Pillars of Eternity II - Final Hours

Originally Posted by bjon045
Well given you bag Pillars, Torment, Tyranny and WL2 so much - those are the alternatives! Can I ask what cRPG's you play these days? Aside from WL2, PoE, Divinity:OS, Tyranny and Torment I can't think of any decent one in the last 3 years.

This is what makes me frustrated. People who bag the new Renaissance of the cRPG and then fail to support it financially and then complain when we end up with Mass Effect 4/Fallout 4 and their craptastic ilk. Yes, none of those games I listed are perfect, but they are a darn site better than the alternative.

Any yes, I know chainmail but that is completely irrelevant. I care about computer RPG's not tabletop. There are literally hundreds of tabletop variants not too different than Chainmail available today. There are very few cRPG's though!

Seems odd you'd scold him for "bagging" on games you like and then in the same post you "bag" on games others like. There are plenty of great CRPG's out there, you not liking them is irrelevant

I guess I'm lucky since I like games like POE, D:OS, BG, ETC and I can also enjoy Dark souls, Skyrim, Fallout 4 etc.

Sorry to butt in but statements like "Go play Dark Soul's/Mass Effect or whatever "RPG" you love then and leave the real rpg fans to PoE" frustrate me.

As if liking POE makes you anymore of a "real RPG fan"

Originally Posted by Maylander
despite the fact that most gamers I talk to prefer more varied or vibrant settings like Morrowind, Baldur's Gate, Gothic, Warcraft etc.

I wouldn't call Gothic and Warcraft "vibrant". Of course there is some comic relief , but on a closer look it's quite gritty, especially Warcraft with its Warhammer roots. IMHO Warhammer is already quite depressing in its underlying idea. Humans are not on the winning side and they are definitely not noble. Also, back in the days, when you asked for the reasons why people prefered Gothic over Ultima or Baldur's Gate, the answer often was "because it's dirtier and more mature". So imho these games are at the beginning of a development you're critizing right now. Planescape, DX and Vampires also didn't win the prize for the most light-hearted story.

If you take a look around you are going to recognize this "mature" trend in every art form. I guess, to some degree it reflects our political and social development over the last decade. And I think it's more interesting for an author to write an unusal story about unusal character then trying to copy Tolkien without making it too obvious.

Originally Posted by Fluent
I mean, WL2 gets knocked on the Codex a lot, and I just don't understand why?

How many CRPGs with that many stats, attributes, options, HIGH END NERD LEVEL STUFF in a pen-and-paper style are being made nowadays? Root these people on, man.

Well, before saying anything else, there is a lot more activity on the Codex. Therefore, there is a greater variety of opinion. So pretty much any game eventually gets bashed there, by someone, at some moment, which is much healthier anyway than listening to whiny feminists.

In any case, WL2 is objectively a lot better than PoE. More coherent writing, WAY more reactivity, way more detailed quests, factions… a LOT better MQ. I had more fun in the Valley of the Mad Monks than during my entire PoE run. That's how ahead folks at InXile are at world-building, and design in general.

Originally Posted by purpleblob
I don't support Obsidian for two reasons: 1. They've been around for a while so should have enough experience to create a decent game…

The key people didn't wish to be involved in a meaningful capacity. From the beginning PoE's purpose was to be a proving ground for a younger lineup. An inexperienced team without sufficient leadership, can't produce a lasting classic. While a right person, even if just one man like Styg, can easily outclass a cohort of oblivious Californian hipsters.

Originally Posted by Maylander
… most gamers I talk to prefer more varied or vibrant settings like Morrowind, Baldur's Gate, Gothic, Warcraft etc.

I didn't think Morrowind was vibrant, seemed to me I was trapped in someone's fevered dream (probably Michael Kirkbride's).

Anyway the problem is not (only) in the appeal of a grim, depressing setting, as already noted. But rather in the sloppy and incoherent execution.

Originally Posted by luj1
hipsters.

Just one. Josh.

Well, WL2 is not a great game, so don't blame codex for their comments.
I can surely understand this is subjective.

For example, luj1 think " I had more fun in the Valley of the Mad Monks than during my entire PoE run. " For me, I like POE more than WL2 and and the only area in which WL2 is better than POE is the voice acting.

Things I don't like in WL2
+ Combat mechanic.
+ + Sniper and rifle are overpowered and the designer team respond by limiting the supply of ammo to force the players to choose different weapons. OMG….
+ + In Ranger difficulty, I usually stand where I am and shoot, shoot, shoot until enemies are all dead. There is no strategy involved and the only thing I need to do is shoot.
+ + There are tons of skills but not all are really meaningful. Most of them are just skill dumb to give you some extra loots.
+ Low quality of World Setting and weird plot.
+ + Mad Monk: They appear out of nowhere after the war and come with such a passion which is quite hard to believe. They are very dumb too! There is an encounter in the valley in which two merchants meet in a narrow road. They both insist themselves should pass first and the other should stay away. After some debates, they both ask their mad monk guards to attack the other and the mad monks follow the orders and end these debates by igniting their mini nuclear bombs. This encounter is really a WTF moment in this game.
+ + AG Center Virus: A virus can change plant into monster and change people into explosive pod. This virus is too powerful in this world and seem quite unrealistic. What is more unrealistic and hard to believe is that the AI use this virus to instill troubles in AG Center with the goal of luring some Rangers into this trap. It seem to me that the AI have a very high IQ to invent such a powerful virus, but the AI certainly has a very low strategy mind by putting such a potent virus into a very no efficient way of eliminating rangers.
+ The success of skill check is based on percentage, which just pushes the player to reload again and again. Age of Decadence and Vampire：bloodline both use a pass or fail approach and NWN use a "take 20" approach. Inxile should certainly learn from their peers.
+ Cover is quite unimportant in this game.
+ Most of the Perk and Quirk are quite useless and most of the useful perk are the common ones available to all classes. This make investing a lot of pts in your weapon skill quite disappointing, because you just get a better shoot.
+ The number of damage dealt don't show over the character's head but rather in the printer, that is, the combat log window. Well, this idea is quite old fashion but not in the good way.

Originally Posted by sakichop
Seems odd you'd scold him for "bagging" on games you like and then in the same post you "bag" on games others like. There are plenty of great CRPG's out there, you not liking them is irrelevant

I don't see them as the same thing. FO4/Mass effect et al have hundreds of millions of dollars behind them with a massive audience - they don't need my support and in another 10 years we will probably be up to FO 7 or 8 (yay!).

I'm talking about a genre that was basically dead for over 10 years!! You seem to suggest that there are "plenty of great CRPG's out there" and while I don't disagree there are - there simply have not been many isometric turn-based/RTwP ones until now. The guy we are talking about comes into almost every thread about these games (check his post history) and bags them.

My thanks to Steinawarjar for the heads-up on the Paypal option now being available. After some due consideration due to some misgivings with the new party structure, I caved and went for another Collectors Edition. Obsidian have been responsible for some of my favorite role-playing experiences in recent times (New Vegas, PoE, Mask of the Betrayer) and tend to make the types of games I enjoy most, so I'm optimistic this will follow suit.

I've still got the White March Part 2 to play yet, which should capably fill the void of waiting for the sequel to be ready. I'd also be curious as whether any players at the 'Watch have achieved or attempted the triple/frozen crown achievement before. This is something I wouldn't mind trying again at some point as my first attempt failed after 25 hrs, due to a badly timed strategic charge in the Ogre Cave. Maybe I'll make a thread, we'll see.

Originally Posted by Fluent
Yep. I just find it a bit disappointing and a missed opportunity. I can't blame Obsidian that much, though, since as I said, D&D has many years of a head start. Still, some attempt to create a "real" ruleset that spans a few games would be a good start, and then they could have balanced it over the course of 30 levels or so. It seems like a large undertaking so I give them a pass on that. I do hope some developer has the ambition and ability to tackle that, though. Maybe Beamdog, even, with a new D&D RPG series. Of course, it would be the "real D&D", but hey, if it's another 2-game or even trilogy in the style of BG, that would be great. IMO.

Agreed. In my case, a series-spanning rule set idea was present in the back of my mind in the lead-up to PoE1, but I forgot about it completely during my play-throughs of the game itself. It was only with the announcement that you'd get knocked down at the beginning of PoE2 that I only remembered it…. but was still subsequently slightly disappointed.

I'm afraid that right now, I have little hope that Beamdog will provide me with a good series, despite them using the DnD rule set. I've played the Enhanced Editions of BG1, BG2, and Siege of Dragonspear, and found their efforts… I don't know, "vaguely disagreeable" might be the best phrase to use. They strike me as a very preachy sort of group of writers, and IMO that never does a game any favours. The new content in each of the EEs I also found to be a little underwhelming, to the point where when I got to the fight with the Big Bad in Dragonspear, I realized that I just didn't much care to finish the game from there, and that I was left with no inclination to follow the company to see what they were doing next, either. I'm hoping they'll make me reconsider that opinion, personally, but that's about all I'm hoping for from them right now.

My feeling is that, once Eora becomes a little more fleshed out, a little more lore- and monster -populated, maybe after the Watcher's story is wrapped up, THEN we'll see a new series in the setting that DOES span multiple titles with a character import feature similar to what we saw in the gold box games, the IE games, etc. I rather enjoy the setting itself, after all, so I'm hoping that it sticks around long enough to be of use a decade or so down the road.

Fingers crossed. Patiently.

Originally Posted by Avantenor
I wouldn't call Gothic and Warcraft "vibrant". Of course there is some comic relief , but on a closer look it's quite gritty, especially Warcraft with its Warhammer roots. IMHO Warhammer is already quite depressing in its underlying idea. Humans are not on the winning side and they are definitely not noble. Also, back in the days, when you asked for the reasons why people prefered Gothic over Ultima or Baldur's Gate, the answer often was "because it's dirtier and more mature". So imho these games are at the beginning of a development you're critizing right now. Planescape, DX and Vampires also didn't win the prize for the most light-hearted story.

Vibrant doesn't mean funny though. It simply means alive or bright. The world of Gothic may be gritty, but it's also fresh, green and filled with people that live out perfectly fine lives. They're not starving in a war zone or dying to a plague. The expansion world of Jharkendar is especially vibrant: Bright, colorful and with a fantastic atmosphere. It's one of the best constructed areas I've ever seen in a game, perhaps the best.

WoW has immense variation, most areas are fun and colorful. There's no way they would have succeeded if they had placed it in Mordor, as people simply wouldn't want to spend thousands of hours in Mordor. Too dark and grim. Too depressing. It can be exciting to visit such a place for a limited period of time, but it shouldn't represent the entire setting.

Originally Posted by Avantenor
If you take a look around you are going to recognize this "mature" trend in every art form. I guess, to some degree it reflects our political and social development over the last decade. And I think it's more interesting for an author to write an unusal story about unusal character then trying to copy Tolkien without making it too obvious.

It's entirely possible to write something original without it being set in a world where everything is shit. For example, the depressing darkspawn and plagues and crap we see in Dragon Age: Origins is no more original than anything else. It's just weird looking orcs. The interesting parts of Dragon Age are the political schemes, the personal struggles and the various cultures, none of which is particularly dark, grim or depressing. Yet the setting is still fairly dismal, and the main story is filled with boring, dark and grim rubbish, with the whole "Archdemon" stuff and the generic darkspawn. They could easily have placed the game in a more vibrant world (and skipped the darkspawn, who felt boring from the start).

Originally Posted by luj1
I didn't think Morrowind was vibrant, seemed to me I was trapped in someone's fevered dream (probably Michael Kirkbride's).

Anyway the problem is not (only) in the appeal of a grim, depressing setting, as already noted. But rather in the sloppy and incoherent execution.

I said vibrant or varied. Morrowind is the latter; it's so completely different compared to anything else; the cultures, the history, the locations. PST is similar. Very original.

Edit: Even something like Fallout, which is set in a nuclear wasteland (!!) is not particularly dark or grim. It's original, it's varied and it's interesting, but it's not filled with suffering the way certain settings are (PoE, DAO, parts of DA3, NWN, etc).