Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Delterius]

kingdom management was bad

come to my land of brothels in every building slot and tell me that i dare you

 

[rusty_shackleford]

they were all equally shit, there's a link in my sig for exactly this topic

nwn2 events were decent tho, not really related to the fort itself I guess

 

[Parabalus]

bg did it better because it was contextual so you never felt you wasted your time. somewhat true for nwn2

every game since has tried making involved systems of keeps, and everyone has failed. PoE and Pathfinder spectacularly so because those two required the most interaction with the system

Looks like you just don't like strongholds.

PF:KM especially is incredibly on point. Extreme ties to gameplay choices and character stats/builds, lots of chances to fail, but even more rewards to obtain.

 

[FreeKaner]

would have liked if the crew of your ship mattered more and made them more interesting to find

They do matter actually but it is opaque. The way it works if you want a crew member to max out in their particular skill you want them to not have points in multiple skills. So you find "best in slot" crew members in particular areas. One of them is recruited from Slaver island for example. Definitely though the crew management minigame could be more fun, a bit like king of dragon pass.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

PF:KM especially is incredibly on point. Extreme ties to gameplay choices and character stats/builds, lots of chances to fail, but even more rewards to obtain.

The problem is that it becomes repetitive way too fast(not enough unique cards) and your choices don't have enough impact on the game itself.
There's some choices like the one where you can accidentally get your kingdom hooked on drugs and had an actual impact that were done well.

 

[Grunker]

bg did it better because it was contextual so you never felt you wasted your time. somewhat true for nwn2

every game since has tried making involved systems of keeps, and everyone has failed. PoE and Pathfinder spectacularly so because those two required the most interaction with the system

Looks like you just don't like strongholds.

PF:KM especially is incredibly on point. Extreme ties to gameplay choices and character stats/builds, lots of chances to fail, but even more rewards to obtain.

so because something has consequences it's automatically good? the gameplay is superficial and has the depth of a kid's pool. your strawman doesn't change that fact and you fall back on it because you can't argue the merits of the system on its own

that's why PF's kingdom mechanics are the worst of the bunch: if your system is bad, the more you have to interact with it = the more negative the impact on your game is

 

[Lyric Suite]

St. Agustine argued that God could not be corporeal and that he had to be exist outside of time and space. According to Aquinas, he is Being in the higher sense, not such or such a being but Being as such, and everything that "is" exists only by virtue of God being Existence in and of itself in it's absolute essence.

Interesting. It's a very intriguing concept and argument. I don't personally have belief in anything in particular anymore after leaving Mormonism so this is very interesting. What's even more interesting is that there was a Mormon scholar named James E. Talmage who was very taken with writings of ancient historians like Josephus and he really tried to understand Judaism (because Mormonism is sort of neo-Judaic in that they believe themselves to be the literal descendants of the house of Israel and are as such entitled to the blessings of the covenant God made with Abraham). So he wrote a lot about this subject of Being and gave this as the reason that God declared Himself "I AM" which you pointed out later in your comment.

God is the "I AM THAT I AM"

And you'll have to forgive my ignorance, but Talmage claimed that Jehovah and Yahweh both meant more or less the same thing as "I AM".

Here, I'll find the exact passage.

Jehovah is the Anglicized rendering of the Hebrew, Yahveh or Jahveh, signifying the Self-existent One, or The Eternal. This name is generally rendered in our English version of the Old Testament as Lord, printed in capitals. The Hebrew, Ehyeh, signifying I Am, is related in meaning and through derivation with the term Yahveh or Jehovah; and herein lies the significance of this name by which the Lord revealed Himself to Moses when the latter received the commission to go into Egypt and deliver the children of Israel from bondage...The central fact connoted by this name, I Am, or Jehovah, the two having essentially the same meaning, is that of existence or duration that shall have no end, and which, judged by all human standards of reckoning, could have had no beginning; the name is related to such other titles as Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.

You have to make a distinction between traditional esoterism and Gnosticism.

Gnostics (and most of those modern religious thinkers can be characterized as such at this point) borrow many ideas and concepts from esoterism but have a tendency to create a sort of pastiche of various doctrines that are often understood only at a surface level.

Talmage is basically the Mormon counterpart to a Teilhard De Chardin. Both were products of a metaphysical framework that is inherently anti-traditional and if one can find certain truths or correct facts in their writings, and it would be surprising not to found any at all, the framework within which they operated led them astray in more fundamental ways than whatever true facts they may have uncovered.

De Chardin for instance is essentially an atheist in the highest possible sense. He seems to have envisioned a progression that begun with "nothing", and that is working within the finite to eventually achieve the infinite, which to me is utter nonsense. How could nothing give rise to existence? How could the finite become the infinite? The relative become the absolute?

Likewise, i cannot imagine how anyone who truly understood what God is could arrive at the conclusion God was originally nothing but a finite man who eventually rose to ultimate existence by drawing from his own finite nature.

If you want to read someone who is closer to traditional esoterism within the bosom of Protestantism, i would point to Jakob Böhme, who despite some of the liberties he took in his language at least seemed to have a much firmer grasp of true esoterism, as did Meister Eckhart some centuries before.

 

[FreeKaner]

I have to add also a person who personally enjoys more maritime settings, especially renaissance & colonial ones. I find it hard to agree with people who just say "why didn't you just make it a land setting with no ships", especially when that's like 90% of RPGs already. Maritime settings are underrated, underutilized and underused.

Also nothing wrong with a text-based ship combat system, in fact I'd go as far to say "Sid meier's pirates" type of "action" ship combat is bad, period. However text combat system needs to be lean and it could have had more actions like the events with fire in the deck or water leak in the hold with a better interface.

It's really a mainly GUI issue.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Ship combat needed more events to manage during it. There was already things like fires that you had to take care of, they should have added more.

 

[Delterius]

bg did it better because it was contextual so you never felt you wasted your time. somewhat true for nwn2

every game since has tried making involved systems of keeps, and everyone has failed. PoE and Pathfinder spectacularly so because those two required the most interaction with the system

Looks like you just don't like strongholds.

PF:KM especially is incredibly on point. Extreme ties to gameplay choices and character stats/builds, lots of chances to fail, but even more rewards to obtain.

so because something has consequences it's automatically good? the gameplay is superficial and has the depth of a kid's pool. your strawman doesn't change that fact and you fall back on it because you can't argue the merits of the system on its own

Kingdom management is good because it ties back into the normal gameplay loop of exploring new areas, beating monsters, and acquiring loot/wealth. Time management in Kingmaker adds a lot to the game because it makes everything feel like a real campaign. And the way that looting and investing in your Kingdom forms a loop feels good as well. Are there some major areas of much needed improvement? Yes, as always. But as someone who was in the mood for just this sort of campaign I found the kingdom management to be a delight and the experience would have been much diminished by it's exclusion. And for everybody else there's a big 'make kingdom management not matter' button. As such I think it's a successful implementation.

 

[Parabalus]

bg did it better because it was contextual so you never felt you wasted your time. somewhat true for nwn2

every game since has tried making involved systems of keeps, and everyone has failed. PoE and Pathfinder spectacularly so because those two required the most interaction with the system

Looks like you just don't like strongholds.

PF:KM especially is incredibly on point. Extreme ties to gameplay choices and character stats/builds, lots of chances to fail, but even more rewards to obtain.

so because something has consequences it's automatically good? the gameplay is superficial and has the depth of a kid's pool. your strawman doesn't change that fact and you fall back on it because you can't argue the merits of the system on its own

You aren't arguing that's it's shallow either, just blurting it out angrily.

To get everything done you need to optimize the initial buildup well. There is still lots of complaining about people outright killing their kingdoms due to poor planning.

Time being a resource is an incredibly elegant solution to many common RPG problems, KM really nails it because it ties the strategy layer and the party layer together with it.

 

[Sunri]

I have to add also a person who personally enjoys more maritime settings, especially renaissance & colonial ones. I find it hard to agree with people who just say "why didn't you just make it a land setting with no ships", especially when that's like 90% of RPGs already. Maritime settings are underrated, underutilized and underused.

Also nothing wrong with a text-based ship combat system, in fact I'd go as far to say "Sid meier's pirates" type of "action" ship combat is bad, period. However text combat system needs to be lean and it could have more actions on the deck especially when events like fire in the deck or water leak in the hold with a better interface.

It's really a mainly GUI issue.

They are underused because people don't like them, I think the setting is a big reason why the game flopped compared to I with more traditional fantasy.

 

[Grunker]

bg did it better because it was contextual so you never felt you wasted your time. somewhat true for nwn2

every game since has tried making involved systems of keeps, and everyone has failed. PoE and Pathfinder spectacularly so because those two required the most interaction with the system

Looks like you just don't like strongholds.

PF:KM especially is incredibly on point. Extreme ties to gameplay choices and character stats/builds, lots of chances to fail, but even more rewards to obtain.

so because something has consequences it's automatically good? the gameplay is superficial and has the depth of a kid's pool. your strawman doesn't change that fact and you fall back on it because you can't argue the merits of the system on its own

Kingdom management is good because it ties back into the normal gameplay loop of exploring new areas, beating monsters, and acquiring loot/wealth. Time management in Kingmaker adds a lot to the game because it makes everything feel like a real campaign. And the way that looting and investing in your Kingdom forms a loop is feels good as well. Are there some major areas of much needed improvement? As someone who was in the mood for just this sort of campaign I found the kingdom management to be a delight and the experience would have been much diminished by it's exclusion.

You are just restating Parabelsus' point without responding to mine. Which was that you can't defend a system on the basis that it impacts the game. The actual gameplay - choosing projects and advisors - is horrifiyingly poorly implemented, overly simply and mindnumbingly boring.

It doesn't help that the system is simply poorly structured: for example, the "optimal" strategy is nearly to avoid building structures entirely. But that kind of balancing wouldn't be as much of a problem is the entire system itself wasn't a boring afterthought.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I think the setting is a big reason why the game flopped compared to I with more traditional fantasy.

Put this on the big pile of "things the codex refuses to accept but are actually very true"

 

[Grunker]

bg did it better because it was contextual so you never felt you wasted your time. somewhat true for nwn2

every game since has tried making involved systems of keeps, and everyone has failed. PoE and Pathfinder spectacularly so because those two required the most interaction with the system

Looks like you just don't like strongholds.

PF:KM especially is incredibly on point. Extreme ties to gameplay choices and character stats/builds, lots of chances to fail, but even more rewards to obtain.

so because something has consequences it's automatically good? the gameplay is superficial and has the depth of a kid's pool. your strawman doesn't change that fact and you fall back on it because you can't argue the merits of the system on its own

You aren't arguing that's it's shallow either, just blurting it out angrily.

You pick the advisor-combinations with the highest bonus, you pick time-sensitive stuff, you finish questlines and then you do whatever in whatever order. It is hard to find more superficial systems than that.

Are you actually going to argue that PF's kingdom cards is an involved strategic decision? I literally just picked stuff at random on the hardest setting except for the cards that obviously had time restrictions and I never had any negative impact from the system.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Modern fantasy writers cannot create spirituality in their games because they don't even know what it is. That's why all of them are just marvel-tier pantheons because their perception of religion doesn't go beyond "wow mythology cool" with very little knowledge of it. They don't even get basics of pagan religion, where it is meant to be about duty and ritual, as well as collective community wisdom.

There's some interesting ideas in Torment that appear to at least take into consideration some genuine spiritual concepts, even if for the most part the game doesn't really go that deep into them. Still better than the other D&D games i guess.

 

[FreeKaner]

They are underused because people don't like them, I think the setting is a big reason why the game flopped compared to I with more traditional fantasy.

If we went with this mentality then we shouldn't do anything but Fallout 3 and Skyrim. If they made a better job it would have been better received. People just don't know what they like or don't like and tend to associate their generalized experience with most obvious outliers. The fact that POE2 is a maritime setting is very obvious, so people in their lack of in-depth analysis associate why they didn't like the game with that fact.

There is indeed a lack of imagination when it comes to creating maritime settings. I assume this is because the main inspirations for fantasy settings are medieval and focused on land but if anything maritime settings are more conductive to adventure party configuration. Moving between ports and cities, exploring islands and landing on uncharted lands basically writes itself. As well as the fact that port cities are more conductive to whole "people giving out odd jobs", "taverns full of characters" and "larger than life figures" that RPG gameplay fits best with.

 

[dacencora]

De Chardin for instance is essentially an atheist in the highest possible sense. He seems to have envisioned a progression that begun with "nothing", and that is working within the finite to eventually achieve the infinite, which to me is utter nonsense. How could nothing give rise to existence? How could the finite become the infinite? The relative become the absolute?

Likewise, i cannot imagine how anyone who truly understood what God is could arrive at the conclusion God was originally nothing but a finite man who eventually rose to ultimate existence by drawing from his own finite nature.

Perhaps De Chardin's notions are the basis of the deepest Mormon doctrine, which is that God has always existed but that He originally existed as what they refer to as an intelligence. Now, some Mormons differ on this subject, but basically the idea is that everyone has always existed as an intelligence, and that intelligence is the most basic building block of creation. Where some Mormons differ is on whether the God of this world is the first God or not. There is some universal agreement that the God of this world (they call him Elohim) once lived as a mortal man, but the disagreement is more on how that happened. Did He live under the rule of another God and progress to Godhood himself? (This is where the Mormon notion of apotheosis for everyone comes into play) Or did He simply will Himself into a mortal body and then will Himself into an immortal body? The disagreement is essentially on whether or not Elohim is the chief God of gods, or not. But like others have pointed out in the past, Mormons are inherently polytheistic and thus not Christian.

But I will definitely read more on Jakob Böhme and see more of this subject.

 

[Delterius]

It doesn't help that the system is simply poorly structured: for example, the "optimal" strategy is nearly to avoid building structures entirely. But that kind of balancing wouldn't be as much of a problem is the entire system itself wasn't a boring afterthought.

I can partially agree with that. Partially because it is still optimal to use buildings and rush high Divine/Diplomacy for Teleporting Circles and Aviaries respectively. But I agree because there's not nearly enough of that. I think the Kingdom Stat gains could stand a retool, where either most of the gains come from buildings rather than events or there are more early bottlenecks for you to achieve. Or perhaps include a mechanic where buildings are the means by which your advisors solve problems in each region, not just via the power of their offices.

The actual gameplay - choosing projects and advisors - is horrifiyingly poorly implemented, overly simply and mindnumbingly boring.

Now this is just nonsense to me. I wanted to play an RPG where I build my own kingdom and that's exactly what I got. The act of managing said kingdom was a joy, in and of itself. If I didn't want to do those things I would have replayed Baldur's Gate 2.

 

[Grunker]

Now this is just nonsense to me. I wanted to play an RPG where I build my own kingdom and that's exactly what I got. The act of managing said kingdom was a joy, in and of itself. If I didn't want to do those things I would have replayed Baldur's Gate 2.

by this logic the system could never be bad. just the fact that it exists and is about managing a kingdom makes it good. insert koala-what reaction

 

[rusty_shackleford]

just the fact that it exists makes it good.

yes
every rpg would be better with base building mechanics, deal with it

 

[Grunker]

just the fact that it exists makes it good.

yes

I rest my case

 

[Grunker]

"This chicken literally has shit in it"

"But it's chicken though"

"But it tastes like shit?"

"And chicken!"

 

[rusty_shackleford]

"You know what would be good though? Chicken without shit in it."

"No! We must never cook chicken again!"

 

[Grunker]

"You know what would be good though? Chicken without shit in it."

"No! We must never cook chicken again!"

Have you ever tried making an argument that didn't include a strawman? I'm arguing that the specific systems are shit. You're the one literally saying the games get better by having shit in them