Poll on preferred party size

[Voodoo]

There are several very valid reasons why to decrease party size specifically in PoE, but you obviously didn't read them:

 

1. Clumsy UI

2. Bad pathfinding

3. Way more active abilities than D&D games and much bigger need to use them (unless you play on very easy), thus more cumbersome micromanagement for every combat

Edited February 3, 2017 by Voodoo

[Ninjamestari]

1. Improve the UI

2. Improve the pathfinding

3. Only if you use melee classes. Spellcasters had a ton of spells in AD&D and infinity games.

 

You don't change aspects of the game because another aspect requires more work.

[JerekKruger]

There are several very valid reasons why to decrease party size specifically in PoE, but you obviously didn't read them:

 

1. Clumsy UI

2. Bad pathfinding

3. Way more active abilities than D&D games and much bigger need to use them (unless you play on very easy), thus more cumbersome micromanagement for every combat

 

You missed one:

 

4. Obsidian is just a shill for Big TV and Big Controller

[Blarghagh]

There are several very valid reasons why to decrease party size specifically in PoE, but you obviously didn't read them:

 

1. Clumsy UI

2. Bad pathfinding

3. Way more active abilities than D&D games and much bigger need to use them (unless you play on very easy), thus more cumbersome micromanagement for every combat

4. Less trash and more readable and tactical encounters - most fights in PoE (and the IE games too) ended up having extra trash to deal with the amount of characters you were bringing and how many abilities they have.

5. Redundancy: With multiclassing returning, characters have an easier time assuming multiple roles.

 

You don't change aspects of the game because another aspect requires more work.

 

That's ridiculous. First of all, that's not what's happening. With six, you're going to get encounters padded with more trash to balance out the amount of players you put out on the field. You have enough characters to deal with any meaningful thing the enemy throws at you unless they give the enemies an impossible amount of skills too. That's the aspect that's currently broken with six, and the aspect they're trying to fix.

 

Second, none of these "aspects" exist in a vacuum. A change in one aspect is going to affect the other. A game needs to have many systems working in tandem. You say you don't want change for the sake of change, but what you're saying is more like staying the same for the sake of staying the same.

 

Once again I have trouble understanding some objections. How is six characters more tactical? I feel like five + multiclassing is plenty to cover all your bases and experiment, while leaving you with more meaningful choices. In PoE you can have a dedicated tank, a DPS-offtank, straight DPS, DPS caster, support caster and debuff caster in one team. You literally don't have to choose anything. You can cover every single possible weakness twice over. Less room for each role makes you have to make more tough tactical choices, not less. You can multiclass into those things, but you're not going to be able to cover all your bases as well with people entirely dedicated to it, meaning you'll have more a challenging and interesting experience where you have to make more choices that actually matter.

[Ninjamestari]

Well, you definitely do not change your game concept if your UI sucks or your Pathfinding isn't coded properly. That is not a valid reason by any stretch, fix the damn UI and Pathfinding if they cause problems.

 

I'm not saying 6 is the best number of characters that there can be, I'm just saying that 6 is the traditional number and there are no valid reasons to change that. I liked having 6 party members in infinity games, and I liked having 6 party members in PoE, and I definitely want to have 6 party members in Deadfire. The amount of Trash isn't dictated by party size, it's dictated by encounter design. Besides, sometimes battle can become chaos, and there are spells and abilities to help you take back control when that happens, be it due to powerful hostile spells, incredibly strong individual foes or large numbers of 'trash'.

 

Also, the redundancy thing, I really don't think that people should be forced to multiclass their characters due to reduced party size. Single class should be the core option, multi-classing the advanced option. If everyone is some sort of multiclass character, then the classes lose their meaning, and it's better to go the completely classless route instead.

[Archaven]

Yeah right... 

 

Clumsy UI

Bad pathfinding

Too many abilities.. too chaos.. too complicated.

 

Why resort with 5? Go up all the way to 4 and don't stop there. I believe with 4 the above will perfectly.. o'perfect solve this complicated, clumsily, chaotic old school pathetic cRPGs.

The more i see Obsidian wanted to casualize this.. the more my hype and hope lost for this game. Sure you all waiting this game to end up with 4 characters right? Good for you. I'm out.

 

If that IGN interview with Feargus didn't hint something.. i don't want to say more.

Edited February 3, 2017 by Archaven

[Lanyon]

With six, you're going to get encounters padded with more trash to balance out the amount of players you put out on the field.

 

This is one of the stupidest excuses for justifying less than 6 party member I've seen. Party size has literally ZERO effect on encounter mob composition unless you're a lazy sack of garbage. ENCOUNTER DESIGN is the primary determinant of encounter composition.

 

This is true for tabletop as much as for gaming. I've DM'd for many a year, and the hallmark of lazy encounter design is "oh, the party CR is higher than expected? Better toss in a couple extra mobs!" rather than redesigning the encounter to properly fit the party CR.

[Blarghagh]

A tabletop game isn't comparable even if you insist otherwise - not just because party size and challenge rating aren't the same thing, and because party size restrictions aren't really a thing in tabletop, but because in game design the encounter design doesn't exist in a vacuum. A game has many other things to take into account, like pacing, visual bloat and readability (hugely numerous complaints about PoE encounters) to deal with. Just because it works for your DM campaign doesn't mean it works for game design:

 

Because of the aforementioned visual bloat and readability problems, you're restricted in how many abilities you can add to your encounters. Lots of ability effects going off at the same. Those effects could be short or small, but then your player might not see them all. They're long and flashy? They bleed into each other. Encounters just turns it into mush, hard to keep up with and hideous to look at. Especially if you want to add any cool visuals to it - who wants their fireball to be a little pop? It might read well, but it's not cool.

 

So instead of giving your encounters more abilities, you could make your encounters have more hitpoints and hit harder, but that's boring, makes fights longer but not really giving your players more meaningful choices. What you want is to make sure your party has to position itself strategically, but again because of visual reasons like that bloat, readability, resolution, UI size, screen real-estate etc. you're also restricted in your arena size. Most rooms in PoE take up the entire screen, so obstacles are minor and even if they weren't, the pathing issues would make it a nightmare.

 

But you still have to, as I said, balance your encounters with the amount of players out in the field, because the sheer amount of active abilities in PoE means all characters in your party are going to be using abilities. Reducing the amount of abilities per character would remove a crapload of strategic choices per encounter from the player, and one major goal of PoE was to make sure no class was boring like an IE game fighter (set and forget), so that's a no-go as well. Options are getting incredibly reduced, aren't they?

 

So in the end, to make sure most characters have something to do and it's still challenging while also keeping it readable, PoE ended up throwing in extra trash in most fights. They don't require a lot of micromanagement or screen real-estate but they do affect positioning and how many abilities the encounter is able to hold, after all. Raedric got some extra guards, trash encounters were larger because you can't really have two Xuarips pose a threat to anything to put it bluntly but you need some trash for flavour and lore reasons. And lo and behold, excessive trash and need for micromanaging (six players worth of abilities) every encounter ALSO become a numerous complaint about PoE.

 

I mean it's all well and good to dump this all on the encounter design not being good enough, but no offense, game designers have much more to deal with to make something work than a random DM. As Josh himself stated, this choice was designed exactly to make it easier for them to create more interesting encounters with the limitations they currently have. Less bloat and trash, more readability and strategic choices. With the addition of multiclassing to make up for it so you can still cover all the roles you could before with less characters in your party, it solves or at least lessens a lot of issues.

 

I mean, yes, they could pour all their energy and completely rewrite their engine and the way abilities work and everything else so they can fix those issues just so they can keep it at 6, but considering they can solve it more easily this way and concentrate and actually delivering more and better content, why would they? I'm not sure what's so magical about the number 6, other than "The IE games did it", in the first place. If your nostalgia and memory of a game hinges on a number, I'm not sure what will make you happy, tbh. It's a balancing act, and right now it's more economical to use 5 for a better end product.

Edited February 3, 2017 by TrueNeutral

[Lanyon]

A tabletop game isn't comparable even if you insist otherwise

I don't have time to respond to everything you wrote and i have no desire to write a novella, but I'll respond to a couple things that stuck out. First, your statement that a tabletop game isn't comparable to a cRPG is flat out false. Just because you don't feel like the comparison is valid, does not automatically make it so. My personal opinion on the matter still stands: even in the cRPG medium, encounter design can be tailored to rectify pretty much all of the "issues" that have been quoted as the reasons for reducing the party size from 6 to 5. Just look at the IE games... there are no shortage of encounters where a bunch of trash mobs weren't required to make a challenging encounter (i.e. dragon fights, demilich, Irenicus, to name a few).

 

micromanaging (six players worth of abilities) every encounter

 

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I'm getting tired of 'micromanaging' being brought up as a NEGATIVE all the time and used as justification to introduce simplification in games where there's already much too rampant oversimplification already (look no further than The Elder Scrolls franchise).

 

I actually happen to LIKE micromanaging. I loved combat in the IE games and still do. Given the choice between another playthrough of BG2 or PoE, I would choose BG2 any day. Which leads me to comment on the statement:

 

 

delivering more and better content, why would they? I'm not sure what's so magical about the number 6, other than "The IE games did it", in the first place. If your nostalgia and memory of a game hinges on a number, I'm not sure what will make you happy, tbh. It's a balancing act, and right now it's more economical to use 5 for a better end product.

What better content? I liked PoE, don't get me wrong, but an actually worthy successor to BG2? I think not (in my opinion). BG2 is the superior game, by far. After all this time and getting back to the genre, there were high hopes that Deadfire would be to PoE what BG2/ToB was to BG/ToTSC. Personally, for my own taste in games, I don't see that happening now because they're departing too far from the formula that won them their initial KS success in the first place, by appealing to fans of the IE games.

 

Last but not least, I have to comment on the 'nostalgia and memory' comment. It's a tired, old argument and it needs to stop. I've heard it way too often when attempting to discuss the merits of the IE titles compared to what's on offer today. The thing with nostalgia and rose-coloured-glasses is that they don't stand up to modern/recent exposure. Nostalgia is when someone claims 'those were the good old days' without being able to remember the flaws and negatives of the thing. This isn't at play, though (for me, anyway) since I still play the IE titles all the time. There's no 'nostalgia' when I can say, unequivocally, that I'll be playing through BG2 again in the next few months for probably about the dozenth time in my life, if not more than that. BG2 set the bar high, and it hasn't been met yet. I was hoping Deadfire would aspire to. But, for me, it never will because of these fundamental changes to the gameplay mechanics.

[JerekKruger]

Personally, for my own taste in games, I don't see that happening now because they're departing too far from the formula that won them their initial KS success in the first place, by appealing to fans of the IE games.

 

At least one fan of the IE games disagrees with you, and I suspect I am far from alone. What I wanted was a return to the isometric PoV with beautiful individually designed maps, to tactical real time with pause combat, and to a deep story. These were the things the made IE games great to me, not the individual mechanical elements ported over from tabletop AD&D, and certainly not the arbitrary party size limit.

[Guest Blutwurstritter]

Party size 6 worked great for the Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale games but i dont think it made these games what they are. A lower party size works too, as long as switching members is not punished and if interactions between the characters outside of combat are implemented. I really liked the camp in Dragon Age Origins or the Normandy in Mass Effect where you could catch up with characters that were not every time with you on missions. The combat also doesn't hinge on the number of available party members. Age of Decadence had a lot more challenging combat compared to Pillars of Eternity although( or perhaps because) you only had a single character.  

[Jarcore]

5 is a good option for POE II, 

[rjshae]

How about like in ToEE? 5 slots for recruitable characters + 2 for a hirelings and/or guest characters

[kanisatha]

 

Personally, for my own taste in games, I don't see that happening now because they're departing too far from the formula that won them their initial KS success in the first place, by appealing to fans of the IE games.

 

At least one fan of the IE games disagrees with you, and I suspect I am far from alone. What I wanted was a return to the isometric PoV with beautiful individually designed maps, to tactical real time with pause combat, and to a deep story. These were the things the made IE games great to me, not the individual mechanical elements ported over from tabletop AD&D, and certainly not the arbitrary party size limit.

Hear hear! I'm really getting tired of the "Only I get to say what qualifies as a true successor to the IE games" crowd. So maybe some of these sentiments will make some heads explode: PoE was an awesome successor to the IE games; PoE2 is shaping up to be even more awesome; BG2 was not all that it's cracked up to be.

[Lanyon]

BG2 was not all that it's cracked up to be.

 

 

 

See, even just a cursory look at the community behind the IE games provides ample evidence that this statement is just ridiculously uninformed. BG/BG2 were released almost 2 decades ago now, and they are STILL relevant today, played by tons of people, modded to hell and back, and then even after all that an enhanced edition of the Vanilla (unmodded) experience was released and sold exceptionally well.

 

There may come a day when i eat crow, but personally I don't believe for a second that PoE will ever have the same following that BG and IE titles in general did, and STILL DO.

 

BG2 was everything it's cracked up to be.

Edited February 4, 2017 by Lanyon

[Blarghagh]

 

A tabletop game isn't comparable even if you insist otherwise

I don't have time to respond to everything you wrote and i have no desire to write a novella, but I'll respond to a couple things that stuck out. First, your statement that a tabletop game isn't comparable to a cRPG is flat out false. Just because you don't feel like the comparison is valid, does not automatically make it so. My personal opinion on the matter still stands: even in the cRPG medium, encounter design can be tailored to rectify pretty much all of the "issues" that have been quoted as the reasons for reducing the party size from 6 to 5. Just look at the IE games... there are no shortage of encounters where a bunch of trash mobs weren't required to make a challenging encounter (i.e. dragon fights, demilich, Irenicus, to name a few).

 

micromanaging (six players worth of abilities) every encounter

 

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I'm getting tired of 'micromanaging' being brought up as a NEGATIVE all the time and used as justification to introduce simplification in games where there's already much too rampant oversimplification already (look no further than The Elder Scrolls franchise).

 

I actually happen to LIKE micromanaging. I loved combat in the IE games and still do. Given the choice between another playthrough of BG2 or PoE, I would choose BG2 any day. Which leads me to comment on the statement:

 

 

delivering more and better content, why would they? I'm not sure what's so magical about the number 6, other than "The IE games did it", in the first place. If your nostalgia and memory of a game hinges on a number, I'm not sure what will make you happy, tbh. It's a balancing act, and right now it's more economical to use 5 for a better end product.

What better content? I liked PoE, don't get me wrong, but an actually worthy successor to BG2? I think not (in my opinion). BG2 is the superior game, by far. After all this time and getting back to the genre, there were high hopes that Deadfire would be to PoE what BG2/ToB was to BG/ToTSC. Personally, for my own taste in games, I don't see that happening now because they're departing too far from the formula that won them their initial KS success in the first place, by appealing to fans of the IE games.

 

Last but not least, I have to comment on the 'nostalgia and memory' comment. It's a tired, old argument and it needs to stop. I've heard it way too often when attempting to discuss the merits of the IE titles compared to what's on offer today. The thing with nostalgia and rose-coloured-glasses is that they don't stand up to modern/recent exposure. Nostalgia is when someone claims 'those were the good old days' without being able to remember the flaws and negatives of the thing. This isn't at play, though (for me, anyway) since I still play the IE titles all the time. There's no 'nostalgia' when I can say, unequivocally, that I'll be playing through BG2 again in the next few months for probably about the dozenth time in my life, if not more than that. BG2 set the bar high, and it hasn't been met yet. I was hoping Deadfire would aspire to. But, for me, it never will because of these fundamental changes to the gameplay mechanics.

 

 

Nostalgia doesn't disappear if you touch something again later. Regardless, when I said better product I didn't mean "better product than BG2", although why you'd take such a sentiment so personally is a mystery to me. I simply meant a better product than it would be with 6. By pointing out so many things that worked for BG and the Infinity Engine games that didn't work for PoE, you pretty much make my point for me that those things won't neccesarily work for the sequel. For the record, I like BG2 just fine for what it is and I'm halfway through a Wild Mage comedy playthrough with my buddies Minsc and Jan Jansen right now, but I also don't think it's a pinnacle of gaming.

 

You conveniently handwave everything I said without any real counter argument regarding the difference between tabletop and game design, but that still doesn't make you right. A tabletop game still doesn't have to account for screen real estate, visual bloat, readability, UI size, pacing, as well as budget and resource allocation during development etc. - since you like to boast "I know, I'm a DM" I'm going to counter that with my "I know, I'm a game developer" experience to point out that a game dev is not going to have to infinite time to perfectly tune every encounter the way they want it. Budget (of both time and money) will override a lot time-consuming design work. As I've already explained in depth, this change of party size is a much more economical change than rewriting the engine, pathing code, ability and engagement system and pretty much everything else so they can tune their encounters around 6 better. Especially because I still see no reason why 6 is better for PoE other than "well it totally worked for those games!"

 

Using BG2 still as an example because you did, despite being a "spiritual successor" PoE has some very different requirements. The most important difference is that half the classes in BG had no real abilities to speak of and the others shared the same abilities. For the most part Monks, Fighters, Paladins, Rangers, Barbarians were set and forget, Clerics and Druids shared a lot of the same spells, and Mages, Sorcerors and Bards had access to exactly the same spells. Other than backstab and traps which were useless until ToB, thieves were practically a non-combat class with their strength lying in disarming traps, opening doors and picking pockets instead. In PoE, every single class has it's own list of unique and important skills and abilities with their own effects and strengths, not to mention all the other systems in place that affect combat, like the engagement mechanic and crafting, that BG2 doesn't have. There's so much going on that it's a LOT harder to keep track of, and you have to use your characters a lot more even in trash encounters. Despite being isometric RPGs with RtwP combat, their combat systems really aren't that similar.

 

For the record, BG1 and 2 actually had waaaay more boring trash than PoE. IN BG1 you're cutting down scores of Hobgoblins pretty much the second you're on the road, and anyone who thinks BG2 didn't have trash fights where you were up against hordes of disposable, boring enemies clearly never played enough of it to hear the phrase "you have been waylaid by enemies and must defend yourself". Your handful of examples are the exception rather than the rule, barring Irenicus, whose encounter holds a high place in the "most disappointing end boss" pantheon especially considering how cool he was before you fight him. Entire armies of orcs, sahuagin, drow, beholders and vampires get put to the sword in that game in fairly dull filler. The difference is that the trash isn't very involved - it doesn't take any effort because devs weren't focused on game balance and challenge.

 

BG 2 is all about setting and companions and flavour and good ol' fantasy escapism. Half the fun in BG 2 is in creating character builds that completely break the game, like Kensai/mages or Ranger/clerics. PoE takes some cues from that, but the tactical side seems to take more cues from Icewind Dale and the story more cues from Planescape Torment's philosophical discussions on what life is worth, and it adds its own goals and designs like how it takes great pains to have all the classes be mostly balanced which BG 2 definitely was not (go ahead, pick Wizard Slayer and pretend you're not gimped from the start by a completely unviable and worthless kit). Being inspired by IE games doesn't mean having the same priorities as a single one, as clearly the IE games all had very different priorities and goals.

 

 

 

BG2 was not all that it's cracked up to be.

 

 

 

See, even just a cursory look at the community behind the IE games provides ample evidence that this statement is just ridiculously uninformed. BG/BG2 were released almost 2 decades ago now, and they are STILL relevant today, played by tons of people, modded to hell and back, and then even after all that an enhanced edition of the Vanilla (unmodded) experience was released and sold exceptionally well.

 

There may come a day when i eat crow, but personally I don't believe for a second that PoE will ever have the same following that BG and IE titles in general did, and STILL DO.

 

BG2 was everything it's cracked up to be.

 

 

Who cares, though? This isn't BG 2. This isn't TRYING to be BG 2. At most this is a sequel to a game that was, as a "spiritual (not literal) successor" to isometric RPGs and IE games, in part inspired by some of the things that were also in BG 2. It never advertised itself otherwise. What worked to make that game great was a combination of lots of things, but PoE isn't looking to carbon copy all the things BG 2 did and doing one thing different at all is going to upset that balance. Again, what worked for BG 2 isn't neccesarily going to work for another game. If you want to play BG 2 again because it's the best game ever or whatever, no one's stopping you. But you've got some very wonky expectations for PoE.

 

For the record, while I like BG 2 just fine and this is not the argument I'm making, an argument could be made that all those things are true simply because it panders to the lowest common denominator. Skyrim is modded to hell and back, doesn't make it a good game. Avatar is the highest grossing movie of all time, doesn't mean it's the best movie. Final Fantasy VII isn't the best Final Fantasy, Majorah's Mask sucks, World of WarCraft has people paying good money every month to play it for over a decade but that doesn't make it anything more than a loot pinata simulator etc. etc. blah blah yadda yadda. Your arguments don't prove quality, just popularity. Yeah, lots of people keep going back to BG. So what? Big whoop. Lots of people also have some extra pounds because they keep going back to McDonalds.

Edited February 4, 2017 by TrueNeutral

[JerekKruger]

Do you understand the notion of an opinion Lanyon, because I am fairly certain that what kanisatha was expressing there was their opinion. The fact that there is an active community around Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 does not mean that kanisatha is wrong about how they feel about BG2.

 

As for whether PoE will ever have the same following that the BG series has I suspect you might be right, but not for the reasons you assume. After the release of IWD2 there were no more IE-style isometric RPGs (very few isometric RPGs at all in fact). Developers decided that 3D was the way forwards, and fans of the old style had no choice but to turn reply the existing ones and, unsurprisingly, a modding community sprung up to extend replayability. Meanwhile with PoE we've got a sequel on the books, we had Tyranny (which I've yet to play) and we'll have Tides of Numenera. Slightly further afield we have games like Divinity Original Sin and its sequel. If all goes well, fans to more old school RPGs aren't going to find themselves in the position they did in the early 2000s and so aren't going to be forced to replay the same games over and over again. I very much hope that in three or four years time I will be looking forward to PoE3, or another isometric title set in the Eora or even a different IP. I used to be a serial replayer of BG2: playing through it every six months or so with a different character, but I haven't done so in a while now and a large part of why that is is because I've got PoE instead, and despite having played through PoE four or five times it's still a lot fresher than BG2 (the dialogue of which I could quote verbatim in many places).

[Lanyon]

 

Nostalgia doesn't disappear if you touch something again later.

 

I don't think you quite understand the definition of the word 'nostalgia'. According to OED, nostalgia is defined as "a sentinmental longing or wistful affection for a period of the past". So yes, actually, nostalgia does disappear if you touch something again later and it's still everything you liked about it originally. Nostalgia would be if someone were to harp on about the merits of BG2 compared to PoE without ever having played BG2 again since about 2005 or something. Nostalgia does not apply to anyone that has played the game nearly once a year, every year, since its release, because there has been no time lapse required to develop a longing or wistfulness for "a period of the past".

 

As for 'convenient handwaving', you're doing exactly what you're accusing me of... except in the opposite direction. You say I'm conveniently handwaving everything you said regarding the difference between tabletop and game design, and yet you are conveniently handwaving what I said about their similarities.

 

However, I'm going to 'conveniently handwave' most of the rest of your reply (i.e. "BG1 and 2 actually had way more boring trash than PoE") because I simply flat out disagree.

 

And you may say that my arguments don't prove quality, but your arguments don't refute it, either. You say a bunch of my arguments 'pander to the lowest common denominator' and then list a bunch of things that only excel or are noteworthy about a single aspect of the many I listed with regard to BG2/IE, wherein the reality is that the quality is evident in the fact that it hit ALL those aspects on the head.

 

And yes, I do know what opinions are, and everyone's entitled to them, including me. And IMHO, Obsidian is taking PoE2 down a path that diverges too far from the 'spiritual predecessor' that the franchise was supposed to honour.

Edited February 4, 2017 by Lanyon

[Archaven]

I see no point in arguing what's the preferred size of individual players. Some prefer 5.. some 4 and some 6.. or more so someone go for 1 (solo). This is simple common sense. You restrict it to 5.. then 5 is the max you can achieve. Now let's go further.. restrict it to 4. Sure if you still feel the party size don't matter, then it probably means you don't really care about it. Why do you care posting in this thread if it doesn't even matter? If people feel 5 is the best, they can always go for it. Why do you need someone aka dev to force or convince you that 5 is better? Or even 4?

 

If you asked me personally, since the availability of multi-classing features, 4 would actually covered all classes. We don't need 5 there. 5 it's because Obsidian knew, they would even disappoint far more players. I have no problem with anyone's party size or their preferences even their opinion. The whole reason why 6 is not possible is because dev admitted themselves the UI was build and design for just a party of 5. Since UI and customizations stretch goals were already hit, why would it be so hard for players to customize themselves so that they are not able to add in 1 more party character? They even go to the extend that no you can't mod 1 extra character in simply because the engine they use were difficult to mod. But then they say they would provide more flexibility to mod this time around, but not the party characters?

 

My wild guess is the UI is going to look very different from the first PoE. I want to say that i love the UI design of the first PoE. Not only that it can fit 6 characters, it can even fit 8 if there's a mod to allow it. I'm trying to be positive here but i suspect the UI would be kind of big this time. Everything should looks bigger as you are reducing 1 character from the UI. If not all, i would say it would look more simplified.

 

Maybe we can make a plea that if we can use the "classic" PoE UI for the main screen?

[hilfazer]

A reason for lower party limit could be trying to make combat slower:

we've slightly slowed down the overall speed of combat, spaced the characters out more, and taken the overall party size down from 6 to 5.

But i doubt it's neccessary or a good way to do it.

 

Was combat in POE faster than i IE games? Yes, unless...

you used Haste which is availible already at level 5. POE combat is NOT faster than IE combat if you used Haste.

I once fought Firkraag and when his circle turned red he was already 'almost dead' (no, i didn't use *that* cheese). The battle was over in one combat round (thanks to prebuffing and summoning). Fights with Adra and Alpine dragons took me much longer.

So perhaps POE combat is not too fast.

 

 

But if it is, it can be made longer by making durations not that short. My palading got hit by dominate, it was a full hit not a graze. And what did he do during domination?

 

He has reloaded his pistol! Nothing else, he didnt even shoot me once. When i get mind controlled in BG i'm ****ting my pants. In POE it is just 'whatever'.

 

 

Josh also said party size can be made bigger through modding but UI might cause some issues.

 

 

 

6 is mathematically proven to be a perfect number, just Google Your Favourite Search Engine it.

It is great for division, it basically screams "Divide me!" it divides by 2 and 3, oh boy so many options! 5 is just a sorry prime number.

BTW Josh likes the idea of having to divide your party.

[JerekKruger]

The whole reason why 6 is not possible is because dev admitted themselves the UI was build and design for just a party of 5.

 

That's the second time you're misrepresented what was said. When asked whether it would be possible to mod the game to increase the party size the answer given was "yes, but it will be tricky because of the UI" (I paraphrase of course). You've contorted that into the weird idea that the devs designed the UI first then went "oh derp, this UI doesn't work with a party of six, oh well let's just drop it to five". There's no evidence for this view and it runs counter to the way things are developed (things like UI get designed later specifically to avoid problems like this).

 

There's also a much more plausible explanation: Obsidian decided on a party size of five for other reasons (be it path finding, encounter design, reducing visual overload or simply because 5 is Josh's favourite number) then designed a UI around this (in the same way PoE's UI was designed around a six person party). That this makes modding a larger party size harder shouldn't come as a surprise since on top of changing the game code to allow you to have more people in your party, you'd have to find some way to give access to the extra characters' inventories and character sheets and so on since the UI wouldn't natively do so. I can pretty much guarantee that there would have been the same problems raising the party size of PoE to 7 say.

[Blarghagh]

 

Nostalgia doesn't disappear if you touch something again later.

 

I don't think you quite understand the definition of the word 'nostalgia'. According to OED, nostalgia is defined as "a sentinmental longing or wistful affection for a period of the past". So yes, actually, nostalgia does disappear if you touch something again later and it's still everything you liked about it originally. Nostalgia would be if someone were to harp on about the merits of BG2 compared to PoE without ever having played BG2 again since about 2005 or something. Nostalgia does not apply to anyone that has played the game nearly once a year, every year, since its release, because there has been no time lapse required to develop a longing or wistfulness for "a period of the past".

 

As for 'convenient handwaving', you're doing exactly what you're accusing me of... except in the opposite direction. You say I'm conveniently handwaving everything you said regarding the difference between tabletop and game design, and yet you are conveniently handwaving what I said about their similarities.

 

However, I'm going to 'conveniently handwave' most of the rest of your reply (i.e. "BG1 and 2 actually had way more boring trash than PoE") because I simply flat out disagree.

 

And you may say that my arguments don't prove quality, but your arguments don't refute it, either. You say a bunch of my arguments 'pander to the lowest common denominator' and then list a bunch of things that only excel or are noteworthy about a single aspect of the many I listed with regard to BG2/IE, wherein the reality is that the quality is evident in the fact that it hit ALL those aspects on the head.

 

And yes, I do know what opinions are, and everyone's entitled to them, including me. And IMHO, Obsidian is taking PoE2 down a path that diverges too far from the 'spiritual predecessor' that the franchise was supposed to honour.

 

 

We could keep arguing forever.

- About nostalgia: That sentimental and wishful longing isn't removed by playing because the game isn't what you're longing for, the period of your past (as per your definition) in which you played it is. The game is only the conduit and it strengthens nostalgia. It's the whole "it makes me feel like a kid again" thing.

- Or handwaving: I handwaved NONE of your points about the similarities between tabletop and video games because you made none other than "you could make encounter design work" which I've adressed in detail.

- Or why BG 2's popularity does or doesn't show quality. I specifically pointed out myself that I wasn't trying to prove BG 2 was bad, so you saying I didn't doesn't really change anything. Again, I like BG 2 just fine, just that popularity isn't the same as quality. Neither your or my arguments about BG 2's popularity say anything about BG 2's quality.

 

But all of that is missing the point. Let's just assume you won those arguments if it makes you feel better, they're still of no consequence to what we're actually talking about. What interests me is that you even take the time to say you're handwaving my opinion about BG 2 having lots of filler, yet you continue to completely ignore and don't even mention the parts that are actually about party size!

 

Again, you're totally free to argue why a party of 6 is better but as of yet, you STILL haven't done that. Your points have been that the devs of PoE could have made it work with 6 because it worked for BG 2. Again, because you seem to keep missing it, but I've conceded this already several times. But again, those arguments only claim that they could make it work, not why they should. Yes, again, it worked completely fine in BG 2. I've conceded this. But again, PoE 2 is not BG 2. The differences between BG 2 and PoE, especially the ability and character progression design, require a different approach. So again, as long as those things are different then what worked for BG 2 is not neccesarily going to work the same way for PoE 2.

 

And AGAIN, yes, it totally could be possible for them to work hard on their encounter design and work hard on fixing all the other problems PoE currently has, which made them have to resort to workarounds such as padding several encounters with trash, to make a team of 6 work. Those other problems such as pacing, visual bloat, readability, screen-real estate, engine limitations and pathing that currently make 6 not the ideal party size for PoE 2. But again, as of right now, because of time and budget, it's more beneficial and economical for PoE 2 not to do so because moving to a team of 5 and adding subclasses already mitigates or removes those problems while still allowing for the same or more strategic depth and player choices in PoE 2 as they had in PoE 1. There's no downside, This allows them to use their time and budget to make a bigger game with more content instead of wasting time hammering away at everything to MAKE 6 work.

 

You seem to interpret this as an attack upon BG 2, but it's not. A party of 6 not being the right design decision for PoE 2 doesn't mean it wasn't the right party size for BG 2. 5 being the right decision for PoE 2 doesn't mean BG 2 was bad for having 6. Okay, you think it moves too far away from being a spiritual successor. That's perfectly fine. I'm not sure why team size is that important to the IE games, but if you think so, that's fine. But I'm going to heavily disagree with you that "it worked for those games so it's how it's supposed to work, it doesn't feel like the IE games with 5" is a good enough reason to not make a simple design decision that looks like it will ultimately be beneficial for this game.

Edited February 4, 2017 by TrueNeutral

[Ashen Rohk]

Besides, the only way to play BG2 is to solo monk that mother****er.

[Blarghagh]

But Irenicus is such a pain in the ass if you don't have Keldorn + Carsomyr to one shot him for you.

[Sedrefilos]

The IE purist leftovers are back to haunt this campaign too, I see

Whatever each of us is thinking an IE successor is, the team has clearly pointed out 3 things they consider an IE successor must have (and keep in mind, they made the IE games ). Thankfully I agree completely. I can add a couple more but they're included in the game anyway so I'm happy with that. Smaller party might take away a tiny beet of feel but, as I mentioned many times before, party size it's not a big deal for me.

Also I don't see how 6 party member are objectively better for encounter design and not 5 or 7. Makes no sense. You design your encounters around your system. If you think your system works better to make interesting encounters with 5, you go with 5. If you thinks with 6, you go with 6, if you think with 7 you go with 7 etc.

 

This conversation is totally pointless until we have gameplay in our hands. Τελεία και παύλα.

Edited February 4, 2017 by Sedrefilos