I just watched a squad of marines empty their clips into a few unstoppable killing machines that crawled through metric ton of non-lethal riot foam and almost made it before being put down...it's a little bit like Aliens.
Aliens not Alien to be clear.
It's fortunate games don't count your ammo anymore.
this is what real verisimilitude in RPGs looks like
Ah yes, everyone is ignoring aoes in Pathfinder. I've also observed that sometimes, if the party moved too quickly out of sight, the enemies would lose interest and go back through the field to their starting position. Even though no one was stealthing or invisible.
I wonder if they will implement companions which are missable unless you do something specific.
Well ... Lae'zel is easily missable if you dont go near her cage, or you decide to keep her there. You can also completely miss astarion, as far as i know, unless you explore whole map around the ship. And honestly i have no idea if you ignore Wyll and never offers him to join you. O_o
As far as i know, the only unavoidable companion is Shadowheart ... she either join you, or you have to kill her.
Originally Posted by alice_ashpool
this is what real verisimilitude in RPGs looks like
Love it! So much smarter, tactic and inovative strategy than some stupid cheesy and exploitable barrels that you have to arange for hours!
Last edited by RagnarokCzD; 30/09/2105:34 AM.
I still dont understand why cant we change Race for our hirelings. Lets us play Githyanki as racist as they trully are!
Only that you are not really interacting with the environment at all. You are just placing traps everywhere and no one reacts to it.
So much this. It fascinates me how putting explosive barrels next to non-hostile victims and then blowing them up is somehow considered 'environmental intractability'.
Then again, we all know that explosive barrels & crates are a staple of good & original game/map/level design. The more the merrier...
But you are interacting with the environment when you blew up statues and bridges that fall onto the map. That's what I meant. You can reshape the environment that the game initially presents you with.
I just watched a squad of marines empty their clips into a few unstoppable killing machines that crawled through metric ton of non-lethal riot foam and almost made it before being put down...it's a little bit like Aliens.
Aliens not Alien to be clear.
It's fortunate games don't count your ammo anymore.
I specifically liked how if you cast enough Web it becomes an incandescent mass of pure white. I had a previous attempt where I did not cast quite as much Web and just like in alien if those smilodons reach you the whole team explodes into a fine red mist in 1 round or less.
I really like this Pathfinder web vid, and I really like the game.
More recently again though it occured to me that (similar to the IE games, really), the environment as such is pretty static. (At least you can already use spells way before a combat is triggered, rather than being artificially restricted, unlike in say Pillars Of Eternity -- else the above video would not exist). It was during (early-game chapter 1 spoiler)
the siege on the tavern. The game threw waves of enemies at me, and sure, ranged characters attacked them from the roofs and such. But it would have been amazing if you could have actually interacted with, e.g. destroyed or pushed the ladders with which they climbed the walls.
I was almost "shocked" when in the Deadfire DLC I was able to distract NPCs by pushing books from the table (which they would pick up) -- usually nothing there is actually much touchable, except for loot for you to pick up (and the occasional prompt that triggers descriptive texts of a location or item).
That's what you get when your main inspiration and ideal is the Infinity Engine in general. Truth is, compared to Ultima it was relatively limited in terms of world interactivty even back in the day. I'm not advocating for the next few Pathfinder games to turn into Ultima, exploits such as this included. https://www.it-he.org/u9_otwab.php It's also certainly not advocating there to be more explosive barrels. ;-) However, I'd certainly like there to be a tad more of that, and there seem scenarios (see spoiler above) when it feels artificial and restricting you cannot actually "touch" anything but the loot.
But you are interacting with the environment when you blew up statues and bridges that fall onto the map. That's what I meant. You can reshape the environment that the game initially presents you with.
Fair enough, having such a destructible environment in an RPG is kinda cool, I guess. Especially when compared e.g. to the super-static world of Pathfinder games. As long as it is not too easily exploitable (pre-patch 5...) in every second fight, it's definitely a plus (though I'm not loving it nearly as much as whoever made the video). However, the whole interactivity feels kinda half-baked when intelligent living beings living in such environment just don't react to the changes.
But you are interacting with the environment when you blew up statues and bridges that fall onto the map. That's what I meant. You can reshape the environment that the game initially presents you with.
Fair enough, having such a destructible environment in an RPG is kinda cool, I guess. Especially when compared e.g. to the super-static world of Pathfinder games. As long as it is not too easily exploitable (pre-patch 5...) in every second fight, it's definitely a plus (though I'm not loving it nearly as much as whoever made the video). However, the whole interactivity feels kinda half-baked when intelligent living beings living in such environment just don't react to the changes.
That's why I was equally shocked (and pleasantly surprised) when in BG3's goblin village I tried to ambush the ogres from the rooftops above them -- and they were actually coded to "acknowledge" that the pillars of the half-ruined building they were in were destructible. So immediately one of them punched those pillars, the roof my guys were standing on collapsed and my my party would fall down. Hadn't seen that coming, not from a mile.
Maybe beacuse else I had played a load of Deadfire and Kingmaker last year (and enjoyed them regardless of the lack of environmental interactivity, mind).
I think Larian has captured the "things can explode" vibe pretty well, and I appreciate the destructible environments. But I wish they could make a D&D game where one could interact with the environment more like Ultima but taken to the new heights demonstrated by games like Breath of the Wild. You know, where one can say move a big rock, or levitate objects or freeze water using magic, or actually jump swim climb or maybe use ropes in a way that feels realistic. It wasn't even all that crazy there, but they had enough of the moving pieces vibe to make it feel like the world was really responding in a living way. Shoving, throwing, dipping, stacking boxes and blowing stuff up with incendiaries is cool and all, everyone loves to shoot that rope with the giant stone I'm sure, but even with those all added BG3 still feels very much like an iso map game ala infinity, more than it does a living breathing sort of simulated-world with all the various moving parts. I wish they could marry the action genre style of non combat exploration and interactivity with D&D systems and then use the more standardized rules in encounters. I think just being able to climb on top of things or knock more stuff around be fun. I don't see a whole lot in Wrath of the Righteous that departs from the static world, where click loot, click traps, or click the magnifying glass for text/jump are pretty much the whole ballgame.
I almost managed to finish pathfinder and I have a few thoughts about the fights. Definitely bg3 is about a million times better in this aspect. What doesn't really work with this game is the combat design, or rather the lack of it. From a certain point on, the amount of defense stats of enemies starts to slip out of control. In act 5, opponents with 70AC are the norm, so hitting them is almost a miracle. Fighting enemies whose only way to hit is Roll 20 is not a good project. In the case of spells, it is even worse, because the statistics are too bloated, most of them are practically useless. There is no point in using spells that are based on HP or that are completely negated by save.
The worst thing is when Owlcat tries to be creative with fights, then the circus happens. I had suspicions that none of the developers had tested this game, but now I am practically sure that it was so.
Blackwater before nerfs is probably the best example. Electric damage was required to kill some enemies, but at the same time their had high resistance to this type of damage.
Still, it wasn't the worst location in the game. What finished me personally was the fight in the temple of three. The fight may be unique (which is a good thing because I wouldn't survive another fight like this) but it's still poor design.
Not that the enemies are difficult because they are not, however, the game throws at you infinite waves of enemies who not only use heal every turn, but also casts a greater dispell and mirror images. The game tragically communicates to you what you need to do if you want to win the fight. The worst part about it is that the game forces you to do it all in TB.
Temple of Three was a backer area apparently. I haven't done it myself yet but I've already heard of how it's now universally considered the worst part of the game. Blackwater was also a backer area.
The concept of backer dungeons needs to get shot into the sun to be honest, or at least a lot more scrutinized. Blackwater was admittedly rather neat, I think the only real problem was that the game just made it possible for you to go there way too early (it should have been a late chapter 3/start of chapter 5 dungeon instead of being available at the start of chapter 3). But you were given free reign to design something, and you go with rather gimmick fights instead of something that could have had neat reactivity with deity background choices and all of the mythic paths.
As for the difficulty... The further I get, the more I realize that the game is just expecting you to optimize all of your companions at once, at least on Core difficulty. In most other cRPGs, I could get away with only really caring about the main character. Both of the Pathfinder games won't let you do that.
Also, the memes on the Pathfinder subreddit are -amazing-. The great thing about the focus on the party banter and the large varied cast of party members is that the community there is going to have material for years.
The only real gripe I have with WotR is how I never know if my class abilities are bugged, or even implemented at all. Speaking as someone who played an Archaeologist in Kingmaker, whose main class ability might still not be correctly implemented, and and a Cavalier in WotR, it can feel like a game of Russian roulette depending on which class you choose to play as in these games.
One thing I noticed about WOTR is that it's not very new player friendly in some ways.
One example is how the characters don't have some of their spells/abilities on their action bar or whatever it's called. And for some it may not be intuitive on how to set them. Like I'm playing as an eldritch archer. None of my cantrips were on the action bar. Camellia has actions like battle spirit that weren't on the bar.
Another thing I mentioned before is how you can't choose which memorized spells you start with. Like I have 7 spells to choose at creation and start with 2. Can't choose which two. Tried choosing in a different order. Didn't help.
Also there seems to be a discrepancy when it comes to turn based and real time battles. May have been mentioned before? Some battles I do well in turn based. The same battle I'll get destroyed in real time.
Another minor thing is how you can't choose which person in your party opens chests or loots things. Like if I have all of them selected it seems like the closest one will do the looting.
Also when it comes to disarming traps sometimes I have to have the character disarming selected alone otherwise someone else will walk into the trap.
I think that the issue with AC/BaB bloat towards the end of the game is solved in BG3 because it is solved in D&D 5e via bounded accuracy. If Larian were left to their own devices we might see a return of the horrible itemization that created more or less the same problem in DOS 2.
I've also observed that sometimes, if the party moved too quickly out of sight, the enemies would lose interest and go back through the field to their starting position. Even though no one was stealthing or invisible.
