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Pathfinder Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

Xeon

Augur
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
1,858
Will be kinda great if they give the option to skip the tutorial or starting dungeon if there is one. Like the Aldori starting place in Kingmaker, they probably forced it for the choices that concern the companions but I'll be happy with just options and then world map right away.
 

Pink Eye

Monk
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I'm very into cock and ball torture
Two Game Designers:
Q: What was it like working on Kingmaker? If you had the chance is there anything you would like to do differently in the past?
A:
Game Designer 1: I would have fixed more bugs.

Game Designer 2: Yeeeaaah(In agreement).

Q: How was it like? Kingmaker wasn't your first game, right?
A:
Game Designer 1: No it wasn't.

Q: Was there anything special about Kingmaker?
A:
Game Designer 1: It was my first actual RPG. When I imagined myself making games, I imagined myself making games like Kingmaker. Before that I was making MMORPGS, they are also RPGs but not the same RPGs like Kingmaker.

Gamer Designer 2: As for me, It was my first time in my life I really though about making games in general when I didn't really understand how to make games. I was playing NWN 1 and I thought that is a really good game. I would like to develop a game similar to NWN 1, and here I am doing just that.

Q: Was there any feature/Class/System you wanted to add into Kingmaker but didn't make it into the final cut?
A:
Game Designer 1: At some point I started to make an assassin prestige class. It didn't make it into the final game.

Q: Have you played the Table top version of Kingmaker and Wraith of Righteousness? Do you enjoy the table top versions, or do you prefer PC games more?
A:
Game Designer 1: We play a lot of tabletop.

Game Designer 2: Nearly every Saturday. Not just Pathfinder, we also play Warhammer and other generic medieval fantasy games. We also play World of Darkness and Cyberpunk. We like to try different systems and settings. We do this because its educational and mostly because it's fun.

Q: Are you both DMs?
A:
Game Designer 2: Yeah. As we play on Saturdays we have more than one DM. Which gives us the opportunity to actually play as a player instead of just DMing. The problem for most DMs is that they don't have the opportunity to actually play the game.

Game Designer 1: We have three Game Masters. And we do it on a schedule. I know Pathfinder. For I have played it for a very long time. My history with Pathfinder goes back to when it first came out. Before that I played Dungeons and Dragons. And before that I played AD&D. But that was a long time ago.

Game Designer 2: My first system was D&D 3rd Edition. Not 3.5. From then I've played and experimented with different systems and different games.

Game Designer 1: I have played a lot of different systems. But my problem was that when I started playing. The manuals for the games were not exactly common in Russia.

Q: What is your favorite classes?
A:
Game Designer 1: Wizard, yes. All the way.

Game Designer 2: Vigilante. But it is hard to play as. It is a strong social class in its mechanics. You can't just play it in any game.

Game Designer 1: Also the class (Vigilante) is kind of hard to adapt to a PC game.

Game Designer 2: Not just kind of. It is totally hard to implement into a PC game. You have to cut half the class and only leave some kind of strange roguish character without all the flavor and features of the Vigilante.

Q: How many lines of code have you written?
A:
Game Designer 2: Quite a bit.

Q: What do you like about the Wraith of Righteousness Adventure Path?
A:
Game Designer 1: Epicness, and some kind of simplicity in the basic ideas. Like for example it has a really easy to understand premise. Where you will easily understand what is happening. You can adapt and change your character to the story. I am currently DMing a game.

Game Designer 2: It is a very easy to understand the story. As a result it is easy to make a party for the AP. In a lot of APs the party composition doesn't make much sense. Where else in Wraith it makes sense because everyone has a common enemy. Its a fun AP.

Q: What makes the mythic Trickster, Angle, and Lich so cool? What makes them so special? Can you gives us an example?
A:
Game Designer 1: All of them can summon allies. Angle summons other angles. While Trickster summons fey. Lich summons undead. They have different abilities, which are gained based on mythic progression. They allow you to advance your class progression. So a fighter can be a Lich, but will have different spell lists unique to that specific subarchetype. Where else Wizard/Lich will have different spell lists. Spell progressions for casters will be different. So cleric/Lich for example will have a different spell progression than fighter/Lich.

Game Designer 2: I want to add a little bit about Trickster. Trickster is not really about tricking allies or enemies. It's about tricking the world. It is very cool in what it does. But I won't tell you what it does.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to share?
A:
Game Designer 1: We will share one of the abilities of the Trickster. Whenever the party rolls a one he can replace it with a twenty. Another ability is the athletics. With upgraded Athletics Trickster can remove conditions. For example he can roll his athletics and stop being nauseated, or stop being poisoned.

Stream timestamp: 32:26 - 50:42 source: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/525811375
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
7th january

1 to 8 january holidays, nobody works.

Also lol they have dude who worked on Эра Водолея. pnp with anime. i feel some nepotism here.

they need to kill off some of the narrative designers in favor of combat ones. (and coders n bugfixers)
 
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DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
You can't put politics before quality or the other way around, that doesn't make sense. Even if you have a political agenda, you would still try to make the work as good as possible. There are a lot of book masterpieces whose purpose was to disseminate politics, like Lotte in Weimar, The Holy Sinner, Animal Farm, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Seraphita, Master and Margarita, The Bible, Ulysses (most of his work actually), The Glass Bead Game, etc. etc.
Dostoyevsky books were political, all about criticizing atheism and the russian intellectual class of his time, socialism/nihilism, but he wasn't an ignorant coward, that is the difference, he didn't abuse his position as a writer like a coward. His atheistic characters weren't mustache twirling villians or he called people bad names like a petulant child.

His characters discussed ideas seriously, Brothers Karamasov is my favorite book, his atheistic/nihilist characters have savage criticisms against his faith and he didn't flee from it. The problem I see is a general lack of maturity and humility, everybody thinks his retardation is special and must be protected these days, people just don't have maturity to discuss politics, the "I'm special." generation are a bunch of pussies at best and malicious cowards at worst. Honestly, I don't want to read politics written by children.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,949
Pathfinder: Wrath
The mythic progression sounds dumb honestly. A lich fighter or lich rogue? An angel tiefling? This sounds more of a problem than 3.5E's mishmash of multiclasses that make no sense outside of mathematical formulas. It seems like the "epic" progression could've been handled better. I don't think D&D's leveling is good after a certain point (maybe past lvl 13 or so) because the power creep is real, so if I were making a game with this system, I'd put the xp cap thereabouts and not worry about epic levels and ridiculous spells.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,949
Pathfinder: Wrath
[The elf] is mentally a child

...ok. Is she romanceable by any chance? Getting into grey territory here.

The progression sounds even dumber with that summary. It only exacerbates the problems the system already has, i.e. ability and spell bloat, and power creep. Additionally, it seems like a daunting task to develop for, every class has its own special abilities depending on mythic choice? Sounds like it's gonna get cut or heavily reworked. It also sounds like something that is not really needed or requested.
 
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purpleblob

Savant
Joined
May 16, 2014
Messages
564
Location
Sydney
[The elf] is mentally a child

...ok. Is she romanceable by any chance? Getting into grey territory here.

From what I heard, no, she is not romanceable.

The progression sounds even dumber with that summary. It only exacerbates the problems the system already has, i.e. ability and spell bloat, and power creep. Additionally, it seems like a daunting task to develop for, every class has its own special abilities depending on mythic choice? Sounds like it's gonna get cut or heavily reworked. It also sounds like something that is not really needed or requested.

I'd say don't judge on it until you play it. With the given information all I get is that mythic levels will add a bit more options to class building - difficult to judge whether it will be good or bad at this point.
 

jf8350143

Liturgist
Joined
Apr 14, 2018
Messages
1,277
Making the game generally easier is not a bad thing as long as the higher difficulties didn't become piss easy.

What they really need is to figure out a way to increase difficulties without stats bloating.
 

Pink Eye

Monk
Patron
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Messages
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Location
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I'm very into cock and ball torture
Two Narrative Designers:
Q: How did you end up in the gaming industry? What was your experience and past experience on working for games?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: I literally saw Owlcat opening. It is my first job in game development. I've had some experience in game development with friends in the indie scene. None of those games were ever released. Pathfinder: Kingmaker is my first game.

Narrative Designer 1: There was a pretty obscure game that never released in English. The game was an urban fantasy like. There are some paranormal elements to the game. That was my first game. There was a sequel to this game. I was in the team that wrote the sequel for it. I have also wrote a role playing table top game. It was horrible. But it was a priceless experience. Also lots of fan fiction. A big secret, your fan fiction can work as your resume.

Narrative Designer 2: I have also sent a lot of fan fiction as part of the test for this job. Some skills you gain from writing fan fiction can apply to your job as a writer as well.

Q: What was it like working on Kingmaker? Was it difficult adapting the table top module to a video game? What problems did you encounter? What was the most easiest thing to deal with?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: Compared to Wraith of Righteousness making Kingmaker was easy. Wraith of Righteousness is more complicated with more nuance and story to consider. Kingmaker was like a walk in the park compared to what we are doing now.

Narrative Designer 1: When I learned which AP is going to be the next game. I doubted that we'd be able to do Wraith of Righteousness. I thought it was impossible. There was no way it could be done. And now are more than a year into development. And I still doubt it and have no idea if it can be done. But were working on it. Speaking of Kingmaker, I remember a quote,"It's really hard to write a dialogue between one potential dead person and another potential dead person. About an event that either did or did not happen". And that's what we are doing all the time. And the game(Wraith of Righteousness I assume he speaking on) is surprisingly linear. It has a certain degree of linearity. But we are always keeping in mind all of these different open paths and trying to maintain some balance.

We can't write infinite content. Every new decision can cause sudden and unexplained and unforeseen consequences. So we have to keep a balance. We have to railroad, I don't really like that word, but we have to put boundaries. It is very challenging. Anything can have unforeseen consequences.

Q: What other table top games have you played besides Pathfinder? How much time have you spent on table top? What is your experience on table top? Do you prefer table top or video games?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: I have played countless board games. As for table top games I have played World of Darkness, D&D, and also some homebrew games in my childhood. I like video games, but I also like tabletop games too.

Narrative Designer 1: I played some free form table top in school. I have also played the game that I worked on, the sequel was horrible. I have never played D&D ever. I have only started playing Pathfinder when I joined Owlcat. I don't like all the math in Pathfinder. To me Pathfinder is horrendously over ruled. So many rules. Pathfinder feels like a war game.

Narrative Designer 2: I disagree with you. I actually like the math, and I like the complexity of Pathfinder. All of that math facilitates you to create an interesting character.

Narrative Designer 1: Yes, yes it does. But in Shadowrun you by math by design outline the social connections. Because systems matter. In Pathfinder you can play a deep social game by ignoring some rules and making up others. Where else in Shadowrun the system itself makes you come up with those choices. Your friends, your enemies, you contacts. My favorite system(Apologizes but I couldn't understand what system exactly he was referring to. Twitch Chat said it was Savage Worlds.) that I personally use is very versatile. It allows you to create anything you want. The system can adapt to anything. You don't need to do a lot of tinkering. The system is not like GURPS. You can create a character and start playing. The system hits that sweet spot between free form and has at least some rules that let you structure your game.

Q: What do you like about Wraith of Righteousness?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: I really like the beginning. The beginning has a mix of social interactions and fighting.

Narrative Designer 1: The Wraith of Righteousness is a straight forward AP that assumes you will play as good with good people. It assumes you will have a good paladin in your party. And one of the reasons why I said it was impossible was because players are not going to play as good with good companions. Players will play with different alignments with different motivations. This is why I love the game that we are working on. The table top version is far linear and more on rails. We have taken the story from tabletop and given the player lots of way to basically derail it.

Narrative Designer 2: We've just given you different rails.

Narrative Designer 1: No, no, there is the original story and there are different paths to derail it. What we want to do is allow the player to take the story and make it their own, but its harder to do that with a game we write. But we can least stimulate the experiences taken from one place and take it into a different direction.

Q: What other Pathfinder APs would you like to write?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: Actually I would like to write my own AP.

Narrative Designer 1: I am currently playing Rise of the Rune Lords. If there is one game I would like to make it would be a fantasy Shadowrun game. A game that is bit like Disco Elysium. Where you have to go around and talk to people and talk a lot. Disco Elysium is majestic because it has rules it has stats it has roles but it has no combat. It has a lot of rules that modify the game, and none of them has anything to do with combat. I want to try that. Maybe one day.

Q: Did any of you play Numenera? It's a very simple system, with a great focus on story and player freedom.
A:
Narrative Designer 2: I have not.

Narrative Designer 1: I know it's a sequel to Planescape: Torment. Which is a great game. Planescape: Torment is an example of a kind of a game I would wish to make. But no, I have not played Numenera.

Q: What makes Witch and Oracle so cool, and why did everyone want them so much?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: The cool thing about Oracle is the curses. Oracles are a class that comes with huge advantages and huge disadvantages. The class has some cool curses that add something interesting to the class. It is a pretty story driven class. Right from character creation the class already contains a story.

Narrative Designer 1: Oracle is an interesting character. A character that I would like to play if I start another Pathfinder game. Oracle on one hand is a spiritual person who has divine spell casting, but also doesn't have to devote to a specific deity. This is an interesting thing to explore.

Q: What about Witch?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: There are some cool Witch builds that are insane. It will take too long to talk about. Witches are cool.

Narrative Designer 1: The other thing about Witch is that just like Oracle she's not completely in control of her powers or destiny. Because a Witch has a patron they may not know who it is, and might be walking around doing magic furthering an agenda for an unknown entity. That is a cool thing about the class.

For Wraith of Righteousness when we started writing we got to offer one specific person who may end up in the actual party. Mine, since its a game about a crusade, I was always fascinated by the idea of the crusade of the children.(I believe he might be referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Crusade) In a fantasy world it might just work, so I added a character who is a essentially a child crusader and she is a witch. She is a witch who does not really know the source of her powers. We came up with a special archetype so that the child witch does not rely on intelligence. The character is a charisma based person.

Q: In some reviews were complains how if you are new to the RPG games and Pathfinder rules you have really hard time trying to first create PC, then start playing. Will there be somekind of "easy" start quest or "how to create your PC" guide this time?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: This is more of question aimed better at game designers. As far as I heard yes. We are planning some tips and some help for character creation. But I don't know any specific details.

Narrative Designer 1: Here is the thing. This why I find Mathfinder a hard game for me to play personally. It does have all the stats and all the math that you have to balance. We understand that it was difficult for new players. We know that it is important to balance the experience for new players. Here is the thing we are making a niche game. We're not making a Call of Duty that is for everyone. We're making a game for a specific niche and that group is what rely heavily on. They want the original Pathfinder rules. And we need to stick to that as close as possible. But on that hand there are all the people who want a different experience. Like for example some individuals come in expecting a less Baldur's Gate experience and more of a Fallout 1/2 experience. And there are people who want less math and more story. Well there are automatic scaling there are automatic builds. There is also the best mode, which is the story mode. Where you can just ignore the fights and go to the story.

Q: Twitch user is spamming the chat with questions about waifus and romances.
A:
Narrative Designer 1 and 2: There will be romances.

Q: Is it safe to assume the scale of the game is similar to Kingmaker?
A:
Narrative Designer 1: Yes.

Narrative Designer 2: It's different. Kingmaker was much more of an sandbox. It's hard to compare the scale between the two games.

Narrative Designer 1: There is a lot of content that is exclusive to the different mythic paths.

Q: Considering Wrath goes into epic levels, how does that factor in the overall narrative?
A:
Narrative Designer 1: It doesn't go into epic levels. We completely retooled the mythic system. You advance by class, in addition to you have a personal mythic journey. Can be any class. So Fighter/Lich. Mythic goes on top of your powers. Some powers become mythic. Some mythic give new original powers. It does affect the story. For example being a Lich does have an influence on the story.

Q: Will the class you choose affect the story?
A:
Narrative Designer 1: Here's the thing. We have some reactivity with your race. We can't really add reactivity for classes, because you can change and multi class. We feel it would break immersion rather than add to it.

Narrative Designer 2: It's also very expensive and too demanding.

Narrative Designer 1: Nearly everything we do is a trade off. We are small, and there is only so much we can do.

Q: Will there be more text?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: It will be a little less in one playthrough. It will be shorter for a single playthrough. But more replayability due to mythic.

Q: Will the deity you worship affect the story?
A:
Narrative Designer 1: This is a feature we would like in the game. But it depends. We would like reactivity, and in a perfect world that's what we'd do. But the problem that is a feature that takes time. Its always a trade off.

Narrative Designer 2: We are at the early stages of the development, in the middle, but still we can't answer these types of questions because there will be changes. We would like more reactivity. But we can't make promises.

Q: I've seen a lot about Good/Evil. What about Neutral? Does that sort of playthrough make sense?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: Yes. We tried to bring all possible player tiles into the game.

Narrative Designer 1: Mythic progression do gravitate towards different alignments.

Q: Which game is more linear? Wraith or Kingmaker?
A:
Narrative Designer 2: Wraith was more linear. We changed it. It's less linear.

Narrative Designer 1: There are more branches. Different from the AP.

Q: Will we be able to customize the base if there is one?
A:
Narrative Designer 1: You will liberate a city and become a commander of it. But how much of that will be customizable we can not talk about right now.

Steam timestamp: 1:26:53 - 2:15:57 Source: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/525811375
 
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Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,660
A proud tradition that dates back to the IE games' modding communities.
Too bad it's so difficult to mod Unity. Put Saerileth in every RPG possible.
6ehKtnM.jpg

16251-2-1209168979.jpg


Edit:
Narrative Designer 2: I have not.

Narrative Designer 1: I know it's a sequel to Planescape: Torment. Which is a great game. Planescape: Torment is an example of a kind of a game I would wish to make. But no, I have not played Numenera.
Colin gets it again.
 
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Pink Eye

Monk
Patron
Joined
Oct 10, 2019
Messages
5,793
Location
Space Refrigerator
I'm very into cock and ball torture
Anyways, can someone who is smart explain to me how Kingmaker is a sandbox. I don't understand what they meant by that. I didn't think kingmaker was a sandbox.
 

Efe

Erudite
Joined
Dec 27, 2015
Messages
2,597
you can go any direction on map straight from start within limits like bounded by river/fog/mountain.
on wrath you probably had to go straight to given objective.
 

Riddler

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 5, 2009
Messages
2,353
Bubbles In Memoria
The progression sounds even dumber with that summary. It only exacerbates the problems the system already has, i.e. ability and spell bloat, and power creep. Additionally, it seems like a daunting task to develop for, every class has its own special abilities depending on mythic choice? Sounds like it's gonna get cut or heavily reworked. It also like something that is not really needed or requested.

That's not how I interpreted it. My interpretation was that they are making different paths for different archetypes, not for every class. Meaning that we will have like 3 paths for every mythic class (warrior/rogue/mage).
 

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