Queen's Wish - Released

You can still play around with builds.

The previous games (like so many others) just offer to give you lots of obvious garbage choices. Like increasing strength on your mage.

You still have different skill "trees" here, though they don't look like trees at first glance and you can think about what combinations make sense to you.

However you can freely redistribute points. The lack of "dedication" of skill points is something you can like or not. But most RPGs of the last 20 years or so actually offer something like that.
 
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You can still play around with builds.
You can make a fighter, mage or cleric with little to no flexibility in each. There aren't even many synergies between categories.
That's not playing around with a build, that's just picking a class.

While the Spiderweb games never had a great and deep build system, at least you could play each class in a variance of different ways.
Now there are, what, at max six abilities per category? That's a joke! There are jRPGs with more choice, and that's telling a lot.

I mean, supposedly you do gain more options later in the game, but I doubt these will make a significant difference. It really doesn't seem to me Vogel has it in him any more to develop a deep character system, to me all of this just screams "minimal effort" - at least in this department, hopefully not the same for story - and that's just quite sad.
Though, to be fair, it is also understandable. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to develop the same game for 25 years, either. But I'd change genres, then, instead of making my games less and less intriguing with each iteration...

The previous games (like so many others) just offer to give you lots of obvious garbage choices. Like increasing strength on your mage.
If the games make it possible to play a strength-based mage, something like a spellsword of sorts, there's nothing wrong with that.
It might be less effective than a pure mage, but that is a choice the player gets to make, maybe to impose a challenge on purpose. Exploration of builds in an RPG is an important element, just like exploration of the world. Now, there's barely any choice at all.

However you can freely redistribute points. The lack of "dedication" of skill points is something you can like or not. But most RPGs of the last 20 years or so actually offer something like that.
I do think that it is a missed opportunity of teaching the player about informing themselves before making a decision and sticking to it - a skill that many players obviously lack and would have an obvious need to develop. Many gamers have become quite pampered.
The most interesting challenges in games have always been when your characters are faced with challenges they are not best equipped for and you have to get creative. If you can just at-will change your characters to suit any encounter, that rids the game of these challenges.
 
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Well, just bought it. Had some coupon (not sure what/why - maybe for owning previous games?), that reduced the price even further. I guess it paid off this time, not being a backer ;)

I like to play these sorts of games on my dev system, which is Linux. At first I thought it didn't play nicely with proton, but it just took ages for initial start up. Works flawlessly now :thumbsup:

For the first time (AFAIK) the game has an appearance/face customiser, with the appearance reflected in the character model. Hey it's not exactly Skyrim, but it's a start :lol:. Some of the sneers and smiles you can apply look pretty funny.

Anyway, that's it for now - I have an Avadon to finish first. After my disappointment in the Kickstarter, I'm strangely pretty keen to return to it.
 
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I haven't played this game, but I totally agree with what you said in general terms, Sheep. I'm that guy that builds gimped strong mages and crap like that all the time. It's fun for me. :p
 
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You can make a fighter, mage or cleric with little to no flexibility in each. There aren't even many synergies between categories.
That's not playing around with a build, that's just picking a class.

While the Spiderweb games never had a great and deep build system, at least you could play each class in a variance of different ways.
Now there are, what, at max six abilities per category? That's a joke! There are jRPGs with more choice, and that's telling a lot.

I mean, supposedly you do gain more options later in the game, but I doubt these will make a significant difference. It really doesn't seem to me Vogel has it in him any more to develop a deep character system, to me all of this just screams "minimal effort" - at least in this department, hopefully not the same for story - and that's just quite sad.
Though, to be fair, it is also understandable. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to develop the same game for 25 years, either. But I'd change genres, then, instead of making my games less and less intriguing with each iteration…


If the games make it possible to play a strength-based mage, something like a spellsword of sorts, there's nothing wrong with that.
It might be less effective than a pure mage, but that is a choice the player gets to make, maybe to impose a challenge on purpose. Exploration of builds in an RPG is an important element, just like exploration of the world. Now, there's barely any choice at all.


I do think that it is a missed opportunity of teaching the player about informing themselves before making a decision and sticking to it - a skill that many players obviously lack and would have an obvious need to develop. Many gamers have become quite pampered.
The most interesting challenges in games have always been when your characters are faced with challenges they are not best equipped for and you have to get creative. If you can just at-will change your characters to suit any encounter, that rids the game of these challenges.

That's a lot of words to attack one specific aspect of a game when a game is usually a combination of many factors. The desire to insert a "gamers these days" diatribe hyperbole because of one specific feature is the big giveaway that you're mostly talking nonsense with an eye to an agenda and bait rather than a valid point of discussion.

But the biggest hint that there's something screwy with your presence here is that your codex personality rated Witcher 3 one of your most favourite and bestest RPGs ever made. And AFAICT Queen's Wish's character building looks very similar to Witcher 3's, with only one skill point on level-up, new levels unlocking new things, most of your abilities dependent on equipment, augments similar to mutagens, and etc.

I also find it amusing that over there on the codex so many people have heard one whiff of one specific aspect of the game and are all rushing to use that as their spear to jab at the game and declare "whelp, that's ME not buying it!!!!!!" as if any game ever was either buyable or not buyable (AKA enjoyable or not enjoyable) because of one specific design feature. As if Planescape: Torment is renown for its character builds.

I also find it amusing that one of the codex's most ardent jPRG fanatics has chosen to reject the game unseen because of this one specific feature, even though the main complaint of this feature on that forum is that it... makes the game more like a jRPG. LOL.

If you're looking for reasons not to play something, the smallest excuse pushes you away, even if it's pretty much bullshit. If you genuinely want to try something out of sheer curiosity or historical favour towards a series then you'll excuse all kinds of nonsense ;)
 
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I actually looked a little more into it and the skill system appears to be a bit deeper than I initially thought. I am not sure yet about any top builds or anything like that, however it might actually be required to do some interesting combinations of the trees.

For example the magic tree is enhancing spells. The support tree offers a healing spell. You can either put a second point into that healing spell for 15%, or you can add the point into the magic tree instead to get 20% instead. Also magic swords and whatnot seem to require points in the magic tree. Each point you put into a tree not just unlocks or improves a skill, it also gives you a passive boost / unlocks reuirements for equipment.
For now I think it's actually quite interesting. But ofc I am just at the start of the game, and cannot tell yet, how it will be like at level 10 or higher.
 
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That's a lot of words to attack one specific aspect of a game when a game is usually a combination of many factors. The desire to insert a "gamers these days" diatribe hyperbole because of one specific feature is the big giveaway that you're mostly talking nonsense with an eye to an agenda and bait rather than a valid point of discussion.
No hyperbole here. I've been around long enough to see the continuous dumbing down of pretty much all genres - not that there are no exceptions, obviously, but the trend is clear.
You seemingly do not want to see it, and that's okay, if that is what keeps your little dream castle intact.
But just because you deny the facts doesn't mean they are not facts.

But the biggest hint that there's something screwy with your presence here is that your codex personality rated Witcher 3 one of your most favourite and bestest RPGs ever made. And AFAICT Queen's Wish's character building looks very similar to Witcher 3's, with only one skill point on level-up, new levels unlocking new things, most of your abilities dependent on equipment, augments similar to mutagens, and etc.
Well, it is one of my favourite games ever made. Likely why I gave it that rating. I don't remember that, but I'll just take your word for it.
But it completely sucks as an RPG, because of so many reasons, one of which being the character system.
I probably shouldn't have voted it that high on poll particularly about RPGs, though, that is true.

But, wow, I must say I am impressed.
I must have hit a nerve so hard it caused you to go full determined rage mode to start digging at profiles until you find the slightest thing to write about. Pretty hilarious! :lol:

I also find it amusing that over there on the codex so many people have heard one whiff of one specific aspect of the game and are all rushing to use that as their spear to jab at the game and declare "whelp, that's ME not buying it!!!!!!" as if any game ever was either buyable or not buyable (AKA enjoyable or not enjoyable) because of one specific design feature.
If that one aspect of a game is very important to you, it is all the reason you need to not buy a game.
And, yeah, Planescape: Torment is pretty overrated. But then again, I am just not into walls of text, even if those walls have better writing than most other games. However, those holding it in high esteem do not do so because of the character system.

I also find it amusing that one of the codex's most ardent jPRG fanatics has chosen to reject the game unseen because of this one specific feature, even though the main complaint of this feature on that forum is that it… makes the game more like a jRPG. LOL.
Doubt you are talking about me here, but that just goes to show that you really do not seem to understand that people want different things from different games.
Even someone who likes jRPGs might not want a certain series (I think you can talk about Spiderweb games as a series) to just become another jRPG. Especially not if that makes it obvious what the developer chose to spend little time on...

If you're looking for reasons not to play something, the smallest excuse pushes you away, even if it's pretty much bullshit. If you genuinely want to try something out of sheer curiosity or historical favour towards a series then you'll excuse all kinds of nonsense ;)
True, but I see nothing about Queen's Wish that would make me curious.
The crowdfunding money was used to create an engine that somehow manages to look even worse than the old games and kinda like an RPG Maker game with a horrible tileset.
And while that is just baffling, it is something I could excuse, but also losing quality in another department I care about in that game really just puts interest at 0.
 
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To be fair, Kickstarter is not a pre-order shop. It's a place people can support a project, to see it brought to reality. It's custom for game developers to offer a copy of the game to supporters, but you shouldn't see it just as a pre-order. It's a contribution as well.

Games and projects like this is what Kickstarter is for: mom and pop operations and the starving artist; not big or even medium size studios. Any bonus you get is like an NPR tote bag or the concert disks you get a PBS pledge drive. I personally don't like those things but it works as a marketing tool.

I've not liked any of the games so I don't buy them, but this is the kind of game that should be backed - a real indie project.

For those that got keys late that's a shame but its probably way easier for distributor to hand them out automatically then it is for the developer to go through the list of emails, then copy and paste the keys one at a time.
 
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But, wow, I must say I am impressed.
I must have hit a nerve so hard it caused you to go full determined rage mode to start digging at profiles until you find the slightest thing to write about. Pretty hilarious! :lol.

Welcome to classic lackblogger modus operandi. :)

Games and projects like this is what Kickstarter is for: mom and pop operations and the starving artist; not big or even medium size studios. Any bonus you get is like an NPR tote bag or the concert disks you get a PBS pledge drive. I personally don't like those things but it works as a marketing tool.

I've not liked any of the games so I don't buy them, but this is the kind of game that should be backed - a real indie project.

Why? I don't see how being from a smaller developer automatically makes something more worthwhile to support. Shouldn't we be more concerned about whether or not the project is actually good?
 
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Games and projects like this is what Kickstarter is for: mom and pop operations and the starving artist; not big or even medium size studios. Any bonus you get is like an NPR tote bag or the concert disks you get a PBS pledge drive. I personally don't like those things but it works as a marketing tool.

I've not liked any of the games so I don't buy them, but this is the kind of game that should be backed - a real indie project.

For those that got keys late that's a shame but its probably way easier for distributor to hand them out automatically then it is for the developer to go through the list of emails, then copy and paste the keys one at a time.

I disagree. The premise of KS originally was to fund games that wouldn’t be able to be made otherwise. Jeff wouldn’t have starved and stopped making games without the kickstarter. He’s been making the same games for a long time and would have continued to even without the KS.

Sounds to me like he used the kickstarter to milk some extra cash out of his most loyal fans that he knew would back the project. Which is pretty lame imo.
 
I won't jump to conclusions, but I admit that I was a bit puzzled when he launched this project on KS. But he's not the only well-established developer doing so, I was similarly puzzled when Larian launched their Divinity games there. And when other-well-known-company did as well.

OTOH, I think one motive for lauching a project on KS is to see if a project is viable, if there is enough interest to go on. I think (guess) that was the case for some of the remakes/reboots we have seen lately.

But it shouldn't be too difficult - if we think that a project shouldn't be on KS, we don't pledge. (I may have deviated from that rule).

pibbur who is sure that everybody knows he does not agree with the notion that mr Vogel makes the same game every time, so there's no reason for him to mention it.


PS. FWIW, If I pledge, I do it to support the project, help it become real. Which means that I usually pledge significantly more than it would cost me to buy the finished game. DS.
 
Careful there @pibbur who;, you don't want to be go getting yourself a modus operandi… ;)
 
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It is fairly well known that divnity success is largely due to extra money from kickstarter. divinity 2 did not require kickstarter but players wanted it - (i can't comment if it was a better game due to kickstarter). My impression is that they didn't really want to do the kickstarter for d:eek:s-2 and i suspect they won't do it again ( to be honest the d:eek:s-2 kickstarter was a let down in many ways - not the game but their handling of such).
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I think this is very different than queen's wish kickstarter. I don't think the kickstarter had much impact on the game and the rewards really weren't that enticing.
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This is sort of like the homeworld 3 campaign on fig3 - they are making the game and using the campaign for advertising - the game was funded on the first pledge....
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As to what is and isn't appropriate use of kickstarter or crown campaigning in general - not for me to say....

I was similarly puzzled when Larian launched their Divinity games there. And when other-well-known-company did as well.

.
 
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@you; seem to know more about this than I do.

pibbur who realizes he was just sitting by himself, thinking.
 
Careful there @pibbur who;, you don't want to be go getting yourself a modus operandi… ;)
Well, I guess I already have a modus o. Sort of.

pibbur who OTOH is not sure what that modus exactly is. Except that a conflict avoiding personality is part of it.
 
He’s been making the same games for a long time and would have continued to even without the KS.

People are complaining this game isn't like his others and yet you're implying there's a problem here because he's just made the same game?

Does not compute, sorry!
 
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The folks at RPGCodex have finally stopped shitposting horseshit and have started talking about the actual content of the game and, as I suspected, this game is not one I'll be putting on my soon-to-purchase list.

Point 1:

At first I thought the lack of trash mobs and the fact that leaving a hostile area restores all encounters would improve things, but it's just annoying. You have so few ability points that you can easily spend them all on healing during a battle that's gone wrong, which means you'll have no chance whatsoever to clear the area in a single attempt… which means going back to town to restore HP/AP, which also means all encounters are repopulated. Since you don't get experience for combat, you just wasted your time.

So no XP for combat and respawns aplenty, but not in a diablo or jRPG way, just in an annoying way that provides a greater sense of grind than most grinders.

Point 2:

I'm not sure if dedicated spellcasters are even viable in this game. You're either a melee fighter with martial abilities or a melee fighter with arcane abilities. You're probably better off just loading everyone up with martial abilities and then spending a couple points on healing and magic.

Character builds don't seem to be varied by class so much as varied by class of warrior. Not by itself a huge thing but within the context of the above a cumulative annoyance. For people like me who don't like playing games where it's just soldiers and not much else this is a big turn off.

Point 3:

all the equipment upgrades are through the town development system.

&

One of the game's numerous flaws is that playing it like a typical crpg where one focuses on a specific quest chain or area will leave the player grossly underpowered with respect to tactical options. The sense of progression and increase in power from just leveling is sorely lacking, and is instead gated behind the busywork of building up 6 other forts.

Eek, all the loot is gated behind base-building. As if I wanted or cared to hear about yet another cRPG thinking it's an RTS, or even a TBS game. So it's not about character progression it's about town-planning progression. So it's not about adventuring it's about crafting material farming. This was the main factor which put me off buying it on day 1 or nearabouts and it seems it's as bad as I imagined.

Point 4:

The game apparently scales all encounters to one level below your average party level

This is only a rumour at this stage as there has been no confirmation from the developer, but it appears to many that there is some pretty stringent level scaling going on. Ouch, as if it needed a final nail in the coffin…

Can't say I'm too disappointed, I've still got both Avernum 5 and 6 to enjoy at some point and Avadon 3 if I'm really at a loss for games, so, as it stands, I'm happy to have at least got one extremely fine game series from this developer and another ok one. This one looks like it's going in the same avoid-bin as Geneforge for me.

@Kordanor; how's things with you, are you still able to keep enjoying it? Can you provide any kind of positive spin on all these factors?
 
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You can make a fighter, mage or cleric with little to no flexibility in each. There aren't even many synergies between categories.
That's not playing around with a build, that's just picking a class.
That's an awfully wrong/false analysis.

I doubt any Avernum games was involving best party building with specialization, creating your character was even the best base, I don't remember what you was loosing compared to prepared start blueprint but they wasn't worth it.

Anyway right or wrong for Avernum, this is pretty true for Queen's Wish. Max number of skill points is 22, you could spend them all in one skill tab plus some in cultural tab, and no matter the build you would get something quite weaker.

Support tree can provide:
- Up to +15% Evade
- +20% speed.
- Hide in shadows which is in fact more useful on close range to exploit aggro.
- Even if Energy is now also used by combat skills, so it's less interesting than in Avernum to use this energy for support or healing, but it's still a good option.

Magic tree can provide:
- Up to 5 Energy points, it' not insignificant knowing that best potion restore 3 energy point and is probably the most powerful potion.
- Magery skill is must for any character.
- Icy Wave or Shock Wave are more useful for character more in front.
- Mage Warrior is a very good alternative with the Arcane close range weapons. I wish the balance of enemies would favor a bit more magic attack than physical attack against more enemies. It's still a quite interesting option, and in my opinion the only valid with 2H close range weapon.
- Orbs and even some magic armors/helms can be powerful options even for a close range.

Combat tree is the most specialized tree, Steelskin is useful for all characters but easy to get. Few more HP at each skill level seems more meaningless past first levels. the +4 damages doesn't apply to bow so it's really only for physical close range warrior. Hardiness is fairly good to take but nothing major. Many skills are for close range. It's still a tree hard to ignore for whole party because of multiple unique skills. The point is it doesn't require put all points in combat tree to get an efficient close range.
 
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I disagree. The premise of KS originally was to fund games that wouldn’t be able to be made otherwise. Jeff wouldn’t have starved and stopped making games without the kickstarter. He’s been making the same games for a long time and would have continued to even without the KS.

Sounds to me like he used the kickstarter to milk some extra cash out of his most loyal fans that he knew would back the project. Which is pretty lame imo.
The problem is it's a guess, or do you mean that all human are evil (or do you mean all but you? Or perhaps you mean that all game dev are evil) but it's still stinky defaming people on pure guessing.

I see your point, but it didn't stop Larian Kickstart Divinity Original Sin 2 despite they was drowning under a sea of gold. I agree it's the base of KS, allow project otherwise impossible. So is Larian are stinky infamous dev? Explain us, don't behave cowardly and say what you think.

The problem is it's also about quality and amount of content and number of sells expected, knowing that this evolves constantly.

You could be right, or Spiderweb could have troubles to survive, and this KS was important. What I quote is QW is the first Spiderweb game with a really coherent UI, if the KS helped for that, thanks to it. :)
 
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That's a lot of words to attack one specific aspect of a game when a game is usually a combination of many factors. The desire to insert a "gamers these days" diatribe hyperbole because of one specific feature is the big giveaway that you're mostly talking nonsense with an eye to an agenda and bait rather than a valid point of discussion.

But the biggest hint that there's something screwy with your presence here is that your codex personality rated Witcher 3 one of your most favourite and bestest RPGs ever made. And AFAICT Queen's Wish's character building looks very similar to Witcher 3's, with only one skill point on level-up, new levels unlocking new things, most of your abilities dependent on equipment, augments similar to mutagens, and etc.

I also find it amusing that over there on the codex so many people have heard one whiff of one specific aspect of the game and are all rushing to use that as their spear to jab at the game and declare "whelp, that's ME not buying it!!!!!!" as if any game ever was either buyable or not buyable (AKA enjoyable or not enjoyable) because of one specific design feature. As if Planescape: Torment is renown for its character builds.

I also find it amusing that one of the codex's most ardent jPRG fanatics has chosen to reject the game unseen because of this one specific feature, even though the main complaint of this feature on that forum is that itÂ… makes the game more like a jRPG. LOL.

If you're looking for reasons not to play something, the smallest excuse pushes you away, even if it's pretty much bullshit. If you genuinely want to try something out of sheer curiosity or historical favour towards a series then you'll excuse all kinds of nonsense ;)
At least not everybody is blind, that said expect anything from Codex is non sense, the forum should be named RPG Blinded Fanatics, Codex is an insane and infamous lie, it's 10% Codex at best because of their blindness and total lack of openness, yeah RPG 10% Codex would be a name that fits more or less.

A game isn't a list of features, it's a whole. But for sure it's more easy to pretend argue on a feature or a list of feature, than to argue on the whole which is really the core of gameplay design.

Queen's Wish isn't perfect (had a ton of fun with it anyway) and in my opinion dev changed a lot of its designs approach and lack of experiment or good comparison point with the use of those new designs approach, hence not everything is working very well.

For once it's not a fake rest system, but the final result isn't perfect, only less fake. The lite expedition approach is very cool but would really work only on base of full respawn, and full respawn without a deep and very diversified procedural generation system just cannot be fun or used very very rarely (as probably very few dungeons in QW). So it's a plus compared to any other Spiderweb game. But the lite expedition approach triggered the lite inventory approach, which is much better than Avadon system but it generates design problems, where put drops in dungeons, how design longer dungeons, how design two parts dungeons, no place for misc items so bye to almost fake systems as food or light but even fake they was more tools for filling, more.

Scaling, I mean smart scaling, is the way to go for very open RPG. But it's quite a challenge for difficulty management, it removes some tools to manage it, and increase difficulty of difficulty tuning. And if it's a better job than in any Bethesda RPG that always implemented a stupid scaling, it''s far to be a scaling masterpiece as was BG2 or DAO.

For the character building, it's better than Avadon, now it can't be compared to Avernum EFtP which uses skills, spells, combats abilities, trainers, special magic books, perks, extra special skills/spells(?) learned only through special ways.

Does Avernum system is really allowing better combats which is a core aspect, not sure. But it also open a few utility aspects which hasn't QW, it's no major gameplay and it's even basic gameplay but it's one more filling tool, as are trainers and special books. Moreover even if the result adds nothing to combats, that it's mechanically more complex is clearly something else.

I had the feeling that many QW design aspect are about controlling better the difficulty to attempt design better combats. But the dev didn't completed it by increased tactical design. He should really study many tactical games to extend his design assets. If not a major benefit of scaling+no grinding+lite expedition approach is lost a lot.

For the respec, I loved it and even late game switched totally two characters to have cultural skills associated with different roles and positions. But I don't know what to say about that, it's very special and I admit a bit disturbing.

It's not perfect, there's too many innovative aspects for dev games (scaling, respec, true lite expedition approach, no grinding allowed, management system adding a layer to party build - it's not a parallel game, more. All of that isn't fully well tuned, but I expect the trilogy will allow improve many aspects, and anyway I had a lot of fun with QW that is among my fave of the dev.
 
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