Opinion: Deadfire has the best quest design of any CRPG

[Lhynn]

Then name an RPG with better quest design

Thats easy, im having a hard time thinking of games with worse quest design than this one. They are all fucking monotonous shit, because writing is complete garbo.

What you are talking about here isnt really quest design, its level design, and while its mostly shit, it has a couple gems. Not the one you pointed out tho, thats just a bunch of trash mob fights with a few skillchecks in the middle.

The best quest/area design in the game is the pirate base, and its miles beyond anything obsidian has done in any of their games in a long time. This single area doesnt redeem the game tho, but it is fun to play through it.

 

[Zeriel]

Yeah, I'm baffled at the stuff that holds up as examples of "good design" while making absolutely no explanation. Diablo-style items. Terrible character system. The area is "okay" I guess, but is basically just "here's a bunch of flags we set, that makes it good design!". If this is the pinnacle of quest design, then most fan-made Neverwinter modules are the height of RPG design. Pillars of Eternity is an evolutionary cul-de-sac, a dead-end of bad choices that removes what made the Infinity Engines game great and replaces it with what Roguey would call cargo cult. Not D&D cargo cult, but "these mainstream games were popular, so let's copy how they handled itemization and character development while ignoring the context of their decision choices" cargo cult.

 

[Efe]

hasongo teaches you that your party is perceptionally impaired and their lines of sight are blocked by barrels.
you get to sneak past the ambush and want to ambush back with a big old fireball? fuck you destroy these barrels first.

 

[Reinhardt]

Hasongo is shit just because it's part of Deadfire main quest and Deadfire main quest is shit. No one cares about walking giant statue - it's worst part of the game.

 

[Sentinel]

It's been out for three months. At some point the length of the critical path stops being a good excuse for why nobody is finishing it.

The excuse is that it was broken on release and many people simply didn't return to it after patches. Doesn't stop it from being superior to PoE2 lmao. Just speaks volumes about how shit PoE2 is that a literally broken game is a better RPG than it.

 

[Sykar]

Lame excuse. Dark Souls is a 50+ hour game that isn't noob friendly, and the completion rate is 22 times greater than Kingmaker.

People quit Kingmaker because it's not fun, and finish Deadfire because it is. It's that simple.

Dark Souls came out in 2011...

 

[Sentinel]

You keep trying to pass that as a good example. Do you know what i see when i see that? i see this:

The whole "stats" part of the game is beyond fucked and has been since poe1 release.

what mod (?) is that?

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

That only makes Kingmaker grow in prestige. It exists as a mountain that stands proudly, wanting only the bravest to test it.

Deadfire is a hill by comparison.

 

[Safav Hamon]

Until they patch in turn-based combat, Kingmaker will never be half as prestigious as Deadfire.

 

[Funposter]

Lame excuse. Dark Souls is a 50+ hour game that isn't noob friendly, and the completion rate is 22 times greater than Kingmaker.

People quit Kingmaker because it's not fun, and finish Deadfire because it is. It's that simple.

Dark Souls came out in 2011...

Furthermore, Dark Souls is not necessarily a 50 hour game. Yes, a blind playthrough will often take someone 25+ hours, but that isn't how redditors and normies approach the "epic, super hard game". They read a guide, they summon people for co-op, and basically do everything in their power in order to make it as easy as possible. Dark Souls is a game that can be completed in a few hours, even by a novice, because its roadblocks can be trivialised by prior knowledge and the online system.

Kingmaker on the other hand is just really fucking long.

 

[Lone Wolf]

People quit Kingmaker because it's not fun, and finish Deadfire because it is. It's that simple.

As someone with no horse in this race, I'll say that the above screams 'stupid'.

Both are fun games. POE2 does some things better (polish, sound design, art, pacing, itemization) and some things less well (exploration, character customization, encounter design, progression, breadth, gameplay layering). Kingmaker was badly hurt by its buggy release, especially with respect to the last few chapters of the game. Lots of people bounced off it after the first few weeks and elected to leave it unfinished. I would wager most of those people had plenty of fun, until the bug/difficulty spike fatigue set in.

This dumbass PS vs Xbox-style argument about which game is 'clearly' better is silly as fuck. It's obvious that each might be preferable to different people, based on their gaming tastes and aesthetic. Kingmaker is a DnD tabletop campaign on the PC. Deadfire is a classic CRPG, with a classic WRPG story, beat-wise. Deadfire takes more risks with its theme(s) (colonization/piracy, exploited natives, religious extremism, renaissance) and turns away from standard fantasy tropes (medieval world, good/evil, adventuring party). Kingmaker hearkens back to classic DnD, taking no thematic risks, but it creates a wonderful sandbox for the discovery-minded player.

What's with this silly crusade to 'prove' one over the other, Safav? The last year was great for CRPG fans. Enjoy it.

 

[Safav Hamon]

(exploration

Deadfire does it better. Every location is accessible from the beginning, and not broken up into chapters. One of the few true open world CRPGs alongside Fallout 2.

Spoiler

character customization

Deadfire does it better. Four times as many abilities and feats. More archetypes for every base class.

Spoiler

encounter design

Deadfire does it better. Kingmaker encounter design is garbage. It has nothing that can compare with Deadfire's best.

Spoiler

Kingmaker was badly hurt by its buggy release, especially with respect to the last few chapters of the game

Why is this an excuse? They shouldn't have released broken shovelware at full price.

ise. Deafire takes more risks with its theme(s) (colonization/piracy, exploited natives, religious extremism, renaissance) and turns away from standard fantasy tropes (medieval world, good/evil, adventuring party). Kingmaker hearkens back to classic DnD, taking no thematic risks

Exactly. Kingmaker is generic and uninspired. Deadfire is creative and risk-taking.

 

[Zeriel]

The excuse is that it was broken on release and many people simply didn't return to it after patches. Doesn't stop it from being superior to PoE2 lmao. Just speaks volumes about how shit PoE2 is that a literally broken game is a better RPG than it.

"How many people finished it" is also a shit metric for how good a game is. Famously so. Grimrock sold millions of copies, but of those millions almost none of them got past the tutorial. Its sequel sold way less, but most people argue its a better game. Age of Decadence is also a great example, look at how many people actually finished it. Does that mean its a shittier game than some game everyone finished because it's an hour long?

A lot of people really enjoy games they never finish. In some cases that's specifically why they liked it. I remember when Baldur's Gate 2 came out. I finished it, but I spent countless hours replaying the first few acts of the game, and from people I talked to many never even bothered to finish the last few acts while saying it was one of their favorite games ever. "Finished it" really tells us nothing about the quality of the time people spent with a game.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Deadfire does it better. Every location is accessible from the beginning, and not broken up into chapters. One of the few true open world CRPGs alongside Fallout 2.

Deadfire does it different. None of your statements read 'better', just different. I preferred exploring in Pathfinder. It had more of a 'anything is possible' feel to it, in terms of what might be discovered.

Deadfire does it better. Four times as many abilities and feats. More archetypes for every base class.

I've never spent any significant time planning out a Deadfire character. Totally unnecessary. You have 1-2 must-haves per level, and 2-3 nice-to-haves. Some levels bring nothing to the table (outside of deflection/accuracy/health/saves). And it must be nice to count the selectable spells of the druid/wizard/cipher/cleric as 'abilities and feats'. Not to mention the generic passives available to every class (40-60% of the total, can't be fucked counting) separately on each character progression chart. Did you include the Arcane and Divine spell lists in the Kingmaker totals? Why not?

Deadfire does it better. Kingmaker encounter design is garbage. It has nothing that can compare with Deadfire's best.

You just posted screenshots of single bosses (with one or two exceptions) as examples of 'encounter design'. That's a masterfully shitty effort. I beat that dragon in the second screenshot a few days back. It literally involved spamming AOE heals and just beating on it with my fighter and Eder, while the cipher plinked it from a dozen yards away. It went down in about twenty seconds.

Meanwhile, the assassin wererats in a single, off-the-beaten-path, optional location in Kingmaker took more thought, preparation and effort. You could have chosen better examples, but decided to go with the lazy bullshit. The best Deadfire fights have multiple moving pieces, which force you to use positioning and prioritisation intelligently. The Imp fight was much better, for example, than the posted dragon.

Why is this an excuse? They shouldn't have released broken shovelware at full price.

Because you posited 'fun' as the reason people didn't finish the game - which is stupid.

Exactly. Kingmaker is generic and uninspired. Deadfire is creative and risk-taking.

Kingmaker is traditional escapism, perfected. Deadfire is creative and risk-taking. Both have pros and cons. Pretending that your subjective preference for the latter is an indictment of the former = stupid.

 

[Incendax]

Then name an RPG with better quest design

Original Sin 2
Witcher 3, especially Bloody Baron.
Witcher 2.
Fallout: New Vegas.
Vampire: Bloodlines.
Ultima IV & VII
Tyranny.
Arcanum.
Chrono Trigger.
Earthbound.
Deus Ex.
Dragon Age: Origins.
Planescape: Torment.

 

[Sharpedge]

Deadfire does it better. Every location is accessible from the beginning, and not broken up into chapters. One of the few true open world CRPGs alongside Fallout 2.

Deadfire does it different. None of your statements read 'better', just different. I preferred exploring in Pathfinder. It had more of a 'anything is possible' feel to it, in terms of what might be discovered.

Deadfire does it better. Four times as many abilities and feats. More archetypes for every base class.

I've never spent any significant time planning out a Deadfire character. Totally unnecessary. You have 1-2 must-haves per level, and 2-3 nice-to-haves. Some levels bring nothing to the table (outside of deflection/accuracy/health/saves). And it must be nice to count the selectable spells of the druid/wizard/cipher/cleric as 'abilities and feats'. Not to mention the generic passives available to every class (40-60% of the total, can't be fucked counting) separately on each character progression chart. Did you include the Arcane and Divine spell lists in the Kingmaker totals? Why not?

Deadfire does it better. Kingmaker encounter design is garbage. It has nothing that can compare with Deadfire's best.

You just posted screenshots of single bosses (with one or two exceptions) as examples of 'encounter design'. That's a masterfully shitty effort. I beat that dragon in the second screenshot a few days back. It literally involved spamming AOE heals and just beating on it with my fighter and Eder, while the cipher plinked it from a dozen yards away. It went down in about twenty seconds.

Meanwhile, the assassin wererats in a single, off-the-beaten-path, optional location in Kingmaker took more thought, preparation and effort. You could have chosen better examples, but decided to go with the lazy bullshit. The best Deadfire fights have multiple moving pieces, which force you to use positioning and prioritisation intelligently. The Imp fight was much better, for example, than the posted dragon.

Why is this an excuse? They shouldn't have released broken shovelware at full price.

Because you posited 'fun' as the reason people didn't finish the game - which is stupid.

Exactly. Kingmaker is generic and uninspired. Deadfire is creative and risk-taking.

Kingmaker is traditional escapism, perfected. Deadfire is creative and risk-taking. Both have pros and cons. Pretending that your subjective preference for the latter is an indictment of the former = stupid.

Pretty much this and as far as final fights go,

Spoiler

I can't even remember what the Guardian at Ukaizo did, only that I beat it in a single try without much effort at all.

Vs the final fight in Pathfinder, where you actually had to think a bit.

 

[Safav Hamon]

Glorious news! Deadfire made it to #35 in Eurogamers reader choice, beating Fortnite, Ni No Kuni 2, Yakuza 6, and Fallout 76.

Unfortunately Kingmaker wasn't even voted in the top 50. It's so bad that it got beaten by Fallout 76.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-01-01-eurogamer-readers-top-50-games-of-2018

 

[Zibniyat]

You do realise almost nobody here cares, and certainly nobody adult and intelligent. What mainstream journalists and their avid readers "choose" to be their "choice" of supposedly good games has no correlation to the actual quality of such games, at least not positive correlation that is.

Most of your arguments are stupid, how come you persist in making them still? Like that one time when you compared the sheer number of lines of dialogue between games as some sort of criterion for the quality of writing (or quality in general), now that was some seriously embarrassing stuff.

I still don't know whether you want people to stay away from POE II, or what? I played POE (1.0) and I must say that it was one of the most boring, bland and forgettable gaming experiences I've ever had, and still considering that it had some merit and I did finish it, I charitably gave it 3/5.

 

[Safav Hamon]

I'm not looking for validation here. Just the opposite.

Deadfire will be remembered a decade from now because it has amazing reviews, GOTY awards, and turn-based combat. The only thing sustaining Kingmaker is the anti-Obsidian circlejerk, and once that fades Kingmaker will be forgotten.

 

[Sykar]

I'm not looking for validation here. Just the opposite.

Deadfire will be remembered a decade from now because it has amazing reviews, GOTY awards, and turn-based combat. The only thing sustaining Kingmaker is the anti-Obsidian circlejerk, and once that fades Kingmaker will be forgotten.

I can only speak for myself but for me it will be the opposite and I am sure plenty of people think the same. Also like all your arguments this mental diarrea you just spewed here could be said for example about Oblivion and Fallout 3 compared to more obscure cRPGs and it still would not make Oblivion or Fallout 3 anything but giant turds despite what corrupt money grabbing games journalists and the retarded masses think. Oh and congratulations being part of the retarded masses. You fit right in with them. Are you sure you were not lost when you wanted to register for RPGwatch?

 

[Darth Roxor]

why do people keep replying to these threads

 

[Sykar]

why do people keep replying to these threads

It's fun laughing at retards whether they are unintentionally retarded or willfully retarded.

 

[Lacrymas]

why do people keep replying to these threads

It's proven that people respond more frequently when someone is wrong on the internet. Safav isn't necessarily wrong in the way everything he says is wrong, but he extrapolates wrong/unrelated/illogical conclusions from the presented facts.

Deadfire will be remembered a decade from now because it has amazing reviews, GOTY awards, and turn-based combat. The only thing sustaining Kingmaker is the anti-Obsidian circlejerk, and once that fades Kingmaker will be forgotten.

Nobody outside the Codex, and maybe RPGWatch, is going to remember either PoEs a decade from now. I'm not sure about Kingmaker, waiting for a GOTY edition with everything included and all the bugs fixed, I'm reserving judgement for when I actually play it and see whether its merits go beyond "it's vaguely like BG!".

 

[Bumvelcrow]

I'm not looking for validation here. Just the opposite.

Deadfire will be remembered a decade from now because it has amazing reviews, GOTY awards, and turn-based combat. The only thing sustaining Kingmaker is the anti-Obsidian circlejerk, and once that fades Kingmaker will be forgotten.

Thanks Safav for brightening up a dreary New Year's morning with this hilarious thread. That so many people can't help but engage with such blatant trolling is even more amusing. I knew I didn't vote for you in the epic Retard 2018 poll for some reason.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

why do people keep replying to these threads

RPG Codex Review: Pillars of Eternity II - It's Pretty Alright

Codex Review - posted by Infinitron on Sat 25 August 2018, 01:37:48

[Review by Darth Roxor]

That’s right, I had fun with the sequel to Pillars of Eternity. What have you done to me, Sawyer?!