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

[Tytus]

To be fair the art on the original character pictures is extremely hard to beat.

Really looks epic like a henchman I'd want to have in my party.

Spoiler

Those green tits are nice.

 

[Reinhardt]

Suikoden already had army battles in rpg game.

 

[Sarkile]

Suikoden already had army battles in rpg game.

Yeah, I had thought of Suikoden when I saw the stretch goal. The mass combat in those games was generally pretty simple and worked well enough. HoMM would be pretty cool too, if they could integrate it well with the main game.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

For the amount of time that you spend playing the minigame, you should get sensible effects and rewards in the main game, but the entire campaign can go on without seeing anything. After you find out that it has almost no effect on the real game, the minigame becomes a boring slog

The artisan items are a very good reward, and they come with acquiring new regions, building and upgrading shops and increasing kingdom stats. But other than that, I agree the kingdom minigame is clunky as hell, though they improved some of it in the EE.

 

[Desiderius]

From what I have seen in EE, most problems mentioned above already fixed:
- decision costs in BP are shown in adviser dialogues now
- Projects are categorized by smaller group
- Adviser portrait is shown over a card he is assigned to
- Crisis points to mitigate bad random
- Buying BP from kingdom screen (at last!)
etc etc

There were a ton of work put into interface parts of Kingdom Management and I'd say that in current EE state it is very... manageable. They also buffed Artisans even more so they are now #1 source of good items in the game.

KM was unfortunately a victim of the bugswarm at release preventing the sort of people who enjoy figuring such things out and getting everyone else turned on to it from doing our work, so it became conventional wisdom that it was a waste of time/impenetrable. Nonobviousness is value, but only if it is discoverable/discovered.

There is in fact a great deal to it (and a great deal of replayability built into it) to the extent to which if you don't get into it you're missing not just half the game, but the half that you do play will be so far behind the people who play the whole game that you'll get a distorted picture of the difficulty/enjoyability of that half.

To say it's a minigame is to say spellcasting is a minigame or equipment is a minigame. It's a seamless whole.

 

[Desiderius]

Yeah when i replayed EE for first time and was surprised by all the little tweaks they added here and there, thought it would be just bug fixs but it was more than that.

That sort of thing built a lot of (grudging, wary, exasperated) goodwill.

 

[Desiderius]

I didn't have any problem understanding what to do and how to do it (I might be a genius, but a couple of months on this forum showed me that I am actually a complete retard), but to me the kingdom management part had two unforgivable flaws:
- in the beginning I had a lot of fun finding the best way to organize towns and guessing which projects could be useful, until I undestood that it's all pointless. Either you fail at kingdom management or you succeed at it, with no in-between. For the amount of time that you spend playing the minigame, you should get sensible effects and rewards in the main game, but the entire campaign can go on without seeing anything. After you find out that it has almost no effect on the real game, the minigame becomes a boring slog;
- it has been implemented by monkeys (and by stupid ones), with an interface that is clearly not designed by humans nor for humans. Cards without any meaningful order, ammassed in a single horizontal line to the point that you can't see the names and you can't precisely click the one you want. The only way to gather information on a card is to click it, which opens a new interface where you can no longer examine other cards. There is no easy way to know at a glace which advisor is busy on which activity. You have to sit through three loading screens everytime you want to go from one gamemode to the other, what the actual fuck, I can't fathom what kind of testing process approved this abhorrent piece of design.

See, people think they've figured it out when you haven't scratched the surface, then other people see that and say why bother and only one player in ten then gets to experience the whole game. Maybe this is a consequence of making the effect 95% carrot instead of stick?

The game I really concentrated on figuring it out I had a Teleportation Circle and Aviary in east Silverstep pre-Varnhold which made a huge difference (all masterpieces by Pitax for instance, blanket immunities for Bald Hilltop/Depths fights). The best items in the game available pre-Pitax/House are artisan items and the better you do with KM the early they show up. A small example of items I had heading into VTomb:

 

[Desiderius]

The buildings matter more than they appear to in the race against time but even there they should have bigger values compared to events. The biggest disappointment is how little KM matters once you hit midgame/8 ranks or so to unlock Artisan tiers.

The card interface was a bad idea (if you want to see the cards use the submenus) since it gave that false impression that KM was a minigame instead of a seamless part of the game itself.

 

[Luckmann]

The real issue is here isn't going to be well explained in the game or not. If yes it may not be that triggering. The problem with Kingmaker is that it's management system had a very very poor tutorial and on top of that some feature were basically hidden from the player. So you either had to play a guessing game and experiment taking large penalties or look shit up on the internet. I hope they learned their lesson.

It always seemed pretty intuitive to me in "learn along the way" type of system. Owlcat probably thought the same thing.

And were wrong. Most RPGs now balanced around lowest common denominator (mostly intellectual) and they had now idea what lows it could hit.

The fact that:

• Noobs started on Hard and then whined that it was too hard.
• So many people died and simply couldn't get past the first encounter outside of the tutorial/prologue that they had to change the wolves into whatever the fuck it was.
• The collected mongoloids of the internet dubbed spider swarms as the Cuphead of RPGs.

Really must've come as a shock to them. I honestly think that they did not realize how retarded and utterly useless nu-gamers actually are, coming from backgrounds in HoMM and such, a generally patrician niche. When Kingmaker hit it big, all the mouthbreathers clamored along and made Owlcat realize just how bad things are.

 

[Desiderius]

The real issue is here isn't going to be well explained in the game or not. If yes it may not be that triggering. The problem with Kingmaker is that it's management system had a very very poor tutorial and on top of that some feature were basically hidden from the player. So you either had to play a guessing game and experiment taking large penalties or look shit up on the internet. I hope they learned their lesson.

It always seemed pretty intuitive to me in "learn along the way" type of system. Owlcat probably thought the same thing.

And were wrong. Most RPGs now balanced around lowest common denominator (mostly intellectual) and they had now idea what lows it could hit.

That's true but incomplete. There's a gratifying sense of accomplishment that is lost to the handheld. Owlcat was seeking to restore some of that sense that games once better provided.

 

[Tytus]

The fact that:

• Noobs started on Hard and then whined that it was too hard.
• So many people died and simply couldn't get past the first encounter outside of the tutorial/prologue that they had to change the wolves into whatever the fuck it was.
• The collected mongoloids of the internet dubbed spider swarms as the Cuphead of RPGs.

Ah you see, it's because Pathfinder Kingmaker is a Dark Souls-like.

 

[NJClaw]

I didn't have any problem understanding what to do and how to do it (I might be a genius, but a couple of months on this forum showed me that I am actually a complete retard), but to me the kingdom management part had two unforgivable flaws:
- in the beginning I had a lot of fun finding the best way to organize towns and guessing which projects could be useful, until I undestood that it's all pointless. Either you fail at kingdom management or you succeed at it, with no in-between. For the amount of time that you spend playing the minigame, you should get sensible effects and rewards in the main game, but the entire campaign can go on without seeing anything. After you find out that it has almost no effect on the real game, the minigame becomes a boring slog;
- it has been implemented by monkeys (and by stupid ones), with an interface that is clearly not designed by humans nor for humans. Cards without any meaningful order, ammassed in a single horizontal line to the point that you can't see the names and you can't precisely click the one you want. The only way to gather information on a card is to click it, which opens a new interface where you can no longer examine other cards. There is no easy way to know at a glace which advisor is busy on which activity. You have to sit through three loading screens everytime you want to go from one gamemode to the other, what the actual fuck, I can't fathom what kind of testing process approved this abhorrent piece of design.

See, people think they've figured it out when you haven't scratched the surface, then other people see that and say why bother and only one player in ten then gets to experience the whole game. Maybe this is a consequence of making the effect 95% carrot instead of stick?

The game I really concentrated on figuring it out I had a Teleportation Circle and Aviary in east Silverstep pre-Varnhold which made a huge difference (all masterpieces by Pitax for instance, blanket immunities for Bald Hilltop/Depths fights). The best items in the game available pre-Pitax/House are artisan items and the better you do with KM the early they show up. A small example of items I had heading into VTomb:

View attachment 12521
View attachment 12522

Okay, but some items are still not enough, it doesn't matter how good they are. You already get plenty of amazing magic items while playing the main game and, while obviously good, artisans' items are still not necessary to breeze through the game.
Even if you REALLY love magic items, artisans are only a small percentage of the kingdom management minigame and the fact that they are the only redeeming quality everyone is able to point out means that the other 90% of the minigame is extremely underwhelming. Kingdom management should be fun in itself and should have some major consequences on the campaign, while right now it gets stale very quickly and its effects on the main game are negligible, apart from some item reward that you need to be VERY invested in the game to care for.

 

[Tytus]

Kingdom management should be fun in itself and should have some major consequences on the campaign, while right now it gets stale very quickly and its effects on the main game are negligible, apart from some item reward that you need to be VERY invested in the game to care for.

The only real consequence is during final mission with the Lantern King the game checks if your kingdom was "strong enough" which means having 10th rank in every aspect (or not) of kingdom management if I recall correctly. The fact that it boils down to such a binary check was really disappointing.

 

[Reinhardt]

Kingdom management should be fun

Let me guess - you picked Lander?

 

[NJClaw]

The only real consequence is during final mission with the Lantern King the game checks if your kingdom was "strong enough" which means having 10th rank in every aspect (or not) of kingdom management if I recall correctly. The fact that it boils down to such a binary check was really disappointing.

What happens if the kingdom is not strong enough?

Kingdom management should be fun

Let me guess - you picked Lander?

Never... so I am not sure I can understand the reference

 

[Pink Eye]

>I am not sure I can understand the reference
Lander betrays you in the final chapters, like a chad. Also, he has retarded advisor advice.

 

[Desiderius]

Okay, but some items are still not enough, it doesn't matter how good they are. You already get plenty of amazing magic items while playing the main game and, while obviously good, artisans' items are still not necessary to breeze through the game.
Even if you REALLY love magic items, artisans are only a small percentage of the kingdom management minigame and the fact that they are the only redeeming quality everyone is able to point out means that the other 90% of the minigame is extremely underwhelming. Kingdom management should be fun in itself and should have some major consequences on the campaign, while right now it gets stale very quickly and its effects on the main game are negligible, apart from some item reward that you need to be VERY invested in the game to care for.

Yes and no.

Yes, the effects of good KM should be more immediate, meaningful, and not confined to items. You do eventually get significant blanket/immunities from projects/region upgrades:

but there needs to be a least one powerful early game effect to motivate people to figure out how the system works.

On the other hand you're also vastly underestimating the breadth/uniqueness of artisan items available and their effect on the game when you get them if you do KM right. With that Warhammer and Wand (go from being hit 1 in 20 to 1 in 80 or with Touch of Chaos 1 in 1600) on Harrim VTomb is a different experience. +6 DEX and Reduce Person at Will makes Nok-nok play much differently, etc...

 

[Pink Eye]

Interview: https://venturebeat.com/2020/03/05/...apting-a-tabletop-rpg-campaign-for-a-pc-game/

 

[Reinhardt]

Never... so I am not sure I can understand the reference

>I am not sure I can understand the reference
Lander betrays you in the final chapters, like a chad. Also, he has retarded advisor advice.

No, he literally says "Ruler should deal only with fun stuff. You have advisors to deal with all boring shit" or something like this.

 

[Pink Eye]

>"Ruler should deal only with fun stuff. You have advisors to deal with all boring stuff"
Jub says that when you meet him in the river, where he gets ambushed by kobolds.

 

[Reinhardt]

>"Ruler should deal only with fun stuff. You have advisors to deal with all boring stuff"
Jub says that when you meet him the river.

I don't deal with boring gnomes.

 

[Desiderius]

>I am not sure I can understand the reference
Lander betrays you in the final chapters, like a chad. Also, he has retarded advisor advice.

He's not a chad, lol.

Chads give Landers swirlies.

 

[Reinhardt]

Traitorous advisors of P:KM.

Irreplaceable Chad Tristian vs Useless Virgin Lander.

 

[Delterius]

Shandra Mervey is the real chad.

 

[Pink Eye]

Hm. I misremembered that quote: