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KickStarter Vigilantes: neo-noir, turn based tactical RPG

ushas

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Or maybe we accidentally play on the highest :negative:

Playing on Hard Boiled. Enemies have between 7 and 8 character level and between 1 and 3 equipment (13 july). They level up as quickly as me, although I didn't take the warning that much seriously at first so I am to blame. Went after some second and third tier battles too early, won them at a great cost to team hp, which weakened my party in the long run. Those battles were a lot of fun, felt there was a thin balance between sides until the last few turns. One tactical mistake or two or three unlucky shots were often enough to decide the fight. Melee build is not good for Hard Boiled. My Sam was effective at the beginning, but after enemies leveled up, he became the weakest party member. Gave him assault riffle and it improved his battle performance, even through his gun skills is like half of his melee skills. Wasted unnecessary money on gym facility updates.

I am planning on attacking first level districts hoping to out level enemies without loosing too much health, although there is a chance may run maybe already unsalvageable at this point.
No worries, if enjoying that fear of few unlucky shots:) Attacking lower danger districts for a while sounds like a good plan, worked for me. Gym provides bonus to Fleetness and Prowess. CC skill also contributes to defense against melee, so not wasted neither. If you invested into his Prowess, can also be good grenadier. I'm doing silly things like making Sam utility/crafter and no firing range, still somehow surviving. Albeit also had to reorient melee guys. Have you upgraded armours?
 

Eyestabber

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As we're all honest here, not saying it's the bestest system, but I don't see this.

Let's take a look on what happens when All out offensive perk has skill instead of stat prerequisity:
a) If has low requirement, it's in danger to become must have -> pushing a dev to balance it down
b) Or if has high skill/lvl requirement, we have to wait till the late game to be able to take it.

(Btw. wouldn't your solution make Arcadi even more forced? His +3 in Leadership isn't that important as that his Presence skill increases on level ups)

Now let's take Leadership back: When putting points into such focused stat, one is making fully counscious decision to build this character as a leader, sacrificing other stats for this. Such high investment motivates towards making leadership and connected perks to be more impactful (and we expect them to be). Other thing is, you can rise a stat right at the character creation (up to 10), completely up to you. Thus Sam can take any stat-gated perk right at lvl 4 if wish so. In other words, those perks are available at any time in game based on the stat investment, whereas skill/level-gated ones correspond to usual linear game progression (skill specialization, pacing). Hm, I don't see why the latter auto-equals to more player options. Tbh. glad we can have both ways.

Except deciding to make Arcadi into the Leader isn't much of a decision and anyone can see that clear as day. Because you don't have a non-stupid alternative. Let's go down memory lane on other games that also feature the "party leader" archetype. They can be split into two groups:

- Games that force the main player into the leader role (eg: Fallout 2, Dungeon Rats)
- Games that let you choose whoever you want (eg Wasteland 2, Jagged Alliance 2)

Notice a pattern? Only games that don't feature a "player avatar" let you pick whoever you want as party leader. Why? In order to avoid this:

Yeah, Arcadi being a good leader has me really weirded-out. Why doesn't he take charge from Sam? I get that some players want to build Sam in their own way and not make him rely on leadership, but it still bothers me. I want my Sam to be the leader for RP reasons, but putting points into him seems like a waste when having two guys with leadership does you no good.

He is right, you know? A "leader build" can't be implemented as a "choice" in a game that features a player avatar, lest it becomes (yet another) half-assed choice. That's the crux of the issue. In Fallout 2 you're the leader, period. You just have to choose whether you want to be a competent leader with tons of followers (but limited combat efficiency) or a crappy one, but capable of dealing with fights on his own. In Jagged Alliance the player is "laptop guy", so he has the choice to hire an experienced (but expensive) leader, or a cheaper but less effective one or not bother with a leader at all or maybe change his mind later. All these are valid and meaningful choices that make JA2 great.

In Vigilantes you have a "leader build" but the choice behind it is offensively trivial: "Do I want to make Arcadi my leader or do I want be a retard?". That's it. Every other character starts with a Lead score of 3, you have no reason to choose them other than being retarded. That's the core issue of every single problem with the game: you people are trying to mimic games you have very little understanding of and seem to think having a lot of options automatically translates into "having a lot of choices". No, it doesn't. You people clearly designed the game with certain choices in mind and never stopped to consider whether the alternatives are viable/fun, you just ensured alternatives existed and called it a day.

If I had to sum all my criticism of the game in one sentence it would be "Vigilantes has a lot of good parts, but they just don't come together to form a coherent whole". You offer the player an ice cream tray with a ton of variety, but one of the flavors is a very tasty "vanilla" and the others are "rocks", "spiders", "cow excrement", "slightly used condoms" and so on. Eh...it was worth the price tag ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

HoboForEternity

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Abandoned my hard boiled playtrough because they are starting to get too tough, it is impossible to win any fight above green thing and defeat rackets or liutenants.

I also have pretty unoptimized build for my character and the progression. That was a good lesson tho, starting anew on vigilante, then hard boiles again, and if bugfinder still broken by then, i will try suicide in hero mode
 

Slimu

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Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I encountered a nasty bug where I couldn't end the turn with a character after using all it's APs. It happed twice, and couldn't recover from it. I tried both the shortcut key and the interface button; the other buttons from the GUI seemed to be working correctly.
 

Dickie

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
How are people's levels so low? I just loaded up my hard boiled save to check, and it's July 12, and Sam is level 16.
 

Timeslip

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I encountered a nasty bug where I couldn't end the turn with a character after using all it's APs. It happed twice, and couldn't recover from it. I tried both the shortcut key and the interface button; the other buttons from the GUI seemed to be working correctly.

Can you give me some more detail on this? There is a bug that seems to occur very rarely if you use a medkit and that consumes the last AP. Unfortunately after several hours of trying to recreate it, have been unable to.
 

ushas

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There is a bug that seems to occur very rarely if you use a medkit and that consumes the last AP. Unfortunately after several hours of trying to recreate it, have been unable to.
Unless it's different issue, I've encountered this with medkits as well as with grenades (though could be two problems), and a kind of out of habit saved the logs with errors. Can fetch it out if you need it. Could it have something to do with using several countable items in a row when # should reach 0? Also it locked the mouse input.
 

Dickie

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
How are people's levels so low? I just loaded up my hard boiled save to check, and it's July 12, and Sam is level 16.
That's interesting. What level are gangs?
6/6/7 with equipment levels 2/1/3. The still-living lieutenants are 10-11 and the bosses are 12-13.

Has anyone tried hero difficulty? Hoping to check it out soon but can't play at the moment.
 

ushas

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Yeah, nice to see how much it can matter. Also some crafting time here. Haven't checked Hero yet.


Except deciding to make Arcadi into the Leader isn't much of a decision and anyone can see that clear as day.
The cited part was about stat- vs. skill-gating, as you aren't talking about Arcadi rising a stat to unlock perks versus unlocking them as he levels up, am assuming it's in response to the three options (Sam, Arcadi, not bother). In that case, feel free to call it retarded, no hard feelings, but in my experience of both, Sam could be better early/mid leader. A few reasons already mentioned before, can add a few numbers if wish. Btw. nobody says you should pick whatever. All six allies are narrowed towards some areas, not so optimal to go into others.

He is right, you know? A "leader build" can't be implemented as a "choice" in a game that features a player avatar, lest it becomes (yet another) half-assed choice.
Not judging your perceptions, guys, perhaps an existence of possibility of a tactical mission leader other than Sam really weirds people off, MC-centered and such. Although, haven't thought of him as a player avatar (as in F2), more like the third person. Name is given. On the other hand, there is 'you' in dialogue descriptions, so dunno.

Anyway, taking things as they are, was simply just disputing the claim that we have to take Arcadi into assault as a leader. Guys who want it to be the main character can feel demoralized. Yeah, perception is powerful, you see +3 in Leadership, perk. Except there are many other factors, so imo Sam as a leader build is quite good.

Being practical here, but, of course, would be cool if there is some second in command effect or whatever.
 
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Nutria

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I figure Sam has to be a great leader, because he's got all these different weirdos suffering from horrible trauma and mental illness, or just total desperation at how disconnected their ideals are from reality, and he manages to get them to work together. It wouldn't bother me except that this is a game where I actually read the text and don't just skip through it.

Who should I give the shotgun to? I've been having Arcadi specialize in it, but not for any particular reason except that he's the odd man out where everyone else has a specific responsibility.
 

Slimu

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Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I encountered a nasty bug where I couldn't end the turn with a character after using all it's APs. It happed twice, and couldn't recover from it. I tried both the shortcut key and the interface button; the other buttons from the GUI seemed to be working correctly.

Can you give me some more detail on this? There is a bug that seems to occur very rarely if you use a medkit and that consumes the last AP. Unfortunately after several hours of trying to recreate it, have been unable to.

I think the problem appeared both times after firing a pistol. I noticed that when the problem manifested, the APs used when firing weren't removed (remained colored yellow). Moving the mouse cursor around the screen didn't marked them as used (red color). Like I previously said, the buttons from the lower left side of the screen seemed to be aware of the fact that I didn't have any APs left (couldn't enter overwatch). The bugs appeared after playing more than 10h.
 

zeitgeist

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In Vigilantes you have a "leader build" but the choice behind it is offensively trivial: "Do I want to make Arcadi my leader or do I want be a retard?". That's it. Every other character starts with a Lead score of 3, you have no reason to choose them other than being retarded. That's the core issue of every single problem with the game: you people are trying to mimic games you have very little understanding of and seem to think having a lot of options automatically translates into "having a lot of choices". No, it doesn't. You people clearly designed the game with certain choices in mind and never stopped to consider whether the alternatives are viable/fun, you just ensured alternatives existed and called it a day.

The first thing I noticed as an issue with the game is the character creation. Think of it from the perspective of someone who doesn't know anything about the game. The main character's portrait has a gun, right? So when faced with a choice of melee and ranged, you would logically choose ranged. Then you would think "this is my main character, clearly he'll need some leadership to actually lead the gang, I guess this isn't much but he'll probably get a chance to improve it later". And then when you actually entered the game, the first character you'll stumble upon will be an almost identical copy of your main character, only better.

This is something that happens in a lot of party based games (the issue with your PC being an inferior copy of the first few NPCs you encounter), and I actually thought I was going to avoid it by making the PC into what I thought the game designers envisioned for him (and what made sense).
 

ushas

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Huh, is it always Arcadi the first one to meet?
I recall, in the past it was random.

This is something that happens in a lot of party based games (the issue with your PC being an inferior copy of the first few NPCs you encounter), and I actually thought I was going to avoid it by making the PC into what I thought the game designers envisioned for him (and what made sense).
Trying to think of a game with fully customizable PC & predefined allies where we aren't in danger of meeting somebody similar... How would one solve it without removing our free will to screw the PC over?

Comes to mind, sometimes the main character gets a special mechanic or boost, but I'm not fan when some superstar PC ends up more powerful than all friends combined. In Vigilantes, Sam is one level higher than others for the rest of the game. Combined with minmaxing he can be technically better, although doesn't feel overpowered, neither a much special.

Edit - oh, allies have one stat point more than Sam.
 
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Risewild

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Huh, is it always Arcadi the first one to meet?
I recall, in the past it was random.
I think Arcadi was the third ally I got in this game I am playing.
I can't remember if the first was Ray or Emilia, but Arcadi only appeared for me after those two.
 

Eyestabber

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What game are you people playing? Arcadi is the russian dude and he is part of the tutorial. He is driving a truck and is accosted by the Mafia. At least that's what I got on the release version of the game, can't speak for early access players.

As for the problem zeitergeist mentioned: it's a problem with games that force NPCs into the player in general. It doesn't really have a solution, but it can be mitigated to an extent by having a larger pool of available characters. Honestly? I'm more of a "full party creation" guy, because I'll always come up with weird and awesome build that would totally work if only I could have a different character to fill X role instead of crappy NPC that doesn't really do exactly what I want him to do.

An elegant and low budget solution can be found on Expeditions: Viking where you have a handful of developer designed and (partially) voiced NPCs while also being able to hire "mercenaries" aka custom player made characters to fill whichever role you intend to ditch the Dev-NPC.
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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What game are you people playing? Arcadi is the russian dude and he is part of the tutorial. He is driving a truck and is accosted by the Mafia. At least that's what I got on the release version of the game, can't speak for early access players.
During early access game randomized which ally encounter you got 1st.

hmmm.
Checked from my save before you encounter companions. It always gives you Arcadi. 10 times out of 10.
 

Timeslip

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ALRIGHT, so I finished the game and it's time for my bullet point in-depth analysis of the game. Bear in mind, I played the game for 55 hours and I'm long past the "honeymoon" period, so if you're expecting to read some more "OMG, SUCH INDIE, MUCH WOW!!!" blind praise after 30 minutes of gameplay, move along. Further down the post I'll present my constructive criticism. So:

  • Before I go into a long autistic analysis of every single gameplay mechanic, one thing needs to be pointed out: the game is not overtly promoting SJWism, but it's 100% #lecurrentyear attuned. Meaning your enemies are very safe, politically correct targets modeled around caricatural representations of what the global media perceives as "Trump Demographics". The "Survivalist" faction is a blend of american gun enthusiasts mixed with doomsday preppers and paramilitary hierarchy and language. "Cultists" are yet another page of "those DAMN bible thumping hillbillies sure are CRAAAA-ZAAAAAAAAAY", in the same vein we've seen on every single AAA game of the last couple years. Far Cry 5, Bioshock Infinite, Resident Evil 7, they all pushed the "religious hillbillies finally decided to start killing everyone who doesn't follow their cult" trope unto the masses and Vigilantes is more of the same in that regard. Lastly we have the "Mafia" which is...well. Mafia. Again. Fine, let's move on.
Appreciate the feedback. On the chin is fine :) Like anything, Vigilantes is open to interpretation, but it is worth keeping the mind that it has been in development since 2014. Concerning overall inspiration for setting, I'd point more to the fictional worlds of detective novels, 80s & 90s action movies, rather than our world. Had considered a gang populated by ambulance drivers who spend their spare time running an animal shelter, but it offended a lot of people in the focus group, and as you observed, that stuff really cuts into the bottom line. On a serious note, the faction choice mostly came down to making them different, and the ones which offered the most potential for building encounters around

  • The main problem with the 3 faction system isn't really the fact that we have 3 different flavor of Trump supporters to shoot at, but rather the fact that the difference between factions is merely a cosmetic one and they don't interact with each other in any meaningful way. No "turf wars" between the factions or anything of the sort. The game shows the factions as 3 different organizations, but they really seem to behave as tree branches of the same organization. A scripted encounter between
    the Mafia and one Survivalist captain is the game's only attempt to show the factions even acknowledging each other's existence
    . There are plenty of examples of cities dominated by crime factions both in works of fiction and the real world (google "Rio de Janeiro" one day) to draw inspiration from and trust me: the interactions between these "people" are anything but "peaceful coexistence". I have a suggestion to somewhat patch this issue bellow.
  • Mechanically the crime factions are meant to be different, but I didn't really find it to be so. You're constantly facing off against the zerg swarm, with every different zerg brood fielding a different "Zergling-to-hydralisk" ratio. "Cultists" prefer lings, "Survivalists" prefer Hydras and "Mafia" stand in the middle, being the weakest faction due to the AI not knowing how to deal with its hybrid fighters. I've seen mafia gunmen moving out of cover to rush my guys with a knife despite having a pistol plenty of times. Survivalist goons sometimes display the same odd behavior. The main point is that the exploration & combat mechanic you see in games like JA, X-Com, Silent Storm etc is simply not there. Every single fight plays out with a portion of the swarm being at quasi-melee range and another portion being somewhat far away so you have an easier time holding your bunkers. If it wasn't for the scripted events the whole thing would become really repetitive really fast.
I agree that making the factions oppose one another would have been interesting. It would also have required significant adjustments to AI and balance, probably to the tune of several months of extra development. It's likely that the difference in most cases between a game that gets finished and yet another EA/Kickstarter that doesn't make it over the line is maintaining a degree of control over scope. The AI tries to pick moves which result in the most damage to the player team, and has to process a lot of data to do this. It doesn't always make moves that seem intuitive/tactical, and it's an area I'd hope to revise in a future game.

  • The character system leans heavily towards "gamey"/heavily abstracted. On that same note: WHY go to such lengths to avoid calling your stats "Strength, Constitution" etc? "Prowess" is just strength but less intuitive. But most importantly: "leadership" is a questionable stat and "utility" is 100% certifiable terrible design. Let me tell you why.
  • "Utility" in vigilantes is not "intelligence" and it's not even a proper "the supporting character's main stat". Utility governs primarily your amount of "utility slots" and secondarily boots some support skills and fills the prerequisites for perks of the "medic" archetype. If you played nuXcom then you probably see the relationship between being a medic and having lots of "utility slots". The problem however is that this is not what utility slots are. Smoke grenades, medpacks and other stuff are not "utility items". In vigilantes "utility" means "stat stick". To make an easy to understand comparison: imagine you're playing some generic medieval fantasy game with magic rings, cloaks, belts etc that can stack with each other and they all give you like "+2 to hit". And then you have a base stat that governs how many of those items you can equip at any given time. That's what "utility" does in vigilantes. It's bad from a "simulationist" perspective and it's also bad from a stricly metagaming perspective because it only aggravates the "spread too thin" problem that usually plague supporting characters by forcing them to invest in a stat that has no synergy at all with their supposed "party doctor" role. Inb4 "but muh med-stick": you only need one slot to equip that one. My honest advice on this one is "take it back to drawing board because it's fundamentally nonsensical", but if you REALLY want a quick fix, I have one bellow.
  • "Leadership" is almost as bad as utility, but not as high up there because 1) it's basically the game's "charisma" stat and 2) "All out offensive" is in the game, which gives you at least ONE good reason to use this stat and 3) "Party CTH bonus" is a strong enough passive buff that actually is capable of justifying the heavy investment. The "squad leader" archetype is obviously filled by Arcadi in the game, which further diminishes the stat impact. "But you can make a PC-leader if you want!". Yes, much like you can drink bleach if you want because Arcadi has the best companion perk in the game which gives everyone not one but two "tears of denial" from Dark Souls. Each and everyone of your guys. And Arcadi starts already heavily invested into Leadership, so you either a) make him your leader (and ignore the stat on everyone else) or b) display the problem solving skills of the average gaming journalist. Answer me an honest question: if the stat got removed from the game and all perks rolled into the "Misc" category with only a "Presence" and a level requirement, would the game change in any fundamental way other than forcing Arcadi into the player? No, it wouldn't. That's how poorly thought out the stat is: its removal would actually increase player options instead of reducing them.
Utility was never intended as a core skill. I think it has it's place for medics though, by increasing medicine. It has the biggest impact on skills of all stats and allows the equipping of additional items. I'm not suggesting you should max utility, but if you can gain an extra slot by adding an extra point (or getting a bonus point from a facility) it will be worthwhile in some cases. Leadership contributes to presence skill, which is the social skill. In general, I agree that the stats for utility and leadership could do with being tweaked and added to. This will happen. Worth pointing out that Arcadi's perk does not give 2x free passes to each team member, but rather 2 total. If it weren't for burst weapons, which could render the perk useless, this would have been 1. I disagree that Arcadi is forced on the player. I've played hard boiled several times with Sam as the leader/limited investment in presence, without perceptible change to game difficulty.

  • "Relationship with Sam" is an interesting mechanic and it does seem to work, but the game makes zero effort in being transparent about its effect. Actually, I found a bug with Arcadi since his leadership went down a point when I maxed out relationship with him. It's quite clever that the best gunfighter NPC in the game, stronk black wahman Elena Furey (because, of course :roll:) also happens to be the "party psychopath", preferring lethal over non-lethal. It's a very good idea since it makes getting the good ending a bit harder, but the numbers need some tweaking and the fact that the 2 pacifist NPCs (Emília de Soto and Ray Case) don't seem to be bothered by deaths caused when they are not on the strike team coupled with the fact that their stat distribution is garbage the conclusion is that we can just perma-bench them while Furey goes on a trigger happy murderspree with impunity.
  • The game needs to provide better feedback to the player on where their stats and skills actually come from. I know facilities/relationship/certain events provide boosts, but I have no idea whether those are being properly applied into my stat sheet or not. It's something that really frustrates me about an otherwise solid game: while Vigilantes upholds the most nonsensical RPG tropes (like rushing a sniper with a baseball bat :roll:) it fails to adhere to the good quality-of-life related conventions of the genre for fuck all reason. A tooltip on every stat telling the player not only what it does, but what current buffs and debuffs are affecting it would be nice. Important information such as AP breakpoints should absolutely show up somewhere. A control scheme that doesn't feel like hotkeys were randomly chosen would be nice. And visual confirmation of the player's moment-to-moment gameplay choices would've been very nice. If you can't afford a new animation of a guy limping after being shot in the legs, at least bring back the good old "Combat log" and write something like "Bandit moves to cover, but fails to reach it because he is bleeding from his waist down like a stuck pig". Literally anything that can push the player away from feeling "ahn...I think my choice did something. I guess. Hopefully, maybe?"
I agree the game would benefit from better feedback to the player. This is something I'll work on.
 
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Timeslip

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Another nice, but kind of obscure bit, is that some companions want to be there when you attack particular criminal lieutenants.
If they are on the team it leads to an additional event. In case with Emilia de Soto and some mafioso, for example, it elaborated on her personal story.

But this info is only shown on the team overview screen, under the companions key skills descriptions, so it's very easy to overlook.
It would nice if companions would speak up when you're initiating an attack they want to be a part of.

Hey Nortar. I agree, extra feedback to the player will be a priority over the next few updates.
 

Timeslip

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Yeah, Arcadi being a good leader has me really weirded-out. Why doesn't he take charge from Sam? I get that some players want to build Sam in their own way and not make him rely on leadership, but it still bothers me. I want my Sam to be the leader for RP reasons, but putting points into him seems like a waste when having two guys with leadership does you no good.

Hey Nutria. The way I see this is that Sam is the driving force behind the group, making the big decisions on what to do, and is also the glue that holds the team together. Combat is one dimension of the group's activities, and if Arcadi is more suiting to guiding the group in combat, it makes sense to delegate that responsibility to him. It's the most obvious example, but in almost all cases, the character with the highest skill will be used - so Edgar will probably take charge of crafting a difficult item, the member with the highest trade will deal with Cuda, the most skilled healer will take care of injuries, etc. - Since you can bring 3 characters with you, and the home team play a much lesser role, it shouldn't have a huge impact.


I try hard to have a good relationship with my people but I have absolutely no idea what (if anything) it's doing for me. This is important for weaving the player's feelings about a character into the gameplay. Like in KOTOR2 I felt really important when my companions noticed me and had +1 to some stat or something, so highlighting that in this game would be great.

I will do this. At present it gives +2/-2 total to stats, depending on relationship level.
 

Timeslip

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The first thing I noticed as an issue with the game is the character creation. Think of it from the perspective of someone who doesn't know anything about the game. The main character's portrait has a gun, right? So when faced with a choice of melee and ranged, you would logically choose ranged. Then you would think "this is my main character, clearly he'll need some leadership to actually lead the gang, I guess this isn't much but he'll probably get a chance to improve it later". And then when you actually entered the game, the first character you'll stumble upon will be an almost identical copy of your main character, only better.

This is something that happens in a lot of party based games (the issue with your PC being an inferior copy of the first few NPCs you encounter), and I actually thought I was going to avoid it by making the PC into what I thought the game designers envisioned for him (and what made sense).

Hey Zeitgeist. The illustration wasn't intended to push the player towards a certain build - mostly it is to establish atmosphere. Picking Sam as a leader is viable - you can bring 3x allies and there are 6 in the game, so 3 will play a lesser part. If you build Sam as a leader, Arcadi will likely be one of these. Arcadi will start with 1 less stat point than Sam, and will remain one level lower, and with the disadvantage that you can't allocate starting stats. Granted, Arcadi has a nice perk, but I don't think he's inferior to Sam (depending on how Sam has been built). I'd say just build the main character you want, and pick allies which complement your play style.
 

Timeslip

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Who should I give the shotgun to? I've been having Arcadi specialize in it, but not for any particular reason except that he's the odd man out where everyone else has a specific responsibility.

None of the allies are better with one weapon or another at the start. Shotgun works fairly well with melee characters who have a little skill in firearms, as it has high accuracy and works best up close.
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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Shotguns also seem to do more damage to a single target when used on overwatch.
It should be noted that shotguns don't do firing cone when you OW.
 

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