Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Bubbles]

The Dragonfall review wasn't exactly a hateful screed either.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Not really. Darth Roxor has been setting an example to us all since 2008.

ah yes 2008, i practically poured a whole bucket of bile down on betrayal at krondor back then

 

[Darth Roxor]

its k tho im currently contemplating writing an article that will once again elevate me to the title of chief edgelord extraordinaire

 

[Bubbles]

"Why RPGs were better before Kickstarter"?

 

[Lhynn]

Na, hes gonna shit all over ding dong.

 

[Excidium II]

I don't think a ping pong review would be that negative, mostly just an "ok that's it I guess", then again it's all about how people interpret it.

 

[Bubbles]

Na, hes gonna shit all over ding dong.

No, that's still weeks off. He needs to do the Undertale review first.

 

[Excidium II]

I can't even imagine roxor playing that.

 

[Cadmus]

Lyric Suite should write a review. At least he'd finally have a reason to play a PC game for the first time since Doom.

 

[Infinitron]

Lyric Suite should write our Dark Souls reviews.

 

[Roguey]

I dare anyone to defend the skills in PoE, I will tear you to pieces! It's shitty for no reason, reworking it wouldn't screw balance and it wouldn't make it less IE games successor. It's a work of a designer who doesn't understand the possibilities of different playstyles within classes.

Making different things governed by different skills isn't going to make content that already exists any more interesting. Wasteland 2 has a half-a-dozen different "open this" skills but they certainly didn't "play" differently.

By the way, Tim Cain was responsible for non-combat skills. Where's your messiah now?

 

[Excidium II]

By the way, Tim Cain was responsible for non-combat skills. Where's your messiah now?

Isn't that the guy responsible for complete trainwecks like Fallout and Arcanum systems?

 

[Roguey]

Isn't that the guy responsible for complete trainwecks like Fallout and Arcanum systems?

Yet he's so idolized by grogs.

 

[Infinitron]

What's your source that he designed non-combat skills other than the ancient Kickstarter update from 2012 he made about them?

 

[Roguey]

What's your source that he designed non-combat skills other than the ancient Kickstarter update from 2012 he made about them?

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64048-update-58-crafting-with-tim-cain/

So I have turned my attention to some of the non-combat skills, including crafting.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?goto=post&postid=410734320

The team did not discuss alternatives because no one objected to anything in the system Tim and I proposed.

 

[Infinitron]

Why the fuck are the Something Awful forums redirecting me to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEYamINdL2c&index=68&list=LLPoSHO-OOTb0rqZr6bJlMkQ

 

[Roguey]

Why the fuck are the Something Awful forums redirecting me to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEYamINdL2c&index=68&list=LLPoSHO-OOTb0rqZr6bJlMkQ

https://twitter.com/lowtax/status/652222167803826176

 

[eremita]

Making different things governed by different skills isn't going to make content that already exists any more interesting. Wasteland 2 has a half-a-dozen different "open this" skills but they certainly didn't "play" differently.

By the way, Tim Cain was responsible for non-combat skills. Where's your messiah now?

Nice Straw Man buddy... I wasn't talking about content at all, unless you count encounter design or systems in general as "content". Or do you claim that changing the systems can't change my experience? If so, then I disagree...

Skills should have been attribute based. On intellect for example? It would solved Sawyer's problem with useless builds much better; for example, my Ranger would actually have reason to invest in that useless attribute...

 

[eremita]

If by experience you mean "it'll match up to my grognardy expectations" sure, otherwise it's pointless, just as Wasteland 2's redundancy is pointless.

Your urge to categorize things as grognardy (and therefore bad) and not grognardy prevents you from seeing the bigger picture. Just start with Sawyer's core ideas, which were a) no useless builds, b) distinctions between classes - which implicitly includes different playstyles. Further analysis shows that a) and b) aren't separated; no useless builds means "You shouldn't restrict your player from making a charismatic fighter." (basically paraphrasing Sawyer's own words), which leads to different playstyles and different playstyle gives meaning to class-based systems in the first place (at least from mechanics point of view), which again leads us back to b) - distinction between classes.

From there, check out these suggestions and surely, you'll see they're in accordance with core ideas: making skills attribute-based makes that particular attribute a viable choice for certain classes. Some attributes are useless for certain classes in current state, which contradicts the designer's core ideas (sign of a failure in my books...). Making a Stealthy Ranger, who sets traps makes perfect sense for light armored ranged class; making a not stealthy Ranger concentrating on damage makes sense; making a skill-monkey Ranger also makes sense. Is this the only viable approach? Of course not, you can remove skills altogether and come up with something different. But they do have skills in this game, don't they... It's not about telling designers what exactly they should or shouldn't do, it's about showing them that they're contradicting their own ideas... If you aren't coherent, then you fucked up. And that approach of yours, checking if something is/isn't grognardy first without analyzing whether it makes sense from the perspective of your core ideas before anything else, might lead to exactly that - fucking up. (And it did.)

 

[Infinitron]

You could probably have talents-as-skills though (and remove some of them outright, nobody really needs an Athletics or a Survival skill).

Eg, Rogues could start with the "Novice Mechanics" talent, maybe also get "Journeyman Mechanics" by default at some point if they don't take it manually, etc. To make things more granular the game could go more completely in the Deus Ex direction and increase the importance and utility of consumable lockpicks.

Anyways, random lore stuff:

 

[eremita]

https://forums.obsidian.net/blog/3/entry-121-tunin-tips-and-tricks/

That makes kind of sense (from lazy developer's point of view) in terms of modifiers, but I wasn't talking about stats modifiyng skill values, only about number of skill points per level. What this means is that intellect itself would only affect skills once per level (when distributing new skill points) and that's it. There's an analogy with 3.5e: Intelligence modifies a lot of other values when it comes to actual gameplay (DC, bonus spells, disable device skill atc.) and I believe that's what Sawyer is speaking about in that quote. But intelligence also affects number of skill points per level, which could be considered a completely separated thing, because there are no other values derived from it - modifing the intelligence by temporary effects never affects the number of skill points you get every level and because there's no permament stats increase (or very rare) in PoE, the problem you're talking about is nonexistent... And even if permanent stat increases were common, it's still not a big deal to come up with solution (like intellect affecting skill points only in character creation) and that's because values derived from stats is a separated thing from stats determining number of skill points).

So no, I don't think my idea is non-starter with Josh. And we've come full circle, because you're doing the same thing you did with your grognards problem; you're not analyzing whether PARTICULAR thing is in accordance with core idea, because you are dissmising everything which contradicts your GENERAL thesis (attributes as skills is non-starter, just as grognardy thing is non-starter).

 

[eremita]

You could probably have talents-as-skills though (and remove some of them outright, nobody really needs an Athletics or a Survival skill).

That would probably suited PoE better.

 

[eremita]

And I know I sound like a whiny faggot, but I really do have a problem to start the game now. That idiotic design of skills really puts me off... Especially after NWN2.

 

[Infinitron]

Get over it, they're a very minor part of this sort of game. I'm sure you'll find plenty of other things to complain about once you've actually played it.

You do realize you don't need to specialize in Mechanics, right? One of your companions can take that role and you can focus on the stuff that's used in dialogue checks (which they can't pass for you).

 

[Sensuki]

And I know I sound like a whiny faggot, but I really do have a problem to start the game now.

It's not worth the experience for much else other than some of the environment art anyway - do yourself a favor and play a better game instead.