Obsidian, please come to your senses. (6 person vs lesser party)

[gibonez]

I

Don't give in to console-money dreams. Stay strong, go back to 6 person parties.

 

 

 

I dont see how 5 person parties are a console centric thing.

 

I thought they wanted a smaller party size in order to reduce the cluster battles from pillars 1.

 

I dont blame them either so many of the battles in POE1 was a mess with spells and masses of people cluttering the entire screen making it hard to even tell who was friend or foe let alone any tactical gameplay.

[RKHeliplex]

 

I'm curious about sidekicks. If they operate like a pet slot. Or if they take a companion slot, do you opt to take sidekicks until you find companions (who may be harder to meet this time around). There's a lot of potential in this idea when it comes to RP.

Sidekicks are full on party members.  They just don't have as much story/lore in them as the companions, and don't work within the companion reputation system.  Think of them like Yeslick, Branwen, or Xan from Baldur's Gate 1.

 

Interesting! I wonder if they show up before the main companions. PoE (understandably) gave you 2 right off the bat to flesh out your group. And an experienced player could go grab whoever they wanted immediately. 

 

To a certain degree I hope they give us sidekicks for the start and make mains a bit harder to win over.

[Heijoushin]

 

 

I'm curious about sidekicks. If they operate like a pet slot. Or if they take a companion slot, do you opt to take sidekicks until you find companions (who may be harder to meet this time around). There's a lot of potential in this idea when it comes to RP.

Sidekicks are full on party members.  They just don't have as much story/lore in them as the companions, and don't work within the companion reputation system.  Think of them like Yeslick, Branwen, or Xan from Baldur's Gate 1.

 

Interesting! I wonder if they show up before the main companions. PoE (understandably) gave you 2 right off the bat to flesh out your group. And an experienced player could go grab whoever they wanted immediately. 

 

To a certain degree I hope they give us sidekicks for the start and make mains a bit harder to win over.

 

 

Probably the opposite. In PoE, the majority of the main companions just hang around, waiting for you to chat them up.

On the other hand, didn't they state sidekicks will be people who join who after you help them in quests?

[injurai]

​

Personally I am fine with 5, I would be fine with 4.  I don't judge how a game plays based on how many party members I can have.  Tyranny worked fine in my opinion for example.

All that said, Sawyer specifically choose a "will you change your mind and go back to a 6 person party" question in one of his streams.  His response was to smirk (rightfully so), and then say no.  After a pause he went into the explanation that has already been offered dozens of times.  Point is, this is not going to happen, period, outside of mods.

 

​Agreed. But I would not want Tyranny's system for Pillars.

[Tigranes]

Tyranny's success or failure at combat isn't down to 4 players. They retained most of POE's systems, but basically made all of its tactical options and choices irrelevant - and it would have been even with 18 party members.

[boffmoffet]

Sacred Immolation breaks my immersion.

Ha! I snorted milk up my nose after reading this.  Well done.

[Aotrs Commander]

 

I

Don't give in to console-money dreams. Stay strong, go back to 6 person parties.

 

 

 

I dont see how 5 person parties are a console centric thing.

 

I thought they wanted a smaller party size in order to reduce the cluster battles from pillars 1.

 

I dont blame them either so many of the battles in POE1 was a mess with spells and masses of people cluttering the entire screen making it hard to even tell who was friend or foe let alone any tactical gameplay.

 

 

I can sort of relate to that. On the table-top, I now typicaly run with 7-8 characters (and was up to nine players at one point) and you can quickly find that physical space becomes a problem. (Stuff like Wizardry 8 got away with it by not actually having any discrete character positioning.)

 

While I would prefer six characters - since that's what I think the the optimum, given thatg I spent 2/3 of PoE playing with GM and mt own Cypher doing the same things but twice pretty much, I haven't got much of a leg to stand on.

 

(In my defence, this was rare and was mainly because Cyphers are such ludicrous FUN; especially before they got nerfed...!)

 

Besides, five is still an improvement over the 3/4 we got with the non isometric RPGs that succeeded IWD2 and it wasn't a deal-breaker (albiet that it did change the nature of the combat (DA:O being a bit of an exception) to be less about maneuvre and position.)

Edited February 22, 2017 by Aotrs Commander

[FlintlockJazz]

I'm willing to give five a try, but definitely not four.  I have done four, and not just in Tyranny, and I'm sorry but its just too small, even with all the abilities and such like.  There's less leeway in building your party, there are less characters to compensate for one bad character for instance.  The class of your main character will have more of a determining effect of who you will take with you as you will always have your main character in the party.

 

Which brings me to my next point: one of those characters will always be your created character, which means that a party of four actually has THREE companions, four for five etc.  Take a look at the dramatic picture at the top of the Pillars 2 forum, of your companions fighting on a boat: one of those won't be in your party, as you can only fit five in and one of them will be your main character. 

 

DA: O did four, and while there were many other problems with that game (the fact that you only had two mage companions, one of them that POS Morrigan who would bugger off, two rogue companions and about four or five warrior characters depending on if you count Dog didn't help) being limited to four did not help one bit.

Edited February 22, 2017 by FlintlockJazz

[Leeuwenhart]

I want just 1 in my team.

And i want it 1st person.

And give me guns.

Yes. Guns. Lots of guns.

And zombies and robots and aliens.

Apocalypse FPS.

PILLARS OF APOCALYPSE.

 

XD

[FlintlockJazz]

I want just 1 in my team.

And i want it 1st person.

And give me guns.

Yes. Guns. Lots of guns.

And zombies and robots and aliens.

Apocalypse FPS.

PILLARS OF APOCALYPSE.

 

XD

Belgium eh?  Brexit hasn't happened yet so I can still get there and murderise you, you know?

[Leeuwenhart]

 

I want just 1 in my team.

And i want it 1st person.

And give me guns.

Yes. Guns. Lots of guns.

And zombies and robots and aliens.

Apocalypse FPS.

PILLARS OF APOCALYPSE.

 

XD

Belgium eh? Brexit hasn't happened yet so I can still get there and murderise you, you know?

 

You would try.

You would die.

[Karkarov]

 

Interesting! I wonder if they show up before the main companions. PoE (understandably) gave you 2 right off the bat to flesh out your group. And an experienced player could go grab whoever they wanted immediately. 

 

To a certain degree I hope they give us sidekicks for the start and make mains a bit harder to win over.

 

Probably the opposite. In PoE, the majority of the main companions just hang around, waiting for you to chat them up.

On the other hand, didn't they state sidekicks will be people who join who after you help them in quests?

Yeap, Heijoushin is correct.  Sidekicks offer to join you after you do "something" that helps them out in some way.  Does that mean you do a quest for them?  Rescue them from a dungeon, which you went into for some other reason? Pay them a big fat contract fee?  Don't know!  

 

Companion wise they haven't been 100% clear on it, but pretty sure you are going to start with Eder, Aloth, and Pallegina already in your party from the get go.  Which means you will only be one person shy of a full party.  As for the standing around waiting for you stuff, yes that is how it should be. 

 

Remember Companions are with you because they are personally invested in your mission for whatever reason.  They have their own motivations for going with you, so of course they don't need you to jump through a ton of hoops.  It is in THEIR best interest to team up.  Sidekicks aren't going with you because they care about your mission, they are going with you because they owe you.

 

That is quite possibly the most important story difference between the companions and sidekicks.

[FlintlockJazz]

 

 

I want just 1 in my team.

And i want it 1st person.

And give me guns.

Yes. Guns. Lots of guns.

And zombies and robots and aliens.

Apocalypse FPS.

PILLARS OF APOCALYPSE.

 

XD

Belgium eh? Brexit hasn't happened yet so I can still get there and murderise you, you know?

 

You would try.

You would die.

 

Depends on whether Obsidian lets me visit you with a party of five or a party of six, obviously!

[Leeuwenhart]

 

 

 

I want just 1 in my team.

And i want it 1st person.

And give me guns.

Yes. Guns. Lots of guns.

And zombies and robots and aliens.

Apocalypse FPS.

PILLARS OF APOCALYPSE.

 

XD

Belgium eh? Brexit hasn't happened yet so I can still get there and murderise you, you know?

You would try.

You would die.

Depends on whether Obsidian lets me visit you with a party of five or a party of six, obviously!

TPK XD

Edited February 22, 2017 by Leeuwenhart

[Heinrich Bhaal]

Whitout 6 Groupmember, without me.
The same pigs like in Exile.
At the beginning still advertised it will be like IE.
After the money was there and the artificial hype around the first part, you now make your own thing.

I was an idiot, who gave them more than $ 250!

I read it only yesterday:
http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/156419783766/hallo-josh-es-wird-gemunkelt-das-f%C3%BCr-deadfire

As in Exile, no clear and direct communication. No information on the Mainpage of the fig campaign side. This deliberate concealment.
 

[rheingold]

Well you can cancel your pledge to Obs if you are not happy. Though you might want to be quick

[algroth]

 

Companion wise they haven't been 100% clear on it, but pretty sure you are going to start with Eder, Aloth, and Pallegina already in your party from the get go.  Which means you will only be one person shy of a full party.  As for the standing around waiting for you stuff, yes that is how it should be.

 

 

 

That'll most likely depend on where you start out in the game. Will Eothas' awakening be playable, or will it be a cutscene/scripted interaction? From my understanding you'll meet Aloth and Pallegina in Deadfire as they'll be there already on different business, so by that I assume you'll get to meet them later, not right away.

[Fenixp]

As in Exile, no clear and direct communication. No information on the Mainpage of the fig campaign side. This deliberate concealment.

What's exile? What's concealed? What on Earth are you talking about?

 

Did you play a different PoE by accident?

Edited February 22, 2017 by Fenixp

[Blarghagh]

Deliberate concealment?

[Heinrich Bhaal]

Well you can cancel your pledge to Obs if you are not happy. Though you might want to be quick

The irony is that I'm Backer 1162.

I donated at the beginning immediately and then not informed me further.

Because I have a lot of work to do. Due to too much work.

And if I had not looked at the campaign yesterday, I would have bought the cat in a sack now

And I think I'm not the only one who would later experience a nasty surprise.

 

And that is bitter. I would not have expected that from Obsidian.

[gogocactus]

I would prefer keeping the party limit at six, simply because I really enjoyed the party size of six in the first Pillars of Eternity and because I found the party size of four in Tyranny severely lacking in terms of banter, combat complexity and overall 'feeling'.

 

That, and the fact that a five man party size is an immediate sign of giving in to console fanboys who want a simpler, more arcade like Diablo III style experience and will undoubtedly form a prelude to a later Call of Duty like shooter spin-off.

 

<edit> that, and a five man party also breaks my immersion :D

Edited February 22, 2017 by gogocactus

[JerekKruger]

@gogocactus For a moment there I thought your post was serious.

[Heinrich Bhaal]

 

As in Exile, no clear and direct communication. No information on the Mainpage of the fig campaign side. This deliberate concealment.

What's exile? What's concealed? What on Earth are you talking about?

 

Did you play a different PoE by accident?

 

A month before the release, players find out that the Italian translation has been deleted. And companions removed. And other things are not in the game. But hey, then there was a message from Exile.

As if you could not tell before the game is released.

 

In the Torment campaign, the question arose about what a combat system should have the game. It was clear from the outset that it will be rounded. But if it had been communicated before, there would have been less money.

[Heinrich Bhaal]

Deliberate concealment?

Where do you read on the start page of the campaign that the group will only consist of 5 Members?

[JerekKruger]

Where do you read on the start page of the campaign that the group will only consist of 5 Members?

 

The other thread on this topic "Poll on preferred party size" was started on the 29th of January, less than a week after the Fig campaign began. I knew of the decision to reduce party size from 6 to 5 before that thread was started. From this I can conclude that the information was out there and hardly hard to find.