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Pathfinder: Kingmaker sales and the single-player real-time-with-pause ceiling

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Lots of programmer work for team leader/owner.

Team leader/owner need to do sale works, ie finding investors who pay you upfront (to pay for IT wages) to do games.

The closer, geographical speaking, the team leaders to the investors, the easier it is for them to have projects.

Investors live and work in big city, example SF.

So the team leaders put up studios and office in nearby cities (because of rents). See Silicon Valley and Palo Alto the early history of IT wave.

The bigger the metropolitan area, see SF bay area and Tokyo.
The more software studios situated in the border of them.

/2cent.

right, but now those outlying towns are nearly as expensive and perhaps some areas more expensive than living in SF due to this. My mother is a MD and my stepfather is also a MD and once my mother graduated medical school and finished her internship in San Francisco in 1990 her and my stepfather decided to move to Fremont from SF because the house prices in SF proper were absurd (for the time), they bought an old 1250 SQ foot house near Ohlone college in Fremont for about 225,000. Today that house is worth 1.7 million, and its really a piece of crap that would cost 75,000 dollars at most in texas or someplace. Its absolutely insane how much their house is worth, its really nothing special at all, nobody outside of the bay area would think the house could be worth more than about 200,000 much less 1.7 million.

Also the traffic today is nuts there now. It could take just as long to drive to SF from fremont as it might to fly from PHX to SFO and get an uber to to see one of these 'investors'. That may be a slight exaggeration, but its not a huge one. My point is the cost of living and doing business is very hard to justify for a small software company living project to project while trying to be stationed in the bay area or LA. LA is probably much more affordable if you are in one of the eastern suburbs, but I am not really familiar with costs of living there like I am for bay area, so I don't know for sure.
 

laclongquan

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And thus to stay competitive, IT companies will squeeze their employees more and more in term of work hours.

I dont know about US but stories about Japanese software companies squeeze their IT coders are all around here. Graphic artists are more tolerated, but coders are like lemon, crushed as hard as possible. And it's about JPN coders, not VN coders, so you cant even accuse JP boss of exploit foreign nationals.

"Black company" is the straight translation of that type in japanese.
 

AwesomeButton

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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
I think the suqeezing has always been a reality, it's just that now it's more often brought up as bad practice, and employees are pushing back more against it in the IT industry, because they are in the dominant position on the labor maket - there are fewer specialists than there are open positions. Of course it varies greatly from country to country and from IT sub-industry to sub-industry, and from company to company.
 

Frozen

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There is also this thing that RTwP is so limited, even more so than turn-based that presides it.
In turn-based you have some tactics involved, with RTwP its just buffing&going after the strongest oponent(mage) all party at once with some kiting&potion drinking at times.
It was a best thing of the moment 20+y ago before RPGs were able to incorporate arcade action combat into itself.
Funny enough, the only thing that was and is an upgrade since then is thing most of you hate because its, muh MMO element- cooldowns.
Because combat system has far less to do with how some rules and digits are implemented then with reality and quality of how the actual combat works-and in this regard Origins is >>>>>>>>>>> BG combat wise.
All these shitty BG clones try to incorporate cooldowns in some way and all fail because Origins combat is the best RTwP combat you could get.
 

111111111

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This is a controversial opinion but I personally don't understand RTwP style as they are implemented right know.

The whole point of real time is using mechanics like auto spacing, and real time spell usage to initiate and counterplay. Things which require little bit of moderate APM which I'm pretty sure codex is allergic to.If your just gonna pause every three seconds to do everything why do you need the real time part?
 

TemplarGR

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There is also this thing that RTwP is so limited, even more so than turn-based that presides it.
In turn-based you have some tactics involved, with RTwP its just buffing&going after the strongest oponent(mage) all party at once with some kiting&potion drinking at times.
It was a best thing of the moment 20+y ago before RPGs were able to incorporate arcade action combat into itself.
Funny enough, the only thing that was and is an upgrade since then is thing most of you hate because its, muh MMO element- cooldowns.
Because combat system has far less to do with how some rules and digits are implemented then with reality and quality of how the actual combat works-and in this regard Origins is >>>>>>>>>>> BG combat wise.
All these shitty BG clones try to incorporate cooldowns in some way and all fail because Origins combat is the best RTwP combat you could get.

One of the most retarded things i read lately... so let me get this straight, there are some tactics involved in turn based, but the same tactics can't be used with RTwP? Why? What is there to prevent you from using the exact same tactics in a RTwP game?

I said it before and i will say it again, RTwP is just turn based with the end turn button auto-pressed. You can configure where you want the turns to pause or if you want in the first place. You can even pause at any time with your spacebar. It is very flexible but takes some effort to configure it how you want it to play.

People who claim they can do things in turn based that they can't in RTwP are just lazy cretins who never bothered to actually learn how to use the system. Stop spreading FUD about RTwP already.
 

Frozen

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One of the most retarded things i read lately... so let me get this straight, there are some tactics involved in turn based, but the same tactics can't be used with RTwP? Why? What is there to prevent you from using the exact same tactics in a RTwP game?
.

BS

RTwP is stuck in between, not a real time arcade nor it has depth of turn based tactical planning. So you get worst of both worlds-slow one dimensional fights that are neither here or there.

In 99% (if the combat is not scripted) RTwP goes like this- group up, attack all one opponent until he dies, repeat until the end of combat/if injured heal and /if difficult fight buff up before. There is no tactics involved (unless you consider kiting a tactic lol )

You cant tell me that's not how 99% of people play. Look it up on YouTube. And if they are "doing it wrong" its not their problem but the games themselves.
 

haderlump

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I have enjoyed a lot of RTwP games, but for me the combat is mostly just 'ok' at best and certainly the last reason for me to play such a game.. Character movement getting stuck or falling over one another, retarded AI, fickly placement of AoE spells and friendly fire, misclicks in the heat of battle are annoyances you simply don't have in turn based combat. It just creates the false impression of being an action game where player reflexes matter.

The speed of encounter resolution is IMO not much of an argument since it mainly depends on the rules and implementation. If it's over fast it basically resolves itself and needs little user input or you can have something like Neverwinter Nights where I could roll the dice and fill out charsheets faster then an average low level fight against one bandit plays out while not allowing for any input.
PoE does allow and require such input but that just means you have to press pause so often that you get the worst of the two worlds. It's frantic and still takes ages to resolve for no apparent reason and no added fun.

Now if you had a RTwP system that allowed for queuing orders and setting waypoints it would be great, but I can't remember any RPG that implemented much in that regard.
I'm sure Real Time can probably be done much better than what I have experienced until now but it never was in the isometric RPG's I have played.
And depending on how it is implemented TB doesn't have to be slow, and I believe it would allow encounters to be designed and executed in much more interesting ways, in theory at least.

I really like Pathfinder so far but certainly not because it's RTwP over turnbased, in my oppinion it looses much of potential depth the system could otherwise have. If only it was more like ToEE... it has the bugs for it, why not the combat? :(
 

laclongquan

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Bitch please. in RTwP games I always play with almost all the indicator for Pause on, thus I have many chance to pause a game in a round. It's like TB that way. If you cant be bother to find that in the option screen that's no skin of my nose. You are probabbly not that good at tactical games anyway. and believe me when I say RTwP can be very very tactical.

Example? UFO Aftershock, UFO Afterlight. Earlier? Icewind Dale 2, and 1. No idea what they are? Like I said, not a good tactical gamer.

Let's say a less known gem like IWD2. Take a setpiece battle instead of static position one (so that kiting tactic cant be used). Take the Shaegan River, second map with Emma chick where you got a battle right after you enter the map.

After the initial dialog, you face with two groups of orc have your party in a crossfire. 3 orc archers in a group, and a bunch of orc fighters in a melee group. We have one ally who can barely keep herself safe, let alone help.

Of course, according to your statement, you would just group all and click on the nearest melee orc, as the archer group are on a cliff. Which is a bad method as archers will tear into your vulnerable back rank.

The tactical choice here are pretty varied. One, you can do a traditional AoE holding action by casting grease, web, entangle whatever in your casters' arsenal of spell. Then mow down target of your choice which is probabbly the archer group by spells and arrows. Two you can have melee up in a rank and stall them in a meatshield wall, then the casters blast them with AoE spells, or bluff all with various spells, going after the melee first fast and hard. Three, same as above but turn on the archer group first, leavethe melee to stall the more numerous melee enemies, a mix of tactic one or two. Four, same as two but casters summon helpers behind the melee enemies to flank them, leave the archers alone for now. Five, same as four but summon behind your own melee then have the helpers moving up gradually, mow down melee one by one . Six same as Two but summon helpers behind archers group.
 
Last edited:

Jarpie

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Codex 2012 MCA
Turn-based > Real-time with pause > real-time. At least with RTWP you don't have to be autistic ADHD sperg :D
 

The Great ThunThun*

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Pathfinder: Wrath
There is also this thing that RTwP is so limited, even more so than turn-based that presides it.
In turn-based you have some tactics involved, with RTwP its just buffing&going after the strongest oponent(mage) all party at once with some kiting&potion drinking at times.
It was a best thing of the moment 20+y ago before RPGs were able to incorporate arcade action combat into itself.
Funny enough, the only thing that was and is an upgrade since then is thing most of you hate because its, muh MMO element- cooldowns.
Because combat system has far less to do with how some rules and digits are implemented then with reality and quality of how the actual combat works-and in this regard Origins is >>>>>>>>>>> BG combat wise.
All these shitty BG clones try to incorporate cooldowns in some way and all fail because Origins combat is the best RTwP combat you could get.

One of the most retarded things i read lately... so let me get this straight, there are some tactics involved in turn based, but the same tactics can't be used with RTwP? Why? What is there to prevent you from using the exact same tactics in a RTwP game?

I said it before and i will say it again, RTwP is just turn based with the end turn button auto-pressed. You can configure where you want the turns to pause or if you want in the first place. You can even pause at any time with your spacebar. It is very flexible but takes some effort to configure it how you want it to play.

People who claim they can do things in turn based that they can't in RTwP are just lazy cretins who never bothered to actually learn how to use the system. Stop spreading FUD about RTwP already.

Not true. The thing is simultaneity. TB and RTwP are completely opposite there. In TB you do not act "out of turn" of other chars. In RT(wP) you do. This changes *everything* including the cooldown dynamics.
 

Kyl Von Kull

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
One of the most retarded things i read lately... so let me get this straight, there are some tactics involved in turn based, but the same tactics can't be used with RTwP? Why? What is there to prevent you from using the exact same tactics in a RTwP game?
.

BS

RTwP is stuck in between, not a real time arcade nor it has depth of turn based tactical planning. So you get worst of both worlds-slow one dimensional fights that are neither here or there.

In 99% (if the combat is not scripted) RTwP goes like this- group up, attack all one opponent until he dies, repeat until the end of combat/if injured heal and /if difficult fight buff up before. There is no tactics involved (unless you consider kiting a tactic lol )

You cant tell me that's not how 99% of people play. Look it up on YouTube. And if they are "doing it wrong" its not their problem but the games themselves.

This is not an inherent flaw of RTwP, what you’re describing is caused by bad encounter design. It’s just as possible to have shitty turn based combat where you do the same thing over and over again (Larian and inXile, I’m looking at you).

Granted, turn based is better at handling space, and it’s better at giving you fine control over your units. But IMO, turn based tends to be superior because it takes up a lot more playtime. So developers have a powerful incentive to actually make it good. In a RTwP game, you might spend as little as 10% of your playtime—or less!—in combat. Bad RTwP combat has rarely ruined an otherwise good RPG. You can just breeze right through it. RTwP is often bad, in large part, because developers know they can get away with it. On the other hand, bad turn based combat can ruin the whole game since it takes so much longer.

It’s no coincidence that IWD 1&2 had the best combat of the infinity engine games: they were dungeon crawls so Black Isle spent more time designing somewhat challenging encounters. Or just look at vanilla BG vs BG with Sword Coast Strategems.

***

RTwP with autopause enabled is phase based combat, not turn based combat. Personally I never noticed much of a difference between the two modes, but then I pause a lot.
 

The Great ThunThun*

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Pathfinder: Wrath
TB is better than RTwP because its feedback is cleaner and obvious to actually allow you to use tactics without having to play like a spastic.
 
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Bitch please. in RTwP games I always play with almost all the indicator for Pause on, thus I have many chance to pause a game in a round. It's like TB that way. If you cant be bother to find that in the option screen that's no skin of my nose. You are probabbly not that good at tactical games anyway. and believe me when I say RTwP can be very very tactical.

Example? UFO Aftershock, UFO Afterlight. Earlier? Icewind Dale 2, and 1. No idea what they are? Like I said, not a good tactical gamer.

Let's say a less known gem like IWD2. Take a setpiece battle instead of static position one (so that kiting tactic cant be used). Take the Shaegan River, second map with Emma chick where you got a battle right after you enter the map.

After the initial dialog, you face with two groups of orc have your party in a crossfire. 3 orc archers in a group, and a bunch of orc fighters in a melee group. We have one ally who can barely keep herself safe, let alone help.

Of course, according to your statement, you would just group all and click on the nearest melee orc, as the archer group are on a cliff. Which is a bad method as archers will tear into your vulnerable back rank.

The tactical choice here are pretty varied. One, you can do a traditional AoE holding action by casting grease, web, entangle whatever in your casters' arsenal of spell. Then mow down target of your choice which is probabbly the archer group by spells and arrows. Two you can have melee up in a rank and stall them in a meatshield wall, then the casters blast them with AoE spells, or bluff all with various spells, going after the melee first fast and hard. Three, same as above but turn on the archer group first, leavethe melee to stall the more numerous melee enemies, a mix of tactic one or two. Four, same as two but casters summon helpers behind the melee enemies to flank them, leave the archers alone for now. Five, same as four but summon behind your own melee then have the helpers moving up gradually, mow down melee one by one . Six same as Two but summon helpers behind archers group.
IWD2 is pretty incline with its encounter design. The orc Drums at the river crossing comes to mind.
 

laclongquan

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The orc drums are used at that place and the cavern after that, but nowhere else~ I'd like it to be used someplace later on, as there're a few fortress type of place that can make good use of that.

Side note

Icewind Dale Heart of Fury leave me with one realization: the best way to limit rest abuse is to make rest abuse unnecessary and not worth the trouble
- At high level, casters have enough slots to use several battles. I use multiple boom spells each battle because I like to see the nuke-it animation and enemies are too tough to die after one volley. And yet I have enough to sweep across the map if my party is correctly configured.
- At high level, teh buffs have long enough duration to allow map exploration. If you just have to buff once, you dont really like to do it again in a map, which is necessary to do after a rest. Several buffs casting once is enough of a chore already.

Which mean, outside of a HoF run, a best experience of a non-HoF Insane run is to create a high level party to run it. Level 13 on average should do it. The level-scale mechanic should make spawned enemies not pushover. Level scaling do good, sound like heresy around here.
 
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Kaldurenik

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Divinity: Original Sin
i did my part and recommended this to everyone i know that have shown some interest in rpg's, it did cause a few of them to buy the game, most of those enjoy it \o/
 

Fairfax

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Messages
3,518
RTwP with autopause enabled is phase based combat, not turn based combat.
Not really. Phase-based systems have a declaration phase and a resolution phase. Most RtwP games let players change each character's action and/or movement at will. That means they can react to things and/or change their mind without any penalty, which would defeat the purpose of any phase-based system.
 

Aemar

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These Russkies deserve credit for creating something that stands out from the popamole crowd. Very solid game, despite a shit ton of bugs - blame it mainly on the publishers, as usual. Definitely worth the full price as far as I'm concerned, even though I'm well aware that I paid 40 euros for something that's basically still in beta stage.

A classic in the making.
 

LESS T_T

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Codex 2014
:necro:

For some reason Deep Silver announced sales number of Kingmaker combined with Outward: over 1.2 Million. But last month they also have announced sales number of Outward alone last month: "tops 600K"

So you can say Kingmaker has sold about 600K copies too. What was estimated sales number of Deadfire again? About 200K?

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/pres...er_Combined_Sales_Exceed_12_Million_Units.php

OUTWARD & Pathfinder: Kingmaker Combined Sales Exceed 1.2 Million Units!

KOCH MEDIA note a growing trend in the popularity of cRPGs

Germany – 19 March 2020 – Koch Media report that their recent critically acclaimed cRPGS, OUTWARD the innovative co-op adventure exploration game from Nine Dots Studio, together with Pathfinder: Kingmaker the challenging isometric classical cRPG based on Paizo Publishing's Pathfinder franchise from OWLCAT Studios, have together sold more than 1.2 million copies worldwide.

“We are seeing more and more public interest and popularity in both classic cRPGs and further innovative takes on the genre.

Many gamers today want to be immersed within plots, swept away by the story and given a chance to build emotional bonds with their characters, and roleplaying games are perhaps the best method to deliver these experiences. The bestselling cRPG buddies Outward with its unique couch-coop experience and Pathfinder: Kingmaker with its classic isometric view opens up fantastical worlds and a style of gaming that is accessible and ultimately a lot of fun.” said Mario Gerhold, Int. Marketing Director Koch Media

For those who have not had the chance to play one of these challenging Roleplaying Games, there is no better time than now - bringing good news right to your digital doorstep: Two great RPGs - Outward and Pathfinder: Kingmaker - are both on sale with a discount of up to 60%

Check out the Steam Sale & get ready for the weekend: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/13763/Outward__Pathfinder_Kingmaker/
 

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