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

[l3loodAngel]

Grunker Sorry, but saying that I am/was prejudiced towards DA:O is more than a little inaccurate. I was more hyped for this game than any other in last ten years (probably as much as I am hyped for PoE now), but it turned out to be a disappointment, also because of the combat system, which I remember as described - although I fully admit they may have become exaggerated with time.

I remember it just like you said. However, the spamming term may be inaccurate. A more accurate term would be clicking on the ability once it becomes available and cycling through all the party members doing the same, then waiting till it becomes available again and...

There was good stuff about DA:O combat, though. I liked how attacking from the flank or the back was more efficient, for example. I can't remember anything else at the moment, though.

That was the worst part literally. The whole DA:O combat system was MMO copy inspired, but poorly thought out. You could do more damage from back, but there ware no sustainable means of holding agro. When the dragon "noticed" the rogue attacking from behind it would 2 shot the rogue.

 

[Grunker]

I remember it just like you said. However, the spamming term may be inaccurate. A more accurate term would be clicking on the ability once it becomes available and cycling through all the party members doing the same, then waiting till it becomes available again and...

You cannot do this. You straight up can't. Three or four abilities and your non-mages are out of stamina.

So you're remembering wrong.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Thing is by the tome you cycled those 3 or 4 abilities on your non mages... most of the encounters, which are filled with trash mobs, would be over.

 

[Lhynn]

Yes. Adventureres slaughtering merchants wholesale to collect their stock, without immeadiate campaign-ending consequences, is totally believable. You pull such juvenile shit in my campaign, you're not just a bad player, you're out of the game.

why? whos gonna know? does the blacksmith have cameras installed on his shop? can people immediately recognize you even with good a disguise?
What if you do it during the night when no one is around and said merchant is closing his shop, or going to bed in the second floor of said shop.
How the fuck would that end a campaign? even if you are found out, you can probably deal with the heat, especially with a mid to high level group.
You short sighted twat, you dont think "NO", you think "lets see how they pull it off and react accordingly". Especially when them doing so would provide them with a way of solving another issue or quest, an opportunity for character development, a good twist in a campaign or god forbid, providing the whole group with a fun little anecdote.

Plus what are they going to get out of it? a fine dagger? a full plate armor that was probably commissioned by someone far more resourceful than the poor blacksmith? Everything can be a good adventure.

 

[Grunker]

I am fortunate enough to have players who get bored quite quickly playing murdering psychopaths (or, alternatively, villains who care nothing for subtlety). I feel bad for your GM that he is not.

 

[Lhynn]

Eh, murdering psychopaths dont usually last long in my world, but not because i purposely stop them from acting or because i tell them not to play with one. Simply because the world has a way of taking care of things in a coherent and organic way. But the most important thing is that i dont remove the option from the players, my GMs dont do it either.
Nothing yanks me out of the experience more than shit that dont make sense, merchants with their stock in the ether is one of the things i despise.
Playing RPGs is as much about the story you want to tell as a GM as about the story the you want to write as a player.

 

[l3loodAngel]

I remember it just like you said. However, the spamming term may be inaccurate. A more accurate term would be clicking on the ability once it becomes available and cycling through all the party members doing the same, then waiting till it becomes available again and...

You cannot do this. You straight up can't. Three or four abilities and your non-mages are out of stamina.

So you're remembering wrong.

And then you wait for shit to regenerate to repeat the wonderful cycle once again. Stamina does regenerate during combat.

 

[Visperas]

You are being very shortsighted here Grunker. I can accept that your group doesn't play that way but can't you picture a Robin Hood-like player party? Or a group that does something bad for the greater good?

 

[Grunker]

You are being very shortsighted here Grunker. I can accept that your group doesn't play that way but can't you picture a Robin Hood-like player party? Or a groups that does something bad for the greater good?

I'm not being short-sighted. You've lost sight of the original discussion, which was that Lhynn wanted the option to kill every shopkeeper and break his game by gathering their entire stock without paying for it in a cRPG.

Could I conceive of a sitution where a party might kill a shopkeeper in one of my games? Yeah. Very, very fringe, but yeah, I could. But would I incentivize that behaviour as a general thing? Fuck no. Therefore, I see no compelling reason for a developer to waste time and effort first implementing kill-shopkeeper-get-his-stock, and then programming game-over-like guards for a player using that option as a firm part of his repetoire.

The argument is absurd, as it always is when it's someone trying to argue his own variety of simulationism as something that should take precedence over all else. If a developer should waste time implementing kill-shopkeeper-get-stock, I damn well expect that to be a worthy endeavour and something I, as a player, gets something from, or that dev should have spent his time on something else. I do not relish the though of someone creating an IE-like by implementing a deep network of C&C to an action that most players won't take unless they're bored or trying to break their own game.

You couldn't do this in any of the IE-games either, and it wasn't a problem.

Any simulationist argument of this variety taken to its extreme is retarded, because ultimately it's all a variety of "I can do X in a hypothetical real-life situation where I'm a free radical within society, so I should be able to do X in the RPG as well."

 

[aleph]

Grunker : couldn't you just have said that you don't like simulationism, instead of making a huge post out of it?

 

[Grunker]

Grunker : couldn't you just have said that you don't like simulationism, instead of making a huge post out of it?

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...project-eternity.75947/page-1074#post-3066495

Someone ask me something, I reply. First, I replied with two short posts. Then a longer one since those hadn't gotten my point across, evidently. It's called a discussion. It's what you have on forums.

 

[aleph]

Grunker : couldn't you just have said that you don't like simulationism, instead of making a huge post out of it?

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...project-eternity.75947/page-1074#post-3066495

Someone ask me something, I reply. First, I replied with two short posts. Then a longer one since those hadn't gotten my point across, evidently. It's called a discussion. It's what you have on forums.

Spoiler

 

[Grunker]

<---- Oblivious

 

[aleph]

<---- Oblivious

I guess you still don't like simulationism, right?

 

[Lhynn]

Why do you think its a waste of time Grunker? what is left of a game after a developer takes away everything dont consider necessary? One thing is feature creep, but the opposite is even worse.

That is beyond the point tho. the point is, i kill vendor npc, i want the loot, because thats how it works. and if that cripples/benefits me down the line that is my choice to make and my consequences to face.
Plus what can a vendor really sell? as a rule you sell what you can protect.

 

[Grunker]

Why do you think its a waste of time Grunker? what is left of a game after a developer takes away everything dont consider necessary?

What a catch-all, hypothetical question. A pity it's bullshit. "What is left of an IE-game when a developer takes away something that wasn't in the IE-games to begin with?"

Seems to me, an IE-game.

the point is, i kill vendor npc, i want the loot, because thats how it works. and if that cripples/benefits me down the line that is my choice to make and my consequences to face.

Yes. You want an entirely different game than this one. More power to you. However, don't go into a Morrowind-thread and declare your love for isometric games. That's just fucking silly.

 

[Lhynn]

something that dont belong to IE games? i remember striping most shops in bg1 from their wares.

 

[Nihiliste]

The UI in conjunction with effective implementation of the slow motion option could help make it less tedious to micromanage actives for the whole party if they're done right. One of the reasons it was so tedious for me in the IE games is I hated the way spells and innate abilities were accessed in combat, clicking through those shitty menus. I think it will likely still be tedious to some degree but hopefully it won't be as bad it was in the past.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

I doubt they will do it like in the IE. Quickquast UI from NWN2 was hands-down the most convenient casting UI in any game I've played, so I expect nothing less.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

There are many people who get away with murder and pillage for a long time until caught. What I see missing to dissuade you from wanton slaughter of innocents/shopkeepers is some sort of consequence that make sense ingame rather than lol no time to implement it. Gothic 2 had a nice system of how things worked if you stole too much.

Josh started with a sandboxy open quest like fallout for example. Now is much closer to a linear dungeon crawl in the vien of IWD. I wonder how further he'll keep on removing shit cause it is teh hard to implement.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS SO SO SAD

UTIMA 5 YOU COULD MURDER THE FUCKING TOWN LOLLOLLOL IT WAS EASIEST IF YOU KILLED THE DAY SHIFT GUARDS WHIE THEY ARE SLEEPING THEN MURDER THE REST OF THEIR TOWN IIN TEHIR SLEEP THEN FIGHT THE NIGHT GUARDS STRAIGHT OUT

BROS LOLLOLOL THT IS NOT WHAT THE AVATAR DOES SO THEY FUCK YOU THERE

I WAS TO SPOILED BY ULTIMAS AND FLLOUT

I WANT TO RAPE AND KILL THE ENITRE TOWN AND STEAL ALL THERE SHIT UNLESS SOMEONE STOPS ME

BROS DONT YOU REALIZE THAT IS WHAT GAMES LIKE FALLOUT AWESOME YOU COULD KILL THE SHOPKEEPER AND STEAL ALL HIS SHIT THE ONLY THING STOPPING YOU WAS THE GUARDS WHO WOULD MURDER YOU

 

[Decado]

Gotta say Grunker is winning this argument pretty handily.

Anyways, the idea that that devs should build a game-breaking feature into their own game because OF IMMERSION! is ridiculous. There a million and one sacrifices, short cuts, and abstractions in every RPG for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being nobody has yet to build a functioning fucking holodeck.

And then you have people just plain old talking out of their asses.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS BTW THE MAIN COINSEQUENCE OF WANTON MURDER SHOUHO LD BE THAT ALL THE GUARDS WANT TO KILL YOU AND NO OME WILL TALK TO YOU WHO SEES YOU MURDEREING CITIZENS OR THE TOWN GUEARD OR REALLY ANYONE IN A SMALL ENOUGH CUTY

AND IN A REALLY GOOD GAME YOU MIGHT MAKE DIFFERENT FREINDS BY MURDERING A TOWN

 

[Decado]

For example, shit like this:

There are many people who get away with murder and pillage for a long time until caught. What I see missing to dissuade you from wanton slaughter of innocents/shopkeepers is some sort of consequence that make sense ingame rather than lol no time to implement it. Gothic 2 had a nice system of how things worked if you stole too much.

Josh started with a sandboxy open quest like fallout for example. Now is much closer to a linear dungeon crawl in the vien of IWD. I wonder how further he'll keep on removing shit cause it is teh hard to implement.

I would love to know how this poster is qualified to make the claim that things are being removed because they are "too hard to implement." Also, comparing FO to IWD (or any IE game) is fucking dumb. They are different games with different aesthetics and different playstyles. You might as well say Brian Fargo used to make dungeon crawlers like Bard's Tale, but now's he making Wasteland 2, and that sucks because they are different. Great observation! Collect your million dollars on your way out!

 

[tuluse]

They've said that it's likely going to be possible to attack and kill any NPC, the only thing is that you won't get the phat loot.