The more I read stuff, the more I am happy that I am not a PnP player.
I compare a computer game to other computer games and the most importent thing is if I enjoy playing this game.
I can understand that some PnP players will always complain because some changes need to be made when creating a computer game.
You cannot include some spells, skills or stuff that PnP players can do because a) technical limitations (like no flying in a 2D game) b) the efford to include this is very high compared to what you gain c) it could break the game (the devs want to tell a story and some events need to happen that the story makes sense).
Regarding Kingmaker, I finished it recently on normal difficulty in turn based mode and it was great.
I do not know the PnP stats and abilities so I had little to complain as a computer game player.
In the worst case the result is similar to Realm of Arcadia. (trilogy from 1991,1993 and1995, based on the dark eye)
The game uses exactly the PnP rules, skills and spells, all of them.
This means that up to 80% of spells and skills are totally useless or extremely situational.
some examples:
- You could spend points in the riding skill but you could never ride anything.
- There is a spell to purify bad food, but there is no bad food in the game
- Some skills/spells are only useful 1 or 2 times over the whole trilogy, but then you can die if you fail them. There is exactly one situation where you need the "banish ghost" spell, but when you do not have it then you are stuck forever. Not on the critical path but still frustrating. There is one point where all party members have to pass a swim check or die as part of the main quest (you have to escape a pirate ship).
These games were great because they implemented lots of interesting stuff you do usually not find in a computer game, but it was almost impossible to finish them without a guide because half of the skills/spells are totally useless while there are some others you absolutely need to have to finish the game at all.
They fixed this in Drakensang (also based on the dark eye) by implementing only skills and spells that have any use in the computer game. I can understand that some PnP fans were angry that they removed some options and changed some other stuff, but I think that most players are happy that the game removed all of the trap choices that are totally useless.
Prof. Dr. Dr. Mad S. Tist
World leading expert of artificial stupidity.
Because there are too many people who work on artificial intelligence already
