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Tolth posted:I wonder how many people finally gave up on 3.5 because of the Owlcat games. I'd been a holdout for at least a decade, but then I did the Playful Darkness fight and I was finally able to process that 3.5 doesn't need to be run ever again. It really helped me to move on I enjoyed kingmaker and Wrath, but it really cemented that I never want to play 3.x ever again. Especially in person. The extremely bad npc builds perfectly replicated my experience carrying other people's poo poo builds in pen and paper games. The buffing was less obnoxious than pen and paper because the computer tracked everything (and adjusted automatically when someone casts dispel!) yet was still annoying busy work. Encounter design felt like one of the GMs I played with back in the day. The really nailed the entire experience.
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Jan 14, 2024 19:41
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Yup. Kingmaker and especially Wrath showed the world what the mixmax boards knew for years. The extreme version of 3.5 that doesn’t include real degenerate stuff with 3D movement or pocket dimension nonsense: Insane number rocket tag that requires layers and layers of defense to even show up. And rogue trader makes me want to go back to it. I was talking it out with my wife last night and I think I was a little harsh. It still deserves the 6/10 because of the mechanics and bugs but the story really did rip
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Jan 14, 2024 20:09
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I still like 3.5 for the sheer amount of options available to the player. Sure there are a metric ton of build traps, but I was able to play through Kingmaker, two runs of Wrath, and the roguelite mode of Midnight Isles without just making the same builds over and over again. You can be creative, and on Core and below you have the freedom to be creative without playing the never-ending buff roulette. By comparison doing anything differently in BG3 runs requires knowing where all the magic items are, because they have far more impact on your characters than what you choose when leveling up. If I started a third run of BG3, every character would end up a carbon copy of one I've played before. Rogue Trader had a middle-ground of options when it came to build crunch, but it really felt like there were objectively correct and incorrect choices. You're not picking talents that are thematic or offer utility, you're just picking everything that facilitates killing enemies as fast as possible, or (as we've seen from players in this thread) you're gonna have a bad time.
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Jan 14, 2024 20:54
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Preechr posted:Oh good, it’s not just me. Before 2 patches ago it was fine for me but on this playthrough I can only tell him to gently caress off, to which he responds lol no and sends you on your way regardless. So is it just a meaningless But Thou Must or does it have plot impacts?
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Jan 15, 2024 00:34
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The Lone Badger posted:So is it just a meaningless But Thou Must or does it have plot impacts? I think it’s just flavor; eufrates is a mandatory event.
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Jan 15, 2024 00:48
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Preechr posted:I think it’s just flavor; eufrates is a mandatory event. But did he try to murder you later at a time when otherwise he would not have etc?
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Jan 15, 2024 01:00
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The Lone Badger posted:But did he try to murder you later at a time when otherwise he would not have etc? The end of the game plays out the same way, with the exception of when you go through the Necron gate; if you were friends with him, the Inquisiton lets you pass. If you were not, you have to fight them. It's stupid.
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Jan 15, 2024 01:28
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pathfinder builds arent interesting at all. theres hundreds of options but they all play pretty much the same and almost nothing forces you to switch things up. in this game ive managed to make every character extremely bullshit in their own way even if the arch militants are the best and theres plenty of fights even in the endgame where i at least have to think about how to use the arch militants effectively i'll say that a lot of this is less because of 3.5 issues and more because the encounter design in the owlcat pathfinder games is so bad cuntman.net fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Jan 15, 2024 |
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Jan 15, 2024 01:59
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If you want to fully minmax have a custom pyrokinetic archmilitant, Cassia, Jae, and three custom Officers. One of which is a commissar, one a biokinetic and the third a sanctic.
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Jan 15, 2024 02:05
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Sailed through the prologue, love the voice work, bit bored with the trope that every single loving CRPG protagonist has to have visions and/or a voice in their head or some other malign influence. Decided to rack up the difficulty just one more tiny notch before I go into the first encounter where this happens: Turn one Idira uses her lightning staff and replaces herself with a bloodthirster. The bloodthirster gets buffed by the non-chaos-themed street scum that attacks me and is allied to them.  I mean, sure, the chance of bad poo poo happening to psykers is accurate to the lore and to the game's P&P source material. And I probably got somewhat unlucky to have my first experience with that mechanic in this particular way. But with how many people do play the game, something like that has to happen to quite a few, and I what it seems to teach to them is "if you want to use this cool character in your party, better not use some of her abilities or sometimes you'll just randomly game over." That being said, the game is very atmospheric, the sound and the visuals are a delight! Maybe I should just put it back on a medium difficulty, auto-attack my way through and enjoy the vibes.
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Jan 15, 2024 02:15
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KM/Wrath have so many interesting builds compared to the mess in this game. The absolute best builds in those games tend to focus on splashing a couple of classes, but you can still make perfectly viable on Hard builds using almost anything. The variety is fun and insane. Here we get almost nothing. Basically, just picking whether you want Cassie, a warrior (Abelard), or a burst fire soldier (Argenta) soaking up your extra turns and murdering everything. There isn't a lot of interesting choices within those builds because you get so many talents you can basically grab anything useful. It also sucks that many interesting talents are locked to backgrounds the player can't pick so you don't have a lot of room for player builds on replays. The most boring combat and character building they've ever made imo. I was still really enjoying the story, space combat, and vibe of the game before my save borked. I can't progress because no matter what I do when back-to-back cutscenes trigger the first one locks my character to their chair even after it ends and the one that follows doesn't trigger properly because of that. I have a bunch of people just standing around my office desk and my character can move around still locked into the sitting animation (it does look pretty funny). Talking to people, moving in and out, triggering things via toybox, nothing seems to get it to progress. Hopefully there will be a patch soon 
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Jan 15, 2024 02:22
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Griddle of Love posted:Sailed through the prologue, love the voice work, bit bored with the trope that every single loving CRPG protagonist has to have visions and/or a voice in their head or some other malign influence. to be fair malign influence of Warp is bread and butter of 40k and arguably one of "otherwordly poo poo messing with your head" trope codifiers quote:KM/Wrath have so many interesting builds compared to the mess in this game. And half of them being different flavour of "dip 1 level in vivisectionist"
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Jan 15, 2024 02:23
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yeah so many of them are just splash these few classes and the end result is your ac is a few points higher. who cares also i could easily get through this game without burst fire
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Jan 15, 2024 02:51
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The difference between a madly-ramping Argenta and a madly-ramping Idira is that sometimes Idira explodes and the officer actions you’ve spent ramping her up are wasted.
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Jan 15, 2024 02:57
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if you like making builds and not just taking tedious poo poo from neoseeker you can also just not use vivisectionist/scaled fist/whatever as there are no shortage of class alternatives. The whole fun part of builds is finding some weird combo that still works on Hard and not just skipping directly to whatever is the current most OP option. That's why the important part of balance in a single player game is not whether there exists an OP option, but if other options are still viable. Especially in Wrath with the interactions of Mythic paths you can make any character concept work. RT just doesn't have the breadth in its character builds to offer many alternatives. In some ways RT has about the same variety as new Xcom 2 it just makes you click through a hundred talents to get there instead of a small number of clear decisions. Probably less when you add WoTC.
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Jan 15, 2024 03:11
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Just finished the game without minmaxing my Rogue Trader. Gonna do a new campaign with a down the line Heretic and really pay attention to my build. Any build guides y'all would recommend?
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Jan 15, 2024 03:13
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i havent played xcom2 much but even xcom1 has more variety than pathfinder when it comes to how things actually play in practice
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Jan 15, 2024 03:27
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Anyone who thinks splashing a level of Vivisectionist is at all required for any reasonable difficulty needs to get off the minmax build boards for a while(and realistically it's not somehow mandatory for Unfair either). Is it an incredibly powerful one level dip? Absolutely. But decently built physical classes are perfectly fine without it, and casters don't want it to begin with. Whining about limited build variety because all the minmaxed builds use that dip (and they don't anyways) is an issue with obsessing over uber optimization, not the build variety you can completely reasonably finish the game with.
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Jan 15, 2024 03:50
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Pershing posted:Just finished the game without minmaxing my Rogue Trader. Gonna do a new campaign with a down the line Heretic and really pay attention to my build. Any build guides y'all would recommend? Take the obvious on the merc you make to replace Argenta (seriously, if you take her on missions she will interfere with your heretical decisions and you can't stop her). On the psyker take Sanctic (cast Word of the Emperor and Hammer of the Emperor as often as possible), Telepath (for Pain Channeling and Aftershock), Bring it Down, and Pyro (just for Backdraft). Put everything else into origin perks and Master Tactician. Their primary weapon should be a bolt staff. Load Cassia up with Navigator powers and talents, only straying to grab Bring it Down, Commanding Voice, and the ridiculous Master Tactician perks. Also No Respite. Put No Respite on every character that can take it. By the end you should be seeing stupid numbers like these.    Note that those are collateral damage numbers, how hard you'll be hitting guys you aren't even targeting. The rest of your squad might as well be meatshields. Lord Koth posted:Whining about limited build variety because all the minmaxed builds use that dip (and they don't anyways) is an issue with obsessing over uber optimization, not the build variety you can completely reasonably finish the game with.
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Jan 15, 2024 03:59
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Gainsboro posted:Same with prebuffing. You can beat core without a single unbalanced class or a single buff spell, it's not a hard game unless you go out of your way to crank up the difficulty. I dont see how this is remotely possible. There are so many must have buffs in that game. Like you are literally never going to hit anything and youll die to every single hosed up spell out there
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Jan 15, 2024 04:30
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babypolis posted:There are so many must have buffs in that game. Edit: Upon revisiting my WotR screenshots, I see that I have made seldom use of Enlarge and Bless, but in 95% of them it's just passives. babypolis posted:Like you are literally never going to hit anything and youll die to every single hosed up spell out there Gainsboro fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Jan 15, 2024 |
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Jan 15, 2024 04:46
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babypolis posted:I dont see how this is remotely possible. There are so many must have buffs in that game. Like you are literally never going to hit anything and youll die to every single hosed up spell out there you just have to build around not using them. The OP neoseeker builds absolutely rely on layered buffs, but there are alternatives. They give up defensives to focus on mostly offensive feats and rely on buffs and dips to make up for it. You can make reasonably armored characters who can complete the game on Hard, but not ones who can compete with the ultra munchkin buff builds abstractly. You can replace buffs with certain feats, but you are giving up elsewhere to fit them in. The one exception is Touch AC goofiness in KM which can really limit the build space near the end, but there isn't anything like that in Wrath. Unfair is on an entirely different level that should almost be called a different game mode. It's specifically built to challenge the mega OP and is far more difficult than most crpgs can become without mods. Even for achievement hunters almost all of the difficulty achievements just require Core and if you are trying to 100% achievo an Owlcat game you are already kinda crazy. Wrath offers a reasonable alternative to the tedium of buffs with the mythic feats that can make buffs 24 hours. You'll give up combat power to do it, but it's a compromise. Some of the mythic paths also offer all in one buff spells so especially an angel path player is just casting a single spell.
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Jan 15, 2024 04:47
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Gainsboro posted:You're going to have to name a few because I can't name a single one, and I've sunk over 400 hours in the Owlcat PF games. its been a while but not having stuff like death ward on at all times sounds like a nightmare. Like I dont doubt you can get tru the game without them but I just dont see how you arent massively nerfing yourself in the Pathfinder games by not using buffs
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Jan 15, 2024 05:14
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all this "well actually you don't need X" still implies complete system mastery of the PF system and more importantly the specific way it was implemented in the Owlcat games including the itemization.
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Jan 15, 2024 06:11
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I simply do not believe you can beat an Owlcat Pathfinder game on Core or higher without buffs.
Janissary Hop fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Jan 15, 2024 |
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Jan 15, 2024 06:38
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pentyne posted:still implies complete system mastery of the PF system
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Jan 15, 2024 06:42
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Gainsboro posted:It's a D20 system, it's not that complicated. It's weird to make it a subject of criticism at all compared to relative nightmare systems like Infinity Engine AD&D and whatever Pillars was built on. I can count the number of RTwP CRPGs that don't feel like complete rear end on one hand. calling Pathfinder "not that complicated" is extremely disingenuous including calling Pillars a nightmare system which is vastly simpler and more user friendly then anything Owlcat has made
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Jan 15, 2024 07:16
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Yeah for better or for worse you have to actively try to make a build in Pillars 1 or 2 that sucks. The way stats work you can make almost any class fit into almost any role.
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Jan 15, 2024 07:18
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Janissary Hop posted:I simply do not believe you can beat an Owlcat Pathfinder game on Core or higher without buffs. 
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Jan 15, 2024 08:04
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once again it goes back to the lousy encounter design. look at dimension door for example. any tabletop build guide rates that spell highly, and teleporting is extremely useful in any other rpg. but it rarely sees any use in the owlcat games. thats because every fight is on a flat field with interchangeable enemies who all have high saves in everything. the result is that the only thing that matters is increasing your attack bonus and spell dc as much as possible which means that whatever build choices you make, theres not much variety in how they play
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Jan 15, 2024 08:12
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cuntman.net posted:once again it goes back to the lousy encounter design. look at dimension door for example. any tabletop build guide rates that spell highly, and teleporting is extremely useful in any other rpg. but it rarely sees any use in the owlcat games. thats because every fight is on a flat field with interchangeable enemies who all have high saves in everything. the result is that the only thing that matters is increasing your attack bonus and spell dc as much as possible which means that whatever build choices you make, theres not much variety in how they play That's one of the (many) reasons why I find Rogue Trader combat much more fun. You have a bunch of trash enemies sprinkled among more distinct thread which makes the encounters much more interesting to handle.
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Jan 15, 2024 08:17
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In DOS2 teleport abilities are common and highly valued.
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Jan 15, 2024 08:33
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The Lone Badger posted:In DOS2 teleport abilities are common and highly valued. That's because DOS2 is a good rear end game.
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Jan 15, 2024 08:34
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Janissary Hop posted:I simply do not believe you can beat an Owlcat Pathfinder game on Core or higher without buffs. I would love to see someone make it though the ten thousand screaming zapping skulls of kingmaker without protection from energy or the wotr swarms of mind control bugs without a buff that helps prevent mind control on anyone.
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Jan 15, 2024 08:38
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cuntman.net posted:once again it goes back to the lousy encounter design. look at dimension door for example. any tabletop build guide rates that spell highly, and teleporting is extremely useful in any other rpg. but it rarely sees any use in the owlcat games. thats because every fight is on a flat field with interchangeable enemies who all have high saves in everything. the result is that the only thing that matters is increasing your attack bonus and spell dc as much as possible which means that whatever build choices you make, theres not much variety in how they play DImension door is extremely useful and anyone who does not abuse it makes life harder for themselves OR has a proper set-up to kill everything with Weird/Deadly Earth/Sirocco etc(. But the latter takes longer to come together than DD access. It even works when it triggers cutscene fights, since it starts from the place you teleported instead of where it walks you in. Many fighst people complained about become much easier with DD. Long story short, even with cheese they read about online, many people play suboptimally
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Jan 15, 2024 08:38
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Janissary Hop posted:I simply do not believe you can beat an Owlcat Pathfinder game on Core or higher without buffs. Yeah no poo poo, but what kind of moron raises the difficulty and then whines that the game expects them to play it perfectly? There's a slider just for lowering enemy stats independently of the other difficulty settings. It's a single player game, no one is going to witness your shame at configuring it to your comfort level.
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Jan 15, 2024 08:44
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Pillars has a system that is easier to make a competent build, but really digging into it has confusing elements. I’d never touched PF before KM but being well grounded in dnd 3.5 it was nbd to adjust. I wish Sawyer would’ve had the freedom to just come up with whatever system he wanted. The need to make it sufficiently recognizable to dnd kickstarter expectations ends up being more confusing than an original system. There are oddball intersections between roleplay and mechanics from the laudable goal of making all six attributes applicable to all classes. Something unfettered would’ve been better. RT lacks the flexibility of PF or Pillars anyway. Like I would imagine every Cassie build looks pretty similar, because you get enough talent points to take every single background talent. There’s some flex on which 2nd class choice you take and how much you want to lean into it, but your bread and butter is the same. There just aren’t a lot of options even if you ignore the optimal choices.
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Jan 15, 2024 08:51
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I think it's worth bearing in mind that the DLC's are expected to add quite a few new archetypes. Given how the class system works in this game, adding more base archetypes and giving all the current ones additional options for advanced archetypes is a significant increase in how many options and combinations are available.
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Jan 15, 2024 09:16
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And odds are Owlcat's probably going to rebalance existing archetypes and classes, so there's that as well; Warrior/AM and Soldier/AM are so unbalanced the nerfhammer is probably inevitable.
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Jan 15, 2024 10:17
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Griddle of Love posted:Sailed through the prologue, love the voice work, bit bored with the trope that every single loving CRPG protagonist has to have visions and/or a voice in their head or some other malign influence. Funny thing: If you immediately give in to Kunrad you won't get that minor daemon put into you. And if you choose the dogmatic option at the burning bridge, Big E will fry the little poo poo.
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Jan 15, 2024 11:28
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