Jeff Vogel vs Pillars of Eternity

[Lacrymas]

I'd rather talk to white elves telling me about their plan to break through the barrier and enter the entropy realm than some random family tell me how much their life sucks and how much their life will continue to suck no matter what I do.

How is this an example of depressing vs positive quest? It seems like your problem is completely different - that you don't care about the people's domestic troubles, but want to have quests with no, or barely any, emotional content at all, relying on more concrete and less "subjective" premises. That's fine, I usually hate "emotionally-driven" quests because I think "emotional engagement" is cheap and easy, it also doesn't work very well when you don't have a personal stake in it, but that's not "positive vs negative mood".

 

[Sizzle]

Speaking for myself - the TE Pale Elves' quest is better because it: isn't overwritten, gives us choices on how to approach and solve it, involves a premise and task that's better suited to a fantasy game.

All in all, I play these kinds of games not so I can solve a common murder down at the docks - any game can have a quest/task/mission like that - but so I can get myself involved with fantastical and unique situations that only RPGs can properly depict.

 

[almondblight]

How is this an example of depressing vs positive quest?

Apparently when I talked about "depressing social worker quests" and "depressing domestic strife" you focused on the "depressing" and ignored the "social worker" and "domestic strife" parts.

 

[ore clover]

I guess people only play with a good party, where it IS like a having a gay ol' time with your buddies, being heroes and saving maidens, but with an evil party it's like a completely different game.

Is that really viable without being retard evil? Serious question, mind you. I remember last time I played (which was a couple years ago, granted, and I probably had zero clue what I was doing) we were gaining rep points up the wazoo just for doing the main quest. And muh boyz Xzar and Montaron started giving me shit, as if I'd stabbed them in the back just for trying to advance the storyline.

Eventually we murdered a shopkeeper after I accidentally stole something, so that solved the issue. But I felt like some one-dimensional sith lord, such as Malak.

 

[Lacrymas]

Is that really viable without being retard evil? Serious question, mind you. I remember last time I played (which was a couple years ago, granted, and I probably had zero clue what I was doing) we were gaining rep points up the wazoo just for doing the main quest. And muh boyz Xzar and Montaron started giving me shit, as if I'd stabbed them in the back just for trying to advance the storyline.

Eventually we murdered a shopkeeper after I accidentally stole something, so that solved the issue. But I felt like some one-dimensional sith lord, such as Malak.

Unmodded? I don't know. I've played the game only once without SCS and it was with a good one. There's an option to reduce rep gain with SCS and I used it because it's ridiculously easy to gain rep, but suspiciously hard to lose it. Afaik, you need below 10 rep to get the "evil" cutscenes. Also, I think it depends on your word choice/choices in general whether you gain or lose rep during the main quest, f.e. if you don't tell the miners you are going to flood the mine you get -rep, but that's a retard option. I think (i.e. I read it somewhere) that you can refuse to help Scar and try to "help", i.e. usurp, the Iron Throne as the "evil" option, but I don't think this is true.

 

[ore clover]

Unmodded? I don't know. I've played the game only once without SCS and it was with a good one. There's an option to reduce rep gain with SCS and I used it because it's ridiculously easy to gain rep, but suspiciously hard to lose it. Afaik, you need below 10 rep to get the "evil" cutscenes. Also, I think it depends on your word choice/choices in general whether you gain or lose rep during the main quest, f.e. if you don't tell the miners you are going to flood the mine you get -rep, but that's a retard option. I think (i.e. I read it somewhere) that you can refuse to help Scar and try to "help", i.e. usurp, the Iron Throne as the "evil" option, but I don't think this is true.

Yeah, it was unmodded. That's a bit dissapointing to hear that you need to mod it; I was thinking for a moment that Bioware might've figured out how to be subtle for once.

I guess I'd have to give it another go to test how dialogue affects rep, but I feel like vanilla is still weighted toward good parties. In the playthrough I made the most progress in I'd rolled a true-neutral, since the whole "

in all things to keep world stable" sounded like a cool roleplaying concept. We mostly just gained lots of rep while I hopelessly tried to sound as neutral as possible in dialogue.

Maybe the game isn't really written for that kind of character. My harddrive died while I was still in the Cloakwood, though, so that could very well change later on.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yeah, it was unmodded. That's a bit dissapointing to hear that you need to mod it; I was thinking for a moment that Bioware might've figured out how to be subtle for once.

I guess I'd have to give it another go to test how dialogue affects rep, but I feel like vanilla is still weighted toward good parties. In the playthrough I made the most progress in I'd rolled a true-neutral, since the whole "

in all things to keep world stable" sounded like a cool roleplaying concept. We mostly just gained lots of rep while I hopelessly tried to sound as neutral as possible in dialogue.

Maybe the game isn't really written for that kind of character. My harddrive died while I was still in the Cloakwood, though, so that could very well change later on.

The idea was that evil parties would be overpowered (literally, they have illegal choices), but wouldn't do a lot of the quests because they give positive rep, so they have less xp. Most of the time there is some way to avoid getting rep or even getting negative rep from the main quest, maybe google has some answers as to how to do in an unmodded game. I very much recommend SCS though, I don't see why anyone wouldn't get it. You CAN refuse to help Scar and 2 of his quests are unavailable to you, so you can't gain their rep, but you are essentially forced into the main storyline after that, Duke Eltan outright kills you if you are uncooperative. There is no neutral option, the game doesn't provide any incentive for neutrality, even for playing with neutral companions (they are mechanically inferior to both good and evil ones, there isn't a single neutral companion better than the other choices) and there are cutscenes that only take into account low or high rep, not middling one, with the cutoff point being 10 afaik. It is kinda assumed you'd be a hero by the game, but it gives enough chances to not be, so I'd say it's fine. If I were to guess, they made the good main quest "run" first and then programmed in some evil alternatives/choices, but ran out of time before they could develop them more. There IS potential in the storyline for a not-good character, i.e. the aforementioned usurpation of the Iron Throne, so that wasn't a problem.

 

[ore clover]

don't do quests

B-but, the xp! Thousands of points upon quest completion!

I'll check out SCS whenever I get around to playing BG again.

Honestly, though, I don't think I care enough about the story to jump through all those hoops; I'll just role a gud guy and see where it goes.

 

[Wehraboo]

This is a real problem with games today in my opinion. I couldn't agree more. Numa numa is probably the worst offender. It is cheap to get a lot of writing into a game, but if it's all crap/filler writing then who cares? Simply having more words is not the same as having more content.

So hats off to Vogel for telling it like it is.

 

[Lacrymas]

B-but, the xp! Thousands of points upon quest completion!

I'll check out SCS whenever I get around to playing BG again.

Honestly, though, I don't think I care enough about the story to jump through all those hoops; I'll just role a gud guy and see where it goes.

The "don't do quests" was Bioware's reasoning for the overpowered-ness of the evil companions, you should obviously do them, just murder an innocent once in a while. Good parties are fairly annoying in BG1, that's why I've only completed the game once with one. Like seriously, who isn't annoying? Khalid and Jaheira are dull and mechanically weaker than their other counterparts, Imoen is annoying, Minsc is a retard (literally), Kivan is meh and literally a non-entity (but powerful before you get Coran), Ajantis is a paladin, nuff said, Dynaheir is a lecturing "exotic woman" and you have no reason to take Yeslick over Branwen, even when playing a good party. Only Coran is useful, literally the most powerful archer, and shuts his mouth at the same time. Oh, and there's Alora, does anyone ever use her? I sure haven't, but I assume her personality based on her being a good halfling thief. She comes waaay too late into the game to be useful, is a single-class thief and you can't dual class her like you can Imoen, soooo.

 

[Azarkon]

You're not a lord of a castle. You're a foreign bum who squatters in a spooky ruin. You have zero right to rule. You're not noble even if you're allowed to occupy the castle. In fact, it was one of the weakest plot holes in the whole game. Not to mention how a castle which goes straight to the only main road is left in ruins, even if spooky. Or get allowed to get occupied from some mad watcher before (not you, the one before you). The necklace story was actually well explained unlike the whole get your own castle thing...

I don't think it should matter whether you are the lord of a castle.

It's just not appropriate to approach a group of heavily armed adventurers with tasks that can be performed by the average person. No sane individual would've even considered the idea.

It's like going to Blackwater headquarters and saying, "hey guys, want to deliver this family necklace for me???" But actually, it's even worse, because at least Blackwater wouldn't likely rob you blind, while you have no guarantee of the risks you're taking with a group of traveling adventurers.

Being hired by the mayor of a small town to kill a local monster. Yeah, I can see that. Being hired to escort a merchant caravan through a dangerous area. Sure, that makes sense. Being paid to assassinate a political rival, to rescue a person from a dungeon, to capture a nearby castle... Those are tasks I can expect to be bothered with as I gain reputation.

Not "hey go and deliver this potion to my uncle who lives two villages away" or "hey I need these materials to make a sword, can you go get them? I won't sell anything to you until you do." Although, in this case, presentation does matter, as I can see a blacksmith telling you that he'll pay well for quality iron and to keep an eye out for it. But personally, I don't think that should be presented as a quest.

 

[Sizzle]

A good RPG quest should have:

- Proper motivation. As in - offer an adequate incentive/reason to do the quest. Either the chance to receive something cool (good loot, nice cash, abilities, land deeds, etc.), go somewhere cool where there's bound to be stuff that will make it worth your while, or a quest that will further your personal agenda (if you have one). This is another reason why many PoE starting quests (like Calisca's pregnant sister) were bad - you only did them for the XP.

- Thematically fit the setting. In the Forgotten Realms, you have so many adventurers crawling about you can afford to give them silly menial tasks like "Please rid my garden of a (normal-sized) bug infestation. There's 5 shiny GP in it for you." Players expect them. In PoE's setting, which doesn't really have an established adventuring tradition, it makes less sense to have random people give you menial, meaningless tasks like that, yet many still do. Even if you're a nobody at the start of the game, you're still heavily armed, and, most likely, traveling with equally well-armed companions. People should recognize this, and not bother you with useless shit. The funniest thing about this is there are occasions in the game where you meet the equivalent of an adventuring party, and the narration tells you just how tough-looking they are, and that you probably wouldn't want to fuck with them. So the game recognizes this in others, just not in you :D

 

[FreeKaner]

A good RPG quest should have:

- Proper motivation. As in - offer an adequate incentive/reason to do the quest. Either the chance to receive something cool (good loot, nice cash, abilities, land deeds, etc.), go somewhere cool where there's bound to be stuff that will make it worth your while, or a quest that will further your personal agenda (if you have one).

Completely agree. In fact I would go further and say it should have both of these elements at all times, just at varying degrees. If it's devoid of one you either get flat out treasure hunt type of quests, which is very Ubisoftesque or a quest that if a player personally doesn't care, or that their PC isn't supposed to care, is essentially meaningless.

This is another reason why many PoE starting quests (like Calisca's pregnant sister) were bad - you only did them for the XP.

The motivation here is supposed to be that Calisca helped you and you could return the favour. It's a weak motivation to be sure but there is still one. There is none for grain quest though, which is possibly the worst, most waste of time quest in the game switching loading screens.

In PoE's setting, which doesn't really have an established adventuring tradition, it makes less sense to have random people give you menial, meaningless tasks like that, yet many still do.

There aren't many menial tasks in the game, only a few and they are mainly in defiance bay. Also how is there no established adventuring tradition in PoE's setting? There are adventuring guilds, there are paladin orders, there are colonists, there are treasure hunters, there are ruin looters. All of those are talked about too. That is more on your personal perception and experience. D&D is already and established setting throughout the years so going into it, you expect to be adventuring, PoE is a new setting so you had different expectations and perception.

See this is the problem with new settings, you have to have lore dumps somewhere, to establish the setting, ideally these would be through books and elements in the game itself and not conversations but that's not always possible. You felt that there is no adventuring tradition in a game that is basically taking place on a colonial frontier which you start by going into ruins which are normally well-protected by natives of the land.

Even if you're a nobody at the start of the game, you're still heavily armed, and, most likely, traveling with equally well-armed companions. People should recognize this, and not bother you with useless shit.

I don't understand this complaint, I can't think of any quest that does not recognise your well-armed capabilities, only problem is people not recognising your title as a (new) Lord. In fact I have noted NPCs telling so on several occasions, acknowledging you as dangerous, as well as just people just running away in some of the encounters, perhaps that was because I was aggressive in general? Could also be because I played with high resolve, which is usually a dump stat but tends to open these type of dialogue options.

 

[Sizzle]

This is another reason why many PoE starting quests (like Calisca's pregnant sister) were bad - you only did them for the XP.

The motivation here is supposed to be that Calisca helped you and you could return the favour. It's a weak motivation to be sure but there is still one.

Very, very weak motivation. I didn't care for Calisca - she was helping herself as much as she was helping me. What could have been a good compromise was telling her sister about her unfortunate demise (get some XP and maybe a +1 honest), and give her some gold for her troubles/or for retrieving Calisca's body, if you thought highly of her (no XP, +1 benevolent). The baby quest was just superfluous, dull, and unrewarding.

There is none for grain quest though, which is possibly the worst, most waste of time quest in the game switching loading screens.

Maybe they could have made it more relevant by having Eder - who's, after all, a resident of that village - speak up and give you a better reason to get involved. But even then, it would have been pointless busywork. The only good Gilded Vale quests are the Eothas Temple one, and maybe the blacksmith's, and that's only because you get a nice reward out of it.

There are adventuring guilds

Don't remember any actual adventuring guilds, which ones are you talking about?

there are paladin orders, there are colonists, there are treasure hunters, there are ruin looters. All of those are talked about too.

Yes, but they are more mercenary than straight up adventuring in nature. Another thing is that PoE expanded on "adventurers" only in the Stronghold Adventures added in v3.0. Which is good, but before that they sort of felt like a barely existing part of the world.

You felt that there is no adventuring tradition in a game that is basically taking place on a colonial frontier which you start by going into ruins which are normally well-protected by natives of the land.

The potential was definitely there, but, again, you spent more time dealing with inane stuff than actually going in those places to explore/plunder them.

Even if you're a nobody at the start of the game, you're still heavily armed, and, most likely, traveling with equally well-armed companions. People should recognize this, and not bother you with useless shit.

I don't understand this complaint, I can't think of any quest that does not recognise your well-armed capabilities, only problem is people not recognising your title as a (new) Lord. In fact I have noted NPCs telling so on several occasions, acknowledging you as dangerous, as well as just people just running away in some of the encounters, perhaps that was because I was aggressive in general? Could also be because I played with high resolve, which is usually a dump stat but tends to open these type of dialogue options.

The complaint was more that people would be generally hesitant to bother a tough-looking, obviously dangerous group with tasks that ordinary people could also solve. But, like you said, this was mostly an Act 1/Defiance Bay issue, the quests later on (and especially in TWM) got better about it.

 

[Lacrymas]

I don't know if it's exactly necessary to have lore that you can't escape from. For all intents and purposes, PoE's setting is derivative and standard, at least the portion we've been through, so there really wasn't a reason for all the lore dumps. Just don't try to have an exposé on all the lore you've come up with and I'm sure everything will fit correctly at the end. You are using that lore to build the world anyway, so, if the lore isn't in a self-contained bubble, people are going to understand what is going on regardless.

 

[Sizzle]

I've talked about that before - what's the use of all that lore, if very little of it comes through in the actual game?

The Dyrwood itself is an interesting place - in theory. It's similar to the US after they seceded from British rule. They have history, an emerging national identity, racial tensions, unresolved border and culture disputes with some neighboring countries, and burgeoning trade and diplomatic relations with others. It's very well thought out. The problem is that it's not very well implemented and relevant to most of the gameplay itself.

 

[ilitarist]

Obsidian are better than this, however, in Kotor 2 you have a cynical old woman who we all know and love, a tortured slave, the only different Handmaiden, a murderer of Jedi, the leader of the Mandalorians, the tech specialist who arguably started the whole mess (by designing and activating the Mass Shadow Generator), an angry wookie twisting what it means to be a wookie, a robot who is pretending to be human, a robot who knows more about what is going on than it lets on and ...Mical and Mira. It feels like most of PoE's companions were supposed to be stand-ins for literally their whole cultures, which makes them stereotypical in the context of the story, even stereotypical in general. This is opposed to their usefulness to the main character and story, they feel like background characters elevated to main ones for no reason. I truly don't know what happened, where did the originality and creativity go? I refuse to believe they did this on purpose to be like BG1, but failing to be such or as good.

BioWare is too deep into trying to emulate Joss Whedon. They turn every character into a walking one-trick pony and then it turns out those characters all have playful sarcastic personality, tragic past and unexpected appreciation for the player character. Seriously, BioWare seems unable to produce a companion from other template, the only exception would probably be Vega from Mass Effect 3 because he respects Shepard from the very beginning.

I like PoE characters. Only Durance and that mage dude follow standard formula. And maybe Devil golem from expansion. And Durance manages to not be secretly like everybody else. They have little reason to follow Watcher apart from maybe Sagani and mage, that's sad. But they're great otherwise.

 

[Lacrymas]

I'm not saying Bioware are good writers (lol), but that they come up with better reasons (or reasons at all) for the companions to come on your mission and without them feeling too normal and pointless.

 

[kris]

- Thematically fit the setting. In the Forgotten Realms, you have so many adventurers crawling about you can afford to give them silly menial tasks like "Please rid my garden of a (normal-sized) bug infestation. There's 5 shiny GP in it for you." Players expect them. In PoE's setting, which doesn't really have an established adventuring tradition, it makes less sense to have random people give you menial, meaningless tasks like that, yet many still do.

You shouldn't excuse one game while blaming another with such a flimsy excuse. have it ever been said "forgotten realms is a world with thousands of adventuring groups that will take on any task", while PoE is said to be one lacking adventerors? Seems more like an assumption based on all the groups people taken on advetures in FR.

Stupid quest is stupid, good is good. not since I was like 13 did I give my players a quest to deliver a rose or kill a rabbit. Oh, wait, not even then.

 

[Sizzle]

- Thematically fit the setting. In the Forgotten Realms, you have so many adventurers crawling about you can afford to give them silly menial tasks like "Please rid my garden of a (normal-sized) bug infestation. There's 5 shiny GP in it for you." Players expect them. In PoE's setting, which doesn't really have an established adventuring tradition, it makes less sense to have random people give you menial, meaningless tasks like that, yet many still do.

You shouldn't excuse one game while blaming another with such a flimsy excuse. have it ever been said "forgotten realms is a world with thousands of adventuring groups that will take on any task", while PoE is said to be one lacking adventerors? Seems more like an assumption based on all the groups people taken on advetures in FR.

Stupid quest is stupid, good is good. not since I was like 13 did I give my players a quest to deliver a rose or kill a rabbit. Oh, wait, not even then.

In PoE, they tried to create a more realistic fantasy world where there aren't as many (before some TWM lore expansions - barely any) adventurers. In FR, adventurers such as Drizzt and Elminister are well-known, not just to us, the players, but to most people living there.

I also think that "please kill rats in basement" and other such menial tasks and assorted fetch quests are lazy writing and design, and should have no place in either game - but that they make more sense in FR than they do in PoE.

 

[luj1]

Just as you begin character creation in PoE you are bombarded with lore dumps. PoE was written by amateurs.

 

[Lacrymas]

In PoE you are hardly an "adventurer" either way. Do you have motivation to go adventuring at all? What does adventuring have to do with the prologue and even up to entering Gilded Vale, i.e. how is it a logical continuation? Why do you go do random tasks for people? Wouldn't it make more sense to go do what the dwarf woman is saying? The adventuring part of PoE is kinda meta in the sense that it exists because other RPGs (specifically BG1) do it and it expects you, the player, to do it based on that context. Which could be interesting to explore, how different entries in the same media inform our expectations and how we approach new ones, but that's too complicated for nu-Obsidian.

 

[FreeKaner]

There were a few meta-critique stuff in white march, such as that quest where you are stopping the Bleakwalker Paladin, you can sardonically say "I kill people all the time" after the Bleakwalker talks about murdering people on their way. IT's lacking in a general sense compared to their other games though, especially compared to Alpha Protocol. There is a general disconnection of main story from rest of the game in general, because of how it's supposed to be an urgent chase all the way until the end. However you are diverging to protect a brothel from locals, which is not a bad quest by the way, on its own that is but seems like really irrelevant to your purpose in Defiance bay.

This is why I think it's a wrong premise to use in a game that is not completely linear, using a chase as a hook into the setting and story then either concluding it mid-way or making it irrelevant on the whole is in my opinion much better approach. However a chase is the easiest plot there is. In fact both New Vegas and Alpha protocol uses a chase as plot hooks but they are only really introductory. New Vegas is especially great in that regard because by the time you reach Benny you might not even care about him anymore and he doesn't really matter since he is just another peon in another dynamic. Especially how this chase ties to conflict over the Hoover Dam is completely seamless.

I imagine this could be easily implemented in PoE as well, perhaps you could even catch and end Thaos in the sanitarium, temporarily that is, with some of the visions happening there instead and granting you some stability, then you could focus on the soulless babies plot which ties much better to state of Drywood and interacting with it more closely. Putting both the chase of Thaos and soulless babies in act 4, as well as resolution of your condition as watcher just makes for a completely off pacing. Learning about rest of who Thaos is and what his purpose was post mortem as you uncovered Waidwen's Legacy, with visions of past establishing your own past and dialogue with Iovara wrapping it up together.

 

[ilitarist]

This is why I think it's a wrong premise to use in a game that is not completely linear, using a chase as a hook into the setting and story then either concluding it mid-way or making it irrelevant on the whole is in my opinion much better approach. However a chase is the easiest plot there is. In fact both New Vegas and Alpha protocol uses a chase as plot hooks but they are only really introductory. New Vegas is especially great in that regard because by the time you reach Benny you might not even care about him anymore and he doesn't really matter since he is just another peon in another dynamic. Especially how this chase ties to conflict over the Hoover Dam is completely seamless.

FNV is an example of a bad motivation for a player/character. Even worse than PoE. In PoE you are first motivated by the need to know what's your condition, then you seek for the villain because he may heal you/he's bad (kinda like Baldur's Gate 2 allowed you to say you're looking for revenge or you're saving Imoen). There's little reason for most companions to follow you and many quests do not have a good motivation apart from maybe making you richer and more powerful. Most characters you can imagine would have this journey. It may be overexplained in one parts and underexplained in others but it works.

FNV assumes you are playing as a person who was never a proper fighter (he works as a courier after all) but for some reason decided to go after mob boss who shot him in the head. You need a very, very specific character to follow this plot. Why doesn't Courier just settle in Goodsprings or waits till he can get back? Why does he have to involve himself with murderous factions? Just because he's a terminator. Meanwhile a cowardly farmer would still work as PoE protagonist as he has no choice but to treat his condition or go mad.

 

[ore clover]

The "don't do quests" was Bioware's reasoning for the overpowered-ness of the evil companions, you should obviously do them, just murder an innocent once in a while.

But now we're back to square one. I can deal, but it feels goofy to be doing bad things solely to stop people from mistaking me for a hero.

Good parties are fairly annoying in BG1

I remember Jaheira always annoyed me with her blatant judgmental attitude. Until one day Xzar and Montaron decided she'd insulted them for the last time, and killed her on the spot.