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Pillars of Eternity by Obsidian Entertainment (Kickstarter) [Up: Teaser]
- Thread starter duckroll
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Don't advocate for poor mechanics!
Respeccing is cheap and cheating.
It takes a lot of the tension and excitement out for me when your choice doesn't really matter.
Not allowing for respecs is poor mechanically. If you want tension and excitement in your specs then make it a hard decision on which ability to choose, don't handicap me into a poor build because I made a bad choice 30 hours ago.
while i agree, people will simply use trainers or mods to respec anyway. Might as well put a possibility in the game for those that want it.
Bad choices are a part of life and should be a part of RPGs.
I like the fact that you are stuck with the choice you made.
Also, more reason to replay the game if you can't respec.
No, that's a relic of gamings past that should go into the trash bin along with checkpoint save system.
If you want people to finish your game, don't make it hard for them to finish it.
We can make it the best of both worlds and give someone a long and epic quest in order to gain access to the ability to re-spec.
Also it discourages experimentation of builds.
It's the consequence of the immediate choice. Work to make the abilities have interesting interactions with each other and give us the chance to try out different builds without having to plow through 30 hours again.
If there's no consequence, then there was never really choice.
If it helps you choose. Remember that this game will have Windows and Mac versions, if it has Steam Play and if you have a Mac you ultimately get two games for the price of one.
Great update! I love the idea that we'll be getting frequent updates 
Can't wait to hear more!
Can't wait to hear more!
They said the middleware costs are too high.
Keep repecing out of my single player game. It might have a place in MMO where skills take many, many hours to level and you can put in hundreds of hours with one character. In a single player game though it should be designed well enough that respecing is not needed at all. Even some off the wall crazy build should be doable even if hard.
and then there is also this reason as well.
and then there is also this reason as well.
I'm pretty sure Sawyer's talked about respeccing on Formspring some time or other, but if I had to guess I'd say respeccing goes against his design philosophy. That skills you invest in should be useful from start to finish of the game.
Maybe not against but it doesn't sound compatible.
Maybe not against but it doesn't sound compatible.
What they should ideally do is make it possible for a variety of builds to progress through the game, with less of a chance of someone screwing up a build so badly that they end up stuck.
Offering a respec option is a bandaid fix and ends up just creating the illusion of choice. Permanence in RPGs tends to always be a good thing.
TW2 and Dark Souls have such incredible armor design. I just stare at the costumes from time to time.
Respec in an Obsidian game is a very bad feature to implement. Unlike in a, say, loot game, skills in an Obsidian game cover combat, non-combat and utility functions. Allowing to respec would probably mess up the reactivity of the world, both what has gone by and what could happen.
Sentenza
Member
Well, not exactly. You were able to "rotate" between three different classes, but that's pretty much it.
Every class had the current spec memorized and stat points were permanent choices across all three.
Yes, so much yes.
By the way, I wouldn't mind Obs using the Red Engine one bit
I agree.
I think the desire to respec goes beyond "i screwed up my build".
Sometimes you are simply sick of your fighter and you want to try to play as a mage without having to start over from scratch.
Personally i like consequence to my choices, however i have yet to see an RPG without a respec mod. Why not simply make a decent integration into the game? Nobody has to use it.
Exactly. On top of that respecing is just an out for devs to cover up poor design. I can forgive it in MMOs. Because when you add in the variables of player interactions you can't of possibly thought of everything. In a single player game you should be able to make it so no skill is useless and if you can't just cut that skill.
I don't think "someone will make a mod for it" is really a great reason to include a feature in a game. At most, it's a reason to put in a console command to save the modders time (like a god mode or infinite money), but that certainly doesn't mean it needs to be part of the core game. Anyway, if it is included, it should make sense from a roleplaying perspective--otherwise, just letting people decide halfway through that they've actually been playing a different character totally invalidates all the time they spent playing previously.
Cameron122
Member
I may be in the minority, but I hope it is 3D.
Perhaps, but it sounds ridiculous. The smooth talking sniper now causes riots by opening his mouth and can't hit a barn door. What might it mean for faction reputations?
Sentenza
Member
Didn't they hinted somewhere that they are going for 2D scenery and 3D characters, like in ToEE?
krameriffic
Member
I'm OK with it in games where it's clear by the skill/talent/spell/whatever design what you're doing and how to build your character. Old fashioned, deep cRPGs have a tendency to let you build yourself into a corner because mechanics are not easy to understand and use.
Sentenza
Member
Yeah, it may fit an hack'n slash or a MMO, but for a proper RPG, where NPCs are supposed to react to your choices, it's more harmful than good.
Also, we are talking about a party-based game here. Your companions are the ones who are supposed to compensate your weak points in terms of specialization.
i guess what i wanted to say is that it's a feature that usually a lot of people like/want.
I don't disagree with the rest of your post, I just tried to bring in a different point of view. Given the audience that funds this game i doubt there is going to be a huge demand for a respec option anyway.
I still can't believe there are people who cannot understand simple character building mechanics and they bich about it.
People just suck at RPG and they want to cheat their way. But they won't change to easy mode because easy mode is for noobs.
Fascinating.
People are born with weaknesses and strong sides due to their genetics. And they have to deal with life by utilizing their strong sides and knowing their weaknesses. If you built yourself into a corner, accept the failure because you can start it again. Or deal with it.
Deal with it is the proper answer. Characters without weekneses are boring imo.
EndcatOmega
Unconfirmed Member
Fixed for Obsidian Game!
Speaking of which, I do hope there's more non-combat stuff for people who invested in physical stats- MOTB had the lodge, and a few flashbacks you could only see with high CON, but the game still heavily rewarded high CHA and WIS.
Sentenza
Member
Do you mean something like Age of Decadence? Where pretty much every single skill (even "physical" ones) can also be used in a dialogue check eventually?
Wait, what? There's a substantial difference between imposing a morality system on a player and not letting a player screw up. You should definitely be able to make decisions that impact your ability to achieve your goal, whatever that might be.
A lot of skill checks and a lot more and a lot more !
Also i concur witch hiring artist from witcher2. Those armors were fucking sexy.
Yeah, me too. I can understand the game not being 3D, but I love being able to zoom in and rotate the camera at will.
We will probably know it in next 2 days. I personally don't have any opposition to 3D but making it 3D is a lot more expansive than 2D and rarely 3D engine is as responsive as 2D engine.
I would like it to be 2D completely but character personalization in 2D is hard.
2.5D engine might be the answer with 2D backgrounds and 3D characters (that looks like 2D characters). In 2,5D option rotating is not an option.
Shagg! GAF Inn!
You misunderstand me; I'm talking about the player, not the player-character. A good RPG should allow a player to pick build and roleplay it satisfactorily. In Arcanum, for example, if you rolled a guns-build, you're screwed. It ends up being a "bad decision" on the player part. So if the game presents so many number of skills, all of those skills should be useful from start to finish of the game and those skills should represent viable builds. There shouldn't be "bad" builds.
For the player-character, yes, there should be c&c. Those consequences should affect the PC, not the player.
My comment was in reaction to the "respec if I made a bad decision".
EndcatOmega
Unconfirmed Member
I haven't been following it much, but that sounds about right. It doesn't necessarily have to just be dialogue checks- there's obviously more use for WIS, CHA and INT in speech(or their equivalents) than the physical stats, but checks for pushing boulders out of the way, DEX nimbly grabbing things, whatever. Again, PST and NWN2 had a few, but not very many- I want to feel like I could play a physical character and see things a more cerebral characters would never see.
And preferably without the ability to cheat the system too much. Bloody druids.
Exactly what I thought when I read it! Shagg?s emails to Feargus are creating some ripple effect hehehehe
I don't think it's good comparition because i remember elephant gun being OP or is it just my memory ?
But yeah no mather where you go which skill you choose it should be usefull.
I'm not even sure I agree with that, to be honest... mostly because I think there is value in playing through a game as a limited character. Not every ability is equally useful in the real world and it can make for a very different (and probably lengthier) path to accomplish the same goals. To my mind, it's a much less artificial, more interesting way to allow people to increase difficulty than just adding a hard mode. As long as it's clearly indicated that certain options may result in a more difficult game, I think unbalanced skills are totally fine. I would say what should be really balanced is not the usefulness of abilities, but how much interesting content investing in those abilities provides. At least when I'm playing an RPG, while my PC's goal may be to get to the end as fast as possible, my goal is to actually experience the world in which that character lives--a skill that just makes it easier to do the same thing doesn't add very much for me as a player, while a comparatively "useless" ability that adds to the content I can experience is great. Maybe it should even be a combination of both--the less "useful" skills from a gameplay standpoint offer more unique content, incentivizing them even for people who aren't just looking for a challenge. I might be totally alone in that thinking, though.
Sentenza
Member
That's exactly like Age of Decadence then.
A game where even your "kill count" can help you in a dialogue check as an intimidating tool, for instance.
yeah, it's also very hard to get so unless you are set from the start to find this particular gun you are screwed.
I started Arcanum with 4 different builds (two of them were made after thorough reading of the manual) and failed at all of them (I wasn't able to get out of the mining town with my first 2 builds). Arcanum isn't a good RPG. There are some good builds which are doable but why should I use them if I want to roleplay my character.
did they fix combat? or is Vince still sitting high in his castle?