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Pathfinder Why Owlcat's Kingmaker Sucks, in Plain Language

Baardhaas

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Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here
When it comes to side locations and kingdom management, Owlcats fell into what I begin to call a formulaic design trap. It's when you design things in a formulaic way (x locations y hours) without taking into consideration players experience or the narrative of the rpg. As game goes on, the tempo of the game should increase with the increasing stakes. The further you are in the plot, the less there should be little side locations to explore. They should mostly be in beginning of the game. The less there should be rote kingdom cards, and the more focus on consequences of these cards from previous chapter.
Instead the tempo of the game regardless of the plot is somewhat the same.
One could argue the opposite just as easy. Games like Baldur's Gate 2 or Risen have a ton of quests in the opening chapter(s) and shift to a narrow focus towards the later stages of the game. 'Great game, too bad everything was railroaded past chapter (x)' is a common critique on every RPG that follows this direction.

Every chapter plays by similar formula, all companions resolve their quests in similar time period, you always have relatively similar amount of boring job to do etc.
It's like failure at dramaturgy of the game.
I think you've nailed it here. The content feels formulaic, bland after 3 to 4 chapters. They should've deepened the story line by making decisions you made in previous chapters matter, or failing that, just shorten the story and make a tighter less repetetive game.
 

Daud

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I have more than a couple of unfinished playthroughs on PF:K, I hope I'll be able to finish the most advanced one but some mechanics and design choices are starting to rub me the wrong way.

I love how much deep you can go with your character through multiclassing, which can be scary at first for new players. The art style and graphics are also great.
Managing a kingdom sounds cool at first, but in the mid game becomes a total chore with dozens of cards to review, and switching to auto defeats the purpose of choice.
Travel is also starting to become tedious and there are so many areas to visit on the map you'll inevitably skip content.
Personally, the most bothersome aspect is how they botched alignment(and moral choices in general) in so many occasions. And don't get me started on companions or advisors being taken away from you for plot reasons.

PF brings a lot on the table(and hopefully the next game will build on that), but some mechanics really frustrate the player, and that's not good given how long the game is.
>Combatfag game isn't like an RPfag game
How's about you shut the fuck up retard?
Nah fam, I don't give a fuck about your useless opinion.
 

NJClaw

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Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
I have more than a couple of unfinished playthroughs on PF:K, I hope I'll be able to finish the most advanced one but some mechanics and design choices are starting to rub me the wrong way.

I love how much deep you can go with your character through multiclassing, which can be scary at first for new players. The art style and graphics are also great.
Managing a kingdom sounds cool at first, but in the mid game becomes a total chore with dozens of cards to review, and switching to auto defeats the purpose of choice.
Travel is also starting to become tedious and there are so many areas to visit on the map you'll inevitably skip content.
Personally, the most bothersome aspect is how they botched alignment(and moral choices in general) in so many occasions. And don't get me started on companions or advisors being taken away from you for plot reasons.

PF brings a lot on the table(and hopefully the next game will build on that), but some mechanics really frustrate the player, and that's not good given how long the game is.
>Combatfag game isn't like an RPfag game
How's about you shut the fuck up retard?
Nah fam, I don't give a fuck about your useless opinion.
Sweeper is a very prestigious shitposter known for having played AT LEAST 2 RPGs, you should show some respect.
 

Daud

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isnt that what projects are?
I get what you're saying but immunity to compulsions, etc isnt unique enough for you?
Sure, that's cool, but I'm talking about the hundreds of times that you have to click on problems and events that have no actual consequence on the game. 75% of projects and 100% of problems and opportunities do absolutely nothing for the core game experience. It's a time-wasting minigame that rarely impacts what you actually bought the game for (the isometric RPG).

There are tens of events like:

Adepts of bizarre cult insist that the forests are disappearing, and that Erastil demands a human sacrifice. Apparently, the trees will return to life if the soil is fertilized with blood. The cultists have armed themselves with bows and set out for the forest, murdering every passer-by for the glory of Erastil. The people are terrified, and now avoid woods and thickets.
A fey magician visited a settlement, and made everyday things come to life! The people seem to be more frightened than amused by the minor and generally harmless anomaly.
A druid fanatic, and defender of the forests, has appeared in the kingdom. He sends wild animals to attack woodcutters, grows forests over the roads, and destroys sawmills. His actions are damaging the local communities, and those who express outrage have only suffered his wrath. He must be stopped, or the lands will soon turn into a dense forest!
A band of arsonists is on the loose in the city. They're extorting money from the homeowners, threatening to set fire to their property if they refuse to pay. These criminals must be stopped!
A druid from the lands of the Linnorm Kings is offering to perform a bloody ritual called the Braided Man, which involves a human sacrifice. The ritual promises to grant a bountiful harvest. But is it ethical to burn someone to ashes for the sake of an abundant harvest?

But what do they do? Nothing. The only agency the player has is to privilege certain stats over others, and the whole thing basically consists in a very barebone resources management minigame where you have to optimize each advisor's time. It can be fun at first because you feel involved in your kingdom, but it quickly becomes apparent that there's nothing behind those events and that the whole minigame is just for its own sake. And the various "advisor X requests an audience" aren't any better, since most of them have exactly zero consequences. There's a huge disproportion between how much time this minigame takes and how little it actually offers in terms of gameplay. To me, the kingdom management feature was passable at best during the first playthrough, but became a burden in subsequent ones (I still played the game for thousands of hours and I will probably keep playing it in the future, so it's not like I don't like it).

I think that having a lot less kingdom cards with a lot more "gameplay content" (areas to explore, quests to solve, enemies to fight) linked to them would have greatly benefited Kingmaker. Not because the game doesn't have enough content, but because the core gameplay is so much more fun than the kingdom management part.

I think you've nailed the core issue of PF. I'm having a lot of fun with the core gameplay but the kingdom management becomes very tedious and just an impediment to enjoy the rest of the game.
 

Daud

Literate
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I have more than a couple of unfinished playthroughs on PF:K, I hope I'll be able to finish the most advanced one but some mechanics and design choices are starting to rub me the wrong way.

I love how much deep you can go with your character through multiclassing, which can be scary at first for new players. The art style and graphics are also great.
Managing a kingdom sounds cool at first, but in the mid game becomes a total chore with dozens of cards to review, and switching to auto defeats the purpose of choice.
Travel is also starting to become tedious and there are so many areas to visit on the map you'll inevitably skip content.
Personally, the most bothersome aspect is how they botched alignment(and moral choices in general) in so many occasions. And don't get me started on companions or advisors being taken away from you for plot reasons.

PF brings a lot on the table(and hopefully the next game will build on that), but some mechanics really frustrate the player, and that's not good given how long the game is.
>Combatfag game isn't like an RPfag game
How's about you shut the fuck up retard?
Nah fam, I don't give a fuck about your useless opinion.
Sweeper is a very prestigious shitposter known for having played AT LEAST 2 RPGs, you should show some respect.

I'm sorry, I have a lot to learn about the lore of Codex.
 

Desiderius

Found your egg, Robinett, you sneaky bastard
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Insert Title Here Pathfinder: Wrath
I enjoy the KM, but NJ is right that it needs to matter way more directly to something other than just the KM itself.

The race to get the Circles and Artisans up should be how it feels the whole game but once those are up (and you get the Immunities) nothing else matters. It’s a travesty that the big late game buildings (and acquiring Pitax!) have no effect on anything.
 

NJClaw

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Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
I think you've nailed the core issue of PF. I'm having a lot of fun with the core gameplay but the kingdom management becomes very tedious and just an impediment to enjoy the rest of the game.
Maybe try to set the kingdom management to auto and activate the invincible kingdom mode. The game is too good to let a minor issue stop you from playing it.
 

Desiderius

Found your egg, Robinett, you sneaky bastard
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Insert Title Here Pathfinder: Wrath
The unfortunate part is that 95% of the people saying that KM doesn’t matter never bothered to figure out whether it matters or not, and it matters a ton in the part of the game they’ve actually played.

They’re facerollers whether they know it or not.
 
Last edited:

Desiderius

Found your egg, Robinett, you sneaky bastard
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Insert Title Here Pathfinder: Wrath
No, auto gimps you because you miss out on all the benefits. This is awful advice because most people who struggle with KM never even tried to figure it out so haven’t experienced the better part of the game’s (pretty good) itemization or the (too few) significant benefits like Immunities.

NJ is right that too much of the benefit (things like doubling speed in mountains) just effect KM itself, which ends up being fatal since KM ends up not mattering (unless you’re really bad at it and end up at risk of losing the whole thing).
 

NJClaw

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No, auto gimps you because you miss out on all the benefits. This is awful advice because most people who struggle with KM never even tried to figure it out so haven’t experienced the better part of the game’s (pretty good) itemization or the (too few) significant benefits like Immunities.
I've never used those settings so I don't even know what they do, but if the choice is between not playing the game and playing it with kingdom management on auto, I'm surely going for the latter.
 

Desiderius

Found your egg, Robinett, you sneaky bastard
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Insert Title Here Pathfinder: Wrath
No, auto gimps you because you miss out on all the benefits. This is awful advice because most people who struggle with KM never even tried to figure it out so haven’t experienced the better part of the game’s (pretty good) itemization or the (too few) significant benefits like Immunities.
I've never used those settings so I don't even know what they do, but if the choice is between not playing the game and playing it with kingdom management on auto, I'm surely going for the latter.

Most of the itemization is gated behind artisans. People who complain about weapons are usually doing this, but the best items aren’t even weapons.
 

NJClaw

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I think you can still get artisans even with the kingdom on auto, but I don't know at which speed. At least that's what people have told me, I've no firsthand experience with it.
 

oneself

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Slow ass movement speed. Slow ass level ups.
game is over 70 hours, you want to be short like it is a 20-40 hours games?

I want it to be less tedious.

If I want to farm to 20, let me farm to 20. If I want to walk across the map, let me get it done faster.

Right now it is such a pain in the ass to do either, let alone both.
 

eli

Learned
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Slow ass movement speed. Slow ass level ups.
game is over 70 hours, you want to be short like it is a 20-40 hours games?

I want it to be less tedious.

If I want to farm to 20, let me farm to 20. If I want to walk across the map, let me get it done faster.

Right now it is such a pain in the ass to do either, let alone both.
game isn't Morrowind, no traditional rpg allowed you to farm to 20 or be high on skomma to walk faster like in oblivion. you have the DLC dungeons although it is bullshit that it is a dlc.
 

Daud

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I think you've nailed the core issue of PF. I'm having a lot of fun with the core gameplay but the kingdom management becomes very tedious and just an impediment to enjoy the rest of the game.
Maybe try to set the kingdom management to auto and activate the invincible kingdom mode. The game is too good to let a minor issue stop you from playing it.
Auto management is not rewarding or engaging at all. It's not even stopping me to play the game, I love managerial mechanics in RPGs, it just sucks that a promising mechanic becomes a burden.
 

Desiderius

Found your egg, Robinett, you sneaky bastard
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Insert Title Here Pathfinder: Wrath
I think you've nailed the core issue of PF. I'm having a lot of fun with the core gameplay but the kingdom management becomes very tedious and just an impediment to enjoy the rest of the game.
Maybe try to set the kingdom management to auto and activate the invincible kingdom mode. The game is too good to let a minor issue stop you from playing it.
Auto management is not rewarding or engaging at all. It's not even stopping me to play the game, I love managerial mechanics in RPGs, it just sucks that a promising mechanic becomes a burden.

It’s funny I’m having a similar process playing original Blade of Destiny (Realms of Arkania). At first everything was a major burden even after I understood everything (I thought), then I discovered there was a lot more going on than I understood at first and some really great mechanics so I got excited but now I’m at the place of realizing how little they took advantage of all that great design and how much was left unfinished without really giving the player an idea which was which.

Pretty much ended up there with P:K KM as well. As with Star Trail, pretty sure Wrath will achieve a lot of the things the first game was unable to.
 

Daud

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Pretty much ended up there with P:K KM as well. As with Star Trail, pretty sure Wrath will achieve a lot of the things the first game was unable to.

That's my hope, they build on their strong points and abandon or rework everything that went wrong in the first title.
 

Apostle Hand

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I like PKM, playing as half-orc armored hulk. Didn't liked that party splitting, so I'm left with cleric dwarf, undead elf and barbarian girl. Valerie and Linzi are cute.
 

Nikanuur

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Random mishmash of badly spelled jargon to desperately sound like they are intelligent

Owlcat's writing is pretty bad.
It cannot be bad.
Me: It's outrageous, you trying to sell me my own throne for 100gp? (Persuasion check on this line should mean you've haggled successfuly into not paying anything)
Shady goblin vendor (Persuasion Successful): Now that I think of it, yes, that's not good. 200gp then.
 
Joined
Dec 17, 2013
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Gregz is right (for once), Offalfinder: Filthmaker sucks.

I feel a strong sense of deja vu.
 

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