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Cythereal posted:Obsidian's lead writer, his name escapes me at the moment, talked about this regarding Neverwinter Nights 2. He doesn't mind the idea of romance options per se, but he's also of the opinion that two happy people falling in love and living happily ever after is boring. He thinks romance in fiction is only interesting when it's two broken people making each other and everything around them worse. Like, he's not wrong that the first doesn't make for much of a story by itself, but does he not get that there's an obvious third option of "two unhappy people falling in love and mutually overcoming their respective shortcomings"?
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Nov 20, 2020 13:45
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| # ? Jun 8, 2024 19:03 |
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Let Verse to the thing
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Nov 20, 2020 14:04
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I honestly have no idea what I'd like to see happen here, so I figure the person who actually has strong feelings on the issue can decide. Name that tune, Verse.
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Nov 20, 2020 15:27
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Let Verse decide Feels a bit like a Tyranny trap I must say, although maybe the DLC is disjointed enough it doesn't pull those. Also I don't entirely find Verse's reactions to be out of character. Verse went on this quest expecting to find blood on her blades and she was very much looking forward to that. Instead she finds her target and her target's sister dead. The only person left is their mother. A woman who nurtured her daughter's towards war and violence and still loved them both very deeply. A woman who is remorseful for raising her daughters the way she did. I know Verse is a bloodthirsty maniac, but I think she would still feel sympathy for this woman and also wishing her own mother was more like Nessa.
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Nov 20, 2020 15:27
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Whybird posted:Like, he's not wrong that the first doesn't make for much of a story by itself, but does he not get that there's an obvious third option of "two unhappy people falling in love and mutually overcoming their respective shortcomings"? Chris Avellone doesn't do happy endings. Like, some things might change for the better, and the world itself may even be on a more positive trajectory, but the best you can hope for from him is a Phillip Pullman-esque "I mean... I guess this counts as 'happy' when you consider the alternatives" ending. Look at the games he's had any sort of significant creative freedom on. Not a one of them has a nice, clean, happy ending, and it makes sense that this would extend to the romances he writes. In fact, the only time a game has had an unequivocal happy ending where he had a prominent creative role was Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and that ending comes at the end of the longest, most grueling, most harrowing campaign to ever feature in a CRPG, and has dozens of flags you need to set in order to unlock it. So, if he was behind that ending, I'd say his philosophy is something like "Sure, you can have your ideal, storybook happy ending, if you absolutely bust your entire rear end for it. Otherwise it's gonna be messy and imperfect because life is hard and merciless."
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Nov 20, 2020 15:39
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gently caress, i don't care, let verse decide
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Nov 20, 2020 18:20
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It's Verse's quest, so Verse should decide. The difference in tone of the DLC aside, "Kyros the Overpig" is pretty funny. 
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Nov 20, 2020 22:03
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The thing with Verse's DLC quest is that it isn't actually written badly. Any of the writing with the new characters introduced is honestly good overall. There's subtext with the scumbag liar mercenary, the farmer mother who feels responsible for her daughters deaths and such. Verse, Nerat, and Ashe all just seem to be acting a bit off. It really does feel like different writers who weren't involved in the core project.
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Nov 20, 2020 23:22
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inflatablefish posted:gently caress Nerat. Harem Ending - 3 way with Ashe, Nerat or bust. let Verse decide What a useless set of laws Kyros has, where a farmer CAN'T SELL THEIR PRODUCE. In a Market economy. If she were following Kyros's laws to the letter, that crop would have gone to waste. Because if she can;t sell, she's going to have trouble hiring farmhands to harvest.
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Nov 21, 2020 01:30
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Gonna let Verse decide, the alternative I suppose is to let the woman live with the grief.
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Nov 21, 2020 01:30
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Veloxyll posted:Harem Ending - 3 way with Ashe, Nerat or bust. weird detail here. market economies are a couple hundred years out at this point: back now, "the market" is either informal arrangements with your neighbors, or extremely formal arrangements with your superiors where you have precisely zero negotiating power. kyros' control over the informal bit is anachronistically powerful, but lets ignore both of those anachronisms under "we're playing a video game with magic and ghosts" and move on. counterpoint: what part of Kyros' law do you think is designed to produce a more numerous populace in the Tiers ask how many of this woman's children died trying to oppose the Overlord, ask whether Kyros benefits by letting her and those she interacts with not starve to death, and ask whether or not Kyros' laws are doing precisely what they are designed to do here.
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Nov 21, 2020 08:39
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as far as my vote:Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:objection: the law is quite clear all things, up to and including your life, are possessed by Kyros. helping someone else commit suicide is a conspiracy to destroy government property and is punishable by fine. she lives.
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Nov 21, 2020 08:42
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Donkringel posted:Let Verse decide So basically, I don't think Verse is suddenly demonstrating a psychologically healthy level of empathy here, but that several factors worked together to make her less enthusiastic than she normally would be at a good old fashioned displaced revenge murder. Plus, Essa is actively asking to die! Verse likes a good fight.
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Nov 22, 2020 04:52
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killing someone who wants to die is basically giving them what they want, which defeats the entire point of murdering them out of sheer spite. verse is going to let her live.
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Nov 22, 2020 18:31
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Radio Free Kobold posted:killing someone who wants to die is basically giving them what they want, which defeats the entire point of murdering them out of sheer spite. Ah yes, the Catch 22 of murder.
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Nov 22, 2020 18:41
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Radio Free Kobold posted:killing someone who wants to die is basically giving them what they want, which defeats the entire point of murdering them out of sheer spite. verse is going to let her live.
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Nov 23, 2020 01:49
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really the fundamental thing about tyranny is about credit and blame assignment. thats why the central point of the biggest tyrannical movement of the 20th century is about blaming the jews for everything. its why passing the buck is a tyrannical thing to do
bob dobbs is dead fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Nov 23, 2020 |
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Nov 23, 2020 02:01
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bob dobbs is dead posted:really the fundamental thing about tyranny is about credit and blame assignment. thats why the central point of the biggest tyrannical movement of the 20th century is about blaming the jews for everything. its why passing the buck is a tyrannical thing to do Hahaha which the goon hive mind is voting for! Tyranny trap!
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Nov 23, 2020 18:18
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Donkringel posted:Hahaha which the goon hive mind is voting for! There's a difference between "passing the buck" and "allowing someone else to choose their own destiny because it's their sidequest and we're not the center of the universe".
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Nov 23, 2020 20:36
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EclecticTastes posted:There's a difference between "passing the buck" and "allowing someone else to choose their own destiny because it's their sidequest and we're not the center of the universe". Certainly, that's a valid and fair point. But, as other's mentioned in past posts, sometimes Tyranny does not allow you to be the RPG character you want to be. When we see claiming the spires as neither sides should get it, others see it as a blatant power grab. Verse is the one who will either be seeing it as passing the buck or being empowered to choose her own destiny.
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Nov 23, 2020 22:07
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when you put it like that, verse is totally thinking that we're passing the buck.
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Nov 23, 2020 22:12
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Would someone else be interested in a mechanics post about experience in Tyranny? I am at the end game with my 4-mage party, and have some thoughts
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Nov 23, 2020 23:09
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Xarn posted:Would someone else be interested in a mechanics post about experience in Tyranny? I am at the end game with my 4-mage party, and have some thoughts 
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Nov 23, 2020 23:14
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Xarn posted:Would someone else be interested in a mechanics post about experience in Tyranny? I am at the end game with my 4-mage party, and have some thoughts I'd be interested
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Nov 24, 2020 00:56
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Xarn posted:Would someone else be interested in a mechanics post about experience in Tyranny? I am at the end game with my 4-mage party, and have some thoughts 
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Nov 24, 2020 02:32
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Xarn posted:Would someone else be interested in a mechanics post about experience in Tyranny? I am at the end game with my 4-mage party, and have some thoughts Feed me content.
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Nov 24, 2020 04:25
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I'm interested in hearing about mechanics.
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Nov 24, 2020 04:25
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As well as general mage supremacy in this game, an odd quirk that we can see now that we have all the party members is that of the characters clearly meant to be 'melee-focused' or 'tanky': Barik is stuck in his poo poo-rust and so he cannot wear any different armor. Kills-in-Shadow is a Beastwoman and so cannot wear armor. This means that you may end up with a bunch of heavy armor in your inventory and nobody to wear it... besides maybe yourself, but why? Another option is sticking Sirin in heavy armor. Because her song effects have no relation to any other cooldowns or recovery time, using her as an armored jukebox is viable.
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Nov 24, 2020 07:28
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Armor is also really bad at tanking you up. It provides flat reduction in damage, worsens your recovery time (how often you take action) and gets outscaled by attack later on. Compare this with dodge, which prevents all damage when successful, and keeps scaling up.
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Nov 24, 2020 07:53
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Honestly, the best tank in the game - and I am aware that is not that much of a distinction - is a melee Verse with a massively jacked up dodge skill.
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Nov 24, 2020 08:03
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I was using Lantry to tank. Is he good at it? No, but when the enemies are on fire, frozen, stunned and prone at the same time, he doesn't need to be good.  What I am saying is, caster supremacy
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Nov 24, 2020 08:18
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Xarn posted:I was using Lantry to tank. Is he good at it? No, but when the enemies are on fire, frozen, stunned and prone at the same time, he doesn't need to be good.
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Nov 24, 2020 08:23
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Here is what I know about how the XP mechanics in this game work, and what I make of it. The most important thing to know is that there are two kinds of XP, skill XP, which is what you get from e.g. casting spells (lore + magic school), hitting things with your weapon (weapon skill), (not) getting hit (dodging, parrying, etc.), and actual character XP (level-XP?) which is what causes your character to get more levels. As far as I understand it, you only ever receive level-XP when your skill levels up from getting enough skill XP. When a skill levels up, you receive the new level of your skill as level-XP. So when you level-up from Lore 50 to Lore 51, you get 51 level-XP from it. As you go up skill-levels, the amount of level-XP you get from skill-XP decreases (or you need to get more skill-XP for the same amount of level-XP, whichever you prefer). This makes sense, but is also yet another mechanic that reinforces mage supremacy. The reason is quite simple: if you specialize in hitting stuff with a weapon, you push your weapon skill up quickly, and then need to spend more time hitting people to get the same # of level-XP. You could switch between different weapon types to get more level-XP, but then you suck at hitting people instead Mages do not have the same problem, because they have 1 important skill that all casting levels up (Lore), and multiple less important skills that they split skill-XP between (Control Foo), when casting. So apart from spells being just stronger, thanks to crowd-control, status effects and plain dmg, they also level up their users quicker. Other notes
How to utterly break the game as a mage (for no reason whatsoever, because mage is already easy mode) this will be in a later post, I want to finish testing just how far I can take this first ------------------------------ So is there anything balancing mages out? Yes, three things.
(Yeah, I was just kidding about it balancing out  )
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Nov 24, 2020 10:46
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Xarn posted:
How to utterly break the game as a mage (for no reason whatsoever, because mage is already easy mode) Prerequisites:
So the trick is that when you get a skill-level through a trainer, your get level-XP from it, as described in the previous post. And trainers just flat out give you enough skill-XP to get the next level... What you do is that you retrain the character you want to break the game with, and put Lore to ~140, or as high as possible otherwise. Then you teleport over to the trainer, and get yourself trained to 150 (master trainer limit). This will also get you a bunch level-XP, so you will likely level up, and get even more trainings. After you are maxed out, retrain, put Lore to ~140, rinse and repeat until you run out of trainings. This should get you an absurd amount of support skill XPs. Even after I wasted a bunch of trainings because I misread the retraining UI and was too lazy to retrain again to fix my mistake, and got bored before running out of trainings, my Fatebinder went from lvl 15 to 20, and from 74 to 176 ranks Lore. (With abilities and party boost, it is 230+.) By using up your trainings like this, you now have access to even more absurdly overpowered spells... But wait, there is more! Spells only check that you have enough Lore when you first memorize them. So can you use temporary Lore boosts (potions, shrooms) just before a fight ends, wait for the combat timeout and then fill out your spell slots with spells that are over your "normal" Lore cap. The biggest boost is from Skycap which gives you 26 extra Lore, and there is at least one extra potion that also helps... Placing it all together, you can probably have spells requiring 300+ Lore and use it for your victory lap in the end game.  Other notes:
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Nov 24, 2020 13:04
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Xarn posted:How to utterly break the game as a mage (for no reason whatsoever, because mage is already easy mode) Sounds like you found out how the Archons became Archons.
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Nov 24, 2020 15:12
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Unfortunately we kinda killed the infirmary trainer otherwise I'd be doing this.
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Nov 24, 2020 17:09
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On my save I count 5 different master support skill trainers in the Training Grounds spire upgrade.  (Shame about the Training Grounds being the worst upgrade otherwise)
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Nov 24, 2020 17:22
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Unfortunately we kinda killed the infirmary trainer otherwise I'd be doing this. When did this happen?
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Nov 24, 2020 21:34
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She is a Sage, so I assume when we burned down the library without warning.
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Nov 24, 2020 21:39
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if they didn't want the library to be burned they shouldn't have filled it with so much flammable stuff 
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Nov 25, 2020 00:45
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