Do most people really play the hardest difficulty level?

[M4xw0lf]

You're going there too early. First solve the Poko Whatevara quest, level up and then wander around on the main island.

So this IS supposed to be hard at level 6? That gives me some comfort ^^

[Boeroer]

Yes, the Lagufaeth are very tough at lvl 6. No wonder you struggled.

[Wormerine]

Titan isn’t a pushover anymore either.

[Boeroer]

I didn't try him (and the stupid sand pop-ups) in the new beta yet.

[SonicMage117]

 

The most casual one but if it (as in any rpg game) would be like how I described, I would play on the hardest one. Unfortunately that will not be for years and I'm already so old (in my tirties).

 

The only mode I finished for Pillars 1 is Classic.

So essentially you're saying you want two sets of difficulty settings: One for combat resolution (like we currently have) and another for story resolution? In essence the latter ranging from "You are the hero of everything and everyone loves you, ever choice you make is ultimately vindicated" (Mass Effect, for short) and "Haha you talked to this guy in act 1 now he's killed everyone you loved in act 2 out of spite" (Like the original Witcher and the Walking Dead had a horrible thalidomide baby)? Interesting but would be even more work than different combat difficulties I think.

No, I meant if rpg's had more respective ahd relative consequences to player actions and choices then I would probably play the hardest difficulty rather than a lower difficulty because for me, it would be worth playing. Allowing players to play 100% passive without consequence is not good no matter how we look at it. We just haven't gotten there yet for the type of experience that treats players like they're not dumb in some way or another. This has nothing to do with difficulty being reliant on story or combat.

 

If you're wondering what I'm talkimg about specifically, my prior comment before the last gives an example. We're not there yet bit the closest thing we have now is Kingdom Come Deliverance which is another genre (what I speak of is not tied to any specific rpg sub-genre anyway) KCD is a step in the right direction at least.

[fgalkin]

I didn't try him (and the stupid sand pop-ups) in the new beta yet.

It's the hardest fight in the beta right now if you don't kite him away all the way to the xaurip camp. 

[The Sharmat]

 

God I hope not. The dialogue in those games was embarrassing.

Haha. I must say, it really was. I would have lynched you for that couple years ago, but after replaying BGs... well, they can be endearing but It can get really awkward.

 

If I'd played Baldur's Gate 1/2 when they first came out I'd probably feel differently but playing them for the first time as an adult...nah. I get the appeal of the games, but the writing doesn't seem like one of them to me.

 

PST on the otherhand is overwrought and clunky at times, but still very good though, even playing it for the first time long after it was released.

[algroth]

I'm having a blast reading/"voice-acting" every bit of dialogue in Baldur's Gate II in my stream, due to the amount of cheese and caricature there is in it. I even partially started through the Aerie romance, that was embarrassing in all the right ways. But I think context and intention are important too - I think Baldur's Gate II is a very different beast to Planescape: Torment or to Pillars of Eternity for that matter, I think it deliberately goes for a more whimsical fantasy feel alla Princess Bride and doesn't really take itself too earnestly even at its darkest moments. Personally I enjoy how full of character much of the text is and how witty certain characters and trope subversions are, for the sake of fitting a certain tone and atmosphere and setting it is doing its job in pretty stellar fashion, warts and all.

 

But with regards to "writing" I think it's also important to distiguish the term from sheer text or dialogue. I can see how something like Annah's romance or Deionarra may appear overwrought in Planescape: Torment yet there's a lot insinuated between the lines that makes the characters and their relationship to the protagonist far richer than what may seem in the surface. Likewise, for all the criticisms you can levy at the text, I have yet to find any game that gets remotely close to Baldur's Gate II when it comes to the sheer depth of narrative for each sidequest and so on - whether you look at the Cult of the Eyeless, the Planar Sphere, the disappearances in Imnesvale, the Astral Prison, the conflict with Firkraag and so on, none of these are treated as mere missions but as full-fledged adventures of their very own, they feel like *quests* in every sense of the word, and far as I see it, this is most certainly a part of writing.

 

But as for Viconia, add another vote in favour of her romance on my behalf. I find it very compelling and well done, even if, again, it does eventually dip into the usual BioWare nacho cheese bathtub. But, I would add, the Baldur's Gate approach to writing a romance would probably not fit a game as sober and muted in its register as Pillars was.

Edited April 2, 2018 by algroth

[Drowsy Emperor]

That would depend entirely on the player. Lots of people love Planescape: Torment because they like the story despite the fact that the game itself is terribly designed. On a similar note, as you might guess, I love Morrowind because of its fantastic atmosphere and setting despite the fact that, again, it's not a very well designed or difficult game. But that's hardly universally true. Given that video game writing is, on the whole, rather terrible, I have to assume that most players are not like this, however.

 

Who is to say PST is terribly designed. The form of RPG's and DnD adventures is not set in stone. Just because its generic incarnation is a pure dungeon crawl, a la Icewind Dale, this does not mean any one given campaign has to have even a single instance of combat.

 

The relevance of the underlying system, the loot, frequency of encounters, necessity of min-maxing etc. - none of these are necessarily more important than the story or the characters. PST had all these trappings, but it was about something else, and it did that well - so you can't say it was badly designed. It merely focused on other things.

 

The game's principal fault was its verbosity - but that was something you went along with or you didn't.

 

Its other 'issue' if you could call it that, stemmed from preconceived expectations of what a DnD game should be like, fueling arguments that it's 'bad as a game'. For me, Icewind Dale was 'bad' as a game, in the sense that it delivered no emotional or intellectual hooks to compel me to play. With a bunch of blank slate characters, I played it merely for the gameplay and the visuals, but never appreciated it beyond that. Despite that, I recognize that it did the things it focused on very well, and in that respect, it's a well designed game. 

[Drowsy Emperor]

I'm having a blast reading/"voice-acting" every bit of dialogue in Baldur's Gate II in my stream, due to the amount of cheese and caricature there is in it. I even partially started through the Aerie romance, that was embarrassing in all the right ways. But I think context and intention are important too - I think Baldur's Gate II is a very different beast to Planescape: Torment or to Pillars of Eternity for that matter, I think it deliberately goes for a more whimsical fantasy feel alla Princess Bride and doesn't really take itself too earnestly even at its darkest moments. Personally I enjoy how full of character much of the text is and how witty certain characters and trope subversions are, for the sake of fitting a certain tone and atmosphere and setting it is doing its job in pretty stellar fashion, warts and all.

 

But with regards to "writing" I think it's also important to distiguish the term from sheer text or dialogue. I can see how something like Annah's romance or Deionarra may appear overwrought in Planescape: Torment yet there's a lot insinuated between the lines that makes the characters and their relationship to the protagonist far richer than what may seem in the surface. Likewise, for all the criticisms you can levy at the text, I have yet to find any game that gets remotely close to Baldur's Gate II when it comes to the sheer depth of narrative for each sidequest and so on - whether you look at the Cult of the Eyeless, the Planar Sphere, the disappearances in Imnesvale, the Astral Prison, the conflict with Firkraag and so on, none of these are treated as mere missions but as full-fledged adventures of their very own, they feel like *quests* in every sense of the word, and far as I see it, this is most certainly a part of writing.

 

But as for Viconia, add another vote in favour of her romance on my behalf. I find it very compelling and well done, even if, again, it does eventually dip into the usual BioWare nacho cheese bathtub. But, I would add, the Baldur's Gate approach to writing a romance would probably not fit a game as sober and muted in its register as Pillars was.

 

Baldur's Gate II was about pure adventure. It went like this 'We will deliver a huge world to you, full of content and interesting stories, a good plot to follow, a memorable villain and a horde of companions from which to choose from (almost everyone can make at least one party of characters they like) - and you do whatever you want with it'. Chances were, wherever you went in the game, something interesting would happen - from a talking sword in a sewer to a bizzarre metal ball superimposed on a city or to negotiating with your own spell summons (the Wish Djinni).

 

By deliberately subverting what was possible, or likely to happen, based on one's experience with previous games (which, even the original Baldur's Gate included, seem rather pathetic by comparison - to say nothing of things like the first person dungeon crawls rampant before BG1), the world seems even larger and wondrous than it was, and it is pretty damn impressive even today. 

 

Not everything was perfect, but everything was either the best at the time or very nearly so. Most importantly, its elements were in balance. There was a lot of everything, but never too much of any one thing: text, combat, music, story etc. 

 

Subsequent games like KOTOR, NWN, Dragon Age, ME felt limited in size, possibilities or imagination. Or they took themselves too seriously (PoE, ME, Dragon Age) without having the intellectual or dramatic depth to back that up. Or they got lost in their own lore (Dragon Age, PoE). 

Edited April 2, 2018 by Drowsy Emperor

[algroth]

 

I'm having a blast reading/"voice-acting" every bit of dialogue in Baldur's Gate II in my stream, due to the amount of cheese and caricature there is in it. I even partially started through the Aerie romance, that was embarrassing in all the right ways. But I think context and intention are important too - I think Baldur's Gate II is a very different beast to Planescape: Torment or to Pillars of Eternity for that matter, I think it deliberately goes for a more whimsical fantasy feel alla Princess Bride and doesn't really take itself too earnestly even at its darkest moments. Personally I enjoy how full of character much of the text is and how witty certain characters and trope subversions are, for the sake of fitting a certain tone and atmosphere and setting it is doing its job in pretty stellar fashion, warts and all.

 

But with regards to "writing" I think it's also important to distiguish the term from sheer text or dialogue. I can see how something like Annah's romance or Deionarra may appear overwrought in Planescape: Torment yet there's a lot insinuated between the lines that makes the characters and their relationship to the protagonist far richer than what may seem in the surface. Likewise, for all the criticisms you can levy at the text, I have yet to find any game that gets remotely close to Baldur's Gate II when it comes to the sheer depth of narrative for each sidequest and so on - whether you look at the Cult of the Eyeless, the Planar Sphere, the disappearances in Imnesvale, the Astral Prison, the conflict with Firkraag and so on, none of these are treated as mere missions but as full-fledged adventures of their very own, they feel like *quests* in every sense of the word, and far as I see it, this is most certainly a part of writing.

 

But as for Viconia, add another vote in favour of her romance on my behalf. I find it very compelling and well done, even if, again, it does eventually dip into the usual BioWare nacho cheese bathtub. But, I would add, the Baldur's Gate approach to writing a romance would probably not fit a game as sober and muted in its register as Pillars was.

 

Baldur's Gate II was about pure adventure. It went like this 'We will deliver a huge world to you, full of content and interesting stories, a good plot to follow, a memorable villain and a horde of companions from which to choose from (almost everyone can make at least one party of characters they like) - and you do whatever you want with it'. Chances were, wherever you went in the game, something interesting would happen - from a talking sword in a sewer to a bizzarre metal ball superimposed on a city or to negotiating with your own spell summons (the Wish Djinni).

 

By deliberately subverting what was possible, or likely to happen, based on one's experience with previous games (which, even the original Baldur's Gate included, seem rather pathetic by comparison - to say nothing of things like the first person dungeon crawls rampant before BG1), the world seems even larger and wondrous than it was, and it is pretty damn impressive even today. 

 

Not everything was perfect, but everything was either the best at the time or very nearly so. Most importantly, its elements were in balance. There was a lot of everything, but never too much of any one thing: text, combat, music, story etc. 

 

Subsequent games like KOTOR, NWN, Dragon Age, ME felt limited in size, possibilities or imagination. Or they took themselves too seriously (PoE, ME, Dragon Age) without having the intellectual or dramatic depth to back that up. Or they got lost in their own lore (Dragon Age, PoE). 

 

 

Criticisms to Pillars aside (which I never felt it got lost in its own lore nor do I think it lacks intellectual depth), I agree with what you say here. It's amazing to see just how much content seems to be packed into the game, even playing it today - and as you well point out, all of it seems interesting, surprising and always taking things a step or two beyond what may be initially suggested by the quest. I don't think any game since has been truly that consistent in its side content and so on.

Edited April 2, 2018 by algroth

[George_Truman]

Story and atmosphere are for casuls. It's all about combat depth and difficulty. The closer my game is to an incomprehensible spreadsheet the better.

[fgalkin]

If I wanted a spreadsheet, I'd use Excel and not spend money on a game. For example, I love Endless Space 2, while the Civilization series bores me to tears

[injurai]

If I wanted a spreadsheet, I'd use Excel and not spend money on a game. For example, I love Endless Space 2, while the Civilization series bores me to tears

 

How is Civilization a spreadsheet?

[fgalkin]

It's highly dependent on its mechanics. Once you understand them, there is usually one optimal way to play

[Mikeymoonshine]

 

I play on normal or hard usually, lately hard more than normal. I like to roleplay and i'm not really interested in powergaming. For Pillars my first playthrough was classic but I found most of it easy outside of a few fights and even those were easy once I realised I just wasn't buffing my party properly. Then after that I played on hard, I have considered trying a POTD playthrough but I haven't gotten around to it yet and I don't imagine I will any time soon. 

 

Difficulty also depends on the game, I barely managed to finish Divinity OS 2 on their classic mode. I'm sure I just need to learn the system though as many of the hardest fights in that game can be won easily using specific strategies. 

 

PoTD doesn't require power gaming. I beat it the first time with a suboptimal RP focused chanter build with no forethought and a party composed entirely of story companions without minmaxed stats. You'll have trouble with a few fights, but it's not remotely insurmountable without minmaxing.

 

 

 

Oh I am not saying it does, I am saying I don't tend to try the hardest difficulty unless I am finding the game way too easy because I am more interested in the roleplaying. Unless I fall in love with a game, learn it's system and then more challenging difficulty can make multiple playthroughs more interesting to do. I have only played Pillars 1 all the way to the end twice though. I'll probably try and finish the third playthrough before deadfire is released. 

Edited April 2, 2018 by Mikeymoonshine

[Mikeymoonshine]

The only romance that  I ever felt was done right was with Jaheira in Baldur's Gate 2. The rest weren't really romances as I understand them (mutual attraction of mature adults), what with the companion's almost compulsive attachment to the Nameless One in Tormet, or were kind of a joke (Viconia) or... questionable... (Aerie). Subsequently, all the Obisidian romances were more or less a total rehash of the Torment approach "PC is a black hole of the universe, sucking everything up like an existential vaccum cleaner" (KOTOR 2, Mask of the Betrayer) and Bioware romances developed toward this horrible 'curing' of other people's 'issues' (often abandonment/daddy issues) and being rewarded with their affection in return.

 

What I found repulsive about the Bioware approach was the implied sleaziness of 'being a shoulder to cry on' and being rewarded with sex in the long run (even with Jaheira). This was not the intention of the writers, but that's how it came off.

 

I believe that this is the result of something rampant in the media -  equating 'issues' with 'depth of character', where shorthand for writing a 'good character' is making them 'really, reallly ****ed up'. So everyone's been: raped, abandoned, abused, had family members killed, ousted from their home - making one of literature's great examples of a 'hard life', Ana Karenina look like a spoiled, entitled, brat. The result is that game characters loaded with all this 'tragedy' lose emotional impact. Oh, your family was killed? Get in line, there, behind the man with the bat ears. 

 

The resolution, I think, is to steer clear of emotional extremes, unless one is extremely confident that they have something worth saying in that regard. Romances and tragedies are all well and good, but like humor, when they fall flat, they bring the overall experience down with them. 

 

 

This is a good point, even though I liked some of those romances so many bioware romance plots play out like that. Even the whole Viconia thing where she'll have casual sex with you but then end the romance and to be successful u have to refuse the first time has been used again and again by them. 

[injurai]

It's highly dependent on its mechanics. Once you understand them, there is usually one optimal way to play

 

Is that not the case with Endless Space 2? Or even Pillars? In Civ there are many scenarios and in any particular scenario there is an optimal way to progress to a goal.

[algroth]

 

That would depend entirely on the player. Lots of people love Planescape: Torment because they like the story despite the fact that the game itself is terribly designed. On a similar note, as you might guess, I love Morrowind because of its fantastic atmosphere and setting despite the fact that, again, it's not a very well designed or difficult game. But that's hardly universally true. Given that video game writing is, on the whole, rather terrible, I have to assume that most players are not like this, however.

 

Who is to say PST is terribly designed. The form of RPG's and DnD adventures is not set in stone. Just because its generic incarnation is a pure dungeon crawl, a la Icewind Dale, this does not mean any one given campaign has to have even a single instance of combat.

 

The relevance of the underlying system, the loot, frequency of encounters, necessity of min-maxing etc. - none of these are necessarily more important than the story or the characters. PST had all these trappings, but it was about something else, and it did that well - so you can't say it was badly designed. It merely focused on other things.

 

The game's principal fault was its verbosity - but that was something you went along with or you didn't.

 

Its other 'issue' if you could call it that, stemmed from preconceived expectations of what a DnD game should be like, fueling arguments that it's 'bad as a game'. For me, Icewind Dale was 'bad' as a game, in the sense that it delivered no emotional or intellectual hooks to compel me to play. With a bunch of blank slate characters, I played it merely for the gameplay and the visuals, but never appreciated it beyond that. Despite that, I recognize that it did the things it focused on very well, and in that respect, it's a well designed game. 

 

 

I think *aspects* of Torment can be accused of being terribly designed. The UI is clunky, the dungeon and encounter design feels perfunctory and in turn combat feels very dull and monotonous. The game certainly aims to be something quite different to a dungeon-crawler and clearly combat and dungeon-crawling is secondary to its experience, yet these aspects are still a part of the overall experience even if we were to stick to the critical path, and it's fair to call the game out on these shortcomings. But as for what it aims for, and how the dialogues, setting, narrative and so on are designed, it certainly does a stellar job in all these aspects. Personally I also feel one of its strengths is that the game never feels like it's being verbose for the sheer sake of verbosity, contrary to some of the later games inspired by Torment which either could have used an additional editor's pass or outright seemed to take pride in their word-count (Pillars among them, despite loving its lore and so on).

[Drowsy Emperor]

I can honestly say I didn't perceive Torment's combat as a flaw. It's been a long time since I played the game though, but I don't remember it being oppressive, mostly because there wasn't too much of it. What was there wasn't particularly memorable, but it kind of seemed to function as a break between all the questing and talking, rather than the usual, reverse situation, in which talking is a break to a string of fighting. 

 

But, I was unfamiliar with the setting, and not well versed in ADnD at the time so the creatures, (like the psy rats in the sewers) were kinda fascinating, and it was a bit challenging as well (when you don't know the rules).  

Edited April 2, 2018 by Drowsy Emperor

[fgalkin]

 

It's highly dependent on its mechanics. Once you understand them, there is usually one optimal way to play

 

Is that not the case with Endless Space 2? Or even Pillars? In Civ there are many scenarios and in any particular scenario there is an optimal way to progress to a goal.

 

Yes, but both Endless Space and PoE make up for it with lore and flavor. Civ is just Civ. 

 

Which was my original point in response to the sentiment that "Story and atmosphere are for casuls" 

[Yosharian]

 

The only romance that  I ever felt was done right was with Jaheira in Baldur's Gate 2. The rest weren't really romances as I understand them (mutual attraction of mature adults), what with the companion's almost compulsive attachment to the Nameless One in Tormet, or were kind of a joke (Viconia) or... questionable... (Aerie). Subsequently, all the Obisidian romances were more or less a total rehash of the Torment approach "PC is a black hole of the universe, sucking everything up like an existential vaccum cleaner" (KOTOR 2, Mask of the Betrayer) and Bioware romances developed toward this horrible 'curing' of other people's 'issues' (often abandonment/daddy issues) and being rewarded with their affection in return.

 

What I found repulsive about the Bioware approach was the implied sleaziness of 'being a shoulder to cry on' and being rewarded with sex in the long run (even with Jaheira). This was not the intention of the writers, but that's how it came off.

 

I believe that this is the result of something rampant in the media -  equating 'issues' with 'depth of character', where shorthand for writing a 'good character' is making them 'really, reallly ****ed up'. So everyone's been: raped, abandoned, abused, had family members killed, ousted from their home - making one of literature's great examples of a 'hard life', Ana Karenina look like a spoiled, entitled, brat. The result is that game characters loaded with all this 'tragedy' lose emotional impact. Oh, your family was killed? Get in line, there, behind the man with the bat ears. 

 

The resolution, I think, is to steer clear of emotional extremes, unless one is extremely confident that they have something worth saying in that regard. Romances and tragedies are all well and good, but like humor, when they fall flat, they bring the overall experience down with them. 

 

 

This is a good point, even though I liked some of those romances so many bioware romance plots play out like that. Even the whole Viconia thing where she'll have casual sex with you but then end the romance and to be successful u have to refuse the first time has been used again and again by them. 

 

 

Where has that been re-used?

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

 

It's highly dependent on its mechanics. Once you understand them, there is usually one optimal way to play

 

 

Is that not the case with Endless Space 2? Or even Pillars? In Civ there are many scenarios and in any particular scenario there is an optimal way to progress to a goal.

Yes, but both Endless Space and PoE make up for it with lore and flavor. Civ is just Civ. 

Which was my original point in response to the sentiment that "Story and atmosphere are for casuls" 

Civ is Civ but Alpha Centauri is Alpha Centauri, and it has more flavor than most games let alone the strategy genre, where it stomps all over almost everything ever released. And it's a Civ game

[algroth]

I can honestly say I didn't perceive Torment's combat as a flaw. It's been a long time since I played the game though, but I don't remember it being oppressive, mostly because there wasn't too much of it. What was there wasn't particularly memorable, but it kind of seemed to function as a break between all the questing and talking, rather than the usual, reverse situation, in which talking is a break to a string of fighting. 

 

But, I was unfamiliar with the setting, and not well versed in ADnD at the time so the creatures, (like the psy rats in the sewers) were kinda fascinating, and it was a bit challenging as well (when you don't know the rules).  

 

It's certainly not oppressive, I just think it's pretty plain and boring, like you can sleepwalk through most of it. It's true that it offers a breathing room between long strings of dialogue and I'd much rather it be there than not, but that along with "it's never frustrating" is really as positive as I can go about it. I mean, I think the spiders *alone* in Baldur's Gate offered more diversity in challenge than the entire roster of enemies in Torment - which is a shame when you consider that, as you well say, the concept behind several of the monsters in Torment is pretty interesting.

[The Sharmat]

But with regards to "writing" I think it's also important to distiguish the term from sheer text or dialogue. I can see how something like Annah's romance or Deionarra may appear overwrought in Planescape: Torment yet there's a lot insinuated between the lines that makes the characters and their relationship to the protagonist far richer than what may seem in the surface.

I was referring more to the prose than the dialogue. I think it talks a lot while not saying very much in certain places, and often becomes more bloated than flowery (Ironically a common criticism of Pillars I've seen, though Pillars' prose is far more straightforward). But this can be a very subjective thing. By contrast, Annah's romance is quite understated, and even Deionarra's declarations of love and borderline obsession suit the story well.

 

 

 

The relevance of the underlying system, the loot, frequency of encounters, necessity of min-maxing etc. - none of these are necessarily more important than the story or the characters. PST had all these trappings, but it was about something else, and it did that well - so you can't say it was badly designed. It merely focused on other things.

 

Those trappings are still a massive part of the game and they perform quite poorly. If a system is in a game and you're better off minimizing your engagement with it, it's a bad system. Basically every part of PST but the dialogue and the atmosphere is mediocre to bad. I'd also criticize the story elements to be honest. It's a game, not a novel. The fact that there's not really any reason to play as anything but a max Wis/ high Int/ high Cha character unless you want to miss the vast majority of the plot is a huge flaw in an interactive medium.

 

All that said, don't get me wrong, I loved the game. It's just a very flawed gem, not the pinnacle of what a story driven game could or should be. I don't think we've reached that point yet. It's still a young medium. That said I'd argue that Mask of the Betrayer and possibly even KOTOR 2 (patched, of course) do what PST did as well or better.

 

 

Story and atmosphere are for casuls. It's all about combat depth and difficulty. The closer my game is to an incomprehensible spreadsheet the better.

Perhaps the excel was inside us all along