Pathfinder Why Owlcat's Kingmaker Sucks, in Plain Language

[Crispy]

I really, really tried to like this president. Really, really tried to give him a chance. Finally, after 3 years of "what the ♥♥♥♥?" and "are you ♥♥♥♥ing kidding me?" I will write an op-ed.
I'll keep this short since many other op-eds detail the many specific shortcomings of the president. To summarize: he is awful. Horrible. Terrible. It's like having a president who is a massive, gaping, prolapsed ♥♥♥♥. Fact checks are absurdly high, social inclusivity and progressiveness are not planned appropriately, gay rights and abortion clinics are constantly overwhelmed, "choices" and their consequences are completely opaque until too late, welfare checks and the abolishment of all existing immigration laws are broken.....et cetera ad infinitum. This president has all the potential to be the next Ronald Reagan or Abraham Lincoln; it is literally stunning that these issues have not been fixed after all the negative feedback for the same issues.

Spoiler

Sorry for getting momentarily political. This is merely a joke. Calm down.

 

[Nano]

Though the game would probably be better if there were more hints in dialogue about possible coming complications, i.e. take a shitload of restoration spells into the spider caves in the Bloom quest finale.

You don't need restoration spells in that part, just cast Delay Poison Communal.

 

[DalekFlay]

You don't need restoration spells in that part, just cast Delay Poison Communal.

Sounds like quite a lot of resting between tons of spider battles.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

You don't need restoration spells in that part, just cast Delay Poison Communal.

Sounds like quite a lot of resting between tons of spider battles.

The "delay" part isn't actually implemented. "Delay poison" -> "immune to poison"

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

YOU CAN'T REST FROM ME FOR LONG, NIGGA.

 

[DalekFlay]

The "delay" part isn't actually implemented. "Delay poison" -> "immune to poison"

I more meant you'd have to cast it every battle and there's dozens of spider battles, but maybe it's a minute per level spell. I don't remember. Haven't actually had to use it much, tbh, on "challenging."

 

[Desiderius]

Though the game would probably be better if there were more hints in dialogue about possible coming complications, i.e. take a shitload of restoration spells into the spider caves in the Bloom quest finale.

You don't need restoration spells in that part, just cast Delay Poison Communal.

Let me guess - Dalek again?

If the only critiques you can come up with make you look worse than the game, then you've got more pressing matters to attend to than game critique.

Sucking at game DNE game sucking.

 

[Nano]

I more meant you'd have to cast it every battle and there's dozens of spider battles, but maybe it's a minute per level spell. I don't remember. Haven't actually had to use it much, tbh, on "challenging."

It lasts a whole hour, bro.

 

[Silly Germans]

Btw is Delay poison supposed to work as it does in the game or is this a deviation from pnp ?
The name of the spell seems just wrong. Will Fireball cause a crab louse and scabies infestation
in the next game ? I hope the next game won't contain such a deceptive name.

 

[Gregz]

Posted: Apr 12 @ 3:30pm

Honestly, screw this game.

I got to the stupid first world area and that solution is so convoluted that you might as well smash your head against a wall. Even looking up the 'walkthrough' gives you a solution that makes as much sense as plucking random hairs off your body.

That's the problem with this game. It has so many good features, good ideas and a beautiful look. And then it destroys it by having tedious mechanics, easily achieved dead end states (You need a treasurer, good luck not ruining all chances to get one) and no clues whatsoever on how to accomplish anything.

This game needed someone in charge to ask the tough questions and force some semblance of order to this game, but that clearly didn't happen.

It wouldn't be so aggravating if the game didn't have such potential. But this is the epitome of hot mess.

hot mess

noun
INFORMAL•US

1. a person or thing that is spectacularly unsuccessful or disordered, especially one that is a source of peculiar fascination.

 

[Nano]

Btw is Delay poison supposed to work as it does in the game or is this a deviation from pnp ?
The name of the spell seems just wrong. Will Fireball cause a crab louse and scabies infestation
in the next game ? I hope the next game won't contain such a deceptive name.

You won't have any problems if you actually read the spell description

Spoiler

 

[DalekFlay]

It lasts a whole hour, bro.

Interesting. Not even sure I had that spell with me at the time, I just used restoration scrolls. Haven't had an issue with poison since. I'm 100% focused on DPS so healing/cure scrolls are what I mostly use. Cool that spell's there, wonder why so many complained.

Let me guess - Dalek again?

If the only critiques you can come up with make you look worse than the game, then you've got more pressing matters to attend to than game critique.

Dude, when I finished that quest I wrote a whole post lavishing praise on it and talking about what a great time I had. I know you're Kingmaker Super Fan, but Jesus...

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Btw is Delay poison supposed to work as it does in the game or is this a deviation from pnp ?
The name of the spell seems just wrong. Will Fireball cause a crab louse and scabies infestation
in the next game ? I hope the next game won't contain such a deceptive name.

No, it's implemented incorrectly.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Lawntoilet what do you need a citation for?
Here's the lead designer of Pathfinder stating how it's supposed to work: https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lc12?I-Drank-What-An-FAQ-on-Poison#24

 

[Desiderius]

Obv when your third level spell obviates your fourth level spell something is amiss.

 

[Silly Germans]

Btw is Delay poison supposed to work as it does in the game or is this a deviation from pnp ?
The name of the spell seems just wrong. Will Fireball cause a crab louse and scabies infestation
in the next game ? I hope the next game won't contain such a deceptive name.

You won't have any problems if you actually read the spell description

Spoiler

My common sense might be off, but when i read the title of a Spell called Delay Poison, i somewhat expect it to delay the effects of poison
and not to grant poison immunity. Must come from the habit to read abstracts only and then to decide whether to read the whole text.

 

[boobio]

yep it does seem to suck pizzo lady dick.

 

[Sranchammer]

My 3 year old made a build for me and I waltzed through Unfair.

 

[Desiderius]

yep it does seem to suck pizzo lady dick.

Sucking at Game DNE Game Sucking part bazillion

Getting to the point where I'm not really interested in a game that Game Journos could master.

 

[LannTheStupid]

No, it's implemented incorrectly.

On one hand - you are right. It is either implemented incorrectly or the spell's name is misleading.
On the other hand - imagine how would it work in the actual game. An hour (or 2 hours with the metamagic rod) is enough to clear a map or to exhaust the party so it needs to rest. So the poison would kick in either during the rest or while travelling on the global map. In both cases it would have no effect on the fights, but would blindside the player long after the fights. As the result, the stream of complaints from functionally illiterate owners of the game would've changed its tone, but not intensity.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

If they implement Delya Poison as per name imply, retard like Grgz will still complain that it is "not intuitive" or whatever.

Complainers gonna complain anyway.

 

[mediocrepoet]

yep it does seem to suck pizzo lady dick.

Eh, this video doesn't seem bad so far. I got to about 43 minutes before I had to turn it off for now. The guy has a few things that are wrong re: abilities, and he's not very good at the game, re: some of the difficult fights but it's a fairly solid critique with some actual issues in the game (itemization, QoL issues) and some interesting feedback such as re: lighting and the map.
My main thought was that the guy seems like he is the exact right audience for the game, but some of the documentation issues and missing things in the combat log / scroll caused him frustration like in the wererat cave where he misses both his sleep spell being interrupted, as well as his self lay on hands going off, so he finds the game to be unresponsive.

Maybe he gets whiny later, but at this point, it simply looks like better presentation of some things could have helped.

I don't even entirely disagree with some of his issues. Like stat bloating requiring a different type of play style or character building is a flavour preference. Some people really like it and others don't. This problem isn't entirely mitigated by the difficulty levels because, he's right, the difficulties swing wildly in each direction for a step up or down. You can customize the difficulty pretty much however you like, but then all the difficulty related achievements are turned off if you care about those things.

It's also simply true that sometimes combat events can be hard to follow, like when he heals Harrim to try and get him up and then the dwarf is instantly obliterated by AoOs. Any AoO chains usually cause units on either side to explode (usually outflank blowing up enemies) and sometimes I've had to pause and read the combat log to figure out what actually happened as creatures turn into mist.
The separate issue brought up by his issues getting Harrim back up is that not only was it surprising to him since it sounds like he has some older tabletop knowledge, but not any newer, so probably isn't used to 3.x and AoOs is that he was surprised by a character being healed and instantly exploding. That can make sense if you think about it, but really isn't necessarily intuitive, especially if you don't know about AoOs. It might have been better had Owlcat had an option to turn off certain AoOs, or even remove them entirely from monsters getting AoOs on your party at normal and easy difficulties. I can see how it could be frustrating trying to get your healer up and then realizing that not only did you waste your action, but it's caused a snowball because the AoOs did way more damage than was healed and probably killed your guy outright.

Anyway, I don't agree with everything he says, but I also don't look at this as general game journo retardedness. I think it's a missed opportunity for someone who probably really would love the game who got frustrated by not understanding some of the mechanics and being upset with some of the presentation and what he saw as lack of feedback from the systems and UI. Out of what I've seen so far, it looks like most of this could be constructive feedback for tweaking WotR without diluting the core that made PF:K great.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Actually as a full disclosure with the above: I was having some trouble figuring out wtf was going on with my first sword saint builds when I was only playing RTWP. It wasn't until later when I played in turn based mode where it was easier to see what the action flow of the class was like and what the different abilities were actually doing and when. A common complaint about any magus class in RTWP is that he moves and then does nothing since spell combat takes a full round action, and in turn based mode it's easier to see when you might want to use spell combat, when you might want to turn it off, etc. while in RTWP in can just look like janky bullshit as your guy does nothing.

Really, my main preference for the TB mod was that it "felt better" and part of that was helping draw out the interplay between the different types of actions and how they're implemented in the game which in turn made it easier for me to appreciate RTWP without thinking everything is broken (and without taking over 2,000 hours to get there unlike some of the other fans). Basically, it presented everything better in order to appreciate what's actually going on: e.g. Oh, my lay on hands did go off, but it only healed 2. Shit. -- Oh, I brought Harrim up and he started to stand but then the wererats cut his fucking head off. Shit. etc.

Even in TB, you still occassionally hit AoO chains where reading the combat log is necessary to figure out exactly what happened (at least until you start to assume that basically any time something unexpectedly blows up, it was probably outflank, etc.).

 

[Desiderius]

The point is that Rat Cave has no vector going there. It's good to have challenging things in games to reward exploration/willingness to take on challenge and the answer if you're having trouble is to leave them for later.

Somehow this concept is foreign to anyone under 30, but figuring out what to do when is a fun skill to develop.

 

[Desiderius]

Sounds like you both need to configure your Autopause/Information Settings in the Difficulty Menu. Those sorts of things took me a couple hours to figure out with a couple exceptions like how to use Arcane Weapon Enhancement, not 2,000. It's taken me 2,000 hours to figure out that the default builds are actually pretty good.

Agreed that the configuration process should maybe be more dynamic since I guess people aren't used to using menus anymore.

I think what sometimes happens with Magi is that you can't Move and Spell Combat in the same turn*, so if you select that it gives you a Cast (charging up weapon) then a Move, then gives you your Full Attack on the following turn. Better to move into position, use a Standard Action, then do your Full Attack Spell Combat/Spellstrike on the following turn. For me that often ended up just using Charge to get in position then Spellstrike. Regongar comes with Combat Casting to facilitate this approach.

* - re-reading I think this is what you were already saying. If you have the initiative timers on and autopauses set it shouldn't take TB to realize what is happening. Maybe have that stuff opt out instead of opt in?