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Indie Passageway of the Ancients - Baldur's Gate-Like RPG with Dual-Persona Character Development

0sacred

poop retainer
Patron
Joined
Feb 12, 2021
Messages
1,986
Location
MFGA (Make Fantasy Great Again)
Codex Year of the Donut
Bought. I'm just playing around with the character creator for now.

Lack of tooltips are a minus, like wtf is the point of dwarves? Also the lack of two handed weapons and non-magic using classes are disappointing, I was expecting more customization.

Will play tomorrow and look at the game proper.
 

JonG

Passageway Games
Developer
Joined
Aug 8, 2023
Messages
143
Bought. I'm just playing around with the character creator for now.

Lack of tooltips are a minus, like wtf is the point of dwarves? Also the lack of two handed weapons and non-magic using classes are disappointing, I was expecting more customization.

Will play tomorrow and look at the game proper.
There are actually many areas in the game where tooltips are present. I would like more feed back on what you mean by chacater customization!
 

GloomFrost

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2014
Messages
1,121
Location
Northern wastes
So used the shadow teleporter for the first time to go to town to level up and buy/sell loot. Teleported back to the dungeon and realised that all monsters have respawned. (Very, very questionable and unnecessary design decision.) . Not the end of the world but my level up and well equipped party is now too strong for respawned monsters so the combat turned into boring slog. Yeah its definitely not Knights of the Chalise or ToEE when it comes to combat.
 
Joined
Dec 18, 2022
Messages
2,580
Location
Vareš
So used the shadow teleporter for the first time to go to town to level up and buy/sell loot. Teleported back to the dungeon and realised that all monsters have respawned. (Very, very questionable and unnecessary design decision.) . Not the end of the world but my level up and well equipped party is now too strong for respawned monsters so the combat turned into boring slog. Yeah its definitely not Knights of the Chalise or ToEE when it comes to combat.
They respawn everytime you leave so definitely have to choose your moments to teleport out
 

GloomFrost

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2014
Messages
1,121
Location
Northern wastes
So used the shadow teleporter for the first time to go to town to level up and buy/sell loot. Teleported back to the dungeon and realised that all monsters have respawned. (Very, very questionable and unnecessary design decision.) . Not the end of the world but my level up and well equipped party is now too strong for respawned monsters so the combat turned into boring slog. Yeah its definitely not Knights of the Chalise or ToEE when it comes to combat.
They respawn everytime you leave so definitely have to choose your moments to teleport out
Well that sucks. Because the story is suppose to be good but I cant even get to it because I will need to spend another couple of hours clearing dungeons I have already cleared. Not happy.
 
Joined
Dec 18, 2022
Messages
2,580
Location
Vareš
So used the shadow teleporter for the first time to go to town to level up and buy/sell loot. Teleported back to the dungeon and realised that all monsters have respawned. (Very, very questionable and unnecessary design decision.) . Not the end of the world but my level up and well equipped party is now too strong for respawned monsters so the combat turned into boring slog. Yeah its definitely not Knights of the Chalise or ToEE when it comes to combat.
They respawn everytime you leave so definitely have to choose your moments to teleport out
Well that sucks. Because the story is suppose to be good but I cant even get to it because I will need to spend another couple of hours clearing dungeons I have already cleared. Not happy.
I set one of my portals in the attic of the inn where I store things, and then I set the other at the end of a dungeon, go to town, sell/reequip, and go back to start the next. Avoids grinding through respawning enemies. Don't know if that'll be the case later on I'm only ~6 hours in
 

GloomFrost

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2014
Messages
1,121
Location
Northern wastes
So used the shadow teleporter for the first time to go to town to level up and buy/sell loot. Teleported back to the dungeon and realised that all monsters have respawned. (Very, very questionable and unnecessary design decision.) . Not the end of the world but my level up and well equipped party is now too strong for respawned monsters so the combat turned into boring slog. Yeah its definitely not Knights of the Chalise or ToEE when it comes to combat.
They respawn everytime you leave so definitely have to choose your moments to teleport out
Well that sucks. Because the story is suppose to be good but I cant even get to it because I will need to spend another couple of hours clearing dungeons I have already cleared. Not happy.
I set one of my portals in the attic of the inn where I store things, and then I set the other at the end of a dungeon, go to town, sell/reequip, and go back to start the next. Avoids grinding through respawning enemies. Don't know if that'll be the case later on I'm only ~6 hours in
Yeah I get that but my point is that respawn is completely unnecessary in general. Even the most combat heavy RPGs like IWD 1-2 or ToEE managed just fine without it.
 
Joined
Dec 18, 2022
Messages
2,580
Location
Vareš
Yeah I have no idea what to do with this frames problem. Was playing on everything max for hours with 150+ fps and all of a sudden started chugging, now im getting 20 even with simple quality and turning down movement performance
 

Litmanen

Educated
Joined
Feb 27, 2024
Messages
634
So used the shadow teleporter for the first time to go to town to level up and buy/sell loot. Teleported back to the dungeon and realised that all monsters have respawned. (Very, very questionable and unnecessary design decision.) . Not the end of the world but my level up and well equipped party is now too strong for respawned monsters so the combat turned into boring slog. Yeah its definitely not Knights of the Chalise or ToEE when it comes to combat.
They respawn everytime you leave so definitely have to choose your moments to teleport out
Well that sucks. Because the story is suppose to be good but I cant even get to it because I will need to spend another couple of hours clearing dungeons I have already cleared. Not happy.
I set one of my portals in the attic of the inn where I store things, and then I set the other at the end of a dungeon, go to town, sell/reequip, and go back to start the next. Avoids grinding through respawning enemies. Don't know if that'll be the case later on I'm only ~6 hours in
Yeah I get that but my point is that respawn is completely unnecessary in general. Even the most combat heavy RPGs like IWD 1-2 or ToEE managed just fine without it.
Respawn, in general, is a plague.

I hope they will find a way to get rid of it, because it is something I cannot sustain
 
Joined
Dec 18, 2022
Messages
2,580
Location
Vareš
So nobody is having frame issues? I've restarted, I've deleted all my saves but 1, I've turned graphics down to simple, etc.

I'm still chugging along with 20 frames, no different than when it first started when I was on max settings (and originally was having 150+ fps)
 

JonG

Passageway Games
Developer
Joined
Aug 8, 2023
Messages
143
So used the shadow teleporter for the first time to go to town to level up and buy/sell loot. Teleported back to the dungeon and realised that all monsters have respawned. (Very, very questionable and unnecessary design decision.) . Not the end of the world but my level up and well equipped party is now too strong for respawned monsters so the combat turned into boring slog. Yeah its definitely not Knights of the Chalise or ToEE when it comes to combat.
They respawn everytime you leave so definitely have to choose your moments to teleport out
Well that sucks. Because the story is suppose to be good but I cant even get to it because I will need to spend another couple of hours clearing dungeons I have already cleared. Not happy.
I set one of my portals in the attic of the inn where I store things, and then I set the other at the end of a dungeon, go to town, sell/reequip, and go back to start the next. Avoids grinding through respawning enemies. Don't know if that'll be the case later on I'm only ~6 hours in
Yeah I get that but my point is that respawn is completely unnecessary in general. Even the most combat heavy RPGs like IWD 1-2 or ToEE managed just fine without it.
Respawn, in general, is a plague.

I hope they will find a way to get rid of it, because it is something I cannot sustain
we are considering changing this mechanic back to where levels re spawn only if you leave a tear(s) on that level. Changed it to allow for more grinding possibilities as later levels are more brutal. Perhaps if you neeed to grind to levelup a bit you drop one an that level an leave and come back These tears are like homing beacons for monster from dark places. What do you think?
 
Joined
Dec 18, 2022
Messages
2,580
Location
Vareš
There are some extremely bad design decisions in this game, and each one builds on top of the other. This is seriously some of the worst inventory bloat I've ever experienced. Instead of listing it out, I'll take you through a journey of only 1 dungeon.

To make my point, let's assume you are a player who picks up everything and explores every nook & cranny on a map. This playstyle doesn't have to be extremely tedious, even in games with lots of loot and restrictions to inventory. Geneforge, Icewind Dale, Svarog's Dream are just some examples from games I've played this year. They each have their problems with this topic, but have QoL features in place to lessen the burden and still don't come close to the amount of items we're talking about here.

4nb0b1f.png

So, just got here after spending some time in town cleaning the inventory, leveling, etc. so I have a clean slate. You start going through the rooms, picking things up, fighting the enemies that get in your way, etc. You will fill 3 & a half inventories taking all items without even exploring a quarter of this map. But you don't want to waste time selling everything, so you portal back to the inn and store what you can. Well, the storage doesn't even fit 3 character inventories, so you dump what you can and continue (vast majority of items you get are not stackable fyi). You portal back to the dungeon and enemies have already respawned, repick any locks, so you start the process again barely clearing a quarter of the map before you have to portal away and store your things. But don't forget, your camera settings reset each time you move areas so you have to click that again, and each time you see an enemy your tactics menu pops up so you have to close it even if you're already set up to fight that enemy type. Thus, you go to a vendor and start selling. There is no sort & stack options for inventory, you have to click and drag each item across the screen to put it in the vendors cart (no option to just move all), click sell. Portal back, change camera settings, fight respawned enemies and explore...well you get the idea. I'm not exaggerating when I say you can fill your entire parties inventory at least 5 times over on 1 map. You see how so many minor things compound into bloat?

A quick example of how this effects other elements of the game: I have over 500 regular lockpicks and a few hundred of the "better" lockpicks. Why did I waste skill points on lockpicking for my rogue when I'd never run out of them? All these little things compound on eachother.

Now, okay, this is bad from a game design perspective, but you don't have to hoard loot and explore everything, right? Well, there aren't exactly many quests found in dungeons (so far). You can find some unique gear sets that you definitely want, and I got 1 side quest from an NPC in the dungeon shown above.

Okay you say, I won't pick up trash (and hope I can eyeball what I can use to upgrade my characters) and I'll only take that legendary gearset and take a sidequest item. Well, you still have to search everything. Those insane amount of items aren't just on the floor. There are without exaggeration hundreds of interactable boxes/shelves/etc. on the map. The vast majority of them contain something. But, hold up, some of them are glitched so you have to do some weird contorting to click on the item. You can't just skip it, because that random box could contain a piece of legendary gear. Or, you have to be on the otherside of the wall to click and open a box, a box that doesn't highlight when you're in the room, but when you're on the opposite side of the wall it does. Or, your pathfinding gets fucked up. So, you save a lot of time but it's still very wonky.

------------End of Bloat Rant----------------

Still though, the game feels like it was made with love, which is a shame because from the gameplay side there are just many rookie mistakes. I just don't know if I can recommend it in its current state, maybe with the caveat of "play low difficulty, get through dungeons, and see if you like the (linear so far) story."

The difficulty itself is not bad at all, I should've gone higher. I'm sleepwalking through every fight, just change style for the enemy I'm fighting and send all 4 characters at the enemy. Maybe it gets harder, but I haven't felt it yet. I'm ready to run through not even looking for legendary gear due to the bloat but I don't want to soft lock myself.

I haven't gotten into the story, mostly because once I learn something, I spend a couple of hours dealing with inventory. There's lots of lore around, but don't expect some amazing world building through dialogue. People rag on BioWare but this is something they did wonderfully with Mass Effect for example. Dialogue choices in this game are more akin to "are you paying attention? Click this 1 option to reply to a massive explanation by a character that feels like it's just a lorebook being read to you".

Anyways, I've already sunk 10 hours into this game and I'm going to finish it, but I have to change up my entire playstyle and rush through everything to just see the story because it's already gotten unplayable with how I usually play games. Hopefully, I will begin to enjoy it more. That being said, I didn't put the game down so that's still a win (despite these design choices I vehemently disagree with)
 
Last edited:

Litmanen

Educated
Joined
Feb 27, 2024
Messages
634
So used the shadow teleporter for the first time to go to town to level up and buy/sell loot. Teleported back to the dungeon and realised that all monsters have respawned. (Very, very questionable and unnecessary design decision.) . Not the end of the world but my level up and well equipped party is now too strong for respawned monsters so the combat turned into boring slog. Yeah its definitely not Knights of the Chalise or ToEE when it comes to combat.
They respawn everytime you leave so definitely have to choose your moments to teleport out
Well that sucks. Because the story is suppose to be good but I cant even get to it because I will need to spend another couple of hours clearing dungeons I have already cleared. Not happy.
I set one of my portals in the attic of the inn where I store things, and then I set the other at the end of a dungeon, go to town, sell/reequip, and go back to start the next. Avoids grinding through respawning enemies. Don't know if that'll be the case later on I'm only ~6 hours in
Yeah I get that but my point is that respawn is completely unnecessary in general. Even the most combat heavy RPGs like IWD 1-2 or ToEE managed just fine without it.
Respawn, in general, is a plague.

I hope they will find a way to get rid of it, because it is something I cannot sustain
we are considering changing this mechanic back to where levels re spawn only if you leave a tear(s) on that level. Changed it to allow for more grinding possibilities as later levels are more brutal. Perhaps if you neeed to grind to levelup a bit you drop one an that level an leave and come back These tears are like homing beacons for monster from dark places. What do you think?
So used the shadow teleporter for the first time to go to town to level up and buy/sell loot. Teleported back to the dungeon and realised that all monsters have respawned. (Very, very questionable and unnecessary design decision.) . Not the end of the world but my level up and well equipped party is now too strong for respawned monsters so the combat turned into boring slog. Yeah its definitely not Knights of the Chalise or ToEE when it comes to combat.
They respawn everytime you leave so definitely have to choose your moments to teleport out
Well that sucks. Because the story is suppose to be good but I cant even get to it because I will need to spend another couple of hours clearing dungeons I have already cleared. Not happy.
I set one of my portals in the attic of the inn where I store things, and then I set the other at the end of a dungeon, go to town, sell/reequip, and go back to start the next. Avoids grinding through respawning enemies. Don't know if that'll be the case later on I'm only ~6 hours in
Yeah I get that but my point is that respawn is completely unnecessary in general. Even the most combat heavy RPGs like IWD 1-2 or ToEE managed just fine without it.
Respawn, in general, is a plague.

I hope they will find a way to get rid of it, because it is something I cannot sustain
we are considering changing this mechanic back to where levels re spawn only if you leave a tear(s) on that level. Changed it to allow for more grinding possibilities as later levels are more brutal. Perhaps if you neeed to grind to levelup a bit you drop one an that level an leave and come back These tears are like homing beacons for monster from dark places. What do you think?
That sounds already better since, as you can read also in BosanskiSeljak's rant, respawn brings also to some completely unwanted and unpleasant situations. I PERSONALLY don't like respawn, no matter the reason.

I'm not playing it right now, hence mine are just opinions. And I'm sure you'll find a solution that would meet most of the users' approval.
 

GloomFrost

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2014
Messages
1,121
Location
Northern wastes
So used the shadow teleporter for the first time to go to town to level up and buy/sell loot. Teleported back to the dungeon and realised that all monsters have respawned. (Very, very questionable and unnecessary design decision.) . Not the end of the world but my level up and well equipped party is now too strong for respawned monsters so the combat turned into boring slog. Yeah its definitely not Knights of the Chalise or ToEE when it comes to combat.
They respawn everytime you leave so definitely have to choose your moments to teleport out
Well that sucks. Because the story is suppose to be good but I cant even get to it because I will need to spend another couple of hours clearing dungeons I have already cleared. Not happy.
I set one of my portals in the attic of the inn where I store things, and then I set the other at the end of a dungeon, go to town, sell/reequip, and go back to start the next. Avoids grinding through respawning enemies. Don't know if that'll be the case later on I'm only ~6 hours in
Yeah I get that but my point is that respawn is completely unnecessary in general. Even the most combat heavy RPGs like IWD 1-2 or ToEE managed just fine without it.
Respawn, in general, is a plague.

I hope they will find a way to get rid of it, because it is something I cannot sustain
we are considering changing this mechanic back to where levels re spawn only if you leave a tear(s) on that level. Changed it to allow for more grinding possibilities as later levels are more brutal. Perhaps if you neeed to grind to levelup a bit you drop one an that level an leave and come back These tears are like homing beacons for monster from dark places. What do you think?
So used the shadow teleporter for the first time to go to town to level up and buy/sell loot. Teleported back to the dungeon and realised that all monsters have respawned. (Very, very questionable and unnecessary design decision.) . Not the end of the world but my level up and well equipped party is now too strong for respawned monsters so the combat turned into boring slog. Yeah its definitely not Knights of the Chalise or ToEE when it comes to combat.
They respawn everytime you leave so definitely have to choose your moments to teleport out
Well that sucks. Because the story is suppose to be good but I cant even get to it because I will need to spend another couple of hours clearing dungeons I have already cleared. Not happy.
I set one of my portals in the attic of the inn where I store things, and then I set the other at the end of a dungeon, go to town, sell/reequip, and go back to start the next. Avoids grinding through respawning enemies. Don't know if that'll be the case later on I'm only ~6 hours in
Yeah I get that but my point is that respawn is completely unnecessary in general. Even the most combat heavy RPGs like IWD 1-2 or ToEE managed just fine without it.
Respawn, in general, is a plague.

I hope they will find a way to get rid of it, because it is something I cannot sustain
we are considering changing this mechanic back to where levels re spawn only if you leave a tear(s) on that level. Changed it to allow for more grinding possibilities as later levels are more brutal. Perhaps if you neeed to grind to levelup a bit you drop one an that level an leave and come back These tears are like homing beacons for monster from dark places. What do you think?
That sounds already better since, as you can read also in BosanskiSeljak's rant, respawn brings also to some completely unwanted and unpleasant situations. I PERSONALLY don't like respawn, no matter the reason.

I'm not playing it right now, hence mine are just opinions. And I'm sure you'll find a solution that would meet most of the users' approval.
Why not just make an area with respawn and just for grinding? And skip that tear system all together. From what I ve seen after 6 hours all areas are already bloated with monsters and items as it is.
 

Litmanen

Educated
Joined
Feb 27, 2024
Messages
634
So used the shadow teleporter for the first time to go to town to level up and buy/sell loot. Teleported back to the dungeon and realised that all monsters have respawned. (Very, very questionable and unnecessary design decision.) . Not the end of the world but my level up and well equipped party is now too strong for respawned monsters so the combat turned into boring slog. Yeah its definitely not Knights of the Chalise or ToEE when it comes to combat.
They respawn everytime you leave so definitely have to choose your moments to teleport out
Well that sucks. Because the story is suppose to be good but I cant even get to it because I will need to spend another couple of hours clearing dungeons I have already cleared. Not happy.
I set one of my portals in the attic of the inn where I store things, and then I set the other at the end of a dungeon, go to town, sell/reequip, and go back to start the next. Avoids grinding through respawning enemies. Don't know if that'll be the case later on I'm only ~6 hours in
Yeah I get that but my point is that respawn is completely unnecessary in general. Even the most combat heavy RPGs like IWD 1-2 or ToEE managed just fine without it.
Respawn, in general, is a plague.

I hope they will find a way to get rid of it, because it is something I cannot sustain
we are considering changing this mechanic back to where levels re spawn only if you leave a tear(s) on that level. Changed it to allow for more grinding possibilities as later levels are more brutal. Perhaps if you neeed to grind to levelup a bit you drop one an that level an leave and come back These tears are like homing beacons for monster from dark places. What do you think?
Why not just make an area with respawn and just for grinding? And skip that tear system all together. From what I ve seen after 6 hours all areas are already bloated with monsters and items as it is.
Yeah, they could actually make some arena-like map where, if you need/want, you can grind and level up your character
 

JonG

Passageway Games
Developer
Joined
Aug 8, 2023
Messages
143
There are some extremely bad design decisions in this game, and each one builds on top of the other. This is seriously some of the worst inventory bloat I've ever experienced. Instead of listing it out, I'll take you through a journey of only 1 dungeon.

To make my point, let's assume you are a player who picks up everything and explores every nook & cranny on a map. This playstyle doesn't have to be extremely tedious, even in games with lots of loot and restrictions to inventory. Geneforge, Icewind Dale, Svarog's Dream are just some examples from games I've played this year. They each have their problems with this topic, but have QoL features in place to lessen the burden and still don't come close to the amount of items we're talking about here.

4nb0b1f.png

So, just got here after spending some time in town cleaning the inventory, leveling, etc. so I have a clean slate. You start going through the rooms, picking things up, fighting the enemies that get in your way, etc. You will fill 3 & a half inventories taking all items without even exploring a quarter of this map. But you don't want to waste time selling everything, so you portal back to the inn and store what you can. Well, the storage doesn't even fit 3 character inventories, so you dump what you can and continue (vast majority of items you get are not stackable fyi). You portal back to the dungeon and enemies have already respawned, repick any locks, so you start the process again barely clearing a quarter of the map before you have to portal away and store your things. But don't forget, your camera settings reset each time you move areas so you have to click that again, and each time you see an enemy your tactics menu pops up so you have to close it even if you're already set up to fight that enemy type. Thus, you go to a vendor and start selling. There is no sort & stack options for inventory, you have to click and drag each item across the screen to put it in the vendors cart (no option to just move all), click sell. Portal back, change camera settings, fight respawned enemies and explore...well you get the idea. I'm not exaggerating when I say you can fill your entire parties inventory at least 5 times over on 1 map. You see how so many minor things compound into bloat?

A quick example of how this effects other elements of the game: I have over 500 regular lockpicks and a few hundred of the "better" lockpicks. Why did I waste skill points on lockpicking for my rogue when I'd never run out of them? All these little things compound on eachother.

Now, okay, this is bad from a game design perspective, but you don't have to hoard loot and explore everything, right? Well, there aren't exactly many quests found in dungeons (so far). You can find some unique gear sets that you definitely want, and I got 1 side quest from an NPC in the dungeon shown above.

Okay you say, I won't pick up trash (and hope I can eyeball what I can use to upgrade my characters) and I'll only take that legendary gearset and take a sidequest item. Well, you still have to search everything. Those insane amount of items aren't just on the floor. There are without exaggeration hundreds of interactable boxes/shelves/etc. on the map. The vast majority of them contain something. But, hold up, some of them are glitched so you have to do some weird contorting to click on the item. You can't just skip it, because that random box could contain a piece of legendary gear. Or, you have to be on the otherside of the wall to click and open a box, a box that doesn't highlight when you're in the room, but when you're on the opposite side of the wall it does. Or, your pathfinding gets fucked up. So, you save a lot of time but it's still very wonky.

------------End of Bloat Rant----------------

Still though, the game feels like it was made with love, which is a shame because from the gameplay side there are just many rookie mistakes. I just don't know if I can recommend it in its current state, maybe with the caveat of "play low difficulty, get through dungeons, and see if you like the (linear so far) story."

The difficulty itself is not bad at all, I should've gone higher. I'm sleepwalking through every fight, just change style for the enemy I'm fighting and send all 4 characters at the enemy. Maybe it gets harder, but I haven't felt it yet. I'm ready to run through not even looking for legendary gear due to the bloat but I don't want to soft lock myself.

I haven't gotten into the story, mostly because once I learn something, I spend a couple of hours dealing with inventory. There's lots of lore around, but don't expect some amazing world building through dialogue. People rag on BioWare but this is something they did wonderfully with Mass Effect for example. Dialogue choices in this game are more akin to "are you paying attention? Click this 1 option to reply to a massive explanation by a character that feels like it's just a lorebook being read to you".

Anyways, I've already sunk 10 hours into this game and I'm going to finish it, but I have to change up my entire playstyle and rush through everything to just see the story because it's already gotten unplayable with how I usually play games. Hopefully, I will begin to enjoy it more. That being said, I didn't put the game down so that's still a win (despite these design choices I vehemently disagree with)
Are you saying we should cut down the amount of loot available in the dungeons?
 

JonG

Passageway Games
Developer
Joined
Aug 8, 2023
Messages
143

BosanskiSeljak

Pursuant to your comments and others we are going to change the dungeons so they only refill if you miss one or more tears or purposefully leave a tear on the level. We are also considering reducing the amount of loot we distribute on each level. What do you think? Also did you resolve your frame rate problem? Was this happening mainly in the Family Chapel and Shrine by chance?
 
Joined
Dec 18, 2022
Messages
2,580
Location
Vareš
Are you saying we should cut down the amount of loot available in the dungeons?
Yes, and a lot. With the current system, ideally ~20% of what's available.

The current amount of trash loot available is detracting from many elements of the game on top of just being an insane amount in general. The process I outlined above shows how bad it gets if you're someone who takes everything, but even if you skip things it causes problems.

Skills: Lockpicking seems useless to spend skillpoints on because just a few hours in you can accumulate almost 1000 lockpicks. There is no situation where I'll ever have to make a decision of which lock to pick, resource management problems, etc.
Economy: Enough money that I will never have to worry about buying skill points, resurrecting if I need to, buying from stores, etc.
QoL Features: The amount of inventory management required due to the sheer amount of loot exposes some lacking features. No sort/stack options, no "sell all" options, no double clicking to move things (i.e. have to click+drag each item individually when selling), the limited storage space at the inn, etc.
Combat: Maybe I overlevelled and got too powerful with all the items I accumulated, but I've been cruising on Strategic difficulty only using Combat AI (I switched from doing it manually). Things might get harder and I'm not sure if this was because of 100% clearing everything and looting all, but it feels that way.

I haven't finished the game yet so I'm not sure what the intended design is here. If it's mandatory to grind this to be able to pass later levels, that becomes extremely tedious. If its not required, some poor sap who can't help but horde items will become overwhelmed and drop your game. Luckily I don't have to play like that and now I'm having a much better time exploring (apart from still not figuring out the performance issue that randomly came up).

Even if nothing here is changed, I'll use Geneforge as an example for something that can be implemented easily and alleviates all these concerns (divorcing from the higher level discussion of this "loot galore" design). Your character has a limited inventory but you have a junk bag. It is unlimited but you can't access it to pull items out unless you're in town so anything you come across you can throw in when you're out of inv. space when exploring. When you get to town, you can just "Sell All" your junk bag.

I just wanted to put this out there because many people cannot help but hoard everything, and while that pads game time in the vast majority of games, it's nowhere near the level of this game and will put many people off.
 

mediocrepoet

Philosoraptor in Residence
Patron
Joined
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13,893
Location
Combatfag: Gold box / Pathfinder
Codex 2012 Codex+ Now Streaming! Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. MCA Project: Eternity Divinity: Original Sin 2
Skills: Lockpicking seems useless to spend skillpoints on because just a few hours in you can accumulate almost 1000 lockpicks. There is no situation where I'll ever have to make a decision of which lock to pick, resource management problems, etc.

You say that now, but you'll be crying when you hit your 1001th lock! :smug:
 

Sotomonte

Learned
Joined
Aug 25, 2020
Messages
120
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Kingdom of Spain
As I mentioned in the developers' Discord, one of the "design decisions" I liked the least, and which is currently making me hesitant to buy the game, is that there are only 3 possible companions with predefined classes: a Paladin, a Cleric, and a Rogue. This almost forces the player to pick a "magic" class (Wizard or Sentinel) because otherwise, the party might become unbalanced (although I’m not sure if the Cleric, as in other settings, could potentially have spells just as offensive as a wizard's).
 

GloomFrost

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2014
Messages
1,121
Location
Northern wastes
As I mentioned in the developers' Discord, one of the "design decisions" I liked the least, and which is currently making me hesitant to buy the game, is that there are only 3 possible companions with predefined classes: a Paladin, a Cleric, and a Rogue. This almost forces the player to pick a "magic" class (Wizard or Sentinel) because otherwise, the party might become unbalanced (although I’m not sure if the Cleric, as in other settings, could potentially have spells just as offensive as a wizard's).
I can tell you that cleric spell selection is let's just say "limited". If you are really into "builds" then better skip it all together. Wraith of the Righteous it is not.
 

Jinn

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2007
Messages
5,489
Not going to lie, these are some truly baffling design decisions. Still happy to have supported these guys, but I think I'm going to have to hold off for some patching before I give it a real playthrough. Thanks to all you guys giving feedback to the devs. Sounds like it's going to make for a much better experience in the future.
 

Sotomonte

Learned
Joined
Aug 25, 2020
Messages
120
Location
Kingdom of Spain
As I mentioned in the developers' Discord, one of the "design decisions" I liked the least, and which is currently making me hesitant to buy the game, is that there are only 3 possible companions with predefined classes: a Paladin, a Cleric, and a Rogue. This almost forces the player to pick a "magic" class (Wizard or Sentinel) because otherwise, the party might become unbalanced (although I’m not sure if the Cleric, as in other settings, could potentially have spells just as offensive as a wizard's).
I can tell you that cleric spell selection is let's just say "limited". If you are really into "builds" then better skip it all together. Wraith of the Righteous it is not.


More than focusing on 'builds' (in fact, when I have the option to create the whole party, I usually stick to the more classic archetypes, setting aside the obsessive search for optimization), my concern about the cleric's offensive capabilities was based on the possibility of encountering enemies that are more resistant to physical damage and more vulnerable to magic, which could put a party without 'pure spellcasters' in trouble.
 

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