Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[rusty_shackleford]

What's tiresome is people thinking more dialogue lines is a substitute for actually interacting with the world in an RPG.

Making what is essentially a UI change be the difference between interaction and non-interaction isn't helping your case in terms of honestly presenting your argument lol

But it's not a UI change, it's fundamentally reversing the way you interact with the gameworld.
It's like saying it's a small UI change if in combat the game told you exactly what move to make each time it was your turn.

 

[Grunker]

Maybe there's a reason deadfire sold like shit and divinity original sin 2 was one of the best selling RPGs ever made. Who knows?

AVATAR IS THE BEST FILM EVER MADE!

 

[rusty_shackleford]

and it gets even dumber the further you go in this 'lineage', here's how world interactions work in wrath of the righteous:

all you do is click it. That's it, that's your entire meaningful interaction. The game tells you what to click, and you click it.
I can't wait to see where it goes from here, maybe they'll take out that strenuous clicking part. Wouldn't want to waste anyone's time, after all.

This is better than carrying 200kg of boxes and barrels in your inventory to cheese combat encounters with.

that has nothing to do with what I posted, it's a non-argument meant to dance around what I posted because you have no counterargument.

You guys have no interest in playing an RPG, you want to read a visual novel while the game tells you what to do.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Maybe there's a reason deadfire sold like shit and divinity original sin 2 was one of the best selling RPGs ever made. Who knows?

AVATAR IS THE BEST FILM EVER MADE!

Gone with the Wind is considered to be one of the greatest ever made, yes.

 

[Grunker]

What a feeble try, lol. The "popularity is quality" argument is such tripe you have been under 25 to make it - otherwise you've had it refuted with basic logic enough times to steer clear. More evidence for the youngbuck rusty-theorem!

 

[rusty_shackleford]

What a feeble try, lol. The "popularity is quality" argument is so tripe you have been under 25 to make it - otherwise you've had it refuted enough times to steer clear. More evidence for the rusty-theorem!

Cope harder. Maybe go read some visual novels.

 

[Delterius]

Kinda wish BG1 was more of an RPG tbh.

 

[Parabalus]

and it gets even dumber the further you go in this 'lineage', here's how world interactions work in wrath of the righteous:

all you do is click it. That's it, that's your entire meaningful interaction. The game tells you what to click, and you click it.
I can't wait to see where it goes from here, maybe they'll take out that strenuous clicking part. Wouldn't want to waste anyone's time, after all.

This is better than carrying 200kg of boxes and barrels in your inventory to cheese combat encounters with.

that has nothing to do with what I posted, it's a non-argument meant to dance around what I posted because you have no counterargument.

You guys have no interest in playing an RPG, you want to read a visual novel while the game tells you what to do.

You're description of meaningful gameplay

The former usually has more meaningful interactions.

I don't consider "click highlighted object and select dialogue line" to be a meaningful interaction.

Compared to 'scroll and click through skill wheel, hoping to receive cookie'?

Yes.

can be automated with a hotkey macro. How is that meaningful?

It's worse than choosing from preset options, because there is no choice at all. Just a question of how impervious the player is to rote repetition.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

and it gets even dumber the further you go in this 'lineage', here's how world interactions work in wrath of the righteous:

all you do is click it. That's it, that's your entire meaningful interaction. The game tells you what to click, and you click it.
I can't wait to see where it goes from here, maybe they'll take out that strenuous clicking part. Wouldn't want to waste anyone's time, after all.

This is better than carrying 200kg of boxes and barrels in your inventory to cheese combat encounters with.

that has nothing to do with what I posted, it's a non-argument meant to dance around what I posted because you have no counterargument.

You guys have no interest in playing an RPG, you want to read a visual novel while the game tells you what to do.

You're description of meaningful gameplay

The former usually has more meaningful interactions.

I don't consider "click highlighted object and select dialogue line" to be a meaningful interaction.

Compared to 'scroll and click through skill wheel, hoping to receive cookie'?

Yes.

can be automated with a hotkey macro. How is that meaningful?

It's worse than choosing from preset options, because there is no choice at all. Just a question of how impervious the player is to rote repetition.

Yes, Fallout is the greatest cRPG ever made. Is there something else you'd like to discuss?

 

[Parabalus]

Maybe there's a reason deadfire sold like shit and divinity original sin 2 was one of the best selling RPGs ever made. Who knows?

AVATAR IS THE BEST FILM EVER MADE!

Gone with the Wind is considered to be one of the greatest ever made, yes.

Why stop at D:OS?

The Bethsoft games have even more freeform gameplay and even higher grosses, that must mean they are better!

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Maybe there's a reason deadfire sold like shit and divinity original sin 2 was one of the best selling RPGs ever made. Who knows?

AVATAR IS THE BEST FILM EVER MADE!

Gone with the Wind is considered to be one of the greatest ever made, yes.

Why stop at D:OS?

The Bethsoft games have even more freeform gameplay and even higher grosses, that must mean they are better!

Yeah, world interactions in TES games are pretty cool and I wish more games would be like them because the rest of TES games are pretty bad.
What's your point? That RPGs where you actually interact with the world -- even ones that aren't very good -- tend to sell very well because they aren't dialogue simulators?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

What's tiresome is people thinking more dialogue lines is a substitute for actually interacting with the world in an RPG.

Making what is essentially a UI change be the difference between interaction and non-interaction isn't helping your case in terms of honestly presenting your argument lol

I don't quite think it does the comparison justice to reduce both to a question of UI.
In one case- text based dialogue boxes, you are effectively confined to whatever is the list of options the developer deems fit to solve the scenario at hand. The more so because it is easier to identify the dialogue option that translates into "I WIN" than not.
In the other- that of interactions between systems, your box of tools might be limited on the face of it but at least you do have to exert some mental effort to choose the tool for the job, which can lead to unexpected means and ends. I suppose it's another matter entirely if you choose to use the same tool over and over again.

 

[AwesomeButton]

You guys are advocating for RPGs to become visual novels where your only interactions with the world are through text. This genre already exists, it's called visual novels, go play read it.

It's like the straw sticking from Eder's mouth is meant to symbolize something about you and strawmen.

No, on this topic I'm not taking either radical position, just trying to reason publicly about either approach. If you remember I said we are probably moving towards freeform speech-to-text based interfaces, which function very well as a substitute to dialogue, but are still expensive to implement, not to mention the difficulties in localizing them for a product such as an RPG videogame.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

You guys are advocating for RPGs to become visual novels where your only interactions with the world are through text. This genre already exists, it's called visual novels, go play read it.

It's like the straw sticking from Eder's mouth is meant to symbolize something about you and strawmen.

No, on this topic I'm not taking either radical position, just trying to reason publicly about either approach. If you remember I said we are probably moving through freeform speech-to-text based interfaces, which function very well as a substitute to dialogue, but are still expensive to implement, not to mention the difficulties in localizing them for a product such as an RPG videogame.

Back in the Saint's War we had this strawman we'd go out and beat up anytime some of those Readcerans made stupid comments about wanting to turn everything fun into books.

 

[AwesomeButton]

You could look up TemplarGR on greek bride websites, you'd be a great team with your opinions on modern vs gorgnard RPGs.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

You could look up TemplarGR on greek bride websites, you'd be a great team with your opinions on modern vs gorgnard RPGs.

My opinion is that the older ones were more correct though.
IE games are newer.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Just wanted to comment that one advantage of this game over the IE games is that Pillars is a complete implementation of the system, by definition since the system was made for the game to begin with.

I never played PnP, but over the years i noticed many comments by people lamenting of such and such a feature of PnP D&D that never ended up on Baldur's Gate or other computer RPGs, and i always had to wonder how those games would have played out if the system was implemented in it's entirety, where as with Pillars i don't have to wonder about anything, which makes it easier to judge the system as such (and not it's implementation).

 

[Grunker]

Maybe there's a reason deadfire sold like shit and divinity original sin 2 was one of the best selling RPGs ever made. Who knows?

AVATAR IS THE BEST FILM EVER MADE!

Gone with the Wind is considered to be one of the greatest ever made, yes.

Why stop at D:OS?

The Bethsoft games have even more freeform gameplay and even higher grosses, that must mean they are better!

Yeah, world interactions in TES games are pretty cool

wait... so now the reason you think sales figures are relevant is that they are directly tied to the quality of interactivity systems

this isn't so much moving the goal posts as it is making them fly and tell jokes in weird made up alien languages to confuse the audience

 

[AwesomeButton]

Just wanted to comment that one advantage of this game over the IE games is that Pillars is a complete implementation of the system, by definition since the system was made for the game to begin with.

I never played PnP, but over the years i noticed many comments by people lamenting of such and such a feature of PnP D&D that never ended up on Baldur's Gate or other computer RPGs, and i always had to wonder how those games would have played out if the system was implemented in it's entirety, where as with Pillars i don't have to wonder about anything, which makes it easier to judge the system as such (and not it's implementation).

I still wish Pillars had more uniform recovery speeds and fake-attack animations like the IE games. Brings that feeling of anticipating the next attack animation and hoping this one will be a hit.

 

[Grunker]

Just wanted to comment that one advantage of this game over the IE games is that Pillars is a complete implementation of the system, by definition since the system was made for the game to begin with.

I never played PnP, but over the years i noticed many comments by people lamenting of such and such a feature of PnP D&D that never ended up on Baldur's Gate or other computer RPGs, and i always had to wonder how those games would have played out if the system was implemented in it's entirety, where as with Pillars i don't have to wonder about anything, which makes it easier to judge the system as such (and not it's implementation).

I still wish Pillars had more uniform recovery speeds and fake-attack animations like the IE games. Brings that feeling of anticipating the next attack animation and hoping this one will be a hit.

heh, i actually play with the tweak that make attack animations play only on actual attacks. i find it easier to follow combat that way

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I never played PnP, but over the years i noticed many comments by people lamenting of such and such a feature of PnP D&D that never ended up on Baldur's Gate or other computer RPGs, and i always had to wonder how those games would have played out if the system was implemented in it's entirety, where as with Pillars i don't have to wonder about anything, which makes it easier to judge the system as such (and not it's implementation).

Someday when we get Knights of the Chalice 3

 

[AwesomeButton]

heh, i actually play with the tweak that make attack animations play only on actual attacks. i find it easier to follow combat that way

I've always had this feeling like a slot machine addict pulling the lever after every animation. I only realize it now, but I guess it's been there since I played it as a teen

This gave me an idea I should try out - double all the recovery times accross the board in Deadfire and see if this doesn't make realtime gameplay smoother and with less pausing on higher difficulties. I've always lamented how you break up the flow of realtime gameplay with a lot of pausing because of all the active abilities and the high-micro characters.

If I can play a slowed down version of RtwP instead of turn-based, it would circumvent the unbalancing of the system caused by turn-based

 

[Grunker]

I never played PnP, but over the years i noticed many comments by people lamenting of such and such a feature of PnP D&D that never ended up on Baldur's Gate or other computer RPGs, and i always had to wonder how those games would have played out if the system was implemented in it's entirety, where as with Pillars i don't have to wonder about anything, which makes it easier to judge the system as such (and not it's implementation).

Someday when we get Knights of the Chalice 3

Pathfinder and ToEE has more close P&P implementations than KotC and even KotC2. Simply because KotC has to cut so many things.

 

[Grunker]

heh, i actually play with the tweak that make attack animations play only on actual attacks. i find it easier to follow combat that way

I've always had this feeling like a slot machine addict pulling the lever after every animation. I only realize it now, but I guess it's been there since I played it as a teen

This gave me an idea I should try out - double all the recovery times accross the board in Deadfire and see if this doesn't make realtime gameplay smoother and with less pausing on higher difficulties. I've always lamented how you break up the flow of realtime gameplay with a lot of pausing because of all the active abilities and the high-micro characters.

If I can play a slowed down version of RtwP instead of turn-based, it would circumvent the unbalancing of the system caused by turn-based

This is a pet peeve of mine: people thinking RTwP feels bad in Pillars due to the speed combat plays on. That's not it. Even at -4x or -8x speed it would still feel awkward.

The reason is simply too many things going on for a real-time system. Even when I play with a hasted party on SCS BGII in an insane fight like Twisted Rune, I still have less moment-to-moment variables to consider than in an average Pillars-fight. More importantly, each action is more responsive and rapid in its actual on-screen execution.

Engagement is the prime reason, but there are many more.

That's why it feels like it does. Not the actual speed it plays at.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I never played PnP, but over the years i noticed many comments by people lamenting of such and such a feature of PnP D&D that never ended up on Baldur's Gate or other computer RPGs, and i always had to wonder how those games would have played out if the system was implemented in it's entirety, where as with Pillars i don't have to wonder about anything, which makes it easier to judge the system as such (and not it's implementation).

Someday when we get Knights of the Chalice 3

Pathfinder and ToEE has more close P&P implementations than KotC and even KotC2. Simply because KotC has to cut so many things.

Hence KoTC 3.
I hope.

This is a pet peeve of mine: people thinking RTwP feels bad in Pillars due to the speed combat plays on. That's not it. Even at -4x or -8x speed it would still feel awkward

Imagine spending 5 minutes at a loading screen only to be next inflicted with a Meredoth laser show. TB is so much slower but at least it didn't annoy my eyesight.