Thread #3923170
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>normal attack
>bonus action
>extra attack from class feature
>extra attack from pact of the blade
>four attacks per turn
>dual wielding uses bonus action for the offhand weapon
>only get one bonus action per turn
>you dual wield once, then stab with your main hand two extra times
>only thieves get to dual wield like an actual dual wielder because of the bonus bonus action
Most BG3 threads devolve into the same 2 or 3 talking points, so let's have an autistic mechanics thread. Are there any other game mechanics that trigger your tism?
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>>3923170
>so let's have an autistic mechanics thread
I would suggest a different game that isn’t based on the most dumbed-down and simplified ruleset for casuals, women, practitioners of alternative lifestyles, and melanin-rich individuals.
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>>3923170
Honour Mode iirc nerfs some of the cross-class comboes so you can't have so many free attacks. Which I'm fine with, and I like the new additions to bosses in HM, I just hate how you can't reroll anything in conversations.
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>>3923179
I refuse to play "no saving the game" difficulties because I don't find them fun, so I play BG3 on tactician.
I'm more mad that you can't just dual wield twice than the attacks existing, and that "dual wielding twice" works only with one build and not the other (I was playing Bardlock) all because of the bonus action thing.
BG1/2 are more abstract with it because it tells you that you get extra attacks every other turn but real time with pause the combat log just blurs by and you can't tell what weapon is hitting anyway.
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>>3923225
I am a BG3 critic precisely because I played and finished BG3, which is a bad game.
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>>3923170
Reverberation and Radiant Orb stacking because of gear on anyone casting spirit guardians. It's well known but it's truly something, and fun, just lawn mower in, whatever popcorn not cooked outright by the AoE is offensively debilitated.
Bows and their arrows are insanely stacked even on honor mode, double dipping in goofy ways. Titanstring with strength flask, diadem of arcane synergy, archer master feat, etc. Volley an arrow of many targets with oil of combustion/freezing with drakethroat glaive weapon enchantment, it's absurd. All the arrows are busted in their own way.
Casting warding bond on the rest of the party with a cleric in adamantine splint armor, heavy armor master feat, and the defender flail takes away half the damage the party recieves, then typically shaves it down to zero, especially if you get resistances. Make it a life cleric and use it's split healing benefits to make even more efficiency out of the split damage. Actually gets kinda crazy how this manages eat a shocking amount of active enemy turn economy given how weak this stuff is in tabletop. Can always background throw utility items or dump water on foes to go full support all the way.
Lastly, upcasting Command with extended spell is just insane. For a single action to potentially lock 6 targets into doing nothing but be prone for two turns is so action-economy breaking, and it doesn't even take a special caster character to do it. Just metamagic, spell slots and access to command.
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>>3923225
We played more games than you have decades before you were born, stupid little shit. And we still play more games than you do. And we'll be playing games while you're dead in a ditch because you shot your dumbass mouth off to the wrong real person with another dumbdfuck hot take like that one.
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>>3923228
I really hate this style of writing. If they wanted to put humor in this section they could've just had the notice and let the contrast speak for itself. The added comment just feels like the writer is elbowing you with a literary laugh track, because clearly you're too dumb to get it otherwise.
Same as those internet articles with
>[Statement]. This is x.
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>>3923402
>'bit harsh, it has some excellent qualities
It does have some. I like the turn based combat, and it has good production values, graphics, animations. I liked some of the music. Everything else was awful. Most disappointing game I played in years.
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>>3923170
Initiative, gets worse the more you can do in a single turn and when characters have less hp.
It feels very dumb when I start a combat in bg3 and every dangerous enemy won't get a turn in because my alpha strike is just way too strong. Especially silly and immersion breaking with lots of movement.
I like turn based games, but this rarely gets solved in a satisfying way.
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>>3923417
There's a middle ground, I'm sure. Like potions taking a night to fully recover or the like. These should come at a cost. Bg3 removed attunement and material cost of spells, too. Power gaming bg 3 is really ugly. Having the avatar bathe in artifacts and misuse damage source and riders to dish out 500 damage per round is hardly fun. Game was designed for this though.
>>3923440
>anon struggles with basic reading comprehension
I blame your corrupt polticians
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>>3923490
How could you initiative or turn order ever do well? Ultimately it'll come down do a single value and this means a strict order.
>lots of movemebt
Iirc Asstarion had 8 meters of movement per turn, it's idiotic.
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>>3923570
>Bg3 removed attunement
And that's actually a good thing. Attunement is a grabage mechanic.
>and material cost of spells
Is there any video game that doesn't handwave it? I recon tards crying about the hunger mechanic in MotB, if you told them that they also have to pay gold to cast their fancy spells, they would start frothing at their mouths. And the economy in DnD was always random as fuck. Potion of bull's strength costing 300 gp and lasting for 2 minutes is some sort of a joke when a lesser rod of extend metamagic is 3000 gp.
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>>3923570
>Game was designed for this though.
Is it just me or are a lot of games doing this now, where they are designing it with the expectation that the player is going to autistically min/max and exploit the mechanics of the game rather than just play it.
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>>3923402
>despite the gals rule, boys lame, old guy I'd like to fuck vibe it has.
Reposting re: dWoke/dT
>BG1
25 companions (15 male, 10 female), with a mean strength of 13.35, and a mean intelligence of 13.32.
Using Student's T-test to find 95% confidence intervals:
80% of high strength outliers were male, and 20% of high strength outliers were female.
50% of high intelligence outliers were male, and 50% of high intelligence outliers were female.
33% of low strength outliers were male, and 67% of low strength outliers were female.
70% of low intelligence outliers were male, and 30% of low intelligence outliers were fmale.
>BG2
16 companions (10 male, 6 female)
Mean strength 13.33, mean intelligence 13.25
100% of high strength outliers were male, 0% female.
43% of high intelligence outliers were male, 57% of high intelligence outliers were female.
40% of low strength outliers were male, 60% female.
60% of low intelligence outliers were male, 40% female.
>BG3
10 companions (5 male, 5 female)
Mean strength 12, mean intelligence 10.3
0% of high strength outliers were male, 100% female
100% of high intelligence outliers were male, 0% female
100% of low strength outliers were male, 0% female
40% of low intelligence outliers were male, 60% female
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>>3923691
>Just be glad you didn't play cyberpunk'd
I did, and I was also disappointed by Cyberpunk, but in a different way. Cyberpunk was disappointing because somewhere along the way during development, they stopped making what they promised (a deep cyberpunk RPG), and ended up making a different game, something like an RPG-adjacent cinematic GTA clone/looter shooter, with shallow and vestigial RPG elements. Think they actually started calling it "action-adventure" at some point in those last couple years of development. When it came out, it was playable, but not what I expected. I gave it a couple of years of patches before revisiting it, and although I reject that they "fixed it" (it's fundamentally the same game as release, it's been reworked some but not radically remade), I can still play it and have fun with it for what it is, despite not being what we were promised.
By contrast, BG3 promised to be an RPG, and an RPG is what we got, just a bad one. Despite my disappointment (much of it was exacerbated by how Larian lied about the state of the game and pretended everything was fine and the players were wrong, there was no cut content, etc, while at least CDPR had the honestly to admit they fucked up), I gave it another year or two in the oven to get its "it's done" patches and see how they fixed the game up, and gave it another replay, hoping to like it more. I got to early act 3 before dropping it, it's still the same shitty game I didn't like at launch. It's just too bad, with too many severe flaws, to enjoy.
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>>3923800
>before dropping it
That's bad. It's the worst part of the game. Not only do they prolong the entry to bg, after shilling it the whole game, but the present you a cut city full of beige. Looks rather lame and worse than bg from bg1 or even worse than the city destroyed in the intro.
Worst part in that part of the game is that you loose incentive to do anything. There are plenty of artificially long quests, but you don't need xp, so you can go directly to the brain and end the game ASAP.
>mods
Maybe play it as a modded dungeon crawler? That's how I play it. In real time the game is faster and can be beat within few hours with ease.
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>>3923807
>That's bad. It's the worst part of the game.
I agree. To clarify, when the game came out, I did play it all the way through and finish it. I only dropped it there on my second post-patches playthrough, just lost all motivation.
Act 1 > act 2 > act 3. Not surprising, since act 1 got multiple years of EA feedback and polish, and act 3 was badly cut and rushed.
I also got a kick out of act 1 running at ~120 fps at ultra/1440, and the performance gradually degrading as the game went on, until act 3 was running at ~60 fps and would chug down to 30 fps at times in the lower city, just like BG1's 30 fps.
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I like that Bald n Gay 3 actually gets to you the max level relatively early, it gives you more time to enjoy your characters/builds at full power. Getting to max level in the last dungeon fucking sucks.
Whats really terrible is the itemization, way too back loaded. There is fucking nothing in Act1 and most of Act2. There is a mod that randomizes loot (except for craftables and "quest" rewards) and I recommend it because it makes exploring more fun and gives items that never are used a chance to shine.
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>>3923828
>I like that Bald n Gay 3 actually gets to you the max level relatively early, it gives you more time to enjoy your characters/builds at full power. Getting to max level in the last dungeon fucking sucks.
Yeah that's a good point.
>There is fucking nothing in Act1
I think the adamantium stuff felt pretty significant.
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Some of you have absolutely awful taste. Modded it so combat is real time? Like guy go play one of those phone games if you need combat to autoplay itself. Absolutely foul.
I'm on custom-tactician (I just want backup saves) with all the difficulty sliders cranked to maximum, mods that slow down level gain, add extra enemies in all battles, adds extra encounters, increases enemy hp by 35%, and gives the enemies all an extra action. Combat and team building is fun.
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>>3924006
Playing bg3 as newb is pretty difficult. There's a reason plenty o' people barely make it through story mode. First dos2 run wasn't easy either, mainly because the stats are bugged and there are few actually viable builds.
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>>3924034
But you don't understand. I NEED rtwp to autobattle me through the 10,000 trash battles against swarms of kobolds. Otherwise I would be bored out of my mind by the tedious drudgery of actually having the play the game. Clearly there is no other solution!
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>>3923170
You could multiclass and have 3lvls of thief for deft hands or assassin for alacrity, have 5lvls of warlock for the pact of the blade extra attack and the CHA for attack and then 4lvls of sorcerer for metamagic quicken spell. That way you´d get attack, extra attack + spell each turn or spell using twined spell + 2 extra spells if you use quickened spells.
The only problem is you´d have only 2 feats and i think only 4 sorcery points... so that´s a hell of a turn but then you get kind of gimped. Other options would be to only dip in warlock as a hexblade for the CHA for attack and put 5 lvls into fighter for the extra attack and armor proficiency... though that will cost you a sorcerer lvl, 3rd lvl spells and hunger of Hadar so the tradeoff is hefty.
Alternatively you could forsake warlock entirely and build around intelligence mixing eldritch knight with blade singing though that build seems to be equipment dependent. Like, in theory you could use the headband of intelligence to boost intelligence and then, in act 2, takeJaheirasword to be able to attack and dmg with intelligence. You´d lose warlock unique spells and metamagic have access to spell scribbing and, i think, lvl 4 spells. It seems like a poor tradeoff.
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>>3923572
>How could you initiative or turn order ever do well?
I'm not sure.
Even in strategy games it becomes a problem.
Homm3 there isn't that much of a problem, the combat is thematic chess anyway, it doesn't pretend to be immersive, there are 200 elves in that one unit and they have exactly 1 counter attack to the first enemy stack that attacks them, mechanically a bit dim, but the immersion comes from what happens outside of combat. Age of Wonders and Master of Magic the defending player gets an insane alpha strike if they have powerful ranged units, especially bad in MoM since armies are smaller where attacking into 9 buffed halfling slingers is like sending units into a wood chipper.
If I were to fix that problem in bg3 while changing the game as little as possible, I think I'd break down turns into sub turns.
weakened lvl 12 fighter vs weakened lvl 12 fighter.
Standard bg3: Fighter A attacks 7 times through 3 attacks per turn, action surge and some type of attack through a bonus action, Fighter B dies and doesn't get to fight.
Modified bg3: Separate initiative rolls for the attacks. Maybe Fighter A gets 2 attacks in first, then Fighter B gets his attack. Before the full turn is over Fighter A gets in 7 attacks to kill Fighter B, but Fighter B at least got some of his attacks(like 4 out of his 7 attacks) out and didn't entirely waste his potential.
A round of combat might look more like "Fighter attacks, Rogue Attacks, Fighter attacks again, Mage casts spell, Fighter attacks again"
Legendary actions feel too clunky to me, I know it's one way they've tried to address it, and the nerf to haste in the harder modes.
There's a lot you'd have to consider with different types of actions, and many characters in combat, how you handle movement, how tedious will this be with how bad the UI is, etc, but I'm just posting and not releasing a video game so I don't have an answer for circumstance, Larian certainly didn't.
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>>3924262
>You only need it in certain fights
Depends on your build. I like to build around darkness, ice dmg and conditions. I like to take devil´s sight, cast darkness around myself and then shoot freezing rays from inside the cloud and pair that with triggering conditions.
With the right equipment and build one could technically be nearly immune to the effects of hunger of Hadar and use it as a more powerful version of that. Like, you´d be immune to ranged attacks while being free to cast trash them with spells of you own and anyone entering would suffer dmg and be blinded. You could push them back with spells and force them to close in again and once they are close enough you can just fly away and leave them all inside the trap. Not to mention that while inside the cloud you´d have advantage on attacks while they have disadvantage so...
If you ask me very few spells are as good a hunger of Hadar.
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>>3924265
>Separate initiative rolls for the attacks
This or subturns. Ye, a more granular way of measuring I initiative is needed. Moving should be under initiative and things like searching for a potion should come with a hefty malus.
>>3924269
Nta but darkness was broken during release. Had 4 tavs and one was a dark helf and afaik they have darkness. Either way, it's broken af, the can't hit shit and can't target you with their ranged units. HoH is just imba, espe2if paired with other op shit, like illithid powers or the lunatic beam or god forbid dagger cloud. Power gaming sucks.
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Initiative and alpha strike is huge huge in tabletop too. As a DM, just under the umbrella term "action economy" and balancing encounters to match the action economy is razor-edge. After loads of trying different things the 5e DM realizes he just never produces encounters for the numbers challenge (4e could do that, but had its own issues of level-scaling and slower action resolution), but instead providing encounters as either moments of player power expression, or gimmick fights where they either solve the gimmick, or don't. Since this wraps up initiative as a make-or-break, and the d20 initiative is so swingy, initiative is probably the most homeruled mechanic in 5e. Larian was right to put it on a 1d4, essentially taking that RNG of action economy out. After that, they basically did the same thing to engineering encounters that good DMs did- gimmick it out or just let them power-game away with their builds.
It's all a mess. HoH and dagger cloud away.
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>>3924383
>This or subturns. Ye, a more granular way of measuring I initiative is needed. Moving should be under initiative and things like searching for a potion should come with a hefty malus.
Moving might be the biggest hurdle of my rough outline.
In standard bg3 my fighter runs towards the enemy to strike, but in my modified scenario, the other fighter would get a chance to act before my attacks are over, so what if he runs away and when I get my next attacks I can't reach him anymore.Triggering an attack of opportunity, but at least the next 5 melee attacks won't land.
It could get awkward, but maybe that's something that isn't too weird to play around.
Movement could get separated into subturns I too guess.
>>3924503
>initiative is probably the most homeruled mechanic in 5e
If I ever DM again I might try this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_mxYKzEjms&t=431s
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>>3924503
>and the d20 initiative is so swingy
Everything that uses d20 is and that's probably the weakest part of the entire ruleset of DnD, regardless of which edition we are talking about. If DnD was designed to use 3d6 where we currently roll d20, it would be much less random and more skill-focused.
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>>3924528
Maybe checkers for you.
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>>3923690
Interesting.
Attributes are a bit weird in 5e though.
Earlier d&d attributes implied more about the character beyond their class prowess..
Like Minsc has exceptional strength in bg1+bg2, but because you can use finesse weapons and ignore strength in bg3 Minsc has mid strength and high dex instead.
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>>3927731
You seem rather dim-witted, and clearly don't understand what an "outlier" or a derivative with respect to time is, so let me helpfully spell it out for you: all of the warrior origins are female (barbarian, fighter), and all of the mage/thief origins are male (rogue, wizard, warlock). This leads to the ludicrously improbable situation where every single female has high or above-average strength, and every single male has low or average strength.
>>3927735
BG1 and BG2 companions were largely based on actual tabletop characters the developers had played in previous campaigns, and one first rolled one's stats before deciding what character one would play, limited by one's rolls, and the minimum requirements for each class. Notably, the only female outliers for high strength are Shar-Teel and Jaheira in BG1. Your rolls determined your character, and you were expected to play what was on your sheet.
BG3's companions all use the incredibly fake and gay "standard array" of pre-canned numbers, and one is expected to first choose your class, and then min-max your stats to optimize. Every companion literally uses the "recommended stats" for each class. Jaheira and Halsin have identical stats, for example, because they're both druids. But Halsin is swole even though he has 10 STR, because he's one of the writer's self-inserts, so it doesn't matter what his sheet says.
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>>3927812
>BG3's companions all use the incredibly fake and gay "standard array" of pre-canned numbers, and one is expected to first choose your class, and then min-max your stats to optimize. Every companion literally uses the "recommended stats" for each class. Jaheira and Halsin have identical stats, for example, because they're both druids. But Halsin is swole even though he has 10 STR, because he's one of the writer's self-inserts, so it doesn't matter what his sheet says.
Kinda makes me wanna try to logically deduce what the bg3 characters actually would look like stat wise in 2e.
Maybe making an iwd party based on them.
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>>3927812
>all of the warrior origins are female (barbarian, fighter), and all of the mage/thief origins are male (rogue, wizard, warlock).
At least you're able to admit it's because of class but if it helps your /pol/ brain to reconcile this: Everybody is trans mwahaha
>Every companion literally uses the "recommended stats" for each class
And that's the correct way to do it considering the game has respec as early as level 2.
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>>3928171
Different anon here. I'll try to explain for anyone in case anyone else reading along is interested, and not as severely retarded as you are.
A game's setting, feel and the experience of playing it is heavily determined by the NPCs you encounter along the way. While D&D traditionally had a very progressive and open mindset when it came to character creation, Player-Characters don't define a setting. They're the exceptions by design. Meanwhile, in reality, there are stark and intrinsic biological sex differences that yield many tangible and observable results in the world. So, competent designers who care about a bare minimum of verisimilitude in their setting, will allow these sex differences to inform the NPCs in their game world.
BG1 strikes a great balance in its NPCs, simultaneously expressing the core rules with characters like Shar-Teel, yet maintaining sane patterns of masculinity and femininity with the roster as a whole. Female NPCs tend to be less physically strong on average, and tend toward professions suited for their stat profiles (rogues, mages, clerics, druids). The result, thus, feels plausible. Obviously it's not "actually realistic," it's a fantasy game in a fantasy setting. But only black&white thinking retards, like those whose minds have been destroyed by woke propaganda, think that this gives license to just subvert every common sense convention without completely ruining an immersive setting.
It simply cannot be denied or argued that the stat spread of NPC companions in BG3 is bizarre. The question is: why. Why are the implementations so backwards?
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>>3923402
>First part of act one is a solid 10/10, despite the gals rule, boys lame
First part of act one is dogshit and specifically so because of the things you've described. It makes you, to be fair, it made me, never care to continue past the grove attack because I've never been made to give a shit about any character or story aspect
>girl characters are mean to you until you're mean to other people and they approve of that- then you can fuck them but they go back to being bitches
>sassy gay tumblrfag tries to bite you in the middle of the night, can't imagine not impaling him
>umm actually le science redditfag dork is a walking timebomb begging for items, can't imagine not shooing that liability away
>annoying loudmouth tumblrreddit dyke with anachronistic dialog and tendencies- also a tiefling (ptu)
>wyll could have been a bro but he's, you know. the only companion I slightly cared about
And don't let me start with Halsin, and for that matter, any druid in the game. Again, they're all either fuck ups or assholes, which of course is only made so to make you sympathize with DEMONIC REFUGEES of all people. Well, "people".
When the tadpole doesn't matter as much as I thought and everyone I meet begs for a sword through the chest, there's no urgency nor reason for me to engage with the world, I'll simply quit the game rather than engaging with the admittedly nice music, mechanics, animations and so on. There's also way too many things to engage with, and, again, none are particularly interesting. Yea lemme just take a break from my life or death mission to look at a fucking owlbear
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>>3923690
>10 companions (5 male, 5 female)
And that's excluding the 12 hirelings: average STR for the 6 female hirelings is 11,66 with the top three having 17, 17 and 12 STR vs an average of 11 for the males with the top three being 17, 12 and 11.
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>>3923690
>16 companions (10 male, 6 female)
And yet every party has Imoen, Viconia, Jaheira, and Viconia in it. Edwin, Minsc, and maybe the dwarf and maybe the gnome are the only males anyone actually uses. One of those male companions is the guy who betrays you even if you have a 19 charisma.
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>>3929486
I think this argument is completely oblivious. BG3 prioritizes making their companions interesting first. The females with high physical strength are, in-fact, more interesting as female. Imagine a Male Lae'zel- it's just a downgrade.
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>>3930003
>BG3 prioritizes making their companions interesting first
BG3 prioritizes ramming political propaganda down the audience's throat first, and this should be exceedingly obvious to anyone who has played and finished the game. One Shar-Teel is a contrasting exception, a party full of Shar-Teels is an affront to suspension of disbelief and an insult to the player's intelligence
"Interesting companions" is probably not even in their top five priorities.If it were, they wouldn't have hastily rewritten them to be more bland, neutral, agreeable, and playersexual in response to early access player focus group feedback, and would have stuck to their original vision for the characters.
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>>3923170
The mechanics doesn't bother me as much as the number of bugged items. Sometimes it feels like half the items in the game doesn't work as intended. Oh, you have a build idea that relies on item X, olololo it will not work as advertised and your build is now garbage. To counter this, you have to google every fucking build's items to see what works as intended, which means you end up reading shit you don't want to and now you don't even need to test the build. Very annoying.
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>>3929992
>source: ass
Keldorn is great even if his cuck storyline is disappointing. Anomen is kind of a bitch at first but he has a solid arc and if player's stick with him, his stats are great and he's a good companion.
Edwin, Jan and Cernd are the males I don't use.
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>>3923185
>Tactician
>With mods that make the rest of the changes to get to Honor difficulty besides saves
>With mods that add new enemies and bosses to encounters
>With mods that improve enemy AI in niche cases, and improve stats
>With mods that add more spells to casters, and add more casters to casterless combats
>All of this to balance out the inevitably stronger characters I am making through modded content
Oh yeah.
It's time to summon like 15 skeletons, baby.
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>>3927812
>every companion literally uses the "recommended stats" for each class
I understand the appeal of tabletop where you roll the dice and just try to survive as long as you can with your dog shit 9 INT Wizard. The ending of tabletop is whatever the fuck the DM decides the ending is and you just make a new character if you die.
But in a video game? Fuck you, just give me the stats I need. And I prefer the point buy system forcing you to make choices than rolling for a 93 to get maximum stats in everything except charisma or wisdom if you're not a divine caster.
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>>3930336
Anomen was definitely intended to subvert and develop the arrogant-lawful-asshole stereotype of paladins. Doing it by resolving paternal abuse trauma was pretty brilliant and well executed. He's a great companion for several reasons.
Edwin was overpowered in the un-modded game because of his amulet and conjuration just being bluntly the superior school. You have to mod the game to fix the mage class in general and the spells in particular. His story was also kind of one where the hyper-evil-asshole wizard's megalomaniacal ambitions get subverted and he's humiliated, which is only slightly unsatisfying because he isn't destroyed. But if you're doing an evil playthrough there aren't that many companions to choose from...
Jan is fucking fantastic. His toolkit as a thief/mage is the ultimate problem solver that no other companion can really approach (because Nalia fucking sucks and Imoen is missing half the game and is a dual-classed so her thief skills suck and she'll never pickpocket for you). His personality is actually very good as comic relief because he actually is funny, rather than just trying to be.
Cernd ... mechanically, if you don't mod the game, is mediocre. The bugs with his werewolf form have been fixed in the Enhanced Edition, so he's not just worthless. If you mod the game to fix various spells, druids can be solid spellcasters but they won't replace clerics. With fixed werewolf, he's a solid combatant in most situations though. His story is very interesting from an historical point of view, drawing out the practical realities of what it means to be a hippie running away from responsibilities to play with flowers. But it's mildly irritating that you can be ambushed by a powerful lich with no warning if you aren't careful. And he doesn't really get anything for any of this.
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>>3930760
There's a very good mod that revamps those ability scores so that they all matter somehow to every class. For example wisdom giving you bonus xp and intelligence giving you extra crit rate and charisma giving you luck bonuses on your rolls. I fucking refuse to play the game without that mod anymore. 2nd edition D&D fucking sucks. The only worse version of D&D is 5e and I refuse to use that, too.
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>when you finally pick up THAT feat which lets your unused action economy roll over to the next round
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>>3931045
Pillars of Eternity did ability scores correctly. I think you and I agree about that, because it's just objectively true. Whatever problems either Pillars game had, that wasn't one of them.
In a better game system, there wouldn't even be ability scores, but that's a discussion beyond the scope of this thread or this topic.
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>>3931166
There are lots of games that do a good job of making all their ability scores count. Pillars of Eternity is a uniquely midwit failure of an attempt at this. It manages the difficult trick of being simultaneously convoluted and overly simplistic, nominally achieving the stated goals while completely forgetting the entire point of what RPG attribute systems are supposed to be for.
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>>3931570
Pillars tries to give parity to every attribute by tying it to specific mechanical abstractions.
Might influences damage and healing amounts. ALL damage amounts (magic or physical.
Perception improves accuracy. ALL accuracy checks.
Intelligence improves ALL AoE radii and effect durations.
This yields build complexity and variety in that your attributes are pretty much always going to be affecting your build one way or the other, while simultaneously ruining the variety with such lazily broad and bland effects. Virtually all magic, anything that causes damage, gets bonuses from your strength (excuse me, "Might") stat. This is a significant dumbing-down of what the possibilities of genuinely interesting strength-scaling magic. Like, imagine a system where "force" type spells scale with strength but perception would enhance "divination" spells. There are so many unexplored possibilities.
RPGs commonly just scale magic damage from an "int" or "spirit" stat. Pillars thought it was beneath them to use something so generic, the problem is they fucked it up because combining Strength and Magic-Strength is retarded. Other attributes aren't quite as obviously bad as Might, but they aren't great either.
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>>3931570
Other anon described much of the problem (having one stat represent multiple distinct concepts in a nonsensical way). I would add that one of the stated goals was to eliminate the concept of dump stats by making every stat valuable to every class. They failed in that goal, because players simply learned what was optimal to dump for each class (often con, sometimes resolve or dex) and then dumped away. I personally hate doing this, and it soothes my tism to custom parties where every statline is a base of 10 with two 18s, but many players do dump to min max.
Also they did some dumb shit with how certain weapons that do damage over time interact with INT. The intended functionality was that the effect did (fixed damage / time) * duration, with the duration scaling with INT, so high INT made the effect last longer and do a greater total amount of damage. The way they coded it, it does (fixed damage / duration), so if you’re a retard with low INT, it dumps the entire quantity of damage in a tiny amount of time, giving a huge rate of damage over time. Sloppy programming, but funny.
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>>3932249
Aaaaah I see.
Yeah, I actually like the way Elden Ring does magic imbuing for that reason, you can get fire through Strength or Faith, and lightning... SORTA through Dex or Faith. Elden Ring doesn't do it very well, but I like the idea of those kinds of stat trends for elements. Makes elemental specializations make more sense, makes individual stat builds have way more expression. Shame it's done that way instead. I can see the idea, dump stats kinda suck, but, yeah, that doesn't sound like a good way to so it.
>>3932297
>if you’re a retard with low INT, it dumps the entire quantity of damage in a tiny amount of time, giving a huge rate of damage over time. Sloppy programming, but funny
Holy shit that's hilarious.
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>>3932249
"Muscles" impacting magic damage is truly weird.
It would perfectly work in Xianxia though, were strength (or Might (: ) of your body correlates to your meridians and chi output or whatever therefore I"m stealing it for myself.
Ergo, ff you can channel mad amounts of chi your body is sufficiently magically powered to pulverize rocks.
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>>3933965
The Giantsflame Seal and Bestial Seal (probably not their actual names, lmao) both cause your incantations to scale partially off of Strength. Still majority Faith, but, especially the Beastial Seal has a non-negligible amount, so flexing your way to better fireballs and lightning bolts and shit works. Though, I think healing specifically ONLY scales off your Faith, which fucks the Dragon Communion Seal specifically, because it barely scales off Faith at all.
The Frenzy Seal makes your Strength, Dex, Int, and Faith all scale your incantations.
I was always kinda annoyed that the Gravelstone Seal didn't make your incantations scale off Dex, the seal is utter dogshit as it is, because the actual scaling is so low, and that could give it an identity.
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>>3934010
Might does not mean muscles. What is going with you? Are you intentionally trying to spread misinformation? Is that it? You're trying to establish some kind of misunderstanding on the basis of a lie about semantics, hoping that no one here is literate enough to call you out on it?
For the people who don't speak English natively, or who maybe can't read books without pictures in them, here it is: might (in this context, as opposed to when it means "maybe") means power. The amount of effort you can put into things. Metaphors about muscles and physical strength are common. But they're just metaphors. And might is not metaphorical, even though muscularity is often used as a metaphor to describe might.
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>>3932249
>while simultaneously ruining the variety with such lazily broad and bland effects
That part is wrong. You have to pick and choose what you're good at. That doesn't mean build diversity is hampered at all. Having a hundred in every stat is not a build. Having to pick and choose what you are good at in order to suit your personal preferences and playstyle is a build.
There are things to do with magic that aren't damage. And when you are very accurate, in this system, excess accuracy becomes crit rate. When you graze a target, you have severely mitigated effect. And of course if you miss, nothing happens. So accuracy is plenty valid as a way to use magic, and you don't have to pump your might for that at all. If you dump your might, it just means you rely more on crits and hits for reliable damage throughput, or you just ignore damage and focus on applying debuffs and crowd control, for example. You don't need might.
Or you might not care about damage because you're a tank, so you build resolve and intelligence and constitution so that you can drink a potion and become invincible for the whole fight's duration while also projecting your paladin aura over a really wide area to help your allies. You could also choose to dump resolve and pump might instead, and accept that you're gonna be frightened and hit more often and in exchange you do more damage.
This sytem allows you to customize and focus a character even within the same class.
It's up to you how you want to play the character. You are NOT forced to pump strength and then punished harshly by being useless if you somehow didn't know that fighters HAVE TO have maxed out strength in order to do anything at all, the way you'd see in D&D. That's the difference. There is radical build diversity possible in Deadfire in a way that there just can never be in D&D.
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>>3932297
There's mods that fix bugs like the duration calculations. The devs weren't still on the project by the time the community discovered the bug, so no one was working there who could fix it in patches. Thus, the mods.
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>>3934239
I would always build a wizard with maxing PER and INT and never the meme muscle wizard build, because raw damage doesn’t scale well into PotD difficulty, while accuracy is crucial.
That said, muscle wizards are an incredibly fucking stupid concept and the critics are right. “Uhhhh it’s just spiritual power” is cope. What do the storybook sequences describe when you have to get past some bars or a crumbling wall? Yup, using your huge muscles to bend and break things.
Also, low might tanks do a shitty job because the AI will ignore them and not prioritize attacking them due to their low damage output, since they’re not much of a threat.
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>>3934244
So does might represent muscles or does it not? You can't have it both ways. Quotation marks don't just magically allow you to do things that don't make any sense at all. That is not how any of this fucking works.
Take responsibility for your attempted bullshit and admit you shot your mouth off without thinking, or just deal with not being taken seriously. You're out of options now because you chose to double down.
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>>3934281
Yeah, anything you don't like for some fucking reason you just made up on the spot is "cope". It couldn't possibly be that your prejudice is based upon your ignorance and stupidity. The entire fucking world that disagrees with you, including a legendary professional game designer... they must all of them be wrong. Every single one of them is just coping. You know THE TRUTH.
Please, save us from out misery! We've been enjoying popular video games! Oh the horror!
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>>3934289
>your prejudice is based upon your ignorance and stupidity. The entire fucking world that disagrees with you, including a legendary professional game designer... they must all of them be wrong. Every single one of them is just coping. You know THE TRUTH.
Please, save us from out misery! We've been enjoying popular video games! Oh the horror!
Now you’ve progressed from simple cope to cope + seethe.
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>>3934291
>This is what an echochamber looks like.
So you believe the entire world does agree with you? I'm the only person on the planet, alone among eight billion souls, who dares to disagree with you?
Please, tell me more about this "echo chamber" concept! I've never heard of that before, it sounds fascinatingly egotistical.
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>>3934297
Look at the extreme and immediate defensiveness with which he responded. “The entire world disagrees with you”, appeal to authority, “please save us from our misery! We are enjoying a popular thing! The horror!”
It’s coping rooted from insecurity due to being aware that hes having to perform mental acrobatics to rationalize the stupidity of muscle wizards. He knows deep down its dumb, but he heard someone he thinks is smart say that its not dumb, so if he says its smart, he will be smart too.
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>>3934301
Accept my updoot too.
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>>3934302
>The entire world disagrees with you”, appeal to authority
He didn't say "the entire world disagrees with you", he said "the entire world that disagrees with you".
You can keep repeating buzzwords and rationalize everything that disagrees with you as cope all you like, "it's dumb because I say so" is hardly a more compelling argument.
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>>3934306
Uh-oh! These words are no-no, not wholesome chungus at all. I'm sorry but that's a downvote from me, bestie!
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>>3934235
>For the people who don't speak English natively, or who maybe can't read books without pictures in them, here it is: might (in this context, as opposed to when it means "maybe") means power.
that's just even more pointless and abstract. "power?" power in what sense?
the attributes do not convey the internal logic of the game's world.
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>>3934402
>"power?" power in what sense?
The power to uhhhhh bend metal bars with your hands and knock down crumbling walls and do more damage when you swing a warhammer but don't you dare call it physical strength, that wouldn't be very nuanced of you. You just the extremely subtle distinction.
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>>3923572
>>3924265
>How could you initiative or turn order ever do well?
I remember playing this game called Leviathan Warships that was turn based in the sense that you could spend all day planning your move if you wanted, but the turns were all executed simultaneously.
Basically, you make all the decisions about what you want to do on your turn, your opponent does the same (neither of you know what decisions the other is making until the turn is executed), then once you both push the button to finalize your decisions, the game automatically executes everything you decided in real time.
I don't know how well this could translate to tabletop or tabletop-imitating vidya, but if you could make it work, then "initiative" would just be a stat for resolving what takes priority in cases where two actions couldn't reasonably be resolved in the same time space.
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>>3934452
That’s called simultaneous turn based and is common in strategy games (e.g. Paradox map games) and some RPGs. It was the intent behind old DnD back in the day.If RTwP fanboys were intellectually consistent and followed their arguments to the logical conclusions, they would be arguing for either simultaneous turn based, or purely real time combat, but they aren’t, so they don’t
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>>3934239
>You have to pick and choose what you're good at.
So long as "what you're good at" involves being "good at AoEs and duration" or "good at dealing damage" or "good at accuracy" which are gross generalizations more suitable to a much more simplified, abstract type of game than what PoE is going for. None of the other variety is unique to PoE. Base attributes build on other abilities? No shit, that's how RPGs systems work. Your attributes are core traits about your character, usually very hard to change (though sometimes they grow continuously). Then skills and abilities and other learned elements are layered on top of the attributes, with equipment as the final layer that determining what your character can do and how it performs.
The problem with PoE is that they turned the base attributes into this convoluted system that essentially just means one of the base attributes is "being good at AoEs and effect duration." And that's just not very interesting as a foundational character trait. It's way too mechanically specific.
>You are NOT forced to pump strength and then punished harshly by being useless if you somehow didn't know that fighters HAVE TO have maxed out strength in order to do anything at all, the way you'd see in D&D.
I'm not comparing against D&D, though. I think one of the reasons why PoE's system is kind of lame is that they were obsessed with solving a few problems with D&D (2e and 3.5e in particular) and seemed to largely ignore the several decades of evolution in other vidya RPG stat systems. (Or tabletop systems, for that matter).
>>3934235
>Might does not mean muscles
Might doesn't mean anything coherent, in world/setting terms. That's the problem with it. It means "damage" which is a higher-level game abstraction, and then an ass-backwards nonsense explanation: "a character's physical and spiritual strength, brute force as well as their ability to channel powerful magic."
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>>3934521
>The problem with PoE is that they turned the base attributes into this convoluted system that essentially just means one of the base attributes is "being good at AoEs and effect duration."
Different anon than the one you were responding to, but each attribute having a straightforward effect that is completely consistent between classes and characters is the opposite of convoluted.
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>>3934527
>It is convoluted because it is arbitrary and unintuitive
Neither of those things make it convoluted. Regardless, any numeric attribute system is by definition going to be arbitrary, and it's no more unintuive than any number of alternative systems.
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>>3934528
>it's no more unintuive than any number of alternative systems
I disagree, as evidenced by the perennial arguments and apologists for how retarded muscle wizards and INT-maxing barbarians are. Everyone understands str/dex/con/int/wis/cha.
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>>3934541
>Everyone understands str/dex/con/int/wis/cha.
Untrue, as evinced by the INT-vs-WIS (and to a lesser extent, STR-DEX, STR-CON and what CHA actually means) arguments that continue to this day. Those have been going on for a lot longer than any argument about Pillars' muscle wizards.
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>>3923170
BG3 is a total masterpiece, If i could afford more time for a fifth playthrough i'd do it immediately.
CRPG with the best gameplay, combat, level design and production.
At the same time its reactive, hilarious and has cool characters and quests. Extremely replayable game
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>>3934526
>Different anon than the one you were responding to, but each attribute having a straightforward effect that is completely consistent between classes and characters is the opposite of convoluted.
Base stats trace to overly straightforward effects in silly ways, leading to simplistic dynamics in a system that still feels too convoluted. It's how you get bizarre and unexpected dynamics that range from mundane to hilariously broken (eg DoT). "AoE effect radius" is not something that should be directly tied to a single core attribute. There's nothing about intelligence that reasonably justifies having it influence all areas of effect of any type. It doesn't describe an actual TRAIT a character might have.
>I'm Rastan, I'm strong and get damage bonuses when I hit things
>I'm Questor, I'm agile and get evasion bonuses when I dodge things
>I'm Chungus I'm smart and... have increased effect radius on my AoEs and longer duration effects
Please tell me you see the difference and aren't going to go straw-manning D&D again.
>>3934547
>Those have been going on for a lot longer than any argument about Pillars' muscle wizards.
Spoke too soon, and it's abundantly clear PoE designers didn't learn a damn thing from any discussions like that. There's no confusion between STR and DEX. The main problem with D&D Dexterity is that it combines two general traits: Agility and Dexterity. This is similar to the way Might combines physical and spiritual strength, except that at Agi and Dex are often at least somewhat correlated traits, both in reality and in common character archetypes. Spiritual and Physical strength are just completely unrelated.
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>>3934572
>Base stats trace to overly straightforward effects in silly ways, leading to simplistic dynamics in a system that still feels too convoluted.
That still doesn't make it convoluted. It's a simple and straightforward system that is explained to the player in a straightforward manner. "It's silly and I don't like it" does not make it convoluted, it just makes you a retard who doesn't know what the words he's using mean.
>There's nothing about intelligence that reasonably justifies having it influence all areas of effect of any type.
"I'm Rodney, I'm smart and therefore have a better understanding of spellcasting/ability use, which means I can cast spells more efficiently, gaining longer duration and greater area of effect". Was that hard? It's no more unintuitive than "I use big brain to cause more spell damage".
>Spoke too soon
I was responding directly to a post which explicitly brought up the D&D attributes. Jesus, is it too hard for you troglodytes to actually read the posts you're responding to? No wonder you don't like the PoE system.
>The main problem with D&D Dexterity is that it combines two general traits: Agility and Dexterity.
That's exactly why there is confusion, yes. I am glad we agree.
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>>3934528
>Regardless, any numeric attribute system is by definition going to be arbitrary, and it's no more unintuive than any number of alternative systems.
This is just not remotely true at all. You do have to choose abstractions, and abstractions will never be perfect. But you can at least avoid making glaring mistakes. That's not the same as being completely arbitrary, as if you could just put some random attribute names like Bahoim, DaHeatEr, makebast, kyswacme, and Orjyessip and tie them to random game mechanics like framecount and time of day, and it would be like any other RPG
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>>3934579
>"I'm Rodney, I'm smart and therefore have a better understanding of spellcasting/ability use, which means I can cast spells more efficiently, gaining longer duration and greater area of effect".
Be strong, hit hard, deal more damage. No one can argue this relationship.
Meanwhile you made up tenuous, debatable connection between intelligence a AoE radius using words like "efficiently" that don't actually apply. For someone crying so hard about perhaps careless use of the term "convoluted" to describe the layers of logic between PoE attributes and effects, you want me to be awfully generous with you here.
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>>3934585
>Be strong, hit hard, deal more damage. No one can argue this relationship.
Sure. The same way Might makes you hit harder and deal more damage, I get it.
>Meanwhile you made up tenuous, debatable connection between intelligence a AoE radius using words like "efficiently" that don't actually apply.
If I cover a greater area with the same amount of effort (or work, or energy, or whatever you want to use), it is by definition more efficient.
>For someone crying so hard about perhaps careless use of the term "convoluted" to describe the layers of logic between PoE attributes and effects, you want me to be awfully generous with you here.
Pointing out that you're a retard who doesn't understand the terminology he's using doesn't mean I'm crying, it just means that you're an idiot. There were any number of words you could have used instead and avoided the whole issue, but here we are. If you had used 'labyrinthine' instead, should I not have made fun of you?
You could have just acknowledged the error, but instead you chose to double down and insist that actually, "convuluted" was right (even though it isn't), which makes you doubly retarded. Someone who can't even use the correct term is not someone worth listening to for meaningful criticism.
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>>3923228
Yea just beat it for the first time after playing bg 1 and 2. I'm throughly convinced everyone on this board claiming that bg2 is the best bg is a hack thoroughly and completely. Bg3 fucking mauls bg1 amd 2 into the dirt, with ease. Act 3 is a little buggy, you reach max level before getting to the end, but aside from that its a Masterpiece. I was an idiot to ever take bg2 millennials/boomers seriously for even a second.
Anyone claiming BG3 is a bad game, or worse that bg2 is better, is either drunk on nostalgia, lying, or in psychosis.
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>>3923170
>only thieves get to dual wield like an actual dual wielder
Nah, thieves are the outlier. In real dual wielding, the main hand does all the work while the off hand is used to trap/cut off attack vectors. Only in training sequences for eskrima do you attack vigorously with the offhand. A fighter dual wielding in dnd is much closer to how dual wielding is actually done than the thieves class.
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>>3934479
>That’s called simultaneous turn based and is common in strategy games (e.g. Paradox map games) and some RPGs. It was the intent behind old DnD back in the day. If RTwP fanboys were intellectually consistent and followed their arguments to the logical conclusions, they would be arguing for either simultaneous turn based, or purely real time combat, but they aren’t, so they don’t
Paradox games is rtwp, fucking retard.
Simultaneous turns is what age of wonders games and civilization uses to make it bearable for multiplayer and you play your turns at the same time, it doesn't really have the same effect as rtwp or leviathan warships.
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>>3934735
>Paradox games is rtwp, fucking retard.
You are wrong. They operate in discrete turns, a day in EU and an hour in HOI. Have you even played them? I do not think that you have. Maybe you just watched them on YouTube.
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>>3934541
>Everyone understands str/dex/con/int/wis/cha.
No. Actually. An extremely hard no.
You're revealing to everyone here that you're a noobie with absolutely zero experience in game design, let alone in D&D or RPG culture generally.
D&D's ability scores have been the subject of one game design's most intense and bitter controversies since the game came into being. (And just for the sake of completeness, wargames before then also had intensive debate about how to depict statistical behaviors). This is a conversation that has been going on for literally thousands of years, but in the context of modern game design, D&D's way of doing things is overwhelmingly understood to be just poor design. Flat out. Straight up. Not even a controversial thing to say.
Sawyer's critique of D&D's ability scores is a lot more involved than just PoE, but suffice to say that making all the ability scores relevant to every character is, today, considered the absolutely bare basic minimum necessary update.
That you are unfamiliar with any of this is ok, but like... dude. You need to shut the fuck up because you're in way over your head on that specific topic. Adults are speaking. You need to go back to the kid's table or just be quiet and listen and stop interjecting.
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>>3934572
>The main problem with D&D Dexterity is that it combines two general traits
Agility is an expression of strength in real life, anon. I know that's hard for you to understand since you've never done anything physical in your entire fucking life, but at least you admit that there is confusion and complaints about it are valid. All you have to do now is understand how fucking thoroughly you blew yourself up right there.
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>>3934641
You're staring at the high poly count boobs and you think that's what makes a game good. You admit you're a Zoomer or younger, which automatically already means you couldn't read anything that was happening. As if we needed to know you're a child in a generation now proven to have the reading comprehension skills of toddlers to see that you're functionally illiterate.
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>>3934762
>Agility is an expression of strength in real life, anon. I know that's hard for you to understand since you've never done anything physical in your entire fucking life
Agility is an expression of coordination, balance, and speed, not strength. An obese powerlifter can waddle up to a bar, wearing a stretchy suit he can barely even move in, and squat 900 pounds. Is he agile? No. Is he extremely strong? Yes.
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>>3934775
>Agility is an expression of coordination, balance, and speed, not strength. An obese powerlifter can waddle up to a bar, wearing a stretchy suit he can barely even move in, and squat 900 pounds. Is he agile? No. Is he extremely strong? Yes.
All your example shows is that you can be strong without being agile. Can you be agile without being strong?
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>>3934773
>illiterate is intimidated by the thought of concentrating on more than a sentence at a time
Reading even the first sentence of his post immediately proves you wrong, so I don't understand what you thought you were going to accomplish. If you dislike reading this much, why don't you play games that are more your speed? Fallout 4 should be pretty cheap.
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>>3934547
>Untrue, as evinced by the INT-vs-WIS (and to a lesser extent, STR-DEX, STR-CON and what CHA actually means) arguments that continue to this day. Those have been going on for a lot longer than any argument about Pillars' muscle wizards.
>1st ed
Strength is a measure of muscle, endurance, and stamina combined.
Dexterity encompasses a number of physical attributes including hand-eye coordination, agility, reflexes, precision, balance, and speed of movement.
Constitution is a term which encompasses the character’s physique, fitness, health, and resistance
Intelligence is quite similar to what is currently known as intelligence quotient, but it also includes mnemonic ability, reasoning, and learning ability outside those measured by the written word.
Wisdom is a composite term for the character’s enlightenment, judgement, wile, will power, and (to a certain extent) intuitiveness.
Charisma is the measure of the character's combined physical attractiveness, persuasiveness, and personal magnetism. A generally nonbeautiful character can have a very high charisma due to strong measures of the other two aspects of charisma
>2nd ed
Strength measures a character's muscle, endurance, and stamina.
Dexterity encompasses several physical attributes including hand-eye coordination, agility, reaction speed, reflexes, and balance.
A character's constitution score encompasses his physique, fitness, health, and physical resistance to hardship, injury, and disease.
Intelligence represents a character’s memory, reasoning, and learning ability, including areas outside those measured by the written word.
Wisdom describes a composite of the character's enlightenment, judgment, guile, willpower, common sense, and intuition.
The Charisma (Cha) score measures a character's persuasiveness, personal magnetism, and ability to lead. It is not a reflection of physical attractiveness, although attractiveness certainly plays a role.
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>>3934799
>Strength is a measure of muscle, endurance, and stamina combined.
>Constitution is a term which encompasses the character’s physique, fitness, health, and resistance
>Intelligence is quite similar to what is currently known as intelligence quotient, but it also includes mnemonic ability, reasoning, and learning ability outside those measured by the written word.
>Wisdom is a composite term for the character’s enlightenment, judgement, wile, will power, and (to a certain extent) intuitiveness.
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>>3934799 (you)
I do not recall any deep philosophical objections to these stats in the 90s. People would sometimes quibble about what an edge case meant (e.g. what does it mean to have high STR but low CON? What does it mean to have high CON but low STR?) but those are just that, edge cases.
Most of the confusion came out post 3rd ed when they introduced the insipid concept of CHA-casting sorcs, and then this bled out into all variety of arcane and divine casters using stats other than INT and WIS. Or look at the number of secondaries who want to quibble about CHA vs beauty, when it was right there in the player's handbook the whole time.
By contrast, everyone immediately began questioning "what the fuck is 'might'?" immediately, because it's a goofy and gamey abstraction that doesn't reflect the laws of the world.
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>>3934803
Very well. When you describe someone as strong, you generally mean upper-body strength. So a long-legged runner who has arms like twigs can't be called strong, even if he could kick like a donkey. Additionally, the heavier you are, and muscles are heavy, the less "graceful" you tend to be. So a ballet dancer or a jockey should have the minimum amount of muscles because they lower their agility.
You can beat my argument by showing me a bodybuilder able to squat 400 kg while also able to do a beautiful pole jump or an equivalent graceful feat.
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>>3934787
>All your example shows is that you can be strong without being agile. Can you be agile without being strong?
Have you ever tried to catch a cat? How much can a cat bench press? A hummingbird? Do you have kids? Have you ever chased a toddler around the house who's dripping shit all over the carpet? It's like you're trying to argue "hurr, locomotion requires muscle contractions to create a moment about a joint, so therefore agility requires strength" which is a perfect example of what a moderate INT, low WIS character might argue.
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>>3934809
>When you describe someone as strong, you generally mean upper-body strength. So a long-legged runner who has arms like twigs can't be called strong, even if he could kick like a donkey. Additionally, the heavier you are, and muscles are heavy, the less "graceful" you tend to be.
You don't think boxers are graceful? Go watch a video of a professional boxer training or sparring, or a judoka, or a karate-ka and tell me they're not both strong and agile.
>So a ballet dancer or a jockey should have the minimum amount of muscles because they lower their agility.
Are you for real? Have you looked at the physique of professional ballet dancers? Guess what the "minimum amount of muscles" they require is: hint, it's not none, or even very little.
>You can beat my argument by showing me a bodybuilder able to squat 400 kg while also able to do a beautiful pole jump or an equivalent graceful feat.
Again, a flawed example. You don't need to have peak human strength to be considered 'strong'. I asked for examples of agility without strength and you haven't provided a single one (no, jockeys don't count - sitting on a horse does not require agility). Traceurs, gymnasts, professional dancers - all professions that require an extreme level of agility and a good amount of strength, they're not noodle-armed lanklets.
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>>3934810
>Have you ever tried to catch a cat? How much can a cat bench press?
Now you're making the mistake of assuming that because cats aren't strong relative to humans they can't be considered strong objectively, even though cats and humans are vastly different. I could extend your logic to gorillas and say that no human could ever be considered strong. Cats are actually pretty muscular for their size, since they need it to be so agile (as well as having a few quirks of physiology that give them better agility than humans) - take a look at the musculature of a leopard or lion sometime.
>It's like you're trying to argue "hurr, locomotion requires muscle contractions to create a moment about a joint, so therefore agility requires strength"
No. What I'm arguing is that agility is a measure of coordination and muscle response - it inherently requires muscle strength. When sports scientists perform agility tests they're not measuring how well someone can reach buttons because of how long their arms are.
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>>3934826
>All your example shows is that you can be strong without being agile.
>You don't think boxers are graceful?
They are strong and agile, not only strong. It's like having 16 in STR and 14 in DEX, or maybe 14 and 16 depending on the build, using DnD terms. You started the argument by conflating both. I showed you that you can have one high without the other.
>Are you for real? Have you looked at the physique of professional ballet dancers?
Yes, they are slim, unlike strongmen. Again, to minmax agility you aim for a specific build.
>jockeys don't count - sitting on a horse does not require agility
Wrong, wrong, wrong. If you looked at anyone who rides horses often, you would notice they have a similar build to gymnasts or swimmers. Lean bodies, albeit professional jockeys have to be short as well. That's also why medieval knights who trained were well built, not because they swung their swords but because of the horse riding.
>all professions that require an extreme level of agility and a good amount of strength
Ah, and here we are. Finally, you admit that strength and agility are two different concepts. To borrow the expression you would undoubtedly love to use at the first possibility, "I accept your concession."
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>>3934589
>If I cover a greater area with the same amount of effort (or work, or energy, or whatever you want to use)
>by definition more efficient
Efficient here means almost anything. If intelligence lets you understand spellcasting better so as to find efficiencies, why is it ONLY AoE and duration efficiencies? Why not damage or accuracy? Why doesn't perception increase AoE by improving awareness of surroundings? We're using a vague definition of intelligence with a vague definition of efficiency to explain what is, in reality, a purely arbitrary and mechanical decision. The devs decided that the AoE and duration mechanics should be tied to a single stat, and arbitrarily chose int as the stat for it. The result was sufficiently convoluted that the devs even had trouble reasoning about it and fucked up Damage over Time formulas.
This is NOT how it works with strength. Strength leads to greater attack force, greater attack force leads to greater damage. This is a straight line of reasoning with no vague words you have to interpret an arbitrary way.
>>3934587
>Saying that PoE is an arbitrary system is just a vacuous statement
PoE has more arbitrary design choices than other games and the main problem with its stat system lies in its relative arbitrariness.
Putting it another way, which is more speculative but perhaps more accurate, PoE seems designed backwards. It seems like gameplay mechanics were decided first, then modifiers on the gameplay mechanics were divided up between the stats for reasons motivated mostly by gameplay balance, decision-making metas and novelty. The result FEELS arbitrary, compared to other RPGs that try harder to make attributes be more concrete and comprehensible character traits.
If the problem with D&D is that stats were too focused on being descriptive, with mechanics as an afterthought(eg CHA), PoE has the opposite problem where the stats are too focused on universal mechanical effects rather than being descriptive.
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>>3934805
You either weren't around in the 90s, or your memory is curiously selective in favour of your own argument, because I remember it being a point of discussion (even if not contention) all the way back to AD&D, including at events and tournaments. Your examples of high STR, low CON and vice versa are hardly edge cases, they're obvious examples that come to mind as soon as you consider the attributes in any great depth, and common enough at the table. There's an even more obvious one that's been apparent since the beginning of D&D - if DEX governs coordination and agility, why is it that STR gives both a damage bonus and a to-hit bonus?
These uncertanties might have worsened with the release of 3E onwards, with the influx of players and abundance of alternate uses for stats, but they were always present in some form or another.
>By contrast, everyone immediately began questioning "what the fuck is 'might'?" immediately, because it's a goofy and gamey abstraction that doesn't reflect the laws of the world.
Again, this is just your bias showing. "Everyone" questioned Might, because you think it's silly, and you just happen to not remember the discussions about attributes in D&D because you're fine with them. Even though Might's effect mechanically is straightforward, explained to the player comprehensively and is well integrated into PoE's setting both narratively and mechanically.
You keep saying that PoE's stats are "goofy" and "gamey", but they're no more so than those of D&D or other systems. What you're really saying is that you don't like them because to you they feel silly, but instead of just saying that you don't like them you keep scrambling to find some justification that actually, you're right and Pillars is Bad (because you don't like it) while D&D is Good (because you like it).
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>>3934840
I did play 2nd ed in the 90s, and I was online then, though I never went to any conventions or tournaments.
>There's an even more obvious one that's been apparent since the beginning of D&D - if DEX governs coordination and agility, why is it that STR gives both a damage bonus and a to-hit bonus?
Because armor class is an abstraction that combines dodging an attack as well as resisting damage through armor, and applying greater force helps to penetrate through armor. Same reason an armor-piercing tank round will penetrate through thicker armor when a longer barrel allows imparting greater kinetic energy. Swinging a weapon harder more easily pierces armor.
>Even though Might's effect mechanically is straightforward, explained to the player comprehensively and is well integrated into PoE's setting both narratively and mechanically.
Yeah, the same attribute letting you bend iron bars with your hands as well as do more damage with a fireball and heal more health when treating wounds is totally narratively consistent and sensical.
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>>3934840
They are.
Dark Souls is a great example of a game where all the stats are intuitive. There's a lot about Dark Souls that isn't RPG-like, it's more of an action game. But the stats and ability system, while possessing far more raw complexity than PoE, is also far more intuitive. Of course there's still SOME arbitrary choice, anyone can be a disingenuous nitpicking faggot. But there's very clear and sensible logic behind character builds.
The system is fundamentally weapon-focused. Generally, "simpler" weapons like hammers scale with strength. Weapons demanding more skill, like rapiers, scale damage from dexterity (and require higher dex to wield). Weapons that are in-between, scale from a combination of strength and dex. Divine weapons scale primarily from faith, with a secondary effect from the weapon's original scaling profile.
The result is that a strength build feels like a strongman, flattening opponents with giant clubs (with option to pull out a smaller cudgel or battleaxe for close quarters). A balanced build feels like a balanced knight, favoring swords but able to make some use out of both clubs and rapiers situation. A dex build feels like a swashbuckler, samurai, using rapiers or katanas. There's no class system, so you aren't "punished" for choosing the "wrong" stat for your class (other than resistance). Almost any stat profile you choose is viable and can be made effective with the right loadout.
Now I'm certainly not saying every game should be like Dark Souls, I'm just using it as an example of the kinds of things you can do with a complex stat system, without it feeling arbitrary.
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>>3934838
>They are strong and agile, not only strong. It's like having 16 in STR and 14 in DEX, or maybe 14 and 16 depending on the build, using DnD terms. You started the argument by conflating both. I showed you that you can have one high without the other.
You only demonstrated that you can be strong without being agile, not the other way around - which is what we are discussing now. And my point was to your contention that "additionally, the heavier you are, and muscles are heavy, the less "graceful" you tend to be." So is a world-class heavyweight boxer less graceful than a 120lb neet who's never done a day of exercise in his life?
>Yes, they are slim, unlike strongmen. Again, to minmax agility you aim for a specific build.
They're slim but muscled. Again, you can't have agility without strength. And again, you haven't provided a single example of minmaxed agility without strength.
>Wrong, wrong, wrong. If you looked at anyone who rides horses often, you would notice they have a similar build to gymnasts or swimmers.
>Lean bodies, albeit professional jockeys have to be short as well.
Right, all those graziers and stockmen, known for being as fit and lean as gymnasts. You have no idea what you're talking about.
Firstly, most people who ride horses regularly and aren't doing it for work will be doing it for a hobby and would be more inclined than the average person to care about their fitness. Secondly, professional equestrians are not jockeys, and professional equestrians will be fit and lean because they're professional athletes. Thirdly, jockeys are lean for the same reason they're short, because the whole idea is to put the minimum burden possible on the horse. You are downright delusional if you think a professional jockey has the same build as a professional gymnast or swimmer.
>That's also why medieval knights who trained were well built, not because they swung their swords but because of the horse riding.
You don't think medieval knights were strong?
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>>3934838
>>3934857
>Ah, and here we are. Finally, you admit that strength and agility are two different concepts. To borrow the expression you would undoubtedly love to use at the first possibility, "I accept your concession."
I never said that strength and agility were the same. I said that agility is a function of strength, that you can't be agile without having some degree of strength, so the idea of a "minmax" where you have maximum agility and minimum strength is nonsensical. But I guess I shouldn't expect too high a level of reading comprehension from someone who struggles with such simple concepts.
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>>3934853
>I did play 2nd ed in the 90s, and I was online then, though I never went to any conventions or tournaments.
Rather curious you don't remember any of these discussions, then, since they've been around as long as the game itself. Even if we restricted it to just 3E onwards these discussions were happening long before Pillars or its stat system existed, I'm sure you could go check the /tg/ archives and find people talking about them.
>Because armor class is an abstraction that combines dodging an attack as well as resisting damage through armor, and applying greater force helps to penetrate through armor. Same reason an armor-piercing tank round will penetrate through thicker armor when a longer barrel allows imparting greater kinetic energy. Swinging a weapon harder more easily pierces armor.
Okay, but if that's the case and DEX governs coordination, why doesn't a low DEX penalize attack rolls? My 6-DEX, 18 STR grug hits just as accurately as if he had 14 DEX, and hits more accurately than his party member with a higher DEX and lower STR, despite the fact that he's probably incapable of catching a thrown ball because of the massive penalty he takes whenever his coordination is actually checked through DEX. You gave the valid example of a lumbering, uncoordinated powerlifter, but that archetype is impossible to represent in-game because even though he would struggle to tie his shoes as soon as he's swinging a weapon he becomes Bruce Lee.
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>>3934853
>>3934867 (me)
>Yeah, the same attribute letting you bend iron bars with your hands as well as do more damage with a fireball and heal more health when treating wounds is totally narratively consistent and sensical.
It's completely consistent. Eora is not the real world and it isn't the Forgotten Realms either. Everything in Eora is tied to soul power, including the attributes and abilites of every player character. The 18-Might musclebound barbarian rips the iron bars from the wall with his huge muscles; the 18-Might wizard rips them from the wall by challening the huge power of his soul through his body. The muscles are meaningless.
It's completely consistent and it makes complete sense. Again, you think it's goofy, which is a fair complaint. But it's not inconsistent just because you think it's goofy. What you really want to say is "I don't like it".
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>>3934859
>I said that agility is a function of strength
Extremely disingenuous. As I said earlier, when we say someone is strong, we think of upper-body strength. If I described you a person that you have never seen before and I claimed they are strong, you would imagine them as someone with wide shoulders and thick arms, and that is what STR in games describes as well.
Someone strong can also be a fat fuck but if he is agile, then the build has to be on the slender side.
You deceitfully imply that I mean that an agile person has no muscles whatsoever. I mean that their muscles are built differently; they are lean and wiry, while strongmen are bulky and heavy. And obviously, you can take a middle ground here. To use your own example, a boxer is a mixed STR/AGI, a gymnast is AGI primary, while a strongman will go full for STR and dump AGI.
>>3934857
>You don't think medieval knights were strong?
You are so fucking retarded it's inconceivable. I did not say that they were not strong but that horse riding training made them agile. You probably think one can simply sit in the saddle and go ride without any issue whatsoever but to ride well, you have to balance your whole body to your mount's movement. Your stomach, legs, back and shoulders work all the time. A good rider would be able to EVADE blows during riding, or at least move his body well enough so the strike hits a piece of armor and gets deflected. To ride well is primarily to be agile, and that's why horse riding knights had the boxer STR/AGI build.
I also saw jousting with my own eyes and some of the competitors also practiced horse acrobacy. I saw these people and they were not bulky under their clothes.
1/2
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>>3934870
If you wanted to shit on DnD attributes, you could go about it by claiming that bows are STR weapons and that most melee non-blunt one-handed weapons should be finesse, and you would have a point. DnD is not perfect but there is some internal consistency there most of the time. What you and other cretins get butthurt about is that Sawyer tried to fix it, created something even worse and people call him out for it.
There is a reason no other game set conflates strength and magic power into one - because it's retarded.
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>>3934859
>I said that agility is a function of strength
It's not a direct function of strength, though. This is exactly the kind of fine-grained nitpicking that should be distinguished from gross contradictions like spirit and strength.
Yeah, sure, maybe if you wanted to pour in thirty gallons of autism into some pointless algorithms capping agility based on strength, that would be more realistic. But nobody cares because "high in AGI and low in STR" makes sense to everyone.
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>>3934869
>The 18-Might musclebound barbarian rips the iron bars from the wall with his huge muscles; the 18-Might wizard rips them from the wall by challening the huge power of his soul through his body. The muscles are meaningless.
Nope. He bends them with his huge muscles. Game says so. Don’t blame me, I didn’t make the game.
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>>3934872
>It's not a direct function of strength, though.
It quite literally is a direct function of strength. As I said before, when sports scientists perform agility tests, what do you think they're measing?
>But nobody cares because "high in AGI and low in STR" makes sense to everyone.
Okay. Give me an example, minmaxed high Agility and low Strength. Should be easy.
>>3934873
>Nope. He bends them with his huge muscles. Game says so. Don’t blame me, I didn’t make the game.
Does every single Might check in the game explicitly mention muscles?
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>>3934870
>Someone strong can also be a fat fuck but if he is agile, then the build has to be on the slender side.
No, not really.
Christiano Ronaldo: 19 AGI + ? STR (who cares)
Lasha Talakhadze: 19 STR + ? AGI (who cares)
Dexter Lawrence: 18 STR + 16 AGI (terrifying 340 lb NFL nose tackle)
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>>3934876
>Give me an example, minmaxed high Agility and low Strength. Should be easy.
NTA. High AGI would be a high power-to-weight ratio, as opposed to high STR alone (without necessarily high AGI) would be simply high force application. One is relatively high, one is absolutely high.
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>>3934884
>NTA. High AGI would be a high power-to-weight ratio, as opposed to high STR alone (without necessarily high AGI) would be simply high force application. One is relatively high, one is absolutely high.
Well, thank you. I'm glad at least someone in this thread has the requisite braincells to understand the concept.
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>>3934876
>It quite literally is a direct function of strength. As I said before, when sports scientists perform agility tests, what do you think they're measing?
Semantic nonsense.
They are measuring strength of the kinds of muscles good at making you agile. Not what normal people understand to be raw strength.
>>3934876
>minmaxed high Agility and low Strength. Should be easy.
Already did. Christiano Ronaldo.
Most divegrass players really. I spent most of my life being high agility and (relatively) low strength. I could outrun like 85%+ of opponents on the field and could change direction very fast for my size. My dribbling skills were weak but I made up for it with sheer agility and ability to move quickly. But I was on the low end on raw strength. I couldn't do more than a few pull-ups, my bench press was weak, my grip strength nothing special. In baseball, I had a high batting average and good fielding skills, but only one homerun (late in the season, at peak strength).
High AGI, low STR.
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>>3934870
>Someone strong can also be a fat fuck but if he is agile, then the build has to be on the slender side.
>You deceitfully imply that I mean that an agile person has no muscles whatsoever. I mean that their muscles are built differently; they are lean and wiry, while strongmen are bulky and heavy.
I refer you to the picture attached to this post.
Have you ever seen a rugby player? That's football in some of the more civilized parts of the world.
>a boxer is a mixed STR/AGI, a gymnast is AGI primary, while a strongman will go full for STR and dump AGI.
Right. All well and good, but where's your example for the full-AGI, minimum-STR build? That's what we've been talking about. Or do you concede that any build that focuses on AGI has to have at least some level of STR?
>I did not say that they were not strong but that horse riding training made them agile.
Right, it was the horse riding that made them agile, not all the martial training or physical conditioning. Swordsmanship? You just hit them with the pointy end.
>A good rider would be able to EVADE blows during riding, or at least move his body well enough so the strike hits a piece of armor and gets deflected. To ride well is primarily to be agile, and that's why horse riding knights had the boxer STR/AGI build.
>I also saw jousting with my own eyes and some of the competitors also practiced horse acrobacy. I saw these people and they were not bulky under their clothes.
I'm sure they were agile, because they needed to train to be for the purpose they were serving. But firstly, they would have been both agile and strong, and secondly, not every trained horseman is a knight or a jockey. I've watched jousting too, as well as dressage, eventing and stock work, and being a trained horserider does not make you lean. Did you ignore the picture I posted? That's a champion stockman, and I wouldn't exactly describe him as on the lean side.
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>>3934889
>Right. All well and good, but where's your example for the full-AGI, minimum-STR build? That's what we've been talking about. Or do you concede that any build that focuses on AGI has to have at least some level of STR?
Why would he need to concede that?
What the hell are you faggots even talking about at this point?
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>>3934888
>Semantic nonsense.
>They are measuring strength of the kinds of muscles good at making you agile. Not what normal people understand to be raw strength.
Now who's being semantic? What is "what normal people understand to be raw strength"? The ability to hit something hard? Efficiency of motion, and relies significantly on core and lower body strength. You don't need to be a powerlifter to be able to hit something hard. Carrying heavy weights? Again, lower body and core strength and stability.
>Aready did. Christiano Ronaldo.
Yes, this is exactly the physique I would expect from someone with terrible strength.
>Most divegrass players really. I spent most of my life being high agility and (relatively) low strength.
Most divegrass players do not have objectively low strength, they're athletes. Assuming you're not a professional athlete, the fact that your 12-DEX, 10-STR self could outrun a bunch of 8-DEX, 8-STR never-weres on the weekend is meaningless. The average person is unable to do even a single pull-up if they haven't practiced before. You might not have had a high Strength, but that doesn't mean you have an objectively low Strength.
>>relatively
There we go.
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>>3934894
>The discussion is about whether agility is a function of strength or is independent of it. Very autistic, I know.
It’s actually about muscle wizards. This is a side tangent of the flavor “but what about DnD, see? PoE stats aren’t so silly after all!”
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>>3934888
>>3934900 (me)
Forgot my image like an idiot.
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>>3934757
>They operate in discrete turns,
They play in real time.
You know where the next turn button is in eu4?
There isn't one.
If you just sit there time passes in Real Time™.
Luckily if you're playing singleplayer, and there's too much stuff you wanna do, you can press space, since the game is designed With Pause™.
Things may take any number of days in game to happen, but you just let the time flow in real time and it happens.
It reminds me a lot of another game, an rpg.
Called Baldur's Gate, maybe you've heard of it, probably haven't played it though it's too complicated for you and a bit before your time.
Anyway.
You know where the next turn button is in bg1?
There isn't one.
If you just sit there time passes in Real Time™.
Luckily, if there's too much stuff you wanna do, you can press space, since the game is designed With Pause™.
Things may take any number of Turns or Rounds in game to happen, but you just let the time flow in real time and it happens.
We use an acronym to describe such a system, rtwp.
It stands for Real Time with Pause, it's a bit of a hint on how the game is played,
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>>3934641
Exactly, Game design is king, so whatever little edge the old games had on story, at the end of the day its gone with that huge gap in game design + aesthetics.
and if im being honest with you, 1 had mediocre story with bad characters and 2 had better characters and story but not really comparable to any top tier jrpg or movie game, so at the end of the day its not worth it unless you really really really like ad&d 2e.
There is just very little reason to keep playing them beyond checking out what it was like before.
im watching twin peaks right now and thats some really good storytelling, why would i spend 200 hours on a mediocre high fantasy story for a roleplaying game that plays poorly? i just dont get those storyfag bioware fans bro, if it was planescape, xenogears, legacy of kain or like something like a visual novel i would say ehh i get it, but to slog through a long ass game for this? i dont get it, but if people find that fun then good for them i guess.
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>>3923170
>game mechanics that trigger your tism
-I hate trash mobs and lazy encounter design
-I also hate scaled loot, Diablo-like leveled loot that become useless once you increase your main level 1 or 2 points
- Weight limit beyond what you wear is also annoying, its fine if it applies to items you hold but if its the whole bag its just annoyance.
-Also grinding sucks, if your game encourages grinding its probably low quality
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>>3935034
This is the bg3 thread and that game is probably the antithesis to all of those points since it has handmade encounters, act 1 loot is endgame capable, and there's no grinding.
Weight limit is just there to discourage hoarding unnecessary trash and to balance barrelmancy somewhat.
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>>3934894
Yeah and I answered that. The answer is that yes, they are linked, but they are also sufficiently distinct that it's fine to have them as separate attributes in an RPG. Any other answer is wrong, which is why this post is garbage: >>3934900
>>relatively
>There we go.
Yes, exactly. In an RPG, stats are used to model traits for actors in the world. They are inherently relative. Your entire ridiculous overblown argument about the link between strength and agility completely misses this. The important question is whether there's sufficient difference between strength and agility to model them as independent attributes, and the answer is YES.
Picrel is a professional dancer, easily a 17-18 AGI. She's strong for her size, but look at those tiny arms. She is not lifting heavy objects, she's not performing feats of strength anywhere close to the D&D descriptions for strength above 11 at most.
Right now the best you've been able to do is argue that AGI shouldn't be more than 5 points above STR or some shit like that, at which point why bother with such a pointless faggot rule? Any game would be a lot more fun without it. If you somehow had a character sheet with an 18 AGI and 6 strength, you just give the character a suitably extraordinary description (eg some kind of wundergnome, weak and tiny but with amazing agility)
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>>3934999
>Things may take any number of days in game to happen, but you just let the time flow in real time and it happens.
You are fucking retarded. In EU, 1 day = 1 turn. While processing each turn, all players orders are executed simultaneously and with equal priority. There is no “real time”.
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>>3935040
Afik anything beyond a stat of 14 is superhuman because that's where commoners max out. (A soldier has 14 str a commoner who trained their whole life towards that stat)
And a level 1 character with a class already is superhuman. So any comparison to real people should be irrelevant.
This is compounded by the fact that for all classes except for rouge there's some training, or magical hand-wave characters have to go through to even get to level 1 of their class.
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>>3935040
>Yeah and I answered that. The answer is that yes, they are linked, but they are also sufficiently distinct that it's fine to have them as separate attributes in an RPG.
You answered it by disagreeing with it, which is why we've been having this whole discussion. If that means you're willing to concede, great. This entire argument was sparked by a discussion of D&D's attributes which do not distinguish Agility as a separate attribute, which is why there's no attribute called 'Agility;.
>which is why this post is garbage
"This post is garbage because I say so, so luckily for me I don't have to engage with it (because I have no argument to refute it)". Convenient! Just like how you could ignore my points about how you were wrong about people who are both strong and agile needing to be "on the slender side", how you were wrong about horseriders, how you were wrong about Strength and Dexterity affecting accuracy... that seems to happen a lot, doesn't it?
>Picrel is a professional dancer, easily a 17-18 AGI.
No chance. 18 is peak human ability, the absolute apex of what a human can achieve without magical or other aid. That's an olympic level gymnast or Cristiano Ronaldo, not the thousands of professional dancers out there. I again refer you to their physiques.
>Right now the best you've been able to do is argue that AGI shouldn't be more than 5 points above STR or some shit like that, at which point why bother with such a pointless faggot rule? Any game would be a lot more fun without it.
The whole point I am making is that people criticise PoE for having stats that are "gamey" and "arbitrary" while apparently "everyone understands" D&D's stats and there's no confusion or uncertaintly there, but as soon as you spend any time at all actually thinking about D&D's stats you'll see that they're just as "gamey" and "arbitrary" as those in PoE.
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>>3935028
>I just don't get those storyfag bio ware fans bro
Its nostalgia pure and simple through and through. Their confusing the objective quality of a game with the nostalgia they have wrapped around it. When you try and point that out, their core argument is "le retarded zoomer" and in some sense they're correct, about the second part at least. My ability to play bg 1, 2 and 3, with fresh eyes at the age of 26, allows me to see and compare them much more clearly than I otherwise would have if I had played bg1/2 10, 20 years prior.
They're fundamentally trapped in an illusion with a distinct inability to take off the nostalgia goggles cemented to their forehead, and attempt to evaluate all three games objectively.
>>3934767
Its okay if you like bg2 more than 3 due to nostalgia, but don't delude yourself in thinking its better by virtually any objective metric. Its not and never will be.
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>>3935563
>Its okay if you like bg2 more than 3 due to nostalgia, but don't delude yourself in thinking its better by virtually any objective metric. Its not and never will be.
What are the arguments for bg1 and bg2 being better?
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>>3935563
>objective quality of a game
>attempt to evaluate all three games objectively
>by virtually any objective metric.
This is why people call you a retarded zoomer. Not because “um akshually *pushes glasses up* BG2 is objectively superior”, but because subjectively, you like BG3 better, and because you are young and lack experience and wisdom, you’ve confused your subjective experiences and opinions with some non-existent “objectivity” in order to make yourself feel like a very smart big boy with “objectively correct” opinions.Many such cases.
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>>3935572
For one thing, they don't use 5e mechanics. For another, the companions' dialogues might not have the same word count, but that's because they don't just clutter your game with idle prattle and Marvel quips. For yet another, the environments were meaningful, rather than just large. Every scene you were in had some reason to exist, with something to do there. There wasn't any empty back and forth walking simulation just so you could watch goon bait walking animations.
Characters in the game actually fit the setting and atmosphere. They weren't neon-colored butch muscle dommy mommies shouting random retard bylines or bigoted hyperslut stereotypes who only exist to simper and sneer sarcastically before trying (and failing) to make you feel bad for brutally murdering them because they betrayed you while being a COMPLETE asshole about it. For another, there aren't any paladins who've made pacts with demons but are totally amazing, good, honest heroes.
There's also a real reason why the player character should be involved in the plot as the protagonist. Rather than just being a random who saves the day through the power of friendship.
But I can give you real reasons if the shallow obvious ones aren't sufficient to give you an idea. Because I doubt you really have the attention span to get into critical literary analysis or art history.
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>>3935328
You're talking about abstractions.
RPGs can use high or low level abstractions to simulate a world. Even a simple RPG with only two stats (Phys+Mind), can still work. It's intuitive: "everyone knows what it means." You assign skill checks to one or the other and envision different character morphs based on the scores. Secondary details like class and specialization can add distinctiveness. It's intuitive no matter how you nitpick the edge cases.
When D&D breaks down, it's usually due to the higher level of abstraction and necessity to make choices, especially under the constraints of a PnP system. There are some arbitrary decisions, but they're arbitrary within the scope of what's already intuitive. An "attack" is a short segment of a melee engagement between two combatants, abstracted into a single to-hit roll and damage roll, where STR modifies the success of the attacker and DEX modifies the success of the defender. Whether agility counts more under STR or DEX is left to the imagination, it doesn't really matter. What's NOT in dispute is that physical attributes should affect the outcome of a melee engagement.
PoE fails because the arbitrary choices are made OUTSIDE scope of intuition or even directly contradict intuition. No one disputes that STR and DEX are relevant, only the exact details on how to do it. There's no similar agreement that "Area of Effect" should be tied directly to ANY stat, much less intelligence. So the arbitrariness of the decision is much more apparent. Meanwhile, the Might stat links concepts that are completely and totally separate by presumption.
So the stats just don't feel right, in PoE. A high-int character doesn't feel like a high-int character. A high-might character doesn't feel like a strong character. There's too much dissonance. And again, don't compare to D&D. D&D has its problems, but it's also an archaic system. PoE should be BETTER than D&D, by a long shot. But it's not.
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>>3923170
>Are there any other game mechanics that trigger your tism?
Those god damn perma-invisible Sanctuary Baal Assassins in act 3. Sure, just make everything but AoE spells completely useless when I'm here to save a child.
>>3934854
Dark Souls does have it's issues in the stat system, namely that you have these various damage stats and if they aren't on your weapon/spell type they are entirely useless. But of course the Souls games are point-buy where you constantly add one point after the other as you wish. That's very different from the D&D lineage games where the bulk of your stats comes at character creation and you'll never "grow" into a different archetype - at best you re-create the character.
Personally I really dislike the D&D approach for video games because it puts the most important decisions at a point where you are the least qualified to make those decisions. But that's because I like to go in blind into games, experiment and figure things out along the way.
While PoE might be unintuitive not all stats work are home-runs, I think we're better off for having it and chipping away at the D&D dominance in the CRPG market. Though like some anon above said, the generic damage scaling is too much and different skill families scaling with different stats would be a quick improvement. It's what I'll be using for my game dev for sure.
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>>3935653
PoE disliker here: I will say that I agree with the principle of “all stats should matter for all classes to discourage dumping and min maxing”, even if the implementation wasn’t great. And I also really liked its miss/graze/hit/crit granularity rather than binary miss/hit. What id like to see next would be a system that sums multiple dice to normalize results rather than a flat d100 or d20 distribution.
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>>3935661
>What id like to see next would be a system that sums multiple dice to normalize results rather than a flat d100 or d20 distribution.
There are systems like that, Sword World for example. I've also heard that some people roll 3d6 instead of d20.
And I agree that d20 is garbage.
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>>3935604
>>3935652
yeesh so much of this is just painfully wrong, many of his claims are outright falsehood characterizations, followed by uncommon personal preferences hyperspecific to things he likes that have no bearing or involve any kind of objective 1 for 1 comparison(writing, story, characters, dialogue trees, player impact on story,) I could unravel it word by word, but I have a thing to attend. Might check back later for a more thorough explanation of why this anons words are driven by nostalgia and hyperspecific preference, and are for the most part incorrect.
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>>3935661
>>3935679
Path of Exile does this a little bit: Their Evasion mechanic is not random, instead you roll one starting value, then add enemies' hit roll until you hit 100 and that last attack now hits you.
They also treat minimum and maximum damage at separate stats, but they mostly use it for more randomness: The gimmick for Lighting damage is that it has a high roll-range which allows it to trigger bigger status effects. Many effects then only add Maximum Lightning damage so you only get 50% of the value. Unless you use the Lucky mechanic(roll twice, take higher result), which gets better the higher your damage range is.
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>>3935735
Ew, that entire comment is just so painfully wrong, nothing but outright falsehoods and mischaracterizations, personal preferences presented as objective facts all in one rambling runon sentence without any proper punctuation or capitalization.
Shut the fucking fuck up. You're underage, you just loudly announced it to everyone, and you shouldn't be here. Pipe down little retard before the jannies tell your ISP to call your mom about it since it's illegal in many states for you to be here.
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>>3935652
You can't argue people out of positions they didn't argue themselves into. People who think BG3 is the second coming of Jesus fucking Christ are delusional contrarians forming their opinions on nothing more than high-poly titties and strobing glittergore. They would tell you with absolute sincerity that Magical Girl Hentai Harem 3.2 is the best RPG ever made because it has huuuuuuuge writings and juicy plots.
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>>3935847
>you're underage
Nope, wrong again.
Playing the part of a grammar Nazi(on an image board)is always a surefire sign of having nothing of value to add to the conversation, least of all a legitmate counterargument.
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>>3935653
>Dark Souls does have it's issues[...] you have these various damage stats and if they aren't on your weapon/spell type they are useless
That's not really a major issue. Any stat value (low or high) will be reflected in the character in what they can do and how they can use certain weapons and spells. And for some weapon/ability types, it's clearly a conscious decision to ignore stats entirely (pyromancy, dragon weapons). Ultimately Dark Souls is an action game with stats, moreso than an RPG, and reasonably skilled players can ignore the RPG mechanics altogether if they want to.
It's a mistake to over-prioritize making every single stat meaningful at all times and fretting about dump stats too much. It's fine to have the player be able to make choices (especially temporary choices like equipped weapon or prepared spell) that render certain stats meaningless, so long as there exist good builds that do express both stats.
>Though like some anon above said, the generic damage scaling is too much and different skill families scaling with different stats would be a quick improvement.
Right, though in this case if you want divination to scale with perception, you may have to accept that a divination-focused build may use mostly abilities that don't scale from any other stats. Although this would be a lot of work, my inclination is to assign scaling case by case. So maybe with an AoE slow spell, you scale the AoE and duration from STR, because you're channeling a magical force to slow down your opponents. But maybe Repulsive Visage doesn't have an AoE radius at all and instead just affects enemies based on their line-of-sight and maybe a reverse perception check.
A lot of work, potential for mistakes, but the result would be soulful.
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>>3935850
>People who think BG3 is the second coming of Jesus fucking Christ are delusional contrarians forming their opinions on nothing more than high-poly titties and strobing glittergore.
I don’t think people are contrarian for liking BG3. I just think they have poor taste, and enjoy consooming dumb popular things.
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>>3936183
>That's contrarianism.
Contrarianism originally meant being argumentative or disagreeable, having a contrary opinion for its own sake (which we do see much of on this board), rather than having a discussion intended to arrive at the truth, or to express sincere opinions. Even if you want to use it in its more modern sense of "disliking something solely because it's popular and widely liked" (virtually every discussion of BG3 on this board will see BG3 fanboys call BG3 haters 'contrarian' in this sense), it depends on the motivations of that anon. If someone genuinely dislikes BG3 and thinks it's bad, that's not necessarily a contrarian opinion. A contrarian opinion is based upon the opinions of others, inverted. A sincere expression of one's own opinion, regardless of others' viewpoint, is not inherently a contrarian position, even if the weight of public opinion disagrees.
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>>3935790
The "objective metric" is (albeit loosely)applied when one tries to evaluate or "measure" aspects of the game objectively and remove subjectivity from the analysis. That way you can approximate its objective value. In an absolute sense this is impossible, but when it comes to art the best we can do is try* to analyze objectively and when you do that toward a given work, what you arrive at is an approximation of its objective value, irregardless of preference.
Take for instance "The Godfather", I can tell by watching it that its a masterpiece, the writing, the acting, looking through an objective lens, but I wouldn't want to watch it again. Its just not my kind of movie.
I think part of the trap those folks who have been swooned by bg2 nostalgia fall into is well... this exact thing. Its not exactly rocket science. Don't get me wrong bg2 is a great game in its own right, especially for its time, it even stands the test of time. But to answer your question clearly and succinctly
>What objective metric makes bg3 better
The "objective metric" is anyone and everyone trying to measure aspects of the game up against those same aspects that were in bg2 through an objective lens.
As for what what aspects of bg3 are better than 2.
>Characters (deeper emotional complexity)
>Dialogue (conveys character complexity and nuance better)
>Dialogue trees/impact on story (More intricate pathways and outcomes)
>combat/level design (three dimensional, environmental intractable mechanics)
>Music (more complex, better establishes tone)
>Graphics/artstyle (more detailed, three dimensional,)
>Voice acting (no contest)
>Animations (physical attacks, spells, lip syncing, gestures, everything)
>Story (while bg2 had a great plot and cute characters, they don't have the writing or staying power to deliver a powerful story like bg3 can, a good story is at least half made by its characters)
Shout outs to BG2
>Progression doesn't get gimped
>Pacing
>6 party
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>>3923170
>Most BG3 threads devolve into the same 2 or 3 talking points, so let's have an autistic mechanics thread.
Thats because its borong and bad d&d mechanics and arent worth discussong. The only fun gameplay was picking up and throwing goblins off of cliffs. Everything else was unfun and annoying.
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>>3936580
>Take for instance "The Godfather", I can tell by watching it that its a masterpiece, the writing, the acting, looking through an objective lens, but I wouldn't want to watch it again. Its just not my kind of movie.
What are you, a faggot?
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>>3936580
>Characters (deeper emotional complexity)
Strongly disagree. BG3s characters were absolute dogshit with no exceptions.
>Dialogue (conveys character complexity and nuance better)
Strongly disagree. BG3s dialogue was absolute dogshit, and frequently immersion-breakingly cringe.
>Dialogue trees/impact on story (More intricate pathways and outcomes)
Likely true.
>combat/level design (three dimensional, environmental intractable mechanics)
Level design I’ll give you, and I personally prefer turn based over RTWP, but BG3 was hampered by using 5th ed rules, which are trash.
>Music (more complex, better establishes tone)
I would hesitate to say it’s better than BG 1 or 2, but the music in BG3 was decent. Can’t complain.
>Graphics/artstyle (more detailed, three dimensional,)
This is clearly true, and I doubt anyone would disagree.
>Voice acting (no contest)
I disagree. Full voice acting is a plague on games. It’s for zoomers who can’t read. I much prefer having only initial/important lines voiced for characterization and then the rest text.
>Animations (physical attacks, spells, lip syncing, gestures, everything)
Clearly true.
>Story (while bg2 had a great plot and cute characters, they don't have the writing or staying power to deliver a powerful story like bg3 can, a good story is at least half made by its characters)
BG3s story and writing are absolutely terrible, though. Like, some of the worst I’ve ever played. I could imagine someone saying they liked the game despite the story and writing, but praising it? Unfathomable to me.
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>>3935661
>I will say that I agree with the principle of “all stats should matter for all classes to discourage dumping and min maxing”, even if the implementation wasn’t great.
It was one of the most soulless systems I've seen in an RPG. Autistically anal at outlawing fun. FUCK THAT SHIT.
The game is very lucky to have the setting and descent storytelling it had because its RPG system is such pretentious rubbish. I wanted to drop it, but instead I suffered it throughh the whole game for the story.
Also fuck Thaos. Obliterate Thaos.
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>>3936801
>anal at outlawing fun
Exactly. I didn't go into PoE looking to critique it. I like rtwp, the setting seemed cool and the story ok. But the gameplay was boring the shit it of me. It felt like a hassle and I wasn't excited about any of my character's growth potential. It was on reflection I started identifying the reasons why I felt that way.
BG3 might be the opposite. I have heard praise for the combat and encounters, but I haven't even gotten to any real fights. I can't get past the retard waves emanating from the writing and cringe cutscenes. They begin melting my brain from the first minutes of the intro.
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>>3936801
>>3936848
Skill issue, both Pillars games have tons of broken stuff you can do. It's also not really true that all stats are equally important for all classes, it's just that most classes have more viable approaches to the stat block rather than the rather restricted sets typically found in d&d-likes.
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>>3936848
>I like rtwp, the setting seemed cool and the story ok.
Same, I like the game despite the retarded high-IQ barbarians, muscle wizards and healers and warrirors deflicting swords by the force of "their resolve".
Besides that, my main gripe with the games is the inclusion of guns, which is something I think is detrimental to fantasy settings. Otherwise I'm a fan and I actually love the PoE plot. Great buildup of the backstory that is revealedat the end it turned out I betrayed my lover, handing her to the inquisition boss to torture and kill, because he promised me that gods will forgive my apparently horrible previous sins - I think it is based on some response in dialogue I gave earlier, and that fucking rocks. IIRC the character in the past then goes insane fucking up his soul over the whole future cycles of reincarnation when he finds out what is worshipped as gods is fake and they won't forgive anything- bravo.
And I prefer real time over turn based too. BG3 fights, I liked them but the problem is, given how they drag out, there is way too little of them. You can get all the way to the end of the map in the early access without fighting anything - and I don't mean using diplomacy or stealth, just sidestepping the few monsters.
It kills the excitement of making a cool mage or fighter when you don't have places to flex the character. That's what's good about the so called "trash mob spam" in things like WotR - retards or obtuse posers clearly don't get it though.
>>3937186
Exactly, I was not defending it, I was throwing shit on that brainfart idea.
>>3937200
>Maybe the terminal autist comment was reserved for Sawyer, hard to tell.
At whoever is behind that, yeah. No idea who's responsible.
>>3936917
>Skill issue
Read again. I beat the game easily, idiot, playing on hard. I'm not complaining about the rules being hard, I'm complaining about them being ridiculous and insulting the intelligence of a non-retard player.
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>>3937185
>A cat is MORE agile than us while being far physically weaker.
Yes, that's what the post says. Congratulations on being unable to demonstrate even the most basic reading comprehension.
>>muh pound for pound
>Irrelevant
Bears exist, so humans aren't strong and this whole argument was based on a lie. Thanks for the concession.
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>>3923185
>you can't tell what weapon is hitting anyway
people really don't know the mechanics of the IE games
they are obscure so I don't blame them
but iirc you only ever attack once with the offhand weapon during a round (imp haste and whirwind being exceptions)
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>>3937229
You are probably thinking some PoE equivalent of Dip 3 levels of sewage extractor and special attack with 30 feet hose while the rest of the part buffs you with stinking cloud that you ignore because you wear the boots from ACT 4.
Those are not fun buids, those are gimmicky builds. Fun builds have to have proper fantasy aesthetic and flavor. Which is why people like fucking shit up melee range while dual wielding swords instead of tanking with two shields waiting for the mage to finally land their crowd control spell.
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this has been said before numerous times, but here goes:
sawyer was inherently wrong in thinking that a single player crpg needs to be "balanced", it's better to think of different options as roleplay/difficulty options and not obsessively seek the most mathematically optimal choice for builds and equipment
MOST OFTEN YOU WILL OPTIMIZE THE FUN OUT OF YOUR GAME IF YOU SET YOUR FOOT ON THIS PATH. Challenge modes are an exception, but then you're the kind of player playing for the optimization challenge, might as well become a tax lawyer at that point. Yes games should strive to have some kind of balance, but not to an autistic degree and some relatively hidden ways to break the game are pretty much universally fun. This is obviously different if the game is in some way competetive or otherwise performative (high scores etc).
sawyer was also retarded in trying to re-invent the wheel when it comes to PoE's mechanics, yes your wheel is different but it's now rectangular and retarded; your pencilneck barbarian and beefcake wizard surely are totally subversive, but when it's not supposed to be a gimmick / rarity it ends up being retarded again. some people have already brough up the stupidity in the levels of abstraction the poe system has so I don't need to go over that again
Oh yeah and for the actual topic: 5e is a watered-down 3.5 so - fpbp >>3923172
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>>3937232
>sawyer was inherently wrong in thinking that a single player crpg needs to be "balanced", it's better to think of different options as roleplay/difficulty options and not obsessively seek the most mathematically optimal choice for builds and equipment
Amen.
That goes for example for the lack of getting XP from monsters so that you can't grind ahead or something. But then the game throws heaps of XP at you for the easiest quests and tasks and the silly stronghold adventurers. WHich can be trivially exploited by kicking people out of party to inflate the rewards, making the whole exercise in autism pointless and only ending up with worse shit than you started with.
Don't fix what aint broke.
What I love about WotR is that is doesn't worry about BUT MUH BALANCED much. So there could be riding on dinosaurs? Here you go!
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>>3937231
>You are probably thinking some PoE equivalent of two things (dipping and prebuffing) that don't exist in the game, because I'm too retarded to actually make a salient point instead of talking about other games
Good argument.
>Fun builds have to have proper fantasy aesthetic and flavor. Which is why people like fucking shit up melee range while dual wielding swords instead of tanking with two shields waiting for the mage to finally land their crowd control spell
You can do that in Pillars very easily, though. DW fighters/rogues/monks are all very strong builds that are great from level 1.
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>>3937241
>You can do that in Pillars very easily, though. DW fighters/rogues/monks are all very strong builds that are great from level 1.
Yes but it's basic. You can't get fancy shit like bloodlines, wings, that sort of crap that is very bad taste but also very fun.
I played Priest of Eothas by the way, and the initial idea to be a goodfag in the game was a pretty good choice for flavor in the end, given the story.
Had to get a bit cheaty because I hate flails and the other weapon for aesthetic reasons, so I decided the guy is a convert from another religion and started as a priest with more cool favored weapons, then edited the character into Eothas.
Makes a bit of sense to me too - the values worshipped by most of the gods can be kinda stinky and somebody seeking to be better could have a crisis of faith and abandoning them to be more humanist. And then find out all that, heh.
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>>3937241
nta, but just thought to say:
I haven't played PoE1 in a long time and I played the early release versions, but at least back then from the perspective of effective resource management and ease-of-use the most effective builds were gimmicky as hell, like having a full firing line, using the wolf familiar as a projectile to spam ectopsychic echo (or w/e it was), using a single tank to deny 99% of the battlefield etc.
I'm neutral on how fun or unfun those were, but they were certainly at least a degree of gimmickyness higher than what I usually get in crpgs
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>>3937255
>having a full firing line
Much as I hate it, that's actually a realistic thing, BUT - you would discharge your prepared firearms or crossbows (really, fantasy is better without firearms, those scream that modernity will invade the world), and then toss them and draw blades or take your spears (which are less cool but effective and safer, IRL) and charge the surprised and bleeding oponents.
If the game is going to be like this, the engine should have support for it. Would be nice if there was automatic support for this style of combat (fire guns once, don't reload but switch to close-range weapons for the rest of the fight, then reload/make ready the firearms for starting the next fight). I hate doing that manually and stuffing powder and bullet into your club for 15 seconds in the heated critical starting phase of combat is so silly.
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>>3937260
>those scream that modernity will invade the world
Literally the main theme of the game by the way.
>If the game is going to be like this, the engine should have support for it. Would be nice if there was automatic support for this style of combat (fire guns once, don't reload but switch to close-range weapons for the rest of the fight, then reload/make ready the firearms for starting the next fight).
This playstyle is quite literally mechanically accounted for, especially in Deadfire where you have a whole subclass dedicated to it.
>>3937250
>Yes but it's basic. You can't get fancy shit like bloodlines, wings, that sort of crap that is very bad taste but also very fun.
There's tons of this in the game though, shit like shotgun gun kata monks and timestop priests and whatnot.
>>3937232
That's not what the whole balance thing was about, it was quite literally about giving the players more options by avoiding the traditionally seemingly mandatory inclusion of pointless trap options nobody ever used anyway.
I don't even like PoE that much, but it's clear that most of the """"critics"""" on this board basically don't understand how to play the game.
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>>3937260
yeah I'm not exactly complaining about it, just saying that essentially having a squad of pike&shot felt a bit gimmicky
what did feel a lot gimicky was the something fast + EEcho combo; battles instantly devolved into enemies dying while trying to catch a wolf running around, it made the rest of the party feel redudant in comparison to my cipher,
also again: not a complaint, it was kinda funny
I think this was nerfed in a later patch as well
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>>3937263
When I noved onto Deadfire, I was looking for cool multiclass stuff to have for Watcher. Kinda wanted to be cipher bceause of the lore and non-combat implications.
Then I found that ascendant can just spam soul shock and vastly outdamage the rest of the party. Very effective, but it sucks that it kind makes you to do the same 1 thing in every combat situation. Or later hand out soul ignitions which is the same problem, done differently.
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>>3937250
>Yes but it's basic. You can't get fancy shit like bloodlines, wings, that sort of crap that is very bad taste but also very fun.
True, but there's not many games that offer options like that - and few of those that make them options that are actually fun to pick. I think the classes offer enough customization through their own options and the general feats and abilties, it's possible to build the same class in radically different ways like Frenzying fighters that want to get hit so they can attack better or Wizards that are essentially Fighter-Mages who fight on the front line.
Pillars offers plenty of fun options you don't necessarily see in other games, from things like classes (Fighters not just being full-attack machines, Rogues being able to inflict disables themselves, Monks have a bunch of active abilities) to weapon focus being by weapon group instead of single weapon, single-weapon fighting being its own style with its own bonuses, even things like being able to adjust the enchantments on weapons you find.
Your character being a convert is a great idea, mechanically I don't think editing your character was needed (it's just a small accuracy bonus, amusingly Eothas has one of the better bonuses if you're happy to use his weapons) but at the end of the day enjoying your character is what matters. I would've liked to see more character creation flavour in the game itself, backgrounds come up a fair bit but it would've been neat to pick a diety even for non-religious classes, for example. Coming in to the game for the first time I decided on playing an Eothas-worshipper which worked out well for the plot, ironically by the end of the game I ended up deciding to convert to Hylea.
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>>3937270
>True, but there's not many games that offer options like that
Yep, that's true. BG2 or BG1 wasn't that crazy either. But once you taste different stuff, you want it, sadly.
Would be cool if races had more level-unlocked special abilities and traits (godlikes really feel made for that, now that I think about it).
I liked getting those permament bonus traits and powers on the Watcher, that's also good.
I'm a simple person, when I played BG1 ages back I was a bit unhappy that a fighter has no cool abilities besides low thac0 and number of attacks, but when the story gave the protagonist a cure light wounds or two, I was immediately happy.
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>>3937255
In part that was due to bugs or other unintended interactions that ended up getting fixed (RIP the full-party Chanter gunline), partly things that were retuned or reanalyzed as the game kept being developed (with the expansions raising the level cap and bringing both extra abilities for every class and other factors like Durgan equipment) and part of it was just incomplete game knowledge on behalf of the players - one big 'meta' strategy at release and for a long time afterwards was giving your entire party arquebuses so they could get a volley off at the start of combat and instantly kill or cripple a couple of enemies. Over time people realised that for the most part this wasn't anywhere near as good a strategy as people had thought, because most characters like martials or casters are better off drinking a potion or using a scroll in that time instead. Shooting guns wasn't nerfed to be less powerful, it was just the perception that shifted over time as people understood the game better.
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>>3937280
>Over time people realised that for the most part this wasn't anywhere near as good a strategy as people had thought, because most characters like martials or casters are better off drinking a potion or using a scroll in that time instead.
Imagine using consumables ever for any reason, instead of haha party of fire enchanted dakkadakka go brrrrrr
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>>3937282
PoE has one of the bestbalancedimplementations of consumables being useful without being OP in the whole genre, imo
>prebuffing isn't possible so getting those buffs onto your characters quickly is important
>different consumables are useful in different situations rather than just always putting +strength and haste on your martials
>most effects are proportional bonuses and, due to the mechanics of things like crit chance and accuracy, useful at all levels, you don't end up with a bunch of potions that give you 1 Attack when your AB is already at 60
>consumables are strong and appropriately rare in the world but crafting gives you access to as many as you need without having to engage in tedious grinding
Don't get me wrong, a party gunline can be fun (and makes for a funny gimmick party idea). I still have fond memories of 1.0 where you could make a whole party of Chanters that stacked their reload buff and pretend you were the British Grenadiers.
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>>3937294
>prebuffing isn't possible so getting those buffs onto your characters quickly is important
except the vast amount of extremely unrealistic resting, food and prostitute (kek) bonuses
That part of the game feels silly.
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>>3937296
That's not really prebuffing in the traditional sense, it's a bit different to casting 30 spells just out of sight of enemies so you can rush in and murder a whole dungeon worth of enemies at once. Even something like Pathfinder has camping bonuses. Sure, the per-rest duration is a bit silly but implementing it with more realistic duration would just lead to players constantly eating food and leaving dungeons to refresh their buff duration, which is exactly what the system is designed to discourage (and which players still do despite the whole camping supplies mechanic encouraging you to pace yourself in dungeons).
I quite like the interaction between resting bonuses. Rest in an inn or your stronghold for a good buff, then when you're adventuring you get to choose when to rest and possibly get a camping bonus. But resting bonuses only last a certain amoun of rests, so you can stack them witha camping bonus in the field but then you might have to choose between resting again and regaining your resources but losing your buff, or pressing on with lower resources but with your bonuses still in place. Hardly the most complex or arduous system in the world but a nice little touch.
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>>3937315
>Hating short duration conventional buffs but somehow finding forever buffs (ahoy Deadfire) good?
Where did I say that? Pillars has short-duration conventional buffs, the potions and scrolls that I was originally talking about work like that. In the first game food is a timed buff, too.
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>>3937276
>Yep, that's true. BG2 or BG1 wasn't that crazy either. But once you taste different stuff, you want it, sadly.
That's true, but it's important to make sure they're implemented properly, fun to pick without being useless or so overpowered they're taken every time. Bloodlines have been implemented as far back as the NWN games but in the vast majority of cases there's no real reason to pick them when you could pick a more useful feature instead. The Pathfinder games did it pretty well, but have their own issue in that while it's fun to pick a bloodline that's thematic for your character, if you're playing a build that needs a bloodline bonus for a specific reason you get pushed towards the same options every time.
WotR addressed this by giving you options like Second Bloodline, but that doesn't so much fix the problem, it just gives you so many powerful options that it's hard to make a character that struggles even making very suboptimal choices.
I like your idea about scaling/evolving race bonuses, but again, the difficulty is in implementing and balancing them properly. If you make them compete with regular class features or perks they have to be strong enough to be competitive, but if you make it a separate system it's easy to end up with getting overpowered bonuses for free. It's not really an issue for me personally but I can see why designers don't go for it more.
>I liked getting those permament bonus traits and powers on the Watcher, that's also good.
>I'm a simple person, when I played BG1 ages back I was a bit unhappy that a fighter has no cool abilities besides low thac0 and number of attacks, but when the story gave the protagonist a cure light wounds or two, I was immediately happy.
Agreed, it doesn't have to be much but I always enjoy when games give you something like that. NWN2 also did it really well with history/epithet feats that you could pick up over the game, which often gave little bonuses or special abilities.
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>>3937232
It's also not striving to be different just for the sake of being different, which is a wanking thing. It makes the wanker feel good but ell, it is a pain to see the signs and trails of a dude wanking in the product you play.
Try to do a great thing and if that turns out to be different, you nailed a gold vein. If it turns out to resemble existing stuff, it may just mean you should not be a contrarian and toss is just because.
I suspect some of the autistic traits of PoE system may be motivated with this.
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>>3936580
The overall plot of BG3 was trite fantasy slop in the modern fashion, with a feel of making it up as the writers go along, and no uniting idea behind it. Basically your typical Macguffin hunt, with forgettable superevil bad guys thrown your way, dispatched, on to the next. That's combined with an obsession to connect everything to the lore and throw in "grand reveals" with no narrative impact whatsoever. Felt like a cheap mystery airport novel.
Compared to BG1+2, which was one of the more mature and psychological stories in the fantasy genre (SoA especially), and had a strong guiding theme, it's just amateurish.
That said, the characters and their dialogue are quite well written and enjoyable. Weird discrepancy, really. Let's say it was half a disappointment, but not a bad game. I suspect, like so many modern games, it has the series-binging audience in mind, with the next witty dialogue being so much more important than a developed theme.
Also, the connection to the older games does not extend beyond name- and reference-dropping, and old characters pointlessly reappearing (cue sitcom applause!). Though Minsc was loveable as ever, so it is forgiven.
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>>3937717
Yeah, "what does it mean to become a god and how does that affect your personal relationships with mortals you know and love?" and "what is the significance of personal choice compared to overwhelming destiny and the machinations of beings older and vaster than you are?" is just trite, immature slop.
Along with "what is the obligation of a god to its worshipers?" and "can violence accomplish good in the world?"
Just silly, trivial things.
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>>3937700
I fucking hate Minsc.
The primary thing I screen applicants for when I'm vetting players for my games is whether they intend to play a gimmick comedy character like that. Minsc is literally the exact thing that Lilarcor existed to mock...
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>>3937785
NTA but
>what does it mean to become a god and how does that affect your personal relationships with mortals you know and love?
is the last 5 minutes of ToB, not some overarching plot theme.
>what is the significance of personal choice compared to overwhelming destiny and the machinations of beings older and vaster than you are?
Eh, it's so general that it can be applied to most RPGs.
>what is the obligation of a god to its worshipers?
That one is not a good example either. Ao states it clearly post ToT, which is also when BG happens.
>can violence accomplish good in the world?
Come on now.
BG1 is borderline hack-and-slash while BG2 is more plot and character focused, but let's not pretend that Irenicus and his plot are something extraordinary. BG2 lives by the vastness of the city and the number of side quests, including companion ones that were quite revolutionary at the time, but the plot proper is not philosophical at all. It's just an adventure with added personal stakes, and that's fine.
Games like Planescape Torment or Mask of the Betrayer can be counted amongst these that have "mature psychological stories," but BG1 or 2 certainly can't, which does not mean they are bad games. And even if one dislikes them, they still have to admit they were a huge leap forward in the industry.
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>>3937717
Yes, apart from what the other anon said, bg2 has the properly developed theme of inheritance and being subjected to the designs of your parent (stand-in for some overwhelming godlike influence) despite yourself, possibly. It does a good job reflecting how your life revolves around murder and violence even if it's the last thing you wanted, but also how seductive your own violent instincts really are and how pleasant it is to just give in and get drunk on raw physical power. This is some rare thoughtfulness in games that are all about hacking and slashing and leaving mountains of corpses in your wake every time.
Then there's Irenicus, a great villain. His "motivation" is one of the better ones: a sort of artificially induced depression as punishment for overambition. Is it a humane punishment? Well, it's certainly tragic and reading about how his soulfulness, appreciation for beauty etc gradually leaves him makes you sympathize just a little bit. It's also a nice mirroring: you want, assuming a good run, to rid yourself of your unchosen nature and destiny as a purely destructive force, while he wants to fill himself with just that, after having been emptied out of everything noble and good.
Other writing highlights are Imoen's loss of innocence and the Jaheira romance. Yes, all that is mature and psychological. Maybe not Tolstoy but excellent as far as fantasy goes.
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>>3937929
<3
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>>3937879
>is the last 5 minutes of ToB, not some overarching plot theme.
Wow, so you literally did not play even a single moment of the game, and you're just... screaming that at all of us. Listen, if you didn't play the game, that's ok and whatever? But maybe you shouldn't talk about things when you don't know anything about them.
I know you're having trouble with social skills and context cues and stuff, so let me try to rephrase that more directly for you:
Stop talking.
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>>3937895
Well put, anon.
I might add that Irenicus also involves a heaping spoonful of incel fixation, which you can see as you escape his lair in the beginning of the game where he was growing clones of his obsession and constructing a perfect replica of her bedroom so he could rape those clones there.
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>>3937879
>BG1 is borderline hack-and-slash
Funny how at the time, BG1 was considered atypically narrative-oriented simply for having main character with a fixed backstory and special destiny. The game was praised for pulling it off.
>let's not pretend that Irenicus and his plot are something extraordinary.
I wouldn't call Irenicus an "extraordinary" villain but he is a consistently effective primary antagonist, a Mad Wizard suitable for the main storyline and "campaign level" of Shadows of Amn. Plus he has a superb voice actor. He's easily an 8/10 on the fundamentals before we get into any advanced fart-huffing bullshit about philosophy and themes.
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>>3938017
>I wouldn't call Irenicus an "extraordinary" villain but he is a consistently effective primary antagonist
Yes, exactly. He does his job as an antagonist well enough, so it's neither a downside of BG2 nor any particular strength. It works, and that's it.
>Plus he has a superb voice actor.
And that's what made him memorable. If they found some shmuck with a barely working microphone, Irenicus would be ignored or hated today.
>BG1 was considered atypically narrative-oriented
That's also true, and companions expressing the bare minimum of character was shocking to everyone. It was revolutionary, as I said. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the medium evolved since then, gamers started expecting more, the designers learned they can push the art further, and something that at the time was a trailblazer ultimately became the norm. That's just life.
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>>3937895
Your good with words ill give you that. An articulate sophist can make anything sound sophisticated, deep, complex I could apply the same wordsmithing to say BG3 writing, themes, story, characters and make it sound very* mature if I wanted to.
You're really quite adept at this actually. A lot of the "mature" and "psychological" ideas your exploring with your elaborate wordplay is really just an additive projection. You thought about it more than the writers did, and ascribe deep meanings and purposes to things that were never really that deep or purposeful.
I played BG2, it was a good game, with a good story, but I know what it is, what it isn't, and how "psychological" it really was.
You can fool those who haven't played with your wordplay, even those drowning in nostalgia with it, but you can't fool me.