Bay 12 Games Forum

Yeah really, really not looking for a strict clan - just wondered if there was a casual B12 clan as I know there was at some point. Warframe is the kinda game I love jumping into a few times a week, put down for a few weeks, and then come back to.

I also don't want to join a clan with probation periods and all the rest - it starts to feel a bit too much like work, and I can't stand when people get all high and mighty about their standing within guilds and all that - it's a grinding game; you've literally just sat still for longer than me.

If there's a B12 clan around or a nice relaxed clan (or someone fancies starting one) - I'd love to join!

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I still feel like the only D&D-style CRPG that really hit home for me has been Temple of Elemental Evil.  It needs extensive modding to work because Troika didn't know how to make video games, but it's so damn good.  Kingmaker lost my interest a few hours in, where I felt like I wasn't strong enough to do any of the storyline content and what was available was just wandering around clicking on thylacines.  Sword Saint class is pretty cool though.

I'd say that Kingmaker has some major problems. I mean it's not what I'd say bad, but it has very clunky mechanics. It definitely favors minmaxing. And the line between a physical god and an useless character is VERY thin. You can hardly RP if straying from the minmax approach leads to unplayability and/or being stuck doing low level stuff.
Characterization and story are also a bit clunky. TBH I get an "amateur" vibe out of it. In a way it reminds me of HoMM5: Good intentions, good ideas, "We'll remake this classic game but *better*"... and yet you can't help but think there's a whiff of clunkyness underneath. Which you'd probably not even notice in an open-source community project, and ignore in a 10 euro game. Problem is P:K was hyped and sold as a superpremium.

IMO PoE Deadfire is a better game overall.

I didn't get an amateurish vibe from it at all - some of the writing is a bit clunky and it lacks a bit of polish, but it also depends when you played it - it feels infinitely better now than it did around launch. I agree that Deadfire is definitely more polished, but I didn't enjoy it nearly as much even though it has a better story and polish. As a sidenote, I just replayed IWD2 and I'd say P:KM feels far more polished than that!

As far minmaxing goes, I think you're completely right and it's why I recommend everyone to use the respec mod which allows you to respec all your companions. It costs gold to do it, and you can't change base stats, but it allows you to have a better put together a party without mercs or aggressive min/maxing which actually fills the roles you need. Playing on normal difficulty this changed it from being wildly uneven to being challenging but fair for most encounters. Again, you shouldn't need to with a really well balanced game, but I think it's a small compromise.

My only dislike is that pathfinder sometimes leaves you without stuff to do, and expects you to just play the kingdom game for a bit. I got confused about what I was supposed to be doing, and had to look up that I was basically supposed to just wait for the next big event to come along.

I'm so tired
last night was amazing

last night was amazing.

So the full version, with campaign, just dropped and...

Wow, the campaign maps are kind of annoying. Make sure you read the requirements for mission completion carefully. I just failed a map that took like two hours because I wasn't paying attention and did not meet the population requirement despite sweeping all the zeds off the map, which was the 'real' objective. Also, it keeps track of your retries and gives you a score penalty that persists for the entire campaign.

Edit: Also: Tactical maps. Better known as kite stuff around for half an hour as you pick them off one by one, followed by staring at the map for another half hour as you pixel hunt to find the bonuses on the map for extra research points.
Edit: Next morning, after clocking another 5 minutes on a mission where I spent two and a half times the mission time hunting for the bonuses... it was in a barrel in a room with like 20 other nigh identical barrels, 80% covered up by a wall.

I haven't played it, but it seems to be a very common theme in reviews. Apparently the devs are releasing a big patch very shortly to drastically reduce the amount of annoyance in the campaign.

cRPGs are not really for mass audiences--even gamer friends of mine are reluctant about diving into one because it is 100+ hour investment. Mass audiences, even gamer audiences like games you can play for a few hours and then a few hours a while later, without needing to remember, say, who Imoen is. Giving BG3 mass appeal via simplicity is weird, given that the target audience is people who like complexity and 100+ hour long games.

I'd usually agree, but D:OS2 got a much wider audience than anything before it - it was consistently on the top of the steam top sellers and it was a lot more accessible than anything before it. I'd say it's the closest that type of game has had to mass appeal, and I think they're hoping that BG3 will build on that more.

We're probably reading too much into the dodge mechanic - it's just my take on why they're cutting stuff out which is pretty core to the mechanics but might be perceived to confuse/annoy new gamers.

Yeah well worth grabbing for that amount - I never got far in the pre-sequel and I can't imagine playing it for a long time, but sometimes I get an urge for borderlands style jokes and shooting and it's good to know I have the absolute collection of it all if I want to.

It's not uncommon to raise the price in early access. I remember Planetary Annihilation did something like that, with a really expensive beta/EA period then dropped price for release. They wanted only those people willing to play and test a beta and report bugs, and who were interested in giving them extra support, to buy the beta. The beta price was like double the final release.

Yeah, I know a few games that have done that kinda thing - however normally they're really open/tell everyone about what they're doing and why they've put the price up so much. I haven't seen anything from the Barotrauma devs that says that's what they're doing, so I imagine they might just be over-pricing it.

Remember it's 5e. Every magic class can get attack cantrips. Oh, and depending on how mich like 5e it is, it's a closed accuracy system. So even 16 in your main stat can be enough to have a 40-60% chance of something hitting/sticking.

The devs have said they're not going to have accuracy (or at least, hits and misses) in BG:3. I imagine their might be spells/effects that cause a miss x% of the time, or that there might be grazes/hits/criticals or something like that as I imagine otherwise it'd limit a lot of equipment/spells that effect that (take blur for instance).

I get why they're going down that path, as it would see a bit frustrating to many newer gamers to not hit most/a considerable amount of the time ('they're right next to them!') - Xcom gets away with it as it's mostly ranged, but seeing your fighter stand next to something and miss 4 times out of 5 might seem annoying to some.

My only fear is that they'll start chucking out other systems that 'dont seem fun' with that.