Game News Pillars of Eternity Kickstarter Update #90: Post-PDXCon Preview Blitz + New Screenshots

[Athelas]

Good thing the game isn't anything like that then.

Also, complaining that the game actually offers choices in chargen and build variety (both for combat and role-play purposes):

 

[ZagorTeNej]

You could push Ignus and (maybe?) Vrailor into attacking you in PST.

You could piss off Annah as well IIRC, sell your party members into slavery (listening to that evil book), give them as offering to the Pillar of Skulls and one potential party member was hidden deep inside a maze and very likely missed by many players. All this while keeping in mind that PST didn't have Adventurer's Hall to replace lost party members with flunkies created on the spot, safe game design is boring game design.

 

[Athelas]

Uhm, it's a game where you can't die, created by the man who couldn't get past the wolves in Arcanum.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Uhm, it's a game where you can't die, created by the man who couldn't get past the wolves in Arcanum.

Sure you can, try pissing off Lothar or massacring Dabuses/praying to the Lady of Pain doll

 

[Rake]

You could push Ignus and (maybe?) Vrailor into attacking you in PST.

You could piss off Annah as well IIRC, sell your party members into slavery (listening to that evil book), give them as offering to the Pillar of Skulls and one potential party member was hidden deep inside a maze and very likely missed by many players. All this while keeping in mind that PST didn't have Adventurer's Hall to replace lost party members with flunkies created on the spot, safe game design is boring game design.

Since most of your examples are initiated by player's choice, i didn't mentioned them since i expect PoE will have this kind of things. Companions abandoning you on their own outside of player's choice like in BG2 is different.
What i want is NPC's choices overule player's choice, like Vrailor killing Trias despite your decision, companions abandoning you or betraying you depending in your in game desisions etc.

 

[Athelas]

Annah leaves by herself at some point, if you have Grace in the party. You can talk her back (with a charisma check? I think).

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Since most of your examples are initiated by player's choice, i didn't mentioned them since i expect PoE will have this kind of things. Companions abandoning you on their own outside of player's choice like in BG2 is different

Yeah, that is true. Annah and Vhailor then, if pissing them off with wrong dialogue choices counts. I still think PoE could have easily done things BG1-2 way in this regard because of Adventurer Hall.

 

[Kalin]

Morte and Dak'kon also attack you if you pick fights with certain people, but of course, they make their disapproval pretty clear to begin with. Personally, I enjoy some juicy inter-party conflicts, even betrayals can be fun as long as they are well-made and offer some way to avoid them (Arcanum has a few cases like this, and while you are forced to fight either Vhailor or Ignus in Planetscape, it is at least a nice touch to have it depend on your alignment). Oh, and all companions should be "disposable" if you want to play that way. Baldur's Gate had a pretty arbitrary reputation system, but it handled followers much better than abominations like Neverwinter Nights 2, where fucks like fake-Annah and fake-Gimli raped their way into the party, "woke up" after every fight and couldn't be excluded from the story no matter how much you hated them and wanted them gone.

 

[Infinitron]

There are all sorts of exceptions, but the point is that in that sort of game, companions leaving you is typically a dramatic event that only happens at the end of a narrative arc of some sort and/or where the player has made some serious choices. It's never a "gotcha" like losing Angela Deth at the beginning of Wasteland 2 if Vargas catches her with you.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Good thing the game isn't anything like that then.

Also, complaining that the game actually offers choices in chargen and build variety (both for combat and role-play purposes):

Seems that "choices" means very different things for different people.

 

[Duraframe300]

You could push Ignus and (maybe?) Vrailor into attacking you in PST.

You could piss off Annah as well IIRC, sell your party members into slavery (listening to that evil book), give them as offering to the Pillar of Skulls and one potential party member was hidden deep inside a maze and very likely missed by many players. All this while keeping in mind that PST didn't have Adventurer's Hall to replace lost party members with flunkies created on the spot, safe game design is boring game design.

On that note you could hand over your companion to cannibals in New Vegas and the guy who designed that quest is the lead writer of this game.

C&C is the one thing you really shouldn't worry about in this game guys.

 

[Athelas]

Good thing the game isn't anything like that then.

Also, complaining that the game actually offers choices in chargen and build variety (both for combat and role-play purposes):

Seems that "choices" means very different things for different people.

A system where attributes have class-specific/limited usefulness makes it very easy to make an optimal build that covers all the bases (assuming the game is somewhat transparent about the rule set and mechanics), which means you're not really making any choices between different attributes . This was the case in say the IE games and even to a large extent Fallout. I guess that makes it easier to get through chargen feeling confident you made a good character, but it isn't terribly exciting to me.

 

[agris]

Physics question: Does thrusting a gun forward whilst pulling the trigger make the bullet move faster?

Yes! The velocity (i.e. speed) and instantaneous acceleration of your thrust when you release the bullet (pull the trigger) will affect the bullet's speed and acceleration.

 

[Roguey]

The might thing influencing gun power is completely retarded, no matter how much profanity jsawyer may utter at normal people.

Most normal people don't care either way, this is something grognards get upset about.

 

[Volrath]

The might thing influencing gun power is completely retarded, no matter how much profanity jsawyer may utter at normal people.

Most normal people don't care either way, this is something grognards get upset about.

You mean the audience he was supposed to make the game for? The audience that funded this little pet project of his? That audience?

 

[Roguey]

You mean the audience he was supposed to make the game for? The audience that funded this little pet project of his? That audience?

They didn't pitch this to grognards, or else they would have licensed Pathfinder. The target audience is people who thought the IE games were pretty fun back in the day and wouldn't mind playing something new that's kinda like them, not the people who obsessed over them for over a decade.

 

[Tigranes]

When I backed POE one of the things I was most excited about was talking about good old RPG mechanics on the Codex and elsewhere. The little I knew that it would just lock itself in some Freudian repetition of MIGHT IS NOT MIGHT MIGHT IS NOT MIGHT MIGHT IS NOT MIGHT

For the record, yes, the basic conceit of might influencing spell damage or something is silly and counterintuitive. No, that doesn't make the game a Sawyer powertrip or defying basic laws of RPG Universe or a game where every single character is balanced to sameness. Yes, a game where every character is equally powerful is stupid. No, that's not the same as a game which lets you build an idiot muscle wizard, though it could be. I liked a lot of what I saw in the beta, I also saw some flaws (esp. animations and combat pacing / feel), we'll see how it is when the actual thing is out.

It's like whining Fallout has no C&C because dumb characters can also finish the game. Whether POE is incline or decline, you'd think Codex would incline in its discussion now that it has some games that try to be real CRPGs to chomp on. Instead we now have a new disease where some people hallucinate Sawyer wherever they go and occasionally scream loudly that the ghost of Sawyer is back to ram their arse up to infinity.

 

[Zed]

You mean the audience he was supposed to make the game for? The audience that funded this little pet project of his? That audience?

They didn't pitch this to grognards, or else they would have licensed Pathfinder. The target audience is people who thought the IE games were pretty fun back in the day and wouldn't mind playing something new that's kinda like them, not the people who obsessed over them for over a decade.

So basically the current Bioware fanbase.

 

[Roguey]

If you consider yourself a Bioware fan but have been disappointed by the latest installments of Dragon Age, boy does Obsidian Entertainment have the game for you.

 

[Infinitron]

I thought Bioware fans liked romances.

 

[Roguey]

They're doing without the kind of people who consider their absence a dealbreaker. I remember Priestly saying the people who pursue the romances are a minority of total players.

 

[tuluse]

For the record, yes, the basic conceit of might influencing spell damage or something is silly and counterintuitive.

It's not counter-intuitive at all, it's just different from what other RPGs have done.

Codex: "magic should be special and different"

5 minutes later

Codex: "waaaah, some attribute makes magic stronger when it didn't in the other games I played"


Edit: The funny thing is that attributes are actually tied to spells now. Which means they actually have an impact on mages outside of "how high is INT". The codex apparently can't handle more than one attribute being important to a character

 

[Raapys]

To me the setup feels kinda gamey. Why does Might affect damage but not AoE and duration? Wouldn't more powerful spells extend the blast radius, and maybe duration, naturally? Why does Intellect affect AoE and duration but not damage? Wouldn't smarter use of a spell allow you to use your spell more wisely to maximize the damage output?

 

[Tigranes]

Why is it that important to anything?

It's like the stupid argument sabout whether Constitution should be Endurance.

 

[Raapys]

It's important for the same reason you don't just call them Attribute1, Attribute2, Attribute3, etc. and assign them completely arbitrary benefits.