So I've been plowing through this game, and have been doing every bit of side content and quest I could find, every good ending for all the companions, etc. But Kingdom stuff took a big backseat because at no point did I have the time or BP to do all the big, major strokes like raising every stat to level 10, doing all the Artisans by claiming all the regions and buildign towns and stuff. Still had like 250 in every kingdom stat but still.
So why the fuck does the game just decide that it's going to say "No, you're done playing now. Go finish the game" by forcing events that do nothing but tank your kingdom stats forever until you go onto to the final quest, which automatically fails all the unfinished quests you have?
Time limits in games are the most retarded idea you could implement, indeed
Brody Evans
It's not really a time limit, so much as it is the game saying that if you tripped a certain flag by doing certain quests, you're now going to to be flooded with impossible Event missions who's only goal is to say "Your kingdom WILL fail! These will not go away until you complete !"
This isn't even the only time the game does this either, it uses this method to railroad the player a few times. Which again, I don't inherently mind if you want to force the player to take care of an impending doom, but why would you do it while also giving the player the option to not go into the last "dungeon" so they can tie up loose ends?
Which is it? Can I go finish stuff up, or do I need to go into the quest and just accept that anything unfinished is just fucked?
Owen Bell
Having any type of 'base' in a CRPG is disgusting and goes against the whole concept of an adventure. You want that shit play a fucking Strategy game.
Jeremiah Jenkins
Careful posting Kingmaker, you'll summon valerieautist. Although he might be busy in a greedfall thread.
Luis Johnson
The stronghold features sucked dick in BG2 and it sounds like they suck major big dick here.
David Green
It drags at the ability to enjoy the experience but there's an option to turn it off.
Owen Nguyen
It possibly comes from trying to manage how the table top RPG version tends to go where your idiot players have min maxed to hell and back and can keep things running fine while the eastern half of your kingdom is being raped by dickwolves so they can gather taxes and make magic items.
Hudson Robinson
Imma make a city that's just goblin quarters, brothels and stocks.
Daniel Barnes
I think the problem is that they always just boil down to either just doing repeated mundane tasks, or forcing yourself through sidequests so you can fill a status bar.
They opted for the WoW Garrison style of kingdom building; You plop down a selection of buildings in pre-defined plots of land, each giving a bonus of some sort, and then you send Advisors on missions from your mission table and hope they succeed and you get a reward of kindgom stat points.
It's not utterly loathsome, but it's not very good either. I've said before that if it weren't for the decent story, the Kingdom building would be a very weak framework to hang the game on.
But my complaint isn't even with the kingdom building at all, it's with how the game is handling the balance between "You can set tasks for your kingdom, and then go complete side quests while they finish, and skip days to move time forward to get through big projects" with "You have set events that NEED to be handled RIGHT NOW and we're going to keep penalizing you until you do them.", which for me is only really a big crime at the end of the game.
I want to finish these quests. I want to finish my kingdom. I want to do all the shit the game offers me to do, but I can't because every day I skip waiting for my Artisans quests to update or Kingdom Stats to level up, I get penlized for not entering the final dungeon and locking myself into the end of the game, thus failing all uncompleted quests.
In defensive stance my Val has 46. This is at level 13 shortly after being crowned.
James Harris
Well at least it sounds better than the "Stronghold" in the dullest RPG of all time. Each attempt Obsidian makes to create their own universe rather than simply deconstruct a setting made by others, has been more disastrous than the last. Aside from the outdated gameplay and lifeless cities, Pillars of Eternity's only consistency has been its lack of excitement and ineffective use of combat mechanics, all to make magic unmagical, to make action seem inert.
Perhaps the die was cast when Sawyer vetoed the idea of making anything at all innovative or original; he made sure the game would never be mistaken for a work of art that meant anything to anybody, just ridiculously profitable nostalgia pandering to ageing Baldur's Gate fans. Pillars of Eternity might be anti-casual(or not), but it’s certainly the anti-Divinity series in its refusal of spontaneity, fun and excitement.
>a-at least the writing was good though
"No!"
The writing is dreadful; the narrative was terrible. As I played, I noticed that every time I engaged in dialogue with an NPC the game presented me with a Wiki-page style infodump instead of anything resembling actual human conversation.
I began marking on the back of an envelope every time this was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Sawyer's mind is so governed by obsession with pointless minutiae of the lore that he has no other style of writing.
Later I read a lavish, loving review of Pillars of Eternity by the same David Gaider. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kiddies are playing Obsidian games at 17 or 18, then when they get older they will go on to enjoy Dragon Age II." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you play "Pillars of Eternity" you are, in fact, trained to shill for Bioware.
>would you like to build the western barbican my liege? >*hires a henchman that penalizes your stats* >*thugs attack your castle when you're on the other side of the world* >*collects 26g in taxes after 1k in expenses* >*you have been visited by the peddler of rare underwhelming magical items* >*companion returns from month long quest with 10g, 2 eggs and a superfluous item that has 2 charges on it*
