Originally Posted by Maximuuus
Originally Posted by robertthebard

Thanks for this, I needed some entertaining reading this morning.

The nice thing about player agency is that you, as the player, can choose to ignore all of it. I hope that they add toggles for some aspects, such as resting, etc, for MP sessions, but in a SP player environment, none of this breaks my immersion at all, because if I think it's a "broken mechanic", I can opt out of using it, and what Joe Casual is doing in their game has absolutely no bearing on what I'm doing.

Don't like dipping? Don't dip.

Don't like Pickpocketing? Don't do it.

Don't like barrelmancy? Don't use it.

Don't like the way resting is handled, handle it how you prefer.

What do all of these items have in common? They are examples of player agency. Isn't it a great thing? I mean, seriously, what's next? "Players shouldn't be allowed to side with the Goblins"?

Another interesting thought, when's the last time a non-magical melee focused build hit mobs with Eldritch Blast? "But dipping is imbalanced", until level 5? That's when Wizards, and soon Sorcs will have access to Fire Ball. It's more than a bit ironic that you point to one of the more powerful classes to compare how imbalanced dipping is, isn't it? It's even more ironic when I sit here remembering how SSG totally spit on 7 years of character development in DDO because melee were crying about how OP ranged builds are compared to melee builds. That melee character can dip all they want, it won't really matter, once ranged characters come into their truly powerful spells/abilities, and melee builds are struggling to even hit something before it dies, right?

One may like pickpocketing in games and hate how pickpoketing works in this game.

Is "ignore a mechanic OR use a broken one" what you call players agency ?
Isn't pickpocketing "player agency" in other games because it's more coherent and/or less easy ?

Who would complain if pickpocketing, highground bonuses, shove, stealth, dipping (and so on) were more coherent and less broken ? I can't be sure but I guess it would be just like when they finally decouple jump and disengage, remove healing food and remove backstab advantage...
Yet many players claimed that everything was perfect and that nothing should be changed... The concept or the idea behind many mechanics is often great but how it works in game is often bad. To the point that "if you don't like it, don't use it" could be a meme of the game.


Originally Posted by robertthebard
That's great, and who knows what's coming in the next two chapters? Maybe we get all of this, maybe we get none of it. It's hard to say what's going to happen from the beginning of Chapt 2 to the end of the game. Personally, and I know I'm not alone in this, I prefer my main character to be a blank slate. That allows me a lot of freedom, within the confines of the game, to do what I want with my backstory, instead of being locked into someone else's idea of what my character is, or should be, before the events that trigger the actual game. I have to admit to a bit of surprise every time I see this argument presented though, because everywhere else I play where "RPG" is part of what the game is, MMO or otherwise, "I don't want to play the developer's character" is a very common position. There was a ton of controversy in AC Odyssey about this very thing, stemming from one of the DLCs, and a situation that comes up near the end. So it confuses me to no end when I read the equivalent of "I need Larian to tell me who my character was before the events of the game". There is a solution for those specifically looking for that, play one of the Origin characters. There's nothing snarky intended there either, it's a good option to have, and adds to replay-ability, as one could choose each Origin character for a specific playthrough, as well as rolling their own. The only reason for an Origin character to be "more deep" is because the player didn't put any thought into the character other than gender and class. Especially now, with the backgrounds mattering, to some extent. At the end of the day, even if there was a "generic" storyline for Tav, it would be exactly the same as it is for every Origin character; one story to rule them all.

You didn't understood me well... or maybe I didn't explain my thoughts well but you wrote something very interresting : "before the events that trigger the actual game".

I never asked for a background before the event starts and I truly hate playing Origin character precisely because it's someone else's characters.
What I asked is different problems and/or different introductions in the story and/or different goals and/or variations in the main story for the MC and for the companions.

While every companions have something special after the events that triggers the actual games... Tav just has nothing for more than 25 hours.
Like everyone else he was taken by mindlfayer into the nautiloid and he has a tadpole is in his head. Like everyone else a strange force save him after the crash. Like everyone else he wants to find a healer and like everyone else, he's making dreams and have special powers.
What a main character ! Once again from a story perspective Origin companions will make better main characters than custom one because the main character even does not have any specific story line.

The problem with "different introductions" is Act 1. You can't skip part of the narrative because you want a special start for a character that could be the PC. Party members sure, but they'd have to skip all of Act 1 to start the Player in Baldur's Gate, and who knows, maybe they'd have to skip more than that, if we're not going straight to the city for Act 2. Also, as I said previously, even if Tav had a story, it would be the same one for every Tav, just as all of the Origin characters are. That's what I meant by "generic" story. I tend to look at the main story as Tav's story, with Origin characters getting it if there is no Tav, which is a distinct possibility. A lot of people love the Witcher series after all, and may find playing one of those predefined characters enticing.

Using a mechanic, broken or otherwise, and ignoring a mechanic are exactly what player agency is. Let's look at resting: It's been an issue since release, despite the fact that one can simply not rest after every battle. It's what I did, I took long rests, when I remembered them at all, at story beats, instead of spending a lot of time on the forums worrying about what Joe Casual might be doing in their game. As far as implementation is concerned, is it broken, or is it "but someone else might be able to do something"? That's not facetious either, I haven't tried to do any pickpocketing, so I have no idea. I've seen a lot of "barrelmancy" videos on YouTube, but if you could see my actual gameplay footage, you wouldn't find any of it. I wasn't aware that it was a problem until I came to the forums. Why? That pesky player agency, it never occurred to me that I should be packing around 100s of barrels to make major fights easy, and so, I never did it.

You see, you read my comments and go "but that's broken" instead of the context of what was actually meant, and explained: Player agency isn't a bad thing. If, as is to be surmised from reading someone complain about it, a mechanic is an issue, then players have a choice to use it, or not, or to use it where it makes sense. For example, a powerful mage is standing next to an exploding barrel, or is forced to move by one during their turn, and so, you blow them up, or use a dipped arrow on a spider web, to drop the spider to the ground. So what's the real issue? "But someone can do something easier than what I did it" is a usual suspect, and I wouldn't be surprised to find that statement mixed in amongst all the complaints. "But the economy", in a SP game, really? Yes, there's a MP aspect, and as I stated previously, there need to be toggles for some stuff that apply to MP. But in the SP environment, it just doesn't matter at all, unless you read the forums. Why is that?

I played AC 4, Black Flag, and thought, since I was way late to the party, I could catch up on their richest pirate leader board, until I saw some YouTube videos about how players were getting there using Cheat Engine. I could have followed suit, but I chose to just continue playing normally, and put the thought of getting into a high position, on PC, out of my head. Someone that sees Pickpocketing as a problem is going to have a stroke when they see what some players will do with Cheat Engine. I mean, there's a tutorial video on YouTube that teaches players how to max out all of their stats in Pillars of Eternity, do you believe players won't be trying that for their SP characters, or worse, for their MP characters. Neverwinter Nights had an "Enforce Legal Characters" toggle for servers, and something like that may be required here as well, for MP. What they may do in SP doesn't bother me in the least.