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

[Reinhardt]

Sengoku Wrath

When you see any romanceable companion ask yourself - "what would Rance do?" Too old? Too young? Too ugly? Too tranny?

 

[Roguey]

This is simply not true. Tons of content has been added, and practically all content is reworked in several ways, and one whole book and about 1/5 to 1/4 of the map is flat-out missing; they literally removed that section of the map and parsed the sections of either side together. I know this because I was planning to use the PF:K map for running the PnP, and you just can't. Add to this all the extra quests, almost all the exploration maps, a ton of the dungeons, added connections to the overarching plot (fixing some of the chief complaints of the base adventure path), nevermind practically all dialogue and the vast majority of unique items.

No. All the content for Kingmaker was definitely not designed on paper in the adventure path. At best, it was partially (re-)designed "on paper" in the private Pathfinder games we know the Owlcat people play, but if that is remotely true, their GM is a crazy motherfucker that goes well far and beyond the call of duty, whereas most GMs have loose notes and a propensity for making shit up at best.

You realize you're arguing against yourself here with how they went above-and-beyond and how that turned out to be too much?

 

[DeepOcean]

About the tactical battles stretch goal:
There are two possibilities here, if the HoMM game is an half assed afterthought then I dont see a point to it as it can become a pain in the ass and boring to play, it would be better to not have it, if it is actually well crafted like a sort of Kings Bounty game, well, this will take away resources from the cRPG part and at some point you are playing a Kings Bounty game with redundant cRPG parts.

If this will be balanced so even players that dont want to engage on it can win, that means those battles will be super easy to players that do want to engage in, if you can set the difficulty to hard on those battles, that means if you dont engage on them, are you going to lose? What hard means here? Harder encounters on the HoMM layer or making the HoMM battles mandatory and you gonna lose on the auto-battle system otherwise?

I dont see how they can add depth to those systems without taking the gameplay away from the cRPG game. Sure, I see a value on you building an army and each thing you do on the game, both small and larger, improving this army, this actually give you context and meaning to your actions but I dont see why not keeping this army as just an abstraction.This seems like redundant gameplay, resourses invested on redundant gameplay seems like a waste.

 

[Desiderius]

that turned out to be too much?

Too much is never enough.

It is the pursuit which makes the greatness.

There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.
Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,
Enter and take their place there sure enough,
Though they come back and cannot tell the world.
My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.
The sudden blood of these men! at a word—
Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too.
I, painting from myself and to myself,
Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame
Or their praise either. Somebody remarks
Morello's outline there is wrongly traced,
His hue mistaken; what of that? or else,
Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that?
Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey,
Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!

- Andrea del Sarto
By Robert Browning

 

[Tytus]

There are two possibilities here, if the HoMM game is an half assed afterthought then I dont see a point to it as it can become a pain in the ass and boring to play, it would be better to not have it, if it is actually well crafted like a sort of Kings Bounty game, well, this will take away resources from the cRPG part and at some point you are playing a Kings Bounty game with redundant cRPG parts.

False Dichotomy.

There is a reason why previous stretch goals were pretty tame compared to this and why this one had such high price point. They knew they want to add such mechanic from the start, but also knew it will take a lot of money/resources. That is why they secured resources for the crpg portion first before going for the HoMM-like feature.

If this will be balanced so even players that dont want to engage on it can win, that means those battles will be super easy to players that do want to engage in, if you can set the difficulty to hard on those battles, that means if you dont engage on them, are you going to lose? What hard means here? Harder encounters on the HoMM layer or making the HoMM battles mandatory and you gonna lose on the auto-battle system otherwise?

If you did not engage in the Kingdom aspect of Kingmaker you would loose too. Nothing new here. And if you really did not want it - you could put it on auto. I suspect here will be probably the same. I don't understand why do you want to "remove" the war aspect from the game that based on PnP campaign based around it.

I dont see how they can add depth to those systems without taking the gameplay away from the cRPG game.

It is not a zero sum game, especially if the budget for crpg portion is already set. Then there aren't really cutting into anything. Especially that we already know the story will be 2/3 of Kingmaker.

 

[luj1]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: As games have declined in quality, the market has expanded massively.

Close

I've said it before and I'll say it again: As the market has expanded massively, games have declined in quality.

Leaving the niche hurts any art. It becomes an industry. There is a gaping difference, for example, between film and the film industry, comics and the comic industry, games and the game industry, and so on.

 

[Desiderius]

As games have declined in quality, the market has expanded massively. The powers that be have thought of this as some kind of strong correlation rather than a weak one (there is one; appealing to the lowest common denominator is inherently widening), but the effect of this means that the vast majority of gamers these days - the potential market as a whole - have never even been exposed to quality games.

Frame that shit and hang it up at dev central office.

Shakespeare packed pit and box. Get 'em in the door with LCD then raise 'em right.

 

[Desiderius]

Leaving the niche hurts any art. It becomes an industry.

No pain, no gain.

Love hurts.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Why would you assume that? A 5-minute visit to the Steam forums or Reddit should make it clear to you that 99% of "feedback" is useless.

I mean feedback from telemetry and polls that Obsidian made, not feedback from social networks.

 

[DeepOcean]

False Dichotomy.

There is a reason why previous stretch goals were pretty tame compared to this and why this one had such high price point. They knew they want to add such mechanic from the start, but also knew it will take a lot of money/resources. That is why they secured resources for the crpg portion first before going for the HoMM-like feature.

It is also a question of attention and player's time, not necessarily only a question of resources (while I'm skeptial they will have the resources they think they have too). The deeper you make the HoMM gameplay, you will shift the attention to those larger scale battles instead of cRPG ones as bigger scale battles will make smaller scale battles look kinda underwhelming and irrelevant (If you force those battles, the player will start feeling frustrated why he cant take his army to certain fights and those fights will look inferior gameplay wise), at some point you will have Kings Bounty 2/HoMM 4 with your party and army engaged all the time. I would love that as I'm a big fan of Kings Bounty and HoMM and a Kings Bounty game with Pathfinder rules would be pretty incline but...

If you have 6 party members AND your army units AND the enemy units, you cant fit all of this on a HoMM fight or the turns would become a huge waste of time. So, they will limit this with maybe only one party member being a general of an army but that asks the question... wouldnt be better to have the six party members on all fights for more complexity instead of trying to shoehorn the army to be useful on this way?

Not all players are fans of fighting HoMM style battles and prefer cRPG ones, so they will make those HoMM battles optional, but by my experience with game developers all those years, when complex systems are "optional", they will end as half assed. If you are forced to engage with a half assed system to not lose, it will be a waste of players time and if all those extra systems are truly optional, they are irrelevant.

I'm not in favor of removing the army system but I'm in favor of keeping it abstracted and use resources + skill checks + special events with choices to run it instead of trying to shoehorn two different games on the same game and end as a mess. I dont see value on a game that is half cRPG, half Kings Bounty, going 100% either way is better.

 

[NJClaw]

I'm not in favor of removing the army system but I'm in favor of keeping it abstracted and use resources + skill checks + special events with choices to run it instead of trying to shoehorn two different games on the same game and end as a mess. I dont see value on a game that is half cRPG, half Kings Bounty, going 100% either way is better.

But what about a game that is 100% rpg AND 100% HoMM?

 

[DeepOcean]

I'm not in favor of removing the army system but I'm in favor of keeping it abstracted and use resources + skill checks + special events with choices to run it instead of trying to shoehorn two different games on the same game and end as a mess. I dont see value on a game that is half cRPG, half Kings Bounty, going 100% either way is better.

But what about a game that is 100% rpg AND 100% HoMM?

Everybody knows that russians are like warhammer orks, when you need more of them, you just plant more of them on your backyard and there you have it... more russians, they only require vodka to survive as well, their belief that taking vodka makes you the better russian is so strong that they actually work two times faster.

 

[Pink Eye]

No offense to the journalists. But that is a shitty way to play a RTWP game. Continuously pausing, taking minutes to plan while paused. I mean, just play TB mode if you're going to be doing that.

 

[LannTheStupid]

Continuously pausing, taking minutes to plan while paused.

That's how I am playing any RTwP game. And with the Kitsune protagonist I will pause even more!

 

[Pink Eye]

Meh. The challenge of the system is to play in real time and micromanage in a real time environment. Pausing should only be used for when things get too hectic, i.e being flanked from behind. Of course, you're free to do whatever you want. It's your game. I just don't see the point of playing in Real Time if you're going to be pausing that much, and spending a lot of time planning while paused.

 

[Luckmann]

This is simply not true. Tons of content has been added, and practically all content is reworked in several ways, and one whole book and about 1/5 to 1/4 of the map is flat-out missing; they literally removed that section of the map and parsed the sections of either side together. I know this because I was planning to use the PF:K map for running the PnP, and you just can't. Add to this all the extra quests, almost all the exploration maps, a ton of the dungeons, added connections to the overarching plot (fixing some of the chief complaints of the base adventure path), nevermind practically all dialogue and the vast majority of unique items.

No. All the content for Kingmaker was definitely not designed on paper in the adventure path. At best, it was partially (re-)designed "on paper" in the private Pathfinder games we know the Owlcat people play, but if that is remotely true, their GM is a crazy motherfucker that goes well far and beyond the call of duty, whereas most GMs have loose notes and a propensity for making shit up at best.

You realize you're arguing against yourself here with how they went above-and-beyond and how that turned out to be too much?

Not at all. The core content is great, and they absolutely *could* have made everything to the same quality. The logic offered for slashing the game was that players ("muh feedback") felt the game was too long. The issue, however, was never that it was too long, but that the end was simply unfinished/lackluster/bugged. They're throwing tons of resources into new mechanics and features right this very moment. Over-extension isn't just a matter of "muh game length", but a laundry-list of potential issues and poor planning, and there is functionally nothing that would've prevented them from doing a more even spread in a way that would've hardly noticeable.

There's nothing inherent in "longer game" that makes said game worse. It's a bogus argument based on a false premise.

Don't be salty now just beczuse you said something stupid and was shut down.

Why would you assume that? A 5-minute visit to the Steam forums or Reddit should make it clear to you that 99% of "feedback" is useless.

I mean feedback from telemetry and polls that Obsidian made, not feedback from social networks.

And I mean all of it. Random focus groups and RetardEra/SomethingAwful are no better than "social networks"; they're probably worse. Sawyer flat-out told us that the reason for the shitty inventory "management" in PoE qas because there was a significant number of people that, to the detriment of their own enjoyment, went back and forth between areas to pick up all objects, no matter how shitty, just so they could sell them. Sawyer knowingly made a game for actual retards, uncritically based on "feedback", in an effort to appeal to the lowest common denominators.

This is not uncommon.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: As games have declined in quality, the market has expanded massively.

Close

I've said it before and I'll say it again: As the market has expanded massively, games have declined in quality.

Leaving the niche hurts any art. It becomes an industry. There is a gaping difference, for example, between film and the film industry, comics and the comic industry, games and the game industry, and so on.

Both are true, I simply focused on the aspect of it that was relevant to my argument. It' amatter of causation, in this case. The market hasn't expanded *because* quality has declined, or, like I said, at least not massively so. Appealing to the lowest common denominator is inherently widening, for sure, but the market has expanded massively due to the digital revolution and the wide popularization of computers throughout every level of society. We can't blame that on Bethesda going from Morrowind to Fallout 4, yet the latter is what the wide market is exposed to, more than the former.

These retard executives have been dumbing shit down since day 1, and with each increase in sales, they've seemingly assumed that that is in direct correlation to their latest dumpster-fire being "better", or "more streamlined", or whatever terminology they use to excuse dumbing shit down and casualizing it. And of course there is something to it, because yes, it's made entry simple for the simpleton. But there's no evidence that there's nearly as strong of a correlation as they seem to assume, and while good games are inherently more niche than McDonalds-tier games, there's a sizeable market out there, largely unexploited, looking for better shit, and they don't even know it.

Both Larian and Owlcat's recent successes are evidence of this, regardless of what missteps they've made otherwise (especially Larian).

About the tactical battles stretch goal:
There are two possibilities here, if the HoMM game is an half assed afterthought then I dont see a point to it as it can become a pain in the ass and boring to play, it would be better to not have it, if it is actually well crafted like a sort of Kings Bounty game, well, this will take away resources from the cRPG part and at some point you are playing a Kings Bounty game with redundant cRPG parts.

If this will be balanced so even players that dont want to engage on it can win, that means those battles will be super easy to players that do want to engage in, if you can set the difficulty to hard on those battles, that means if you dont engage on them, are you going to lose? What hard means here? Harder encounters on the HoMM layer or making the HoMM battles mandatory and you gonna lose on the auto-battle system otherwise?

I dont see how they can add depth to those systems without taking the gameplay away from the cRPG game. Sure, I see a value on you building an army and each thing you do on the game, both small and larger, improving this army, this actually give you context and meaning to your actions but I dont see why not keeping this army as just an abstraction.This seems like redundant gameplay, resourses invested on redundant gameplay seems like a waste.

Yeah, I agree. It's a bit of a red flag for me. I remain cautiously optimistic, but I'm worried that they are either over-selling it (meaning it'll suck and marr the game) or over-stretching (meaning it and/or other things may such and marr the game). I'm hoping for something fairly simple yet engaging, with a difficulty slider for the journalists.

 

[Luckmann]

Continuously pausing, taking minutes to plan while paused.

That's how I am playing any RTwP game. And with the Kitsune protagonist I will pause even more!

I'm sorry, we all decided on ratfolk.

 

[Reinhardt]

the player will start feeling frustrated why he cant take his army to certain fights

Firewine Ruins BUT WITH 10000 CRUSADERS!

 

[BarbequeMasta]

So when will we start the full on race wars about the vote? I have no preference really, but I have my popcorn.

 

[Lacrymas]

No offense to the journalists. But that is a shitty way to play a RTWP game. Continuously pausing, taking minutes to plan while paused. I mean, just play TB mode if you're going to be doing that.

If you want any sort of control, this is how you play a RTwP game. Journos are pretty terrible at games and veterans know how to make builds to minimize the pausing, but it's still a feature of the game, not a bug in the system.

 

[Reinhardt]

If you have 6 party members AND your army units AND the enemy units, you cant fit all of this on a HoMM fight or the turns would become a huge waste of time. So, they will limit this with maybe only one party member being a general of an army but that asks the question... wouldnt be better to have the six party members on all fights for more complexity instead of trying to shoehorn the army to be useful on this way?

In Suikoden you appoint your party members as unit commanders.
Or, ffs, just look at Dark Omen! Morgan fucking Bernhardt and his Grudgebringer Sword.

 

[Luckmann]

We are, 100%, going to have retards asking why they can't bring their army, but I don't think that really has anything to do with the tactical battles. You were going to have that army anyway.

This is not an uncommon problem, either. One of the most common issues when it comes to the Kingmaker adventure path is players asking why they'd do this or that, considering that they have servants that could do it.

Luckily, in the CRPG medium, it's easy to avoid such an issue by simply ignoring it and never adressing it. Sure, some autist will rage over the option not showing up, but.. just.. ignore it. It's a suspension of disbelief we have to deal with and that's just how it is, or there would be no game.

It's harder to excuse in a PnP, where jo such limitations logically exists. You absolutely can send your troops out. There's nothing stopping you. As a GM, it can be legitimately frustrating.

 

[LannTheStupid]

The challenge of the system is to play in real time and micromanage in a real time environment.

Well, for such a challenge I have only one answer: I fail. So it is pointless for me to even try. I like simultaneous movement and aiming moving targets, though. As usual, to each his own.

 

[Pink Eye]

The challenge of the system is to play in real time and micromanage in a real time environment.

Well, for such a challenge I have only one answer: I fail. So it is pointless for me to even try. I like simultaneous movement and aiming moving targets, though. As usual, to each his own.

For sure. To each their own. As long as you can enjoy the game that way, then by all means.

 

[Luckmann]

So when will we start the full on race wars about the vote? I have no preference really, but I have my popcorn.

I can tell you that they've already started.