Game News Pathfinder: Kingmaker Kickstarter Update #74: Turn-Based Mode Beta

[ikarinokami]

The game is spectacular with the turn -based mod. It's definitely not a slog, and is actually much easier to play in TB. As was pointed out, the underlying systems are designed for turn based, so the RTwp orginal encounter design doesn't affect much because 90% of the game uses the orginal tabletop rules. The biggest change that of the change to flanking is actually much easier to manage with TB. Finally the last chapter plays 100% better in TB mode, since you no longer get immediately get ganked by wild hunt archers.

 

[Lhynn]

Yah, not only flanking, all the little swift action skills you didnt bother with before actually become very important now.

 

[Shadenuat]

I wonder what difficulty people play on tb who say it's same as rtwp or shorter; because for me on Unfair even undead fight near staglord fortress took something like an hour or two hours. total playthrough took hundred(s) of hours while usually full playthrough on Unfair took me around 130.

 

[Roguey]

What the fuck, 20 gigs for the update.

Having to download 2/3rds of the game for a turn-based patch, thanks Unity. I won't be bothering.

 

[Drowed]

Well, for those of you who have already erased the game from your HD (like me), it doesn't make much difference to have to download everything again. So it's better to wait for the full version to be out. And then, wait another X months until they get the most destructive bugs out.

 

[Dr Schultz]

The game is spectacular with the turn -based mod. It's definitely not a slog, and is actually much easier to play in TB. As was pointed out, the underlying systems are designed for turn based, so the RTwp orginal encounter design doesn't affect much because 90% of the game uses the orginal tabletop rules. The biggest change that of the change to flanking is actually much easier to manage with TB. Finally the last chapter plays 100% better in TB mode, since you no longer get immediately get ganked by wild hunt archers.

The ruleset is just a factor in the enounter design. Not even the most important.

The real problem here is that, usually, RTWP games tend to have few demaning ecounters that test the players undestanding of the systems and LOTS of easy trash ecounters, designed to a) drain the party resources b) quickly test the party growth c) keep the player engaged during exploration.

This model is bearable long term only because it takes few seconds to breath trough trash encounters in RTWP (or in streamlined turn-based system lIke the ones you have in bloobers). Fighting all this trash encounters with a full fledged turn based system would be a slog. The A.I. would also be an issue. TB AIs work differently than RT AIs. I doubt you'll ever see a smart move from an enemy in this late addition to the game.

The ideal blueprint for a full fledged turn-based game is: FEW encounters of various difficulty levels that test the player in different ways trough variation in kind.
Essentially the opposite of Pathfinder (or Pillars) encounter design. If you wanna see a good encounter design for a D&D/Pathfinder TB game, you must play Knights of Chalice.

 

[Black]

Unless the game and most importantly encounters are designed for turn-based it won't matter because you'll still have gorllions of trash encounters.

 

[Raghar]

Turn based - sequential execution doesn't imply there wouldn't be millions of "trash encounters".

 

[Kem0sabe]

Went to check feedback on the patch on Steam, seems like a lot of people are unhappy about the bugginess of the game and how Owlcat is leaving previous bugs unaddressed. Is the game without the beta TB patch in a good state to finish without any game breaking bugs?

 

[Falkner]

My game in the last patch freezes every time my PC attacks after getting the barony. Could just be a me problem, though.

And the size of the patch definitely makes me think that they uploaded the wrong version for Linux. For me it was just a 1.5GB download (and no TB mode). Apparently it's the same for OSX. Go, Owlcat.

 

[Roguey]

Is the game without the beta TB patch in a good state to finish without any game breaking bugs?

I'm in chapter 3 now and the only bugs I've noticed so far is that sometimes it will crash when I save (keeping the folder clear of all saves except quicksaves and autosaves helps but doesn't entirely eliminate this).

 

[Sratopotator]

Started playing 2 weeks ago for the first time - can confirm that there are no major issues. With accent on 'major'. There is still some jank, and some UI bugs here and there. I'm enjoying the game without interruptions, really.

With that said, technically speaking, you can still find gamebreaking issues, but they only break the game if you 'double down' and find a way to extrapolate them into a crash/save corruption etc. Yesterday, I quickloaded the game for whatever reason while on the kingdom map, just after placing a completely new city. The loaded save was done on the kingdom map too. I wanted to repeat city placement in the same location, but... there was a city already there... It took the spot, didn't have its model displayed, but was interactable. I was thinking about playing with the bug a bit, but I gave up, killed the game and loaded the save again - all was fine.
I would bet my dick that there was a way to completely break the game at this point.

Didn't have any random crashes though, even when saving the game (shitty PC, but with ssd).

 

[elverkongen]

Went to check feedback on the patch on Steam, seems like a lot of people are unhappy about the bugginess of the game and how Owlcat is leaving previous bugs unaddressed. Is the game without the beta TB patch in a good state to finish without any game breaking bugs?

I'm playing on Linux and have only really noticed one bug: if an enemy is affected by the Enlarge Person spell and dies, their corpse is all stretched out like Gumby.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Went to check feedback on the patch on Steam, seems like a lot of people are unhappy about the bugginess of the game and how Owlcat is leaving previous bugs unaddressed. Is the game without the beta TB patch in a good state to finish without any game breaking bugs?

Finished the game with maybe one or two crashes. That was over 100+ hours and using the TB mod. Also use the cleaner mod or you will regret it.

 

[Mortmal]

Imagine how long it will take to go through all those shit encounters with turn based mode... Adding this to the game without completely redesigning the combat encounters is just as stupid as when Pillars of Eternity did it.

Glad there's sill some sane codexers. Still 7 buffoons who tag this news as incline.

 

[Lhynn]

Glad there's sill some sane codexers. Still 7 buffoons who tag this news as incline.

Its been tested already, and it works well. Better than real time, because the ruleset has been designed around it. A million abilities require a swift action and you never use them. While it could use a trimming of the encounters, it still works very well for individual encounters.

 

[Mortmal]

Glad there's sill some sane codexers. Still 7 buffoons who tag this news as incline.

Its been tested already, and it works well. Better than real time, because the ruleset has been designed around it. A million abilities require a swift action and you never use them. While it could use a trimming of the encounters, it still works very well for individual encounters.

Translating those trash encounters into turn based is retarded by default, its not a bit of trimming required, its a whole redesign. That game is nothing like a pen and paper conversion, nowhere near not even with that. So to me its not incline.

 

[Lhynn]

Translating those trash encounters into turn based is retarded by default, its not a bit of trimming required, its a whole redesign. That game is nothing like a pen and paper conversion, nowhere near not even with that. So to me its not incline.

Have you tested the turn based mod or are you just talking out of retarded ass?

 

[Mortmal]

Translating those trash encounters into turn based is retarded by default, its not a bit of trimming required, its a whole redesign. That game is nothing like a pen and paper conversion, nowhere near not even with that. So to me its not incline.

Have you tested the turn based mod or are you just talking out of retarded ass?

Keep fellating your favorite russian devs, if you are happy with this good for you, it doesnt take much to please you.

 

[Andhaira]

Why didn't they just go with the fan made TB mod? Just an excuse for another edition?

I hope this is a good lesson for them and they exclusively make games with TB from now on; RTwP can be for later updates.

 

[Thonius]

CUz legal reason. You cannot just grab 100% of code from modder and call it a day. Sorry.

 

[razvedchiki]

is it better than the unofficial mod? the ai clearly was not build around turn based combat, especially its inability to use the 5 feet step completely ruins its melee mobs at higher lvls.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[razvedchiki]

my game hangs up with the turn based beta at the loading screen, should i play more to Stalin?

 

[NJClaw]

Why didn't they just go with the fan made TB mod? Just an excuse for another edition?

I hope this is a good lesson for them and they exclusively make games with TB from now on; RTwP can be for later updates.

While the fan-made TB mod is incredibly fun, it definitely is not "official release" material. There are a lot of small bugs and problems that, while tolerable in a passion project, aren't acceptable for the official content of a released game. Also, Owlcat had to implement it for the console release and for their next game, maybe they were confident that it would be good enough for the PC version of Kingmaker as well.