Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

(also: fixed)

Provided you can do that without the binary simplicity and shitty presentation of DA2 then... I guess?

Bullshit SCO, playing Planescape for the first time you have no idea when there are meaningful differences. I played PS:T the first time with a fighter-type without high mental stats, and there was no indication at all that my stats mattered fuck all except for some failed dexterity rolls to break people's necks. It wasn't until years down the line when I played with a character with high mental stats that I realized what high implication those had had.

PS:T is the perfect example of the discussion we're having. When you talk with new players of PS:T afterward (which I have done many times as I have recommended the game heartily to bros) they always have a sense of "yeah man, the game was very reactive", when in fact PS:T is rarely reactive in the classic C&C-sense, it's just that it opens up a bunch of stuff depending on the way you go through the dialogue trees. Though people had a sense of this, they didn't know at all, because you won't until you playback. And thinking a game is reactive based on your assumption is just as good as all those people who claim "wow mass effect wow such consequence such reaction" because they larp it into existance.

Also, when PS:T was best, it was gamist. It told you that you used a dexterity check to attempt neck-breakage, it gave you boni to stats based on your roleplaying choices, and it notified you without error about the short-term consequences of your dialogue choices.

 

That is a problem with gamers mentality and not with the game itself, you can educate them at the beggining by showing them how their actions could have an unexpected or all too expected yet still surprising effect on the world. You can make them think outside the box, you can have them trying to manipulate a person trough a dialogue instead of just going the line they think is going to give them the best reward and thinking its all pretty much the same in the end..

 

I'm fairly sure it didn't. It said something along the lines of 'you weren't quick enough, and he slipped out of your grasp', which is the correct way to handle it: giving feedback without exposing the underlying stat mechanics.

It's mentioned in the character creation screen.

 

RoA and Fallout's character creation screens also told me my skills would matter

 

first mod i'm gonna install is some crap to remove that [-1 charisma] stupidity, which is probably some lost battle considering the lead designer

edit: fuck, that won't solve anything because it will still show the option because of butthurt min-maxers that have to know what they're missing, all of the dialog tree leafs will be apparent

 

I thought there was supposed to be some toggle for this shit?

 

Ah, of course. The tags should be hidden by default!!1!ELEVEN

 

That's always implicit.

I posed that because, frankly, I had absolutely no issue with pissing of certain characters. Odds are they deserved it. But I do think that the way its presented in NwN2 and DA:O can prevent all kinds of narrative development. If there's one thing I liked in DA2 is how the characters, depending on they see you, gain different abilities -- which is a far cry from how in DA:O they either liked you (and were therefore stronger) or they didn't and nothing happened until a possible betrayal 40 hours down the road.

 

Character creation tells you exactly what intelligence does.

 

How much more clear can a game be than "a high intelligence... gives you more dialog options"?

The failing of PST is that it doesn't say the same for wisdom, even though it unlocks dialog options too.

 

So this is what it has come to

There is nothing, nothing wrong with hiding dialog options from the player based on requirements, any requirement, from the most obscure item combination to the most obscure faction choices, to even the humble one way dialog tree path with stat requirements.

Use your fucking brain to suspect content

 

Good point. I'll eat that raw. I certainly detest games that encourage you to keep good relations with all characters, but I think that can also be achieved by keeping relations mutually exclusive or simply making it mechanically impossible. Makes the PC behave more like a babysitter or populist politicians than real people.

tsk - you speak against blind decision-making and you're a "dirty gamist", eh?

 

You're probably one of those guys that went half insane with the Half-Ogre arcanum quest aren't you Grunker.

 

Only in a gamist system though. If you see "[grab the thief's hand before he takes your gold]" you assume this involves your dexterity, and so you don't need to tag it. Only when you need to take into account considerations whether devs felt dexterity was getting overpowered and needed balancing by involving different stats where common sense says they shouldn't, do you needs tags to show you the way.

Also,

 

[Perception] You appear to be suggesting that the game should help the player metagame... as a solution for metagaming. If the game does not include sufficient uses for the Intelligence attribute, that's a problem, but telling the player "you will not use this attribute ever" does not solve that problem.

edit: +1 storyfag -10 sawyer

 

Its not blind decision making if you do get hints about what it does, you just gotta think. This whole genre should be about thinking and planning, thats one of the things that make an RPG an RPG.
To solve the problem of people missing out on a lot of things there should be multiple answers to a single problem that depend on different stats or skills. Not all tho, that would make the whole thing pointless.

 

Might be part of it, but I still think it's mainly the problem that if you're going the gamey route, you need to explain mechanics more consistently in dialogue checks than if you don't. If strength improves damage for weapons and spells, how do you read its impact in dialogue checks? You certainly can't apply common sense the way you would in the way if strength merely affected the former.

 

[Deduction] If your choice of specialization boils down to "What will let me see more content in this playthrough?" you are not roleplaying, sir. This approach may in fact make the game more enjoyable, but only insofar as certain character types are boring to play due to how the game is designed. +1 Sawyer

 

[Diplomacy] Maybe we should start a new thread for this rather than keeping this one off-topic.

[Intimidate] Those insisting on visible stat checks are no better than Bethesda LARPers.

[Bluff] I'm Drog's alt.