Your gripes with CoC II
- Thread starter Narmlet
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One of my biggest projects included no smut content at all, and another was like half non-smutty.
So far, my biggest pet peeves (meaning not things that I expect should necessarily be changed, but just things that annoy me personally) are as follows.
1. My straight male character keeps getting his arse raped by footlong cocks whenever he loses a battle, and there's nothing resembling the D&D "challenge rating" system to keep me from walking into battles that I can't possibly win, or losing winnable battles due to bad luck. Often times I don't even have time to notice that I'm losing so that I can flee. I have to intentionally break my own immersion in these cases, and that keeps me from enjoying the game the rest of the time.
2. The extreme length of the sex scenes, and the variably-pastel purpleness of the prose used therein, means that I tune out quickly and start skipping ahead. Obviously this is highly subjective; the scenes that I'm into are more likely to hold my attention, but even then, more than a full page of text soon bores me.
3. The game system is overly complex, yet produces relatively few meaningful choices. If I only have five different powers to choose from per character, then why do I need to have like twelve game stats? Is a +1 to my Presence ever going to be relevant...how should I know? It seems as if the game was intentionally made overcomplected just to have room for future expansion, I don't know if that's actually the case.
Aside from these issues, I tend to like the game; it's certainly kept me addicted since I discovered it the other day. (If you care, you owe your ad revenue payment to a Pornhub user known as GamerWolfSix. His QuickLook video on it was rather dry, but it was enough to give me an informed choice that I wished to come check it out.)
1. My straight male character keeps getting his arse raped by footlong cocks whenever he loses a battle, and there's nothing resembling the D&D "challenge rating" system to keep me from walking into battles that I can't possibly win, or losing winnable battles due to bad luck. Often times I don't even have time to notice that I'm losing so that I can flee. I have to intentionally break my own immersion in these cases, and that keeps me from enjoying the game the rest of the time.
2. The extreme length of the sex scenes, and the variably-pastel purpleness of the prose used therein, means that I tune out quickly and start skipping ahead. Obviously this is highly subjective; the scenes that I'm into are more likely to hold my attention, but even then, more than a full page of text soon bores me.
3. The game system is overly complex, yet produces relatively few meaningful choices. If I only have five different powers to choose from per character, then why do I need to have like twelve game stats? Is a +1 to my Presence ever going to be relevant...how should I know? It seems as if the game was intentionally made overcomplected just to have room for future expansion, I don't know if that's actually the case.
Aside from these issues, I tend to like the game; it's certainly kept me addicted since I discovered it the other day. (If you care, you owe your ad revenue payment to a Pornhub user known as GamerWolfSix. His QuickLook video on it was rather dry, but it was enough to give me an informed choice that I wished to come check it out.)
Git gud and maybe you won't fucking lose. Or ya know, change the difficulty to something easier. :U
This varies between writer to writer. You have Will's style of writing that can get rather purple, whereas with Tobs his writing I wouldn't call purple at all. Different writing styles vary, there's actually not a whole helluva lot of purple prose in the writing as a whole. In fact for me it gets jarring to suddenly read purple prose because it's not so frequent in the game's normal writing outside porn stuff. (Not to rag on Will at all. But gotta admit even when I'm now used to it it always throws me out when suddenly I see all the purpleness in my smut lmao)
Depends on your build. If you're a Charmer or Summoner, that one point of presence for some can be extra points in sexiness/summon power or something. While the bonus stats you get at the start don't REALLY have a huge massive impact in the long run it always can't hurt to have that one little bit for some. Plus, the game really isn't that difficult to understand. if you can't tell that you're supposed to focus on only a few out of all your main stats by the first level up screen and optimize for your build idk what to tell ya. but it ain't that complicated to get, at all. >.>'
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I suppose I could reduce the difficulty, but I think part of the issue is that the game tries to push you toward a certain area (the north) where most of the low-level enemies are, and for personal reasons I wanted to go the other way, not realizing that the other directions (east and south) are higher-level areas with enemies that would overpower me at level one. Still, it'd be nice if this information could have been obtained from a villager before I went out those gates, rather than at the expense of my character's anus.
Mostly only in the sex scenes. I actually really like the background description of each area, although it annoys me when the game doesn't offer the relevant options (eg no Explore in areas that have clearly-defined interesting features that I'd like to investigate).
Agreed. This Will person must be a member of the school of thought which ranks the quality of erotica by the number of different synonyms used.
The tutorial aspects could always stand to be improved. They are after all fairly easy to skip if you've already learned everything.
That's called "game design". The game pushes you toward certain areas at first by design, because that's where the low-level enemies are. You said it yourself. Every RPG ever does it this way, either through only offering quests in those areas or hard gating higher tier areas behind levels or some other mechanic. And if you do find yourself stepping in an area where you get one-shotted by the first NPC you meet, then that's a sign to run the fuck away and come back some other day. If you insist on going somewhere the game isn't nudging you into, then on your head be it.
These games don't have real-time GMs to keep you on track or adjust on the fly to moronic players. Hell, when I GM'ed D&D back in the day and my players absolutely insisted on being idiots and going to an area they weren't prepared to enter, I'd just say something like, "Fine, you arrive at the evil sorcerer's castle, walk inside and set off a trap and you all die instantly. Game over."
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Enemies have levels, but just like D&D, you don't get shown them at every encounter. Your DM generally isn't going to say "oh by the way, this one is level 2," and similarly, this game doesn't. That said, areas also have adaptive difficulty based on character level: Harder foes like Arona and the Harpy Wingleader only show up in the foothills (east) if you're at level 3 and up, and the Manticore only appears if you're at level 2 and above. Meanwhile, the southern path, the Harvest Valley, actually has level 1 and 2 enemies (albeit, most are a mixture of one at 1 and one at 2). The level 3 and 4 enemies stay away unless you ford the river. And even in the north, the Old Forest, all of the encounters except for the wolves (and the Effigies if below level 3) have enemies higher than level 1 present.
6 stats you can increase, each of which impacts 2-4 actual stats. They're not complicated overall, and even if you examine them more closely, it's relatively plain. Strength means you do more damage and take less damage (I think specifically in regards to physical damage, but I think it might also impact other damage due to its penetration stat since it's not specified). Toughness means you have more health and are less likely to get hit by physical abilities. Agility means you hit sooner, more often, and also get hit less often. Cunning means more crit power and you take less damage, less often, from magic. Willpower means you do more magic damage and take less damage, less often from tease/mental attacks. Presence means you hit more often with tease attacks and also all of your companions get a damage buff, plus summons are stronger.
Basically: If you're a warrior or thief, focus on Strength and alternate between Toughness, Agility, and Cunning.
If you're a white or black mage, Willpower first, Presence second, Toughness, Agility, or Cunning third.
If you're a charmer, Presence first, Willpower second, and pretty much whatever stat third.
The stats are very rarely needed for roleplaying, they are pretty much purely for combat. If you're looking for meaningful choices(Which was how you introduced the point. Not sure why considering that the stats are not related to choices.), well, then look in the actual game. There are several things which are meaningful choices (and also a lot of moments which are just the illusion of choice because the other one shuts out the majority of the content associated with it)
Except that, as I stated, my personal preference directly counterindicated my going toward that area. Nobody in town said "you should not go south, the enemies there are more dangerous", and the knowledge that Kasyrra was somewhere to the north made going anywhere else seem like the imperative choice, since s/he was both obviously too powerful to fight, and personally distasteful to me (as I mentioned over on the Too Futa For Me thread). As a final boss for the game, s/he works fine, but that means that whichever direction s/he appears to have gone in, I'm heading the other way pretty much without exception. Whether that makes him/her a terrible villain or me a bad player, I will let you decide. *wink*
Well, not *all* of them, but certainly most of the more popular ones.
Garth offers quests in all three directions more or less simultaneously; there's like three to the north, so some players might assume it's better to go that way and get multiple things done at once, but I generally have the opposite philosphy, preferring to have only one job on my plate at a time, so that I don't absent-mindedly forget what was going on (even having a quest log only reduces, not eliminates, the possibility of this happening; insert obligatory reference to bolting on one's own head).
Which is my preferred approach, and that's not what the game does, at least not in these instances. (There is flavor text that implies it in several places, but it's hard to tell when that's actually meaningfully binding. Mostly I only figure it out by Exploring about ten times and noting that I still haven't gotten a new path in the direction I'm trying to go.) The south gate isn't sealed, and the path east from Cait's wagon is also open; if there was a guy charging tolls or something, it would discourage blundering in those directions before being prepared. I'm not saying the game is terrible because it doesn't do this, I'm just saying that I would have personally preferred if it did.
Which is exactly what I did, but not until after my straight-dude character got assraped by the Crazy Horse (who attacks twice each round for some reason, so I didn't have any time to see that I was losing before I lost). Damn near ragequit the game over this.
While these kinds of stories definitely involve an idiot player, they also tend to involve an overly inflexible hardass of a GM. A somewhat less lethal version of this message, like having all the characters blunder into a Teleport Circle instead of a Rocks Fall Everyone Dies, would obviate the need to roll up new characters. (Granted I'm given to understand this was a less onerous process back in the TSR days; I grew up playing 3E, where creating a character generally involves several hours of painstaking craftsmanship, so I have a bit more of a bias against unncessary character death. 5E has mitigated this somewhat, and amusingly every single 5E character I've played for more than two sessions has died, or in one case been given a "do this or die" bargain by a demon. I have nothing against those deaths, but that's largely due to being less invested in 5E characters, as they are so low in customization.)
Was it this?
I don't get it....
The GM can however say something like "your character gets a gut feeling that this thing is way out of your league" or "your sixth sense warns you of extreme danger". The flavor text in COC2 occasionally does this kind of thing, but frequently lays it on equally thick for foes that have become utterly pathetic by the time you level up once (at least if you have the right party put together; Brint and Cait together are pretty much Easy Mode regardless of how badly you screw up your own build).
Besides Crazy Horse, most of my worst losses were due to the goblin cultist (before I figured out that spamming Tease was the answer there) and to the Cultist Bloodletter. The harpies are annoying with flying but I can usually manage them, and the centaurs aren't that tough either. Maybe I just got really awful luck the first couple times, and that sort of imprinted my brain with the idea that I couldn't win, which made me run away too much and thus gain too little XP. Could well be my own fault, but I'm still entitled to whinge. >
Right. My level 3 party with Brint and Cait has now gotten to the point that it can mop the floor with these guys, and I'm rather tired of them still showing up (in basically every RPG I ever played, I've wished for an auto-win system for battles sufficiently below your Challenge Rating; the industry really hasn't caught on to my perspective on this issue). For my other two characters, who are at level 2 and using only one of these companions each, I still break a sweat against even the weaker foes; I've learned to save a lot, which is always a good habit to get into.
The river makes a good barrier, although the "you will be vulnerable" warning is a bit vague, since you don't actually see the enemies before you first attempt the crossing (and this is a game with, as far as I can tell so far, no Game Over mechanic, so stumbling into the ambush doesn't result in just a quick reset to your last save point, it leaves your character having been abused and possibly corrupted with little warning). However, that is the only such clear distinction I've gotten thus far, and even then, beating the Tainted Witch gives the misleading impression that you can handle the upcoming area, where the difficulty again spikes - and, annoyingly, you have to keep fighting the Tainted Witch every time you go back and forth. That part is the only thing I'd really criticize about this design; getting a couple uniquely tough encounters, and even possibly losing them, is fine, but repeating a tough encounter you've already had twice quickly becomes tedious.
Wow, that's brilliant. I think I have to steal that as a D&D houserule, especially in 5E where Intelligence is the dump stat for pretty much all non-wizards.
Just so I know, is all this laid out in the actual game anywhere? I would argue that it's not great if you have to read the forum for a game in order to be able to understand its basic mechanics. Granted, that's partly me being the kind of grognard who remembers when computer games came in a box with a manual that you actually had to read (often as a deliberate anti-piracy/resale effort).
Which I would argue is a bad thing in terms of any tabletop RPG, although I'm not certain what exactly you mean in bringing it up with reference to a computer game. If you describe your character walking with a confident swagger and flexing his muscles a lot, he probably should have decent Strength and Charisma stats (unless the entire point is for him to be a ridiculous poseur).
It was mostly in reference to not being clear on the tactical utility of consumable items. For a while I hadn't figured out why anyone would care about an item that gives you extra Resolve, because I hadn't run into any of the enemies that attack it. Likewise, if I had a potion that would give me a boost to Presence, I had no clear indication of whether it would be worth spending my action drinking it, when I had no idea what would happen as a result. The default there is of course "don't", but this makes those items useless, and yet the mere fact that I got an item means I pay attention to it and have to wonder whether I should use it. It'd be nice if the game offered more of this information, even if you have to work for it a little. Eventually I started to notice where some of these answers were, but some of them remain unclear.
*nods*
Actually, once you collect Brint or alternatively Atugia, all three areas are valid starting zones. Old forest is 1-3, Harvest Valley North is 1-3, and foothills are 2-3. This is perfectly fine; the foothills were actually the first zone to be released because their content was pre-loaded from before public release; that was a time when Cait was your only party member. Tough, but doable.
In short: there is no need to gate any areas leading out of Hawkethorne because all are valid starting zones. The difficulty fluctuates slightly, but all are valid for a level 1 full party. We don't believe in handholding players to that extent, so you're not likely to get that level of signposting even were there a problem to begin with.
Action economy of single entites; as a general rule, encounters that consist of a single enemy will have two actions per turn, sometimes three. They act more times a round, recover from debuffs faster, and recharge powers faster. Yes, this applies to random encounters.
There's a reason we push them so hard; they form an easy warrior/priest axis you really can't go wrong with and help to carry players through the early game. It's only later that Brint's crippling pheromone and blight damage weaknesses come into play when enemies start using more exotic damage types with regularity.
The waystone fast travel system basically eliminates most of this problem. Encounters do change based on events in the game, with older ones being removed and others introduced; for example, when skow gets to writing it, the level 1 hornet encounters in the old forest will be replaced with level 4 hive knights once a certain dungeon is completed. Maps change based on events; for example, after dealing with the centaurs in Harvest Valley, you can lower the drawbridge to the left of the map to let you get to that side of the map without going through all the hassle.
We designed the combat system to have no dump stats.
Try the codex, that repository of all things helpful that is on your sidebar. The information therein has yet to be updated for the latest resolve rework, but otherwise is good.
I mean the game is about you trying to fight Kass so your character (and you) immediately deciding to go anywhere but basically means that, story-wise you may as well have just picked the "don't get involved" option in the tutorial.
Crazy Horse is a pretty easy encounter honestly. He's level 2 and alone, so unless your build is AOE only and also you're also not with any teammates he should be generally easy. The only reason why him attacking twice per round would seem ridiculous and lead to you loosing super quick is if you just straight up eschew the companions and go out solo (especially considering how strong Cait is, primarily with healing but also her single-target damage). Also he attacks twice because the game is balanced around you having two companions with you at all times, and doesn't adjust if you handicap yourself.
The Evangelist and the Bloodletter are both level 2 foes and, well, yeah tease is super strong against her. The inspect option takes a turn but (I think) shows the stats and weaknesses of opponents. And yeah, you are pretty much expected to fight everything you come across unless you absolutely can't win.Besides Crazy Horse, most of my worst losses were due to the goblin cultist (before I figured out that spamming Tease was the answer there) and to the Cultist Bloodletter. The harpies are annoying with flying but I can usually manage them, and the centaurs aren't that tough either. Maybe I just got really awful luck the first couple times, and that sort of imprinted my brain with the idea that I couldn't win, which made me run away too much and thus gain too little XP. Could well be my own fault, but I'm still entitled to whinge. >
I mentioned the "adaptive difficulty thing" earlier. There are encounters which, at level 3, get a new enemy added, like the Pollinator Effigy and the Harpy Wingleader for the Effigy and Harpy encounters. There are harder fights which appear in areas they weren't in before. Some basic bitch fights like the wolves still pop up, and not every fight scales, but they still change. And as Tobs said, you don't need to trudge through hordes of these battles to get everywhere since once you clear the Old Forest and beat the boss, the Alraune, you can unlock the Waystones.
For what I specifically said, go to the journal, go to the Codex section, and press on the first entry, Attributes and Stats. It lays out the specific stat numbers each attribute increases, and below it describes what the stats that are increased do. Of course, if you don't want to look in the codex or if you want to look up things like enemy levels, you can check the wiki, though a lot of entries are incomplete or out of date. Not that you generally have to.
Oh, the consumables. I barely ever use them except for transformatives that fit the specific appearance I want for the character, though that's mostly because, while they can be useful, they aren't generally needed. That said, some consumables are useful outside of combat in a few situations: When doing the Getting Into The Closet quest (after Alraune is beaten) if you have the Camping Supplies item you can scale a cliff and if you have Naptha or Wyvern Venom you can void a combat encounter, though of note this is one of the situations where stats can have an impact as if you level either Strength or Agility with every level up you'll have a high enough combined score to bypass the camping supplies requirement.
Also, not sure why you were referring to consumables but followed up by talking only about stats.
I was annoyed that this option was a Game Over; it could just as easily have turned into Garth coming over and asking you more directly to help this person, maybe even bribing you in some fashion (while the other two options gave you different bribes, such as a "courage bonus" to your stats instead of a piece of equipment). Just because Kass is the big bad doesn't mean that a level 1 character should immediately go out and attack "it"; you'll keep hearing about what's going on and should eventually come to the conclusion that you need to do something, but not that early. Look at the various Buffy seasons; almost without exception, she doesn't try to go after whoever the big villain of the season is in episodes 2-4 of the season. Instead, the threat builds in the background until eventually the story forces her to start dealing with it.
If you wound him, he frenzies, and his already deadly attacks get worst. He basically two-shotted me.
She's a good healer, but she's not so good that she can't be dropped without warning if you're not super careful. I forget what kind of a party I had at the time but I'm pretty sure I had her and was still wiped out before I could really react.
Well that's a bit of an issue. A smaller party should have the advantage in issues like stealth, and if lone enemies get extra actions then so should a lone player.
For some reason I don't always have the Sense option available.
Avoiding an unnecessary combat should be nearly as rewarding as defeating it in many cases. Otherwise the players turn into murderhobos.
You should try some actual threat management if you're that squishy. Those colored orbs on the portraits aren't just for show after all. Also only the PC can use Sense, and you can't Sense an opponent you've Sense'd before, it saves their data so you can just open their page and check.
Anyway, this isn't some open world game like Fall Out, Far Cry, whatever, you're basically just traveling down the road or trails, nor do some of the companions even fit the stealthy type anyway, like Brint. It's only one button to run away from a fight you don't want after all, which is more sense than just looking at them and saying "I win" and getting the rewards. Besides some people like myself like some of the defeat scenes.
Anyway, this isn't some open world game like Fall Out, Far Cry, whatever, you're basically just traveling down the road or trails, nor do some of the companions even fit the stealthy type anyway, like Brint. It's only one button to run away from a fight you don't want after all, which is more sense than just looking at them and saying "I win" and getting the rewards. Besides some people like myself like some of the defeat scenes.
Have you guys updated the Salamander TFs to include getting a Salamander Dick? I remember hearing from Savin that he thought it was already done but from what I can tell it hasn't happened yet.
I am playing the pub release atm and the Turgid Mushroom CInderlead still only adds size to the penis rather than transforming its type.
Edit: yeah it is the same with the backer build.
I am playing the pub release atm and the Turgid Mushroom CInderlead still only adds size to the penis rather than transforming its type.
Edit: yeah it is the same with the backer build.
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That doesn't really work unless you have a tank in your party. And my warrior character is a terrible tank for some reason. My other characters all recruit Brint, but he can't really actively tank for anyone else in any way I've managed to find out. Only warriors get Guarded Stance, I think?
What do you mean "open their page"?
Hence why I don't always recruit Brint.
Again, I don't always have time to flee after I start losing (enemy 1 knocks down the healer, enemy 2 knocks down my guy, I never even get an action), and fleeing doesn't always succeed, so a failed effort gives the enemy two more attacks before I get another turn. It's pretty fucking dangerous; even a fairly beef level 3 party of two can lose against a lone level 2 monster.
So Any PC can learn Guarded Stance, if you are not a Warrior you can go to Garth and Learn it. It is difficult being a tank as a player as you getting defeated is game over rather than just your teammate going down. I recommend buffing Toughness, Agility, and Presence as I believe warriors with heavy armor use toughness rather than willpower for fortitude.
For "open their page" could mean many things, near their character icons there are 3 dots, you can click on them to show you your team's skills and talents. you can also go to your character menu in Journal and at the bottom, you can select between yourself and your companions to see their stats. You can also make it so you can control the whole party rather than just your character, it is in both the options menu and during combat in the combat menu at the bottom of the screen.
I have no idea how much of this info you already know, I am just going through it just in case you don't.
But this means replacing your own innate. If you're a White Mage, you'll probably need Heal way more; if you're a Black Mage, Withering Bolt may well still be more useful. Only the Charmer seems really likely to be worth training away his innate (and maybe Warriors if you have Brint and Cait), and frankly all of the Charmer's powers look kind of useless to me (this was exactly why I recruited both Brint and Cait for my Charmer, which is probably why he's doing better than my other two-character parties).
Yep, that's definitely a problem. It also bothers me that you can't do inventory management on your followers, and that using an item may or may not give you the option to use it on an ally instead of yourself, with no real way of knowing before you try it, and no undo if the result is unsatisfactory.
I always do; it took very little time for me to decide the combat AI was unsatisfactory.
This is the correct approach, thank you.[/quote][/quote]
It is all a matter of build preference. one of my characters is a physical DPS character which I feel the Warrior passive talents do not mesh well, so I chose to be a Thief for the increase in crits and just have a mixture of physical skills from any class I prefer or even classless skills I have gained throughout the game.
I also would not underestimate the Charmer. Charmers were amazing considering the majority of their offensive skills are based on resolve damage and only special enemies had over 100 resolve. I don't know how the Gang is changing resolve combat in the newer patches but it used to be brutal. used to be able to take out enemies in a turn or 2.
Well I almost never see a Resolve that isn't over 100, although it is frequently lower, and often much lower, than Health. The system definitely has some unbalance to it, but as I learn more about it, it's clearly *somewhat* manageable.
I was writing the TF blurb to finally fix this before I got dragged back into the appearance screen rework stuff, so I'm afraid not
After reading through everything, both on this topic and others, the issues boil down to:
-Self-inflicted problems -- most notably, the insistence on running two-man teams. No, the game is not balanced around you having anything less than three in your party, no, we're not going to compensate, yes, there are two or three encounters that do this because they were first released when Cait was the only companion in-game and were scaled up when we finally slid Brint into the game. You have the freedom to play a certain way if you like, but the game world isn't going to bend over to accommodate it; game developers do not balance around their players doing a no items no dodge no sphere grid level 1 pacifist no skills run.
-The desire to be handheld to a degree more than we're willing to do -- if you push the button that says don't get involved, you don't get involved and the game ends, because you miss the crux of the plot hook. When you push the button that says "x" and get "x", don't be surprised when we don't pull a but thou must and instead say "okay, goodbye". We shouldn't be, but there are players who are expressly horrified that they blew up a planet when our sister game presents to them the option to do so highlighted in bold, so there you have it. There's a reluctance to explore and experiment there for fear of losing or wasting resources, and it's not an approach we are interested in encouraging. We put retry buttons right after all bad ends, losing otherwise is a slap on the wrist mechanically in the loss of money and/or some corruption at most, and frequent autosaves mean easy reloading and erasure of one's mistakes if one's buttginity is paramount.
Much of the information you actually want (for example, re: stats and what they do) is actually a short hop away, in the above case, in the codex or takes a little digging, but by your own narration the fear of losing or wasting resources is holding you back from exploring to find such.
-The argument that game design should follow what makes "sense", inasmuch as what one's subjective sense should be, but basically boils down to: "why didn't they use a phoenix down on Aerith?" The shine to being the guy to repeatedly point out that dragons aren't aerodynamic and that there's no way their wings should be able to generate enough lift to carry them, it wears off quickly. They fly anyway, because flying dragons are cool, and people who try to theorise about hydrogen bladders miss the point.
No, many of the design and narrative decisions we made don't make sense, inasmuch as that subjective metric is constant. We don't require players to eat, drink or sleep, because that would be tedious and isn't the aim of the game, we don't require players to have minimum lust to fuck the way the old games used to, somehow, taking a two-foot dick inside of you doesn't cause organ damage and orifice tearing, no, parasitic eggs introduced up your butt don't cause sepsis and death, yes, you hold the same number of items regardless of how many companions you have with you, yes, a bottle occupies the same amount of space planks of wood do. Etc, etc, etc.
We make these decisions for various reasons: to stick with Savin's vision for the game, to reduce tedium, to streamline the experience, to make sure players can concentrate on the porn instead of being reminded to eat every two steps, to not penalise certain body types, for combat balance, etc, etc, etc. Making sense isn't even on the list of considerations here.
***
While I'm glad you're still having enough fun with the game to stick with it for now and of course, you're free to voice your thoughts and everything and discuss them on the forums as is the point of these threads, do understand not much action is going to be taken on your feedback for the above reasons.
-Self-inflicted problems -- most notably, the insistence on running two-man teams. No, the game is not balanced around you having anything less than three in your party, no, we're not going to compensate, yes, there are two or three encounters that do this because they were first released when Cait was the only companion in-game and were scaled up when we finally slid Brint into the game. You have the freedom to play a certain way if you like, but the game world isn't going to bend over to accommodate it; game developers do not balance around their players doing a no items no dodge no sphere grid level 1 pacifist no skills run.
-The desire to be handheld to a degree more than we're willing to do -- if you push the button that says don't get involved, you don't get involved and the game ends, because you miss the crux of the plot hook. When you push the button that says "x" and get "x", don't be surprised when we don't pull a but thou must and instead say "okay, goodbye". We shouldn't be, but there are players who are expressly horrified that they blew up a planet when our sister game presents to them the option to do so highlighted in bold, so there you have it. There's a reluctance to explore and experiment there for fear of losing or wasting resources, and it's not an approach we are interested in encouraging. We put retry buttons right after all bad ends, losing otherwise is a slap on the wrist mechanically in the loss of money and/or some corruption at most, and frequent autosaves mean easy reloading and erasure of one's mistakes if one's buttginity is paramount.
Much of the information you actually want (for example, re: stats and what they do) is actually a short hop away, in the above case, in the codex or takes a little digging, but by your own narration the fear of losing or wasting resources is holding you back from exploring to find such.
-The argument that game design should follow what makes "sense", inasmuch as what one's subjective sense should be, but basically boils down to: "why didn't they use a phoenix down on Aerith?" The shine to being the guy to repeatedly point out that dragons aren't aerodynamic and that there's no way their wings should be able to generate enough lift to carry them, it wears off quickly. They fly anyway, because flying dragons are cool, and people who try to theorise about hydrogen bladders miss the point.
No, many of the design and narrative decisions we made don't make sense, inasmuch as that subjective metric is constant. We don't require players to eat, drink or sleep, because that would be tedious and isn't the aim of the game, we don't require players to have minimum lust to fuck the way the old games used to, somehow, taking a two-foot dick inside of you doesn't cause organ damage and orifice tearing, no, parasitic eggs introduced up your butt don't cause sepsis and death, yes, you hold the same number of items regardless of how many companions you have with you, yes, a bottle occupies the same amount of space planks of wood do. Etc, etc, etc.
We make these decisions for various reasons: to stick with Savin's vision for the game, to reduce tedium, to streamline the experience, to make sure players can concentrate on the porn instead of being reminded to eat every two steps, to not penalise certain body types, for combat balance, etc, etc, etc. Making sense isn't even on the list of considerations here.
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While I'm glad you're still having enough fun with the game to stick with it for now and of course, you're free to voice your thoughts and everything and discuss them on the forums as is the point of these threads, do understand not much action is going to be taken on your feedback for the above reasons.
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TheShepard256
Well-Known Member
'Warrior' and 'Tank' are not synonymous e.g. Brint's a warrior, but he's clearly a massive damage-dealer, not a tank. If you want a dedicated tank, Atugia's available pretty early; just hold back on the big-damage attacks in the first few rounds to make sure she generates enough Threat through her own abilities.
Why should it not be a Game Over? Like how in the Far Cry games where you need to do something in the beginning, if you don't do it then the events of the story turn out totally different. Sure, Kass appears either way, but the entire reason for your character to engage vanishes if you don't go with Cait at the start. And as for the bribing/asking, why should Garth? There's several patrons at the bar, and the PC is completely unimportant before heading to the temple with Cait, so there's nothing of interest to get Garth to ask you. And several storybeats do not work without the PC's presence at the temple. The writers should not have to rewrite huge chunks of the story to accommodate a choice which indicates disinterest in game's plot.
It's not an issue. You don't get stealth bonuses to combat or something like that beyond specific abilities, and there's few occasions where stealth is even an option outside of combat, and those are never penalized by who your companions are (though certain companions may instead support alternative options). This is a game in which you are expected to always have a full party, and if you don't want to engage with it as such (like I did back when I first played, back when the Foothills were the only available area with combat), then, well, tough. If you play Dark Souls at soul level 1, the game shouldn't make everything easier to accommodate your choice.
Murderhobos are a problem in a TTRPG where the story can be actively hurt by resorting to violence. In instances where the story is actively hurt be resorting to violence in a game like this, options get laid out which allow the player to see that there are viable alternatives in that situation to violence. Murderhobos are born from a scenario where peaceful solutions are discouraged when one would think it viable, but this game clearly marks where it is or isn't simply by the choices it presents to the player.
1: If you want to be more tanky, buy armor. You start out with the Comfortable Clothes, which are tied for the lowest armor of the whole game (15), while also having the lowest evasion of any non-heavy armor (5). With your starting money (after you beat the tutorial and sell excess items), you should have enough to afford most of the armor items available for sale from Leorah and Ogrish, and even if you don't sell anything you should have enough for the leather coat, which has 35 armor and 20 evasion.
2: If you want a different character to tank, Atugia is the third easiest companion to recruit. Cait you start out recruited, and Brint you recruit by literally just walking into the forest, and Atugia? She's in Hawkethorne. If you go to the far right, and then go up, and continue along that path past the temple where you fought Tollus, you'll encounter her. If you're level 1 you'll almost certainly lose but there's literally no negative impacts (storywise and mechanically) for if you lose in this fight, and then you can talk to her. It is a bit rng dependent but if you enter and exit the tile she's in repeatedly some events should occur (you've said your character's a straight man so this should be fine to you) and you can recruit her. He role is to tank, and she does so quite well.
Engage with the game the way the game is supposed to be engaged with. It's not going to accommodate your choice to not engage with it the way it's supposed to be engaged with.
Charmers are intended to be the non-combatant combatant. They're Presence focused, which is the stat that boosts your ally's stats and boosts your character's sexiness, and their powers are things which fit this role: Bolstering Dance buffs your whole team's survivability, both against physical and mental attacks (also it's one of a few abilities which restore resolve damage rather than physical damage, which is useful against teasing enemies), and the the Charmer gets two alternative at-wills at level four. One is Soothing Dance, which is straight up just Heal but for resolve and the Aroused condition rather than health and the Bleeding condition. The other is Song of Courage, which goes harder support aspect with no constantly active resolve heal. War Song is an aoe resolve hit, and even if you don't use it to fight with resolve, its status effect. Song of Storms can be used to buff yourself, but it's also able to target allies, which is especially useful with Brint since he's weapon-focused. The Charmer stays this way throughout, excelling at supporting allies and dealing resolve damage, and while the latter isn't quite intended with your starting teammates, they can still work with it as their own tease attacks aren't weak. They aren't useless, they're just different, in a perfectly viable way.
That said, replacing your class abilities with those of another class are useful in certain situations. My main character is a Warrior who focused hard on the damage-dealing aspect, and to support this I swapped out the at-will with the White Mage's Charge Weapon, so she hits even harder with all her abilities.
Yeah it's literally just there as a shout-out to FarCry.
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