What's the Yea Forumserdict? i want to play a highly customisable rpg

brb reinstalling the game RIGHT FUCKING NOW

Im just kinda waiting to see what other DLC they are planning to release, in case its someting that will add to the main story

I tried to get into as a PnP Pathfinder fan but it honestly doesn't compare. They cut too much cool shit to make it work for a videogame and while its highly customizable its not as customizable as the PnP.

you're in for a good time
we beta tested the game for you, it was pretty broken for weeks after release
the tiefling dlc is very good too

Are they both lesbian?

>and i 174h
Doesn’t make your opinions “better” than mine.
>loading times are already fixed
Yeah, we went from 30 second loading screens to 25 second loading screens. Ya know, “Fixed”.
>Bullshit.
Not bullshit. You’re either good or evil, no in between.
>Companions builds can be customized to fit your playstyle
That has nothing at all to do with my post
>No it's not.
Yes it is. Half the reviews mention how slow it is retard.

I'm playing through it now and am in the tomb looking for Armag. Load times have been a few seconds for me on an SSD.
>Not bullshit. You’re either good or evil, no in between.
That's definitely not true. There have been loads of situations where you can just be lawful, or an opportunist, or just be neutral and walk away because you don't give a fuck.

I dropped the game too at launch because of the bugs but most of them are fixed, including the load times. Reminds me of how people still shit on Deadfire for being stupidly easy at launch when that has been long past fixed.

>You’re either good or evil, no in between.
Are you retarded? There's tons of neutral options and even variation between differend types of good and evil.
As a lawful good you go around killing evil doers while neutral and chaotic good are more about forgiveness and second chances.

>Most, if not all, characters will try to activate their romances on the spot. You meet a new character? They start hitting on you, even if you never talked to that character and just chose them for a quest.

Who does that but Octavia and Reognar, the duo that tries to fuck anything that moves?

For FeMC, of course!

>actual bestgirls
When the fuck did this happen? You mean they added female romance options that aren't "lol open relationship" bullshit?

How is Valerie "lol open relationship"?

Almost everything in your post is bullshit.

I stopped playing once goblins came to my city and started fucking shit up
Because I had no one to handle them my kingdom got destroyed or something
The kingdom stuff is half baked and takes forever, which feels weird when your party could be killing necromancers but you rather fast forward to complete your bakery or some shit

She doesn't feel that love and sex have a connection; ergo, she'll fuck others if she feels like it

>did they fix the load times?
>did they fix everything else?

This could have been my g2 isometric rpg, but those god slavs done fucked up badly.

The adventure its based off isnt very good in paper either. Don't know why they chose it.

You can take the tiefling twins as wives? Can it be an ffm relationship?

Yes

Holy fuck, reinstalling

I'll never understand why people care so much about RPG romances.

>i want to play a highly customisable rpg
It's good compared to modern vidya, but if you played tabletop Pathfinder you should know what's up - majority of choices are useless and in the end there are only few actually viable builds. Of course on easier difficulties this should be fine.

Also it boggles my mind that they ported skill checks without adjusting them to crpg realities, like New Vegas did. Failing checks works in tabletop because DM will adjust the story accordingly to make it even more fun. In crpgs this just means mindless quickloading because the only thing that happens when you fail a random roll check is that you become weaker in the long term (less XP) while the encounters stay on the same difficulty.

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pro tip/Spoiler ahead!

Dont't make linzie a vital part of your group, what happens with her in the last dungeon fucked me over bigtime

>majority of choices are useless and in the end there are only few actually viable builds
you sound awful to play RPGs with.

The same reason japan crazy about waifu simulators.

Not really, since Pathfinder as a system is heavily focused on combat heavy adventures for optimized characters. That's exactly the reason why i don't like it compared to other systems.

If we're going to assume each archetype is placed somewhere on a tier list, theres no reason your party can't all be "tier 2" or "tier 3" characters and have your DM tailer encounters to match. Minmaxing takes all the fun out of Pathfinder, its more interesting to try and play around with everything the system has to offer.

You can beat the game just fine on hard running literally any class with story companions without any multiclassing or vivi/monk/thug/etc memes. The only time you have to optimize hard is on unfair which is meant to be a powergaming cheesefest where they just cranked npc rolls and damage to 11.

Should i play this or pillars of eternity 2 deadfire?

Is this game still broken as shit?

Deadfire is shorter and easier to understand so you might want to do that first.

Pf:Km has actually good writing without blatant virtue signalling

All the issues of the game (bugs and loading time) have been fixed. With these problems fixed there is no reason not to play the game. It's the best RPG of 2018.

There is some minor bugs, but mostly it's ok to play.

It needs a turn based option

Tabletop PF is caster edition and Kingmaker really isn't. Resting is a bitch and you fight like 2x the amount of shit you'd normally face in a really encounter heavy game. And you can't use your spells in the usual creative ways.

Honestly, they did a great job of porting the strong content for typically weak builds (unchained monk/crane style for monks, piranha strike for dex pure martials, accomplished sneak attacker for Arcane Trickster early entry cheese, etc.) instead of just grabbing the 3 most core sourcebooks or whatever.

What's the point of saving the world if you don't even get the girl? Even if the romance itself is straightforward/mediocre, it's better than having an autistic protag who only manages to form businesslike relationships.

That would be perfect, but i doubt that will happen. I'm really surprised about poe2, now i want it in poe and i can play it at last.

>Kingmaker end had me killing an immortal being in the shape of a star with my qt plant waifu
>Deadfire end had me watching a green statue break a machine

Kingmaker was more entertaining.

>killing the Lantern King
wrong

>Lets turn a 100hour game into a 1000hour one

I thought the curse you reflect onto him makes him mortal?

In anycase even if he respawns in the first world he will have no power so he is as good as dead.

still waiting a few more months for them to iron out bugs. Initial playthrough had me feeling pretty good but some of the pathfinder rules don't translate so well to CRPG

>No Alchemist
>No summoner
No buy

Absolutely fantastic. The first game since BG2 that actually feels like a successor to BG2. One of the best games I've played in a long, long time.

Great characters, well done, interlinking story, fun combat (fuck the Wild Hunt though) and almost all the bugs have been squashed. Very playable.

Now, half a year after release, tell me friend, who played this game, are they gone? The bugs.

all i wanted was to spend 90% of gmea time fucking with character creation. but they have only base classes and 4 prestige..
even nwn2 had better gameplay and DEFINITELY a better character creater

She says the exact opposite if you actually do her romance, she clearly expects loyalty in your relationship.

Yup

>can't doggystyle the barbarian
>can't mating press Lizzy-Stinkie
>can fuck cuck paladin
>can fuck overused half-elf
It's thrash.

Luckily group Exp makes that an easy fix, so long as you've got another decently geared character.

Kingmaker is a world away from Deadfire, it's absolutely fantastic.

Those are both things in Kingmaker.

>The first game since BG2 that actually feels like a successor to BG2.
This comparison is very accurate. Both games are hack&slash garbage with nonexistent roleplaying and have nothing to do with actual RPGs.

>Tabletop PF is caster edition and Kingmaker really isn't. Resting is a bitch and you fight like 2x the amount of shit you'd normally face in a really encounter heavy game. And you can't use your spells in the usual creative ways.

Pretty much this, except for resting, you can almost always rest whenever you want. Only time it really got dicey for me there was Vordakai's tomb.

But playing melee was waaaaay more engaged than playing a caster until about the final 1/5th of the game, at the start especially your mages feel like almost deadweight.

True Ending kills him

They're both in though? Alchemist is crazy OP too.

Yeah, BG2's story is low tier so I don't see why someone would praise Pathfinder on that basis.

>Can fuck Dryad Goddess
>Can fuck two Tieflings, together

10/10

>cockblocks you until the end of the game
>dlc whore

I'm really surprised Linzi wasn't an option.

How insane do you have to be to think a girl simply mentioning a past relationship as you getting cucked?

It's the Pathfinder of D&D video games.

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>Can't fuck the midget girl
I dropped that shit as soon as I knew that. What's the fucking point?

She does fuck you, though. Financially.

Easy. She mentions it right when you start fucking her. Just to belittle you. Also, the endings. If you marry her, she is on pill control, no offspring for you, faggot cuck. If you don't, she marries some peasant and let him breed her and knock her up. 2 times.

Why would you even want to fuck that whiny-voiced thieving cunt

She doesn't though. She gets you a printing house for like 1/4th what they cost normally.

thicc dwarf gf when

THIS STRIKE
MY MASTERPIECE

>Can fuck two Tieflings, together
wait, explain

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THIS WOUND
MY GIFT TO YOU

The Hot/Cold Tiefling twins, their whole thing is being inseparable, and so, if you refuse to choose just one of them, they accept it. Kinda like Justine and Caroline in P5, where they tell you there's no need to choose just one of them, they wouldn't wanna leave the other out.

The romance with the Good girl literally begins after she catches you having just fucked her sister

>cockblocks you until the end of the game

No she doesn't, nothing is stopping you from sleeping around before you get to that point. Just keep the relationships from becoming romantic, or break them up before you get her (or just spend two seconds turning their flags off, then back on afterwards, so you can marry up to all 5 if you want)

My last playthrough was as a Paladin of Shelyn and I was banging Valerie, Octavia and Kanerah, and I still married Nyrissa at the end.

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>Paladin of Shelyn
>banging Valerie, Octavia and Kanerah, and I still married Nyrissa at the end.

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I like to do silly roleplays in my head for RPGs, so the idea for that character was that he was big on the whole Smite Evil stuff, not bad with Mercy, Art and Beauty, but hadn't really been paying attention to the whole "it's courtly love, not physical love" stuff.

So after most missions I'd come back to town, flip Kanerah on her back, then take either Valerie or Octavia back to the Palace with me.

I actually wound up turning romance flags off and back on at a few key moments in my player.json file, so at the end I just married all 5 of them

If you don't think having a girl impaled on your cock and it being the only thing keeping her off the ground then I am disappointed in you.

Companions are shit, just like they are in Pillars and Divinity.
Story is boring, just like in Pillars and Divinity.
Balance and/or overall combat is shit, just like in Pillars and Divinity.

Just get some friends and play the tabletop.

The idea is so hot that I forgot to include "is the hottest shit"

How does a Nyrissa romance work anyway? Aren't you essentially shoving your dick into tree bark. Must feel comfy.

Does it have Animal Companions? I'm in the mood for a game where I can fuck people up with my pets.

Wait you can get Nyrissa end even if you have romance with other girls?

Yes but they scale like dogshit.

Yea

Not without changing some values in your save file you can't.

Sounds like pain in the ass, so i should turn off every girl flag at critical points of the game?

begone thot

Dude, optimized characters will blow any published PF adventure away, and past level 9 or so most monsters wouldn't even know what hit them.

Pathfinder adventures are sold to a very specific crowd that apparently loves rolling dice for the sake of it.

I think you have to turn off the other romance flags right before you enter the house at the edge of time

More like
>no oracle

I haven't used them, but from what I've seen they can be crazy with the right feats and gear.

Not legitimately, but Nyrissa only checks once, when you talk to her after defeating her. So just open your player.json and turn off the other romance flags, then put them back on afterwards.

Same as romancing both Octavia and Valerie. You can fuck then both, but sooner or later, if you keep progressing things, you'll be asked to make it exclusive and choose one. Just turn the romance flag for the other off right before that point, then do the same in reverse for the other.

Not so bad. Thx for the tip.

Been a Forever DM for over a decade on multiple systems and people certainly do NOT like to roll the dice for the heck of it. Not everyone is a min-maxing faggot but every player wants their character to succeed in their given task, and when you play with friends this allows you to play anything from a noncombatant face or skill-slut thief without worry of your combat effectiveness because its NOT your strength.

What the games do however is FORCE you to go down that path whenever you SHOULD be able to make the entire group invisible and sneak passed a guard post, to use survival and anticipate an ambush in order to turn it onto them or go around them, or even to wait and sneak into an enemies bed chambers at night and maybe charm them into your way of thinking completely negating combat at all. So hes not wrong when he says that the games force a certain playstyle, especially so on higher difficulties.

It's a pretty run of the mill cRPG, but it's probably the best one that has come out recently. The Pathfinder guys were protoSJWs, woke before woke was a thing, so expect horseshit in that regard. It's like the overwhelming majority of other cRPGs where Evil playthroughs are neutered and were an afterthought. There are some legitimately interesting characters, though, and some bits of good writing.

Pathfinder is not "highly customizable", though. You are meant to powerlevel and game the system to be viable. If you are a sword and board warrior, you ain't gonna have a good time.

If you want just Valerie/Octavia and Nyrissa you'll have to edit one variable right before you confront Nyrissa.

If you want Kalikke and/or Kanerah and Nyrissa, you'll have to do the same, but also turn Nyrissa off just before you meet them in the House at the Edge of Time.

If you want Valerie/Octavia and Kalikke and/or Kanerah then combine both of those.

If you want Valerie AND Octavia, you have to also turn each of the others flag off at the critical "I want you to myself" moment of the relatonship.

It's really easy, takes about 5mins all up. If you're really romancing Nyrissa you're probably looking at your save file data anyway to double check you've got all the requirements met throughout the game.

Is it normal for my spells to miss 7/10 times while bandits keep 2 shoting 30 AC Valerie?
I'm a complete noob at this games I'm probably doing something wrong.

Sword and board in PF basically just turns into TWF with a couple extra steps. It's doable, especially if your class has an archetype suited for it, but like TWF, it's a lot of extra effort that's ultimately less reliable at damage than just using two-handers. Of course, most of the adventure paths are designed to be clearable by parties of the "iconic" characters, most of whom are pretty terribly built (ask the Paizo guys on /tg/ about Harsk), so you really don't need to worry for the most part.

>There are some legitimately interesting characters though
If you can stand to waste your time long enough to get to them. Got to getting your own keep and a few hours after that point was so disappointed by the followers by that point that I didnt care about building up the frontier.

Maybe theres one that pops in later in the game so I wont call you a liar, but whats the point in doing companion side quests and hearing their unique dialogue when all you're waiting for is for them to shutthe fuck up?

The only spells that can miss are touch attack spells. You probably shouldn't be casting those early game, but rather crowd control spells like grease to knock the bandits on their ass. That will help you a lot more than direct damage spells.

And if you do feel the need to cast damage spells that ealy on, use magic missile. It always hits.

Reminder to put Linzi in her rightful place.

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Okay, I'll do that

You never played the game, don't ya?

If you don't have the Point Blank Shot feat or whatever it's called, then you get a huge penalty shooting spells into melee.

>"Erotic Writing"
>Zero details only actions
>Literally somehow the exact opposite of autism

Shame, actually kinda like parts of that. The guy could be good.

Checks out to me. Just add "Marvel™ quip" option as well and its a golden take of the game.

I don't know who to trust. Niggers in steam hate this game, but FAGGOTS on Yea Forums praise it.

Protip: Valerie should pick up Crane Style and 3 ranks in Mobility for -2 hit/+4 AC when fighting defensively. You can dip Traditional Monk 1 if you don't want to spend a feat on Improved Unarmed Strike.

I thought that was for bow and crossbows only, I'll get it next level then

You could just play it a bit and refund it if you don't like it, user.

There has been a kingmaker general for months since it's release in September, 2018.

Deadfire stayed up two days at most.

Take away from that what you will.

>In before flies and shit/McDonald's analogy.

I chose the vassel option and became an immortal sorcerer king.

>accepting the Lantern King's offer

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Always have Defensive Fighting on Valerie, and give her ranks in mobility to make it better.

Just *miss* give it a try *miss* goy. For the low price of 40 dollery-doos *miss* you too can enjoy the tale of insufferable halfing girl *miss*, Good McPaladin, haughty-elf (original donut steel), Don't-need-no-miss, and walking contradiction!

Maybe even before dying to completely fair, balanced, and true to the official Paizo Monster Manual™ enemies like the ratfolk you too can enjoy the LITERAL KEK LIFE of our brave, bold swinger couple companions!

There has been a Katawa Shoujo general for years now.

If you're going to become a vassal why not become Nyrissa's? Or her husband? You're immortal either way and not selling yourself out to the LK of all people.

Arthas surrendered his soul to the Lich King for the power to kill the demon sent to create the Lich King's army.

whats the best crpg for a noob

Smilodon is a godlike being who carries you through the whole game. Dog and wolf can knock enemies down on every attack.

NWN 2

You can always try "free" version and you can buy it after if you liked it.

What's wrong with the first one?

>Player can prebuff before every single encounter
>And can savescumm at will

It's not exactly a mystery why they buffed some monsters. Nevermind how strong damage is here, on anything below the hardest difficulties, unless you're somehow underlevelled, you'll be 2 shotting even the biggest stat-buffed creature.

I don't min-max at all, my character was a pure Paladin and I kept Amiri as a pure Barbarian, and between the two of us, both using (greater)cleave, enemies just exploded into giblets.

Add Jubilost, Noknok or Kanerah in and fights end FAST.

I think I beat the Lich superboss in about 10 seconds.

It's not aged well, and imo it's more complex than nwn2, maybe because it was my first game with dxd system.

BG2 or PS:T

>couldnt play Divinity till end
>couldnt play Pillars till end
>couldnt play this till end
Why is it so hard to make likable followers these days? Not asking for something iconic like Garrus, Khelgar, or Dog but fuck me sideways could I not be assed to listen to a single line of dialogue from any of the starting members after reaching the first inn.

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>>Player can prebuff before every single encounter
>>And can savescumm at will
These are problems in all CRPGs though, it's not exactly unique to Pathfinder.

there's something deeply mentally wrong with james jacobs imo. he's thematically stuck on playing heroic characters and playing the game AS DESIGNED, which is basically the least fun thing I can imagine. if it were up to JJ all games would be 4 poc wyxmen sword and boarding through goblins

Unlike some users who spills bullshits, I did play the game. Last time I played was on november.
At the release, the game was full of bugs, but it seems that now they fixed most of them; loading times were longer, but I can't check if now they are faster.
The character customization is deep and vast, it lets you to create various and possible overpowered builds.
The writing is average fantasy at best. It is far away from planescape levels, but its not garbage neither.
If you are into RTWP combat system then you will love this game, although you will have to micromanage your team every instant, because the is very basic, and it does allow you only basic functions (such as "use always this spells/attacks").
There are a lot of trashmobs, especially in the final part (don't know if they fixed it, or not).
The companions are....well, some of them are annoying (Valerie, Octavia) and others decent written and/or charming (Linzi), don't expect deep/tormented personalities.
I do not know about the DCLs.

I wouldn't say it's more complex - the second game actually has a complete party to level and gear up instead of just the main character, and choosing the "recommended" options generally makes your party members terrible.

> because the is AI very basic

>>couldnt play Divinity till end
Ah, Divinity 2...... what a fucking waste of money.

I was well past the point of making that work when I discovered that was an option and not interested in going back 50 hours.

Doubt my sorcerer cared. Why stay with one bitch forever when you have an endless variety as the king?

>Linzi
>charming

Through her to the, literal, wolves the first chance I had.

Thanks for all the help, I actually have a lot to work on but it should improve my chances considerably

Than that's probably just my experience.

No idea what that is but I suspect it falls into the same analogy.

Sure, and no CRPGs are really all that hard because of it, Pathfinder is probably the hardest, but on normal difficulty it's still very approachable for noobs.

The only buffed creatures that'll really fuck you up are the wererats if you fight them early, and the Wild Hunt (which are bullshit).

Even in BG2, the hardest encounters are way beyond anything you'd generally find on the tabletop, unless the players are crazy munchkins.

>savescumming makes shit encounter design okay
Nigger what?

>tfw you can not torture and execute her for embezzling government funds
The developers are retards.

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>Companions are shit, lore and gameplay-wise.
Ekundayo is based and literally redpilled both lore and gameplay-wise, and you are a retard

Just don't build the library, her book becomes an eternal prison.

>shitlings
>best
Go back to tumblr

>playing the game long enough to get to E-kun
Other people did this?

I'm in the middle of playing right now, I'm somewhere between the 2 and 3 chapter. I have only really been half enjoying it, its definitely not as good as Pillars or Divinity.

>and no CRPGs are really all that hard because of it
I'd argue that the real problem is that general game and encounter design is what lends to prebuffing and "savescumming" rather than the inverse.
If people actually designed good encounters, enemies and battle mechanics prebuffing wouldn't mean much, but since they do not and pretty much 99% of CRPGs are made up of shallow battles of attrition that also promote blitz lest the battle inevitably snowballs in one direction...you can see why prebuffing is what it is, outside of dumb fucking shit like D:OS 2 where you can switch to other characters mid dialogue and go mad with teleport bullshit, pickpocketing, free repositioning or buffing the speaker PC with infinite buffs.

Play Tyranny it's the best crpg out now

He's right. It isn't really about powergaming as much as it is about fucking yourself over and having no fun at all.

>tfw can't fuck best boy Ekun but some thot can
I'm fucking seething over here

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I wish the game had custom AI. Bothers me I can't just have my wizard auto-buff. Enjoyed it otherwise though and felt it was a decent adaptation of Pathfinder.

Kinda felt like playing FF12 after realizing

How’s the romance with the new Tiefling girl? Haven’t played since she got added.

I keep hearing this game is really buggy. Is there patch mods that fix the shit devs are too dumb or lazy to fix. How is the mod scene for this game anyway?

Best option by far.

it hasn't been buggy for a while. Played the game from start to finish with no issue other than one conversation during resting that soft locked the game.

It was insanely buggy on release and some updates inadvertently broke the game in new and interesting ways. However it’s pretty stable in it’s current state. The devs aren’t that incompetent that modders could fix it faster than them, it’s a huge game with a million mechanics because it’s trying to accurately portray the real Pathfinder, so a lot that could fuck up.

Think of kingmaker like baldurs gate 2 if someone decided to cut the dungeon crawling, companion content and replace about 60% of the game with these load screen galore kingdom micromanagement system that somehow managed to be worse then pillars 1 stronghold.

New to Pathfinder and the UI is very convoluted coming out after playing Deadfire.

Is Monk a good class? If so, any general guides? It's hard to find one. I just want to punch shit.

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might give it a try again. honestly i just stopped playing first few hours because of how slow everything felt (both in-game shit like running through maps and loading screens) but that was back when it released.

are kineticists good?

I swear having 2 or 3 Grenadiers makes the early and midgame so much easier. They’re the only good source of AoE damage (damage focused wizards/sorcs are a trap) and you don’t have to worry about friendly fire with them.

As noted, it's okay now, not perfect, but not much worse than most games.

The issue was it got shoved out the door with only the first half of the game QA tested.

The team took on a little too much trying to make both a Pathfinder game AND Kingdom building aspect.

I'd like to see the sequel (if it gets one) do a Baldur's Gate 2 and fix the focus on one area and make the content dense and interesting.

Its basically got everything wrong with it that people complain about in Pillars games, but its made by slavs and uses D&D as a base so people give it a pass.

I won't touch it until its fully DLCed out, at most. Tried it near release and the massive bugginess and overall lackluster gameplay wasn't really gripping.

do scaled fist monk its arguablly the best martial class in the game as it has tank,dps and cc with trip that applies with your attacks

Its D&D so the best builds are ones that abuse 1 level talents in subclasses or wizards.

Do the regular monk with max dex and high wis for huge dodge tank, wear amulet of agile fists the instant you find one (beginning of chapter 2)- accept you'll do trash damage until then.

Or, go full str with some cha and be a scaled fist- this is all about multiplying the strength bonus to become an extreme hard hitter, and many attacks per turn, but a real glass cannon.

Can I be a wizard that bashes face with huge weapons while burning everything in my path? if not then fuck this game.

Does this game have a lot of imbalanced shit and deliberately useless noobtraps? I love that shit in RPGs, they're like a puzzle to me more than anything

I don’t have issues with packs if enemies though, it’s always the crazy strong bosses/optional enemies with retardedly high HP, AC and saves that fuck me. I swear some of these fucks don’t have a single low defensive roll to target.

yes

Its annoying. Sometimes you run into an enemy where you have no way to reliably hit them at all outside of a nat 20. Its just retarded. If they were in an area you shouldnt be in, thats on thing, but they pop up where you would normally go sometimes and i dont get why.

>got everything wrong with it that people complain about in Pillars games
It's not overwritten, not BALANCED, it doesn't hate anything fun and it isn't trying to be a "not-DnD".

I actually consider the companions one of the games strengths.

>Valerie

Annoying and arrogant, but, then you realise her arrogance is actually well founded and just her accepting what's been true her whole life - that everyone thinks she's hot. She doesn't like it, but she accepts it. But then, when she loses her beauty it actually messes her up, she struggles to deal with it. And her whole arc is about accepting her fault changing her ways.

>Jubilost
>Harrim
>NokNok

All completely and utterly based. Jubilost's quest is probably the best and the ending is fantastic.

>Amiri

Big and stupid, she's caused endless problems but she's fun.

>Octavia and Regongar

Probably the best example I've seen of two people who're utterly fucked up by their life in slavery, you can see that everything about how they define themselves still comes back to it. Octavia is also a great example of why Chaotic also means periodically annoying and stupid, contrasted to many chaotic characters that just take it to be an excuse to ignore inconvenient rules.

>Ekun
>Tristian

I didn't use either on my first playthrough, but both wound up being far more enjoyable when I actually gave them a chance. Tristian balancing mercy and justice was surprisingly great.

>Linzi
>Jaethal

These are the only ones that never really clicked that much for me, still fun, but I didn't love them.

Really great

Are you playing on Hard? That’s an issue with the highest difficulty levels, the universal stat buffs enemies get round out their weaknesses.

Why, yes.
You can even turn into a huge dragon.

Literally nothing you said makes sense.

Yep, that's Pathfinder in a nutshell.

>are kineticists good?

It may be because the characters aren't min-maxxed, but having used the Tiefling girls, I'll say they do fuck loads of damage but also feel really, really restricted by burn.

I may have been playing them badly, but 8 generally left them on just autoattacking, using one or two big attacks on the bosses and that's it. They do a LOT of damage though, but then, not as much as an endgame Wizard, and not as easily earlygame as a Warrior/Paladin.

It's based on 3.5ed so you can pick just about whatever class you want at any level which can lead to some fucked up builds if you don't know what you're doing. Some archetypes are outclassed by other options but there's nothing egregiously bad if you stick to one class. Worse sure (some of the ranger ones I think are trash if I remember right) but the game will still be easily completable on the normal difficulties.

I expected to hate nok nok but somehow I adore that little shitter.

Nice. My favorite RPGs basically boil down to avoiding noob traps and figuring out the one most broken strategy that trivializes everything and I hate the push nu-RPGs have for "balance" and "choosing your playstyle". Fucking horseshit I say.

One of your companions is basically exactly that as a Magus, but you can also do it as a pure wizard through transformation spells.

Are there straight up unviable classes on high difficulties? Hoping for a yes.

Do you ever finish those games or just quit once your game becomes trivial?

Excuse me user, what did you just say about muh balance?

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>noobtraps
Absolutely. Most of the negative reviews of the game are retarded casuals who couldn't get past the first chapter.

The devs have started playing another Adventure Path, so yes they are definitely planning to adapt another considering how well this sold.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with some classes or characters being significantly better than others.

Change my mind.

Keep in mind though that it depends on difficulty.

I've never played Pathfinder in my life, I kept all my characters pure in their classes and still beat it on normal without huge difficulty (some parts were challenging, but I could get through it all more or less).

But as you go higher up, you're expected to min-max more.

Yes, a lot of martial classes, especially ones without 1 BAB per level, really have issues on higher difficulties.

I did it? I did!

Easily the best of the RTWP-revivals. Still flawed in some ways but definitely worth playing.

>a lot of martial classes
Perfect. Fuck martials. Caster supremacy is the best.

I hope they put in some more time ironing out bugs/glitches before launch. Should be real good if they do

There are some obvious "why would you ever" subclasses like the scroll wizard or base alchemist. Their alternatives just offer a lot more useful perks.

That said even those shitty subclasses will work perfectly fine if you have the appropriate attributes.

Unfair difficulty straight up says "Don't choose this unless you're familiar with pathfinder and know what you're doing." You need to build right to get through it.

For me though, the biggest noob trap I ran into on normal was not bringing more than 6 rations to Vodakai's tomb. You get fucking locked in, and it's HUGE! By the end, I was savescumming like crazy just to survive a fight. No spells left, no abilities to use, and all but one of my party had Death's Door.

Intense.

(But as they say, if you fuck yourself over, you can always just turn the difficulty down).

Nothing, but even the weakest classes should be viable for beating the game have some fun features.

They've probably learned a lot from Kingmaker's launch. I don't doubt that they were also pushed to release it in that buggy mess because of their publisher. Deep Silver is known for pulling that bs.

Even the good classes are non-viable if you fuck up your feats/class talents. Minmaxing in Kingmaker is about knowing how all the different pieces fit together. For instance, Alchemist is the only class that can cast Shield on other characters (but only with the Infusion discovery) -> bring Jubilost -> now your monk has +4 AC you would have never had otherwise.

Better in what ways?

Warriors are doing 80 damage crits in Ch2 while you're mage it casting a spell for 8 damage. Warriors are better, mages are useless.

Warriors are doing 120 damage crits endgame while mages are winning entire fights by themselves. Mages are better, Warriors are worthless.

Etc.

(Alchemists are the GOD class though, my god)

>now your monk has +4 AC you would have never had otherwise
use magic device - wand/scroll of shield

Well some caster classes suck too. A lot of what made wizards OP in pen and paper is gone, you're gonna be on color spray duty for a large chunk of the game.
It's specifically summon classes that are way too strong in this game. Druids, Monster Tacticians and Rangers with the equal pet level feat are amazing.

If I were to rate classes in this game with grades ABC. Every class would get ABC while kinitecists would get S++
Once their firewall spell is online they break the game worse then alchemists. Aggro mobs drop 2 of those firewall things they have. Congrats you won.

>like the scroll wizard
Scroll wizard would be fantastic if you could actually buy and scribe arcane scrolls. That's a flawed game design.

I think there should definitely be ways to build your character wrong, but what does not letting every class excel even when used optimally add to the game?

Unfair is nutso. Enemies do so much damage and get so many huge bonuses that the winning strategy is to never give them a chance to do damage in the first place.

If it dumped the kingdom management it would be a contender to the true legacy of BG2, but as it stands that fucking bullshit is so godawful, like abysmally the worst game design of all time in a CRPG, that it will never achieve its true potential.

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Jubilost is, as far as I can tell, the only character that can cast Protection from Arrows: Communal, and Stoneskin: Communal.

I never found a single scroll for either of those anywhere, but they're utterly godly talents for endgame.

Just use the crafting mod.

Unironically this.

RPGs are not a competitive genre and some classes being harder to play than others is absolutely no problem. In fact, figuring out to play a game that is stacked against ones own class can be part of the fun. Also, in a party based game it really doesn't fucking matter because the party NPCs alone can carry any gimped shit character through the game.
Classes not being "balanced" enough is a nonsense critique coming from people who are mad that they can't solo the game with just any class or that certain classes don't have enough to do, which then leads developers to add all types of abilities that need to be micro-managed so the retard who wants to solo the game as a fighter can manually click on that "hit something with particle effects and aoe" ability button every now and then when factually they'd have enough to do if they played the game with a full party as intended.

Actually I can believe that, I didn't do it very often since it was kinda finnicky to setup but firewall did seem VERY strong.

Competitive games don't need to be balanced either.

I'm pretty sure I had Octavia cast stoneskin communal.

Stoneskin is shit after a while because everything hits like a truck so that 10 damage reduction aint doing shit.

I mean that's true but spamming consumables for a spell that only lasts 1 minute at CL 1 is a huge pain. Wheras a couple infusions will get you through a whole dungeon, once you get on in levels. The main point is that you knew enough to try to get Shield on a monk in the first place.

Because it removes depth and variety. If every class is good, then no class is good, because for something to stand out as good, something else has to be bad. And there can be fun to be had in trying to make obviously terrible classes work. Why take that away from people?

Making every class good is just boring.

Not every class being able to solo shit is a dumb complaint and I don't know where you got that from, but having a ton of classes you would never, ever reasonably pick is basically a waste of content, isn't it?

>using casters as damage dealers
Yeah nah. They're there to lay down hazards, do crowd control, and spam Sirocco so your martials can get in and do some big damage. Summoning is also great since there's no summon limit.

My monk's ac was already so ridiculously high it didn't need the shield buff all the time. I cast it for bosses and that was it.

Being a trap option justifies the content in itself. Its reason to exist is to be bad and not worth picking.

Figuring out what's good and what's bad is what the game is about, and stumbling into something bad and figuring out why it's bad is a learning experience.

here's the argument

jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/161302725596/balance-in-single-player-crpgs

like many things it doubtless comes down to personal taste

Not if it's a level based RPG. The point of levels are to tell you how strong something is. A level 15 X and a level 15 Y should be the same power cause there are both level 15. Otherwise, why even have levels?

Isn't there a setting to make the kingdom stuff automatic? I'm pretty sure I saw it

Fucking. This.

Absolutely.

My favorite playstyle for RPGs is to play a mage, getting the full experience of that (sometimes brutal) power curve. You suck shit at the start as a trade-off for Godly powers at the end.

I played PoE, I was enjoying it, playing a mage and slowly, slowly getting my way towards good spells. Then I got busy and took a break for a bit, I came back and find out that Sawyer had balanced things, and nerfed the fuck out of mages as one of those balances.

I don't know how bad the changes were, but I was too pissed off to ever pick it up again. Why the hell would a single player game need to be balanced? The whole reason I chose the class was to earn the right to be Broken. What an utterly pointless, unnecessary change!

Dunno if it's been fixed now but he's absolutely right about the load times being horrendous previously.

Just because a class isn't good doesn't mean you can't play it. It's a roleplaying game.

They were fixed.

Yes, there is. Downside is that if you enable it once, you can't turn it off again.

What kind of roleplaying experience is a class that's barely even functional? Why would a class that does fucking nothing useful even exist, in-universe? People don't usually keep doing things that don't work for very long.

I've put in about 300 hours into it. it was decent.

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Just put it on easy imo

Yes it's fixed, it's few seconds on ssd now, before it was 15-20 i think, don't know about hdd though.

>having a ton of classes you would never, ever reasonably pick is basically a waste of content, isn't it?
It depends on why you wouldn't want to pick them. A class that is factually not as "strong" as the other classes can still be fun to play if the gameplay itself is fun. For example, I had a lot of fun playing an assassin in Baldur's Gate 2. Is an assassin as strong as some other builds? No. But sneaking around and instantly killing something with backstabs every now and then made it still a satisfying experience.
I'm not talking about some classes being shit to the point of where they're not fun to play any more, I'm talking about some classes just not being as game-breakingly powerful as others, which is completely fine.
Especially because the player character will pretty much always turn out the strongest entity in the game at some point due to the player handing him the best items, bonuses, etc. While theoretically the player could be playing with a "stronger" character than his current one, that theoretical character is not part of the game and the player is not competing with that character.

>My favorite playstyle for RPGs is to play a mage, getting the full experience of that (sometimes brutal) power curve. You suck shit at the start as a trade-off for Godly powers at the end.
But that's its own form of balance, really. An imbalanced mage would be godly by the end while being just as powerful as other classes early.

Balance doesn't have to mean making everything boring, but that's the approach a lot of shit designers have. It's really just a matter of giving options "fair" advantages and drawbacks instead of giving some stuff nothing but upsides and others nothing but downsides.

>Why would a class that does fucking nothing useful even exist, in-universe
All jobs aren't equal and not every job is gonna be specialized toward combat in a small group.

He's missing the forests for the trees and really should just take a lesson from the MMO crowd. Nerfs feel shit, buffs feel good, a single player RPG doesn't need to be completely balanced.

If Wizards are too strong and Warriors too weak, then buff Warriors. Nerfing Wizards is stupid.

Okay, so why can't you just have a class that's godly powerful at all levels, and one that's pretty terrible at all levels? Why do these things have to be restricted by some worthless concept of "balance"?

>While theoretically the player could be playing with a "stronger" character than his current one, that theoretical character is not part of the game and the player is not competing with that character.
While I get what you're trying to say, it's not quite correct since different options are "competing" with one another to be picked, and not every player is going to be solely roleplaying-oriented. At least some players will be examining options and choosing what will work well in their opinion, and then you're going to be weighing these "hypothetical characters" against one another. And for these people, having only one obvious answer that dominates everything else is going to be kind of boring, as opposed to a variety of ways to make lots of classes really powerful if you're ingenious enough and work for it.

If you want to play a weak character, there are plenty of ways to handicap yourself with smaller scale choices without having to make an entire class simply always terrible even when played optimally.

A level just gives you a vague idea of a character's experience. Not to mention that in plenty of games some classes level faster or slower than others, some races level faster or slower, etc. - also, it doesn't just come down to the level but also to the tactical situation one faces, otherwise one wouldn't need to play out the battles, just add up the numbers and see which side has the higher level to calculate the result. A level 15 archer in melee combat will get easily get taken apart by a fighter with sword and shield. A mage who hasn't prepared the right spells might find himself in a situation where he can't win. That certain classes end up stronger than others is also a consequence of the game design itself, e.g. what kind of enemies the player faces, what the enemies can tactically do and so on. Games usually have a very limited system where the player is not confronted with a lot of threats that could be present in a pen & paper game for example, so he can get away with extreme min/maxing based on already knowing what to expect of the game, which could easily get him killed if he went "blind" into a role playing session. These situationally strong builds and abilities are however part of what makes games interesting, getting rid of them because they can be abused by an informed player will often make games less interesting.

How does the game play right now? Is it still broken?

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>My favorite playstyle for RPGs is to play a mage, getting the full experience of that (sometimes brutal) power curve. You suck shit at the start as a trade-off for Godly powers at the end.

that doesn't make sense though. you have a full party of characters so you likely have some fighters doing the heavy lifting at the start of the game anyway. while a fighter character would have mages in their group. so you're not making a trade-off at all.

to me, that design is like when you're playing a pokemon game and you have one overlevelled pokemon and a bunch of underlevelled ones. it's effective but boring because the overlevelled pokemon carries the whole team easily and you don't get the variety of using a range of character types and abilities. you're baking that into the class design, which defeats the point of having classes (which is to have different characters with interdependent specialities, instead of a whole team being carried by one powerful character that can do everything).

if you want that "brutal" power curve just set the difficulty to "hard" at the beginning of the game then turn it to "easy" later on, which is kind of dumb if you ask me because games should get harder as they go along but whatever.

>Balance doesn't have to mean making everything boring
Balance simply means giving each class or tool a reason to be used, a clear set of pros and cons to it that is as relevant as possible throughout the game.
I have no problems with a mage being stronger or weaker than a warrior and viceversa as long as both do their own shit accordingly to what they are, I have zero problems with thieves not being great at open fights because I can (supposedly) use them to do things other classes cannot do.
The problems about balance arise when there's no reason to use something because another class or tool does everything that class/tool does but better, that's where the actual balance problems lie in the context of a roleplaying game, see how for instance thieves in BG are not worth your time because mages end up with most of their toolkit anyway, or how two-handed+warfare shits on every other possible melee setup in D:OS2, outside of a dual dagger scoundrel with Warfare.

They fixed a lot of problems. You should have a better time of it.

Yeah, exactly. But I see people constantly defending the sorts of things you describe anyway because "single player game". Single player games are designed and balanced in very different ways from competitive games, but a single player game should not just be exempt from criticism for obvious bad design choices.

>The problems about balance arise when there's no reason to use something because another class or tool does everything that class/tool does but better
What exactly is wrong with this? Why does the weaker class suddenly not have a reason to be used when it provides a completely different gameplay experience?

Choice is meaningless if there are no bad choices.

Trash options must exist.

I think there's a difference between some classes being stronger than others and some classes being outright terrible. Obviously I'm not arguing for classes that aren't fun to play I'm merely saying that not all classes need to be as effective as others. e.g. you can have a class that can easily kill everything by making things explode, making the game very easy and a class that is stealth based, having to be very cautious about from where and when to attack, etc. in the same game. I would argue the latter class - even though factually less "powerful" would often end up being more interesting to play and sometimes possibly even more satisfying to play by "making things work".
What I worry about is that if everything is supposed to be balanced that classes end up too "same-ish", with the fighter being eventually indistinguishable from a mage because he has AOE damage, elemental attacks, etc. and everything, similar the archer who can rain fiery death upon his enemies except that he's not using a wand but a bow instead. Also, "balance" often includes a certain hesitation when it comes to making interesting abilities or items, because nothing can't exceed the player's current level by far, with every level seeing small increments, every ability somewhat scraping away from a large hp pool, adding a minor debuff/buff, making battles play out very slowly as if someone took an oldschool RPG battle and put it through a gaussian blur filter, with few "highlights" where singular abilities can decide over victory or party wipe (which may also have something to do with some demand to make the game solo-able in ironman modes).

yeah but you can still lose the whole game because of the bullshit going on in there

Wake me up when they impliment turnbased mode.

>Why does the weaker class suddenly not have a reason to be used when it provides a completely different gameplay experience?
Reread the post slowly.

I personally don't see what a class that trivializes the entire game with no effort adds in terms of interesting gameplay unless it's basically included as some kind of obvious "cheat" or secret unlockable or something.

>games should get harder as they go along
This is not that often the case in RPGs. Plenty of RPGs, e.g. the Gothic series, are brutally hard in the beginning but become easier as the player progresses. This may seem counter-productive at first but it also gives the player a sense of "growth", the feel that his character is getting stronger. Certainly, some enemies may still give the player trouble but he clearly feels as if his character is getting more "competent". If the game gets "harder" the further you progress, then the whole element of "growth" that is central to RPGs becomes lost. I would argue that giving the player a feel for his character's progression is very important for good RPG design. If you design them in a way that the player 'always' faces enemies that are as strong as he or stronger, then there's no point having levels in the first place.

A class is defined just as much by what it can't do, as it is by what it can.

It can be fun figuring out that build and having the game become easy mode is the reward for that. Also, the fact that such a class is in the game doesn't take away from the other classes. If you want the game to be harder, play a different class instead.

REREAD the post slowly.
Then read it one more time.
Then reply to me.

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Yeah, I did, and my point stands.

Even if a wizard can do everything a thief can do, the thief is justified in his existence because he CAN'T do the things the wizard can do, and playing around those limitations is interesting in itself.

I'm not against the reward of seeing smart character building choices pay off, I just don't see why this should only be limited to one or two classes if instead every class could be very powerful in some way if built and used correctly, or why difficulty selection should be tied to which classes you play at all when that just reduces the amount of variety possible (class X will always make the game easy, class Y will always make your playthrough a living hell, etc)

How do I play as a MUSCLE WIZARD?

I played the game for a while and was almost sort of having fun but I quit when I ran into a fucking owlbear with like 46 strength after changing the difficulty and reducing enemy stats to "normal."

not everyone likes the same things as you. what if someone else wants to play as a barbarian or something? why bait him with the option just to make it trash? should he not get to have as much fun as you because he wanted to play a different character?

notice how it's always wizard players and only wizard players defending shit class balance. they don't give a shit about anyone else's fun because wizard is the rpg developer's pet class and always gets special treatment.

Unironically this.

>I just don't see why this should only be limited to one or two classes if instead every class
I am not opposed to making classes interesting to play I am opposed to attempting to make every class equally strong and viable in just any situation at the expense of gameplay in general - in particular if you have such strong demands as the game being playable solo/ironman. See what I said in regarding classes ending up too same-ish, etc. I don't condemn the ideal as much as I condemn the solution/outcome. It's okay if some abilities/items/classes end up imba in the same sense as it's okay for some abilities/classes to be weaker if they're still interesting in some way, e.g. mechanically, visually, in terms of the narrative and so on. Classes being weaker than others only becomes a problem when the general gameplay is too similar between the classes.

Nah it's just the old martials vs casters issue in most of these D&D or D&D derived RPG's. Casters in say Shadowrun however while strong have to contend with fatigue for spellcasting and can still die easily from a grenade or good old BOOLIT.

I love Valerie!

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You are aware that peasant ending is her bad ending, right?

I don't think classes should just be reskins of each other, not at all, I just think that each class should have a high potential ceiling of usefulness. For a class to feel "powerful" it doesn't necessarily have to be useful in every situation or do everything another class does, it just needs to be able to do what it does, really really well when built and played properly.

>Nah it's just the old martials vs casters issue
yes which is the issue of wizard players being primma donnas and wanting to have all the fun without caring about anyone else. wizards get an entire book of new spells. warriors get a sidebar with a new weapon that does +1 damage to werepigs. wizard players claim it's fair because they think wizards are more interesting.

i disagree, the sense of progress in RPGs comes from unlocking new, previously inaccesible content. it's when you get to explore dangerous new places and fight enemies that were impossibly tough before. low-level content should get easier, but only because you've outgrown it. if high-level content is also easy, it means the developers shit the bed - either in failing to balance player options versus enemies, or not adding enough challenging endgame content.

or in other words, fighting a dragon-god makes you feel powerful because you can fight it and hope to win, not because you can beat it easily. that's just anti-climactic.

different doesn't always mean good. i don't think you're entirely wrong, but if a class is deliberately hard mode it needs to be specifically designed to provide an interesting challenge. this is rarely what actually happens. what happens is that designers fuck up their math somewhere and you end up playing, for example, a warrior is shit at killing things, or a wizard who finds all his spells are resisted by everything, and the game turns into a tedious slog. just being gimped by itself isn't fun for most people, there needs to be a specific challenge in mind that is tough but not frustrating.

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I find that playing as a caster(at least in P&P RPG sessions)makes you lazy as you always try to find an appropriate spell for the situation. Meanwhile me as a Fighter in another game once held off 20 enemy dudes with some ball bearings and some cooking grease from the kitchen in the castle.

>For a class to feel "powerful" it doesn't necessarily have to be useful in every situation or do everything another class does, it just needs to be able to do what it does, really really well when built and played properly.
That is the ideal, but practically the imagination of game devs seems to be focussed on the idea of making every class a wizard. Instead of adding tactical depth at a party-scale, or adding other elements of gameplay that make having certain characters in the party rewarding, they tend to focus at the individual character level and this usually means: more abilities that the player needs to micro, so that the one guy who wants to solo the game as a fighter won't get bored and has ten different variants of "hit something" in varieties with AOE, elemental damage, and whatelse in his repertoire. And when someone is playing with a full party of these wizard-a-likes it turns every battle into a firework of particle effects that ultimately looks the same regardless of the party composition. And then balance also becomes a major issue again because if the gameplay is generally the same regardless of class/build then players will complain if some classes are weaker then others.

I'm not opposed to the idea of being able to make fighting a dragon god trivial, but being able to do so should require enough ingenuity and effort to make it a more impressive feat than defeating it normally would have been.

Hows Divinity 1 compared to 2? I just beat 2 and loved it.

DivOS 2 is much better in pretty much every way and it has even less balance.

Magus is for doing some wizard shit while smashing faces in, something like a Sorc with abyssal bloodline and polymorph spells would be a Wizard/Sorcerer with Mad Gains, though you'll still be doing magic shit for the most part

Ill probably skip it then. What other cRPG should i play? I was thinking between Pathfinder and Pillars.

>the sense of progress in RPGs comes from unlocking new, previously inaccesible content
In order for it to feel like progress you need to be able to access the late game content early so you get a "feel" of how much more powerful it is than you in the early game stage, but you also need to be able to go back to early game content and easily defeat things that gave you trouble at some point. If all you have is level scaled enemies that are always around your level so that the game feels the same or even gets harder as you progress through the game, then it won't feel like "progress" as you are lacking a sense of perspective. In Gothic for example you start the game as a weak nobody, people will boss you around, rob you, bully you and there's nothing you can do about it because as soon as you try to fight back they'll kick your ass. But at a certain point you start getting stronger and ultimately you get the opportunity to get back at all the people who wronged you, which is part of the experience of progress.

If you loved 2 you will definitely love 1. Give it a try.

Well yeah, of course, level scaling is shit. The point was just that there's not much fun in being super powerful if everything is trivially easy to defeat.

Pillars 1 is fine. 2 is boring and none of your choices really matter down the line. I'd start with Kingmaker if you have prior experience with any of the DnD based games (Baldur's, NWN) or have PnP experience, otherwise it's going to be a struggle learning to build your character since they don't explain much.

And I maintain the position that a singular class being super powerful doesn't hurt the game if the others are still interesting to play in their own regard.

It does though because it actively removes choices from the game. If it's the only class that can ever be super powerful, then those who want that as their end goal have no other options. For players that don't want to be super powerful, they can now not play that class at all if it's always broken OP.

Just because you still have choices left doesn't mean that having fewer options isn't still worse than having more of them.

I enjoyed Pathfinder more than Pillars but Pillars is not as bad as some people on Yea Forums claim. It's still a solid RPG - both Pillars games, that is.

If you don't limit yourself to party/based and rwtp you might also look into games like Age of Decadence or Underrail if you haven't played them already.

Not every class needs to cater to every player. It's better to only offer a few choices to select players if those choices can then be completely tailored to them.

More options isn't always better.

I would argue that being interested more in the class being "super powerful" than in the class having interesting gameplay up to the point where one feels that one cannot play other classes any more is much more of a sign of some kind of mental disorder than something RPG developers should design their games around.

How can a class whose defining characteristic is being brokenly powerful have "interesting gameplay", if it makes the entire game trivial?

And why would one need to have a mental disorder in order to enjoy being able to make a player character powerful? Isn't that the entire argument against "balance" to begin with? That it's okay for player characters to be really powerful with the right choices? Why limit that to only one class while everything else has to cap out at mediocrity?

So so what I've read is that none of the caster mages are for dps, is that correct?

>How can a class whose defining characteristic is being brokenly powerful have "interesting gameplay"
That's not what I said. I said that the presence of a game breaking class does not make the other classes any less interesting. It only affects them if you have some kind of mental disorder that always intuitively compares your current class to that one broken class to the point where you can't play other classes any more ("removing choice").

There's a fundamental difference in structure, D:OS is a freeroam(mostly) game while D:OS2 is a linear, act based game.
Other than that, D:OS lacks the magic/physical armor mechanics, that means fights are faster and you apply statuses in a more orthodox way, since you don't have to deplete armors for that and proc rates are not failproof like D:OS2, but the game's balance ain't really that better off, positioning matters a tiny bit more than D:OS2 though.

As for everything else, you have a custom MC couple setup for your adventure, to which you add two other premade characters from a pool of four, Madora, Bairdotr, Wolgraff and Jahan(Yes, the same Jahan from D:OS2), crafting actually exists in D:OS and it's actually worth your time, there's a MC personality mechanic that will shift your MCs behaviour depending on the choices you take through the game, and will also lead to a tedious RPS minigame because one of the MCs will almost always contradict the other during speeches, even if they share similar nature, that leads to annoying problems like failing the speech route you wanted because one of your MCs butted in randomly and the RPS game is mostly RNG even if you max out your persuasion skill/charm whatever.

In terms of setting, it takes place 1000 years before D:OS2, ogres are a thing, so are imps, but there's no elves nor lizards, or dwarves, the writing is also VERY comedic in nature and overly exaggerated, the artstyle is basically a poor WoW attempt, and by playing this you'll also see how many reused assets they used in D:OS2.

Not a bad game all in all, but it's just as flawed as the average Larian game, D:OS2 tends to be better for most things, but fails in other little things which D:OS does much better, like again, crafting.

> If you're really romancing Nyrissa you're probably looking at your save file data anyway to double check you've got all the requirements met throughout the game

Wait is it supposed to be hard to romance her?

She is the only one I was able to fully romance lol. I somehow got the true ending on my first playthrough without looking it up.

Why do you need to have a mental disorder in order to compare different choices in an RPG against one another?

You sure you're not the one with the mental disorder?

Yes. Why throw fire or lightning at someone when you can turn them into a pig, make them literally retarded, or teleport them to an underground dimensional prison?

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Ill give it a shot. Thanks.

>Why do you need to have a mental disorder in order to compare different choices in an RPG against one another?
Because if a perfectly viable class with interesting gameplay becomes an "invalid choice" to you just because it is comparatively less powerful than other classes then you have a mental disorder. The presence of a stronger class does not affect the current class you're playing. If I deleted the stronger class from the game the weaker one would play exactly the same. In the same sense unlocking a cheat class the devs use to debug to a game which comes with an "i-win" button does not make the existing classes any worse. What matters is not how strong they are but whether they're fun to play or not.

>Because if a perfectly viable class with interesting gameplay becomes an "invalid choice" to you just because it is comparatively less powerful than other classes then you have a mental disorder.
Class choice is a strategic element. Removing that from the game entirely by deliberate ludicrous imbalance where all class choice becomes nothing more than a manner of simply choosing your preferred degree of deliberate handicapping will have an impact.
>The presence of a stronger class does not affect the current class you're playing.
Yes it does. Just because you arbitrarily look at every element of a game in a vacuum, does not make it so.
>If I deleted the stronger class from the game the weaker one would play exactly the same.
And yet its position within the game would be dramatically affected because by removing that other class, the previously weaker class now has a niche it did not have before.
>In the same sense unlocking a cheat class the devs use to debug to a game which comes with an "i-win" button does not make the existing classes any worse.
It doesn't because such a class would not be an intended part of the game.
>What matters is not how strong they are but whether they're fun to play or not.
Which is completely disassociated from their actual effectiveness because...?

Go get your own mental disorder checked out before you start accusing others of the same.

>Play the game on normal, with all the options turned to whatever makes it most like playing tabletop games
>Enemies literally always roll crits, on every single attack.

Yeah ok.

>Class choice is a strategic element.
Class choice is most of all a choice of what type of character you want to play. Some people may want to play a spell caster, some people may want to play a fighter. This is not a question of "what is more powerful" it is a question of "what type of person do I want my character to be" and a question of "what type of gameplay style do I prefer".

I can only repeat: the presence of a stronger class does not affect the other classes. If playing a rogue is fun because he can sneak around and backstab people left and right then playing said rogue doesn't become less fun just because there is also a spellcaster in the game who has a literal "i-win" button. In fact, it may comparatively make the rogue MORE fun because you actually need to put effort into your gameplay, consider what you're going to do, how to approach the situation, etc.

>Yes it does. Just because you arbitrarily look at every element of a game in a vacuum, does not make it so.
It IS in a vacuum because you're the only player character in the game. You're playing ALONE. It's not a multiplayer game. The fact that you 'could' be playing an imba character does not affect the gameplay of what you're currently playing.

>yet its position within the game would be dramatically affected because by removing that other class, the previously weaker class now has a niche it did not have before.
That is ONLY the case if you're playing a badly designed game where classes only differ in terms of effectiveness. I already explained this. If the game is badly designed and all classes essentially do the same then there's no point in going with the weaker class. But this is a matter of bad game design more than bad balance.

>Which is completely disassociated from their actual effectiveness because...?
See what I wrote above: effectiveness becomes the most important quality where game-design has already failed.

I think it will be great, after like a year more of patches.

I'm glad I bought it. But it launched a long, long way from ready.

I don't mind waiting. I'll play it when it's completely polished. The core is solid.

Guess I'm buying DLC

they're literally different ways of saying the same thing, and if you want to remain in character you have to act retarded most of the time I.E wanna be good? let a fucking demilich join your fucking court, wanna be evil? let your fucking people suffer for teh luls, there's definitely not enough choice despite all the fucking alignment options, most of them don't even come up in conversation together, only a handful, its shit

>Class choice is most of all a choice of what type of character you want to play. Some people may want to play a spell caster, some people may want to play a fighter. This is not a question of "what is more powerful" it is a question of "what type of person do I want my character to be" and a question of "what type of gameplay style do I prefer".

First of all, role playing/class fantasy is not every player's primary concern. Second, if playstyle matters so much to you then it should be especially important that the game doesn't arbitrarily just shit on you for liking the wrong thing.

>I can only repeat: the presence of a stronger class does not affect the other classes. If playing a rogue is fun because he can sneak around and backstab people left and right then playing said rogue doesn't become less fun just because there is also a spellcaster in the game who has a literal "i-win" button. In fact, it may comparatively make the rogue MORE fun because you actually need to put effort into your gameplay, consider what you're going to do, how to approach the situation, etc.

Now what if the spellcaster also had to put effort into his gameplay to earn his "I-win" situations? Wouldn't that be more interesting too than just letting him break the game with no trouble at all?

>It IS in a vacuum because you're the only player character in the game. You're playing ALONE. It's not a multiplayer game. The fact that you 'could' be playing an imba character does not affect the gameplay of what you're currently playing.

But the presence of "imba" options WILL affect your decision process during character building. If you've got a hardon for scimitars but longswords do three times as much damage per hit that sucks.

>That is ONLY the case if you're playing a badly designed game where classes only differ in terms of effectiveness.

If an option isn't basically replaced by another option hat fulfills the same purpose better, then there isn't a problem to begin with.

Incel

>Second, if playstyle matters so much to you then it should be especially important that the game doesn't arbitrarily just shit on you for liking the wrong thing.
There's a big difference between "shitting on a player" and not having every class in the game be as strong as that one imba class. If a class is viable, if the gameplay is fun, then all is fine. In fact, a class being imba might make gameplay LESS fun for that particular class. Consider playing a wizard in Arcanum for example, which is complete easy mode.

>what if the spellcaster also had to put effort into his gameplay to earn his "I-win" situations? Wouldn't that be more interesting too than just letting him break the game with no trouble at all?
Of course. My point is not that it's "good" that there's an imba class. My point is that devs should not be afraid of 'accidentally' including that one imba class and thereby gimping gameplay in its entirety, as the inclusion of that singular broken class won't hurt the overall game.

>the presence of "imba" options WILL affect your decision process during character building. If you've got a hardon for scimitars but longswords do three times as much damage per hit that sucks.
First of all: you're most likely not going to know which option is imba. It might as well turn out that all enemies you face have a resistance to longswords for some reason (think Mask of the Betrayer, where all you fight is spirits and undead, which severely gimps backstabbers), so these initial options may be misleading. Second, this too is mostly a matter of game design again. Using a longsword or a scimitar makes no practical difference most games. This is what I described earlier where the choice comes down to nothing but "effectiveness". Good game design would be to give the weapons different properties, make them each viable in their own way. However, that does not mean that there can't be an imba longsword in the game as long as the scimitar is "generally" viable.

I'm not even sure what you're trying to say. You'll have to be specific. I don't see how Vordakai joining your council is proof of binary choices when it's literally locked out for anyone not of an evil alignment.
Especially when it happens around the same time as other non-black and white choices like whether you chase after the Oculus or help your allies or how you handle Tristian and Armag.

>Some people may want to play a spell caster, some people may want to play a fighter.
some of those people don't want to be gimped because they picked a class that wasn't the developer's favorite. don't try to pretend that not having spell levels isn't a handicap in anything dungeons and dragons.

>the presence of a stronger class does not affect the other classes.
this is especially wrong in games where you have a full party. if you have a fighter, a thief, and a wizard and the fighter and thief spend 80% of the game doing nothing you start to think you should have just picked 3 wizards.

What's a fun Paladin build I can use to bang Tiefling bitches?

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It worked better in OSR shit were there were different exp charts and levels of play

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mage leveled up faster than other classes which is the opposite of what people try to claim

Paladin/fighter archer is fun. Otherwise Paladins don't really have "builds", you just take Power Attack and hit stuff in the face.

>some of those people don't want to be gimped because they picked a class that wasn't the developer's favorite.
Being "gimped" only takes place inside your head if the class is viable and fun to play in its own regard. The fact that there is a class that is imba does not make the class you're playing less fun to play if the gameplay itself is good. I can only repeat: the imba class may be LESS fun to play.

>this is especially wrong in games where you have a full party. if you have a fighter, a thief, and a wizard and the fighter and thief spend 80% of the game doing nothing you start to think you should have just picked 3 wizards.
This is again an issue of bad game design. And the solution of most devs is way too often to literally turn the fighters and the thieves into wizards, i.e. giving them all sorts of elemental damage, particle effects, aoe, abilities that need to be micro'd, etc. - which is a bad solution. If anything they should be working on the greater tactical scale: making the fighters NECESSARY as tanks as the wizards couldn't survive on their own and giving the rogues lots of non-combat tasks that make them great additions to the party. The problem is NOT that the wizards are the ones you're mostly micro-ing in combat, the problem is when the wizards have too much survivability that you can rely exclusively on them and don't need any other classes.

No it went Thief

I don't think people claim that wizards levelled slower but more that wizards take longer until they really unfold their full potential. At the very beginning of the game you're pretty much useless and will die almost instantly but at the very end of the game you can wipe encounters on your own.

What's a decent enough game like this that has a decent enough romance system or is this one pretty much it?

Baldur's Gate 2 or Dragon Age Origins. Any old school Bioware game basically.

>if the class is viable and fun to play in its own regard.
it literally never is you knob slobbering simpleton and you know it. games are developed with the assumption that you will always have a wizard in your party and trying to play without one is a significant handicap since fighters don't have any of the crowd control or debuff spells that are nearly mandatory. remember baldur's gate 2 where the only way to protect yourself from level drain other than the spell was an equip that could only be worn by spellcasters? you are dumb as fuck and argued yourself into a stupid position and are now too autismal to stop so you have to keep pretending you're retarded and hope you can get away with it.

>turn the fighters and the thieves into wizards
this argument is also retarded. how is something like a spin2win cleave or a leaping attack "turning fighters into wizards?" you are so far up your own ass that you think that literally anything but auto attacking and trip checking is "wizard sbilities." fuck off back to /tg/.

I don't see how giving other characters options and abilities to micro harms anything or why that would be bad design. What is this, an RTS?
It sounds like you just have a huge hard on for casters.

>it literally never is you knob slobbering simpleton and you know it.
But it literally is. Would you seriously argue that Baldur's Gate 2 is not fun to play? Because it is - despite the fact that there are classes in it that are more powerful than others.

>games are developed with the assumption that you will always have a wizard in your party and trying to play without one is a significant handicap since fighters don't have any of the crowd control or debuff spells that are nearly mandatory.
Your point being? The game also has you miss out on loot if you don't have a rogue. This is not bad game design.

>remember baldur's gate 2 where the only way to protect yourself from level drain other than the spell was an equip that could only be worn by spellcasters?
So have a spellcaster around? The game hands you plenty of recruitable NPCs for that purpose. It's your own fault for not making use of the tools the game hands you. Not to mention that late game fighters will have amulets and cloaks that give them immunity, swords that can instantly kill, etc.

>you are dumb as fuck and argued yourself into a stupid position and are now too autismal to stop so you have to keep pretending you're retarded and hope you can get away with it.
No, you are a literal retard who does not understand that the presence of a certain class being imba does not affect the other classes if they're fun to play on their own. And a class having 'necessary' skills does not make it 'imba'. The fact that you need a cleric to resurrect or heal does not make a cleric imba. It makes the cleric worth having around. The fact that only a wizard has access to certain spells does not make the wizard imba either.

>I don't see how giving other characters options and abilities to micro harms anything or why that would be bad design.
It's bad design if it results in making everyone a caster down to the very same visual effects.

>Would you seriously argue that Baldur's Gate 2 is not fun to play?
with a party that excludes or limits spellcasting the game becomes extremely frustrating. many fights are reliant on rng or can only be beaten with cheese. you don't even have to do it on purpose. if I only use party members I like my only spell casters end up being jan and viconia.
>The game also has you miss out on loot if you don't have a rogue.
wrong since wizards can unlock doors and detect traps
>So have a spellcaster around?
so you admit now that wizards are indispensable instead of just stronger than other classes?
>Not to mention that late game fighters will have amulets and cloaks that give them immunity
I said that only spellcasters can equip the one that protects from level drain you mongoloid
>It's bad design if it results in making everyone a caster down to the very same visual effects.
so I guess according to you every class in diablo 2 is sorceress and sorceress reskins. fuck off to /tg/ you cock goblin.

>with a party that excludes or limits spellcasting the game becomes extremely frustrating.
But it's still possible. And if it's too hard - why not lower the difficulty level? You're not competing with anyone but yourself.

>wrong since wizards can unlock doors and detect traps
I'm fairly certain that detect traps was a divine spell in AD&D. And when it comes to knock it's not really viable at a large scale due to vancian casting unless you want to rest all the time.

>so you admit now that wizards are indispensable instead of just stronger than other classes?
So are clerics, so are rogues. They all fulfil their purpose.

>I said that only spellcasters can equip the one that protects from level drain
So what? You can heal level drain.

It seems you have lost your entire argument - you're not arguing whether certain classes are imba any more but you're now arguing that no class should have exclusive abilities. It's GOOD design if you need clerics or mages to cast protection against status effects. It's GOOD design if you need rogues to detect traps or open chests. It's GOOD design when only fighters have survivability in close combat. If you deliberately choose to gimp your party by not having any spellcasters in it then that's something entirely different from a singular spellcaster class being imba. An imba caster is a high level Sorcerer who can wipe an entire encounter alone. That's what we were originally arguing about. Crying about only spellcasters having access to spells does not make them imba.

And I can only repeat: the fact that there is a sorcerer class in the game doesn't make it less fun playing a paladin. That's the actual argument we were having, and that's what I have been right about from the very beginning.

If you want to open yet another can of worms and argue about whether entire super-classes of classes (caster/fighter/rogue/...) should have unique abilities, should be necessary for building a party, etc. is a different debate.

>every class in diablo 2 is sorceress and sorceress reskins
Diablo 2 is only vaguely related to CRPGs. Stats and skills alone aren't enough.

here
It's getting late here, so we'll have to continue this some other time. I'm certain this sort of discussion will pop up in a future RPG thread. Until then.

>but I suspect it falls into the same analogy
It's an example of why the length a general stays up really doesn't mean anything in regards to game quality. It has little to do with your analogy.

>why not lower the difficulty level?
why is there a "with wizard" and "without wizard" difficulty? because the balance is shit.
>unless you want to rest all the time.
like you do anyway until you get wish and unlimited spells?
>rogues
already been established that they're literally worthless.
>You can heal level drain.
how are you supposed to heal when the encounter is nearly impossible to win due to dying from it?
>If you deliberately choose to gimp your party by not having any spellcasters in it then that's something entirely different from a singular spellcaster class being imba.
the fact that you are gimped to the point of having to rely on cheese to even beat the game is proof that spellcasters are the center of the game. on the other hand a party of only spellcasters is only slightly weak for the first few levels and solo spellcaster playthroughs are possible without cheese.
>the fact that there is a sorcerer class in the game doesn't make it less fun playing a paladin.
yes it does when your paladin playthough is constantly struggling because the game expects you to have magic.

fuck off to /tg/ and don't come back

Cleared the Varnhold DLC. It's okay, I like the change in perspective in that you're effectively a companion rather than the PC and have to convince your lord to make the choices you want and from what I understand, the PC of that DLC will make a cameo appearance in the main game and I think you can actually recruit them to your party which is cool.
Fuck that final boss though, losing two of your companions hurts like hell if you're playing on the harder difficulties.

Running a rogue into duelist in the main campaign, it's pretty nice, I do a shitton of damage so long as I have Valerie taking the hits.

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