Eternity Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Pre-Release Thread [BETA RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[AwesomeButton]

Sure. And you can leave all your stats at 3 in Pillars as well. Or not wear any armour, ever. Or fight with your bare hands. Or gimp yourself in any of a million other ways. So what?

So, nothing. You said "IE games might not have had stats, everyone assigns his class' main stats to 18 anyway". I say this isn't a drawback of the IE games, but a decision the player may or may not make.

And why should a player make a decision where he'll deliberately gimp himself?

For some self-imposed role-playing challenge?

Why not? Who are you to decide how a player should have fun? What if the player wants to roleplay his paladin?

Fact is, the only thing you get out of it is the satisfaction of knowing that you can make a shitty character and still win.

Maybe that's what you get out of it. You can't apply your experience to everyone.

 

[Sizzle]

Sure. And you can leave all your stats at 3 in Pillars as well. Or not wear any armour, ever. Or fight with your bare hands. Or gimp yourself in any of a million other ways. So what?

So, nothing. You said "IE games might not have had stats, everyone assigns his class' main stats to 18 anyway". I say this isn't a drawback of the IE games, but a decision the player may or may not make.

And why should a player make a decision where he'll deliberately gimp himself?

For some self-imposed role-playing challenge?

Why not? Who are you to decide how a player should have fun? What if the player wants to roleplay his paladin?

Then the player should find a game where that's actually possible.

Speaking just for the IE games - how can you properly RP in a system where half the attributes are useless, a game never checks your stats, there are no skills, etc.?

Yes, you can make it all up in your head as you go along, but that's similar to the infamous Oblivion RP ideas.

 

[Background Character]

Yeah I already play a loser with below average stats irl why would I want to play as one in a videogame

 

[Lacrymas]

Is there a "modern" (after 1995) RPG where you can make a shitty character and not win? I don't make shitty characters so I wouldn't know.

 

[CptMace]

Yeah I already play a loser with below average stats irl why would I want to play as one in a videogame

Well for what it's worth, you display more WISDOM than most people there I'd say, a solid 13 !

 

[Iznaliu]

Is there a "modern" (after 1995) RPG where you can make a shitty character and not win? I don't make shitty characters so I wouldn't know.

I should make an RPG where it is impossible to make a good character.

 

[Sizzle]

Is there a "modern" (after 1995) RPG where you can make a shitty character and not win? I don't make shitty characters so I wouldn't know.

I should make an RPG where it is impossible to make a good character.

I can already see some people here that would love that sort of thing :D

- "After lots of tinkering with various builds, here's one for a fighter that manages to land every 12th punch. OP? Possibly, but it sure is fun to have a statistically negligible chance at winning!"

- "If you think about it - there's no way a mere human could ever be stronger than an orc and defeat one in direct combat. That's why this game is so good - it realistically portrays such a hypothetical fight. This game rocks, it kills you even faster than Dwarf Fortress!"

- "I died on the very first round of the very first fight! Even AoD didn't have the balls to pull that off! GOTY!

- "If I may offer a suggestion: there were some RPGs in the past where you could die during character creation. Could you implement that in this game as well? I would love to be given a chance to fail in this game before I even start playing it!"

 

[Mark Richard]

There's a series of wrestling simulators where you can purposely play a character with no potential who'll go through a middling career and never amount to anything.

 

[Grotesque]

Is there a "modern" (after 1995) RPG where you can make a shitty character and not win?

Just ask Avellone!

 

[Lacrymas]

There's a difference between making a shitty character and playing like someone with 5 thumbs lol.

 

[Parabalus]

Is there a "modern" (after 1995) RPG where you can make a shitty character and not win? I don't make shitty characters so I wouldn't know.

Despite the meme in PoE it's pretty easy to fuck up your characters - just consider how much people complain about the NPC attributes.

As for your question, seems pretty unlikely. In all party RPGs you can just get carried by NPCs. Pmuch all solo RPG's have deterministic chargen(no RNG fuckery + point buy) so even if e.g. you get handed a shitty char, if you pilot to the best of your ability you change your win condition. Glancing at the kodex top 50 this seems to deal with all listed RPGs.

Seems like a fun community thingie tho, you get handed a char sabotaged to the best of someone's ability and you have to do a playthrough.

 

[Sizzle]

 

[Prime Junta]

I like that laconic "No" for number 2.

 

[santino27]

Well, THAT is going to bug me for at least a little while.

"Let's compose a narrative that tries to explain why we're effectively restarting with the main character by grounding that event in the world's lore... and then at the same time, let's just fucking punt on any real effort explaining why the same thing happened to the three characters we decided to bring over with him/her."

 

[Quillon]

The game never acknowledged characters' progression power-wise, PC/party didn't get treated differently just cos we were low or high level so yeah it would have been good if there were a lore reason for all that but why should game tackle on Eder being level 1 again when his level never mattered through all 16 levels of him in PoE1?

 

[Lacrymas]

It's not the level that's the problem, it's the lost abilities. How did he unlearn his gained techniques?

 

[Father Foreskin]

Some skills are like riding a bike, you never lose the ability once you learnt it. Some skills are like jerking off without moving the blanket, be single for a month and its gone

 

[Quillon]

It's not the level that's the problem, it's the lost abilities. How did he unlearn his gained techniques?

Same thing, the game never acknowledged Eder's abilities in its narrative which prolly isn't a thing they would have went for anyway unlike if the game had reacted how he was a weak fighter in the beginning and again reacted to how much more powerful he became later on, which is something more likely they could have done. I'm not saying this justifies companions' returning to level 1 but there was always a disconnect between narrative and some gameplay elements. Its much more important Eder being Eder rather than him being X level fighter with "these" capabilities.

 

[Lacrymas]

I actually thought Pallegina, Aloth and Eder will be with you when Eothas barges in, so I didn't think to ask the question of how they lost their abilities.

 

[AwesomeButton]

In the years after they saved the Dyrwood, the Watcher and his companions gave themselves to hedonistic pleasures and idleness, which blunted the adventuring skills they had honed during their hunt for Thalos.

 

[Quillon]

I actually thought Pallegina, Aloth and Eder will be with you when Eothas barges in, so I didn't think to ask the question of how they lost their abilities.

It's been said Pallegina & Aloth went to Deadfire Arc. on their own account. Eder will accompany us, prolly right after the incident. If they are not dead

 

[Infinitron]

Sequels that start you over at level 1 can alleviate the narrative consistency problem somewhat by:

1) Having you start facing off against enemies that seem more dangerous, even if they're technically still low level. For example, an organized unit instead of wild animals. That way it does feel like your character has progressed from the first game and is facing more capable foes.
2) Giving you more interesting items at the beginning of the game, that are capable of doing things items in the first game didn't do.
3) Giving you more allies at the beginning than you had in the first game.
4) Having you level up quicker so you make up the lost power as soon as possible.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Well, if you want a better ruleset than PoE, which I hope you do, you have to accept the fact that you'll be reset to level 1.

 

[FreeKaner]

Or we could just play another character. Create another watcher and just put the story of lord of Caed Nua who learned truth of gods to a rest. Sure they would need to write new companions and what not but they wouldn't need to integrate bunch of decisions from first game.

 

[Lacrymas]

I'm not opposed to playing a different character entirely either. Eothas "stole your soul", so it would've worked with whoever, even not a Watcher. By resetting us to level 1 the "BG2-like continuation" is ruined anyway.