Feedback: Game is really nice but too large ;)

Pathfinder: Kingmaker General Discussions
#1

I really like Pathfinder Kingmaker, apart from some minor issues.

However, there is one major nitpick: For my tastes, the game is simply too large :wink: In my humble opinion, it would have been much better if it had been split into three games :wink:

I think itā€™s great that you delivered so much content all at once. But sometimes giving people time to admire a certain content, characters or storyline, finish it and take a break before moving on to the next is important.

Of course this is completely subjective.

#2

Assuming your on pc and have not played that many isometric real rpgā€™s. On console the game has quite a number of mechanical issues.

Compared to some of the classic isometric rpgs while kingmaker is by no means small, i would say that baldurā€™s gate 2 plus dlc is much bigger and the maps are more detailed and have more interactions placed within. Even pillars series feels like bigger games to me really.

Mind you still love the game, just need to finish a run once.

#3

God forbid - a CRPG can never be too large or too long. I didnā€™t finish kingmaker, but this is not because it is too long but because I was not fond of the story. If you keep spreading words like that we never gonna end the plague of poor, unfinished games, that decided to grab easy money with an excuse ā€œbecause our previous game was too big, only 10% of players were able to finish itā€. We need to fight for better game quality! :crossed_swords::crossed_swords::crossed_swords:

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#4

As I understand it, this feedback was taken into account for the next game.

@Scorpy Companies say that to justify spending less time (money) on the development of a sequel so they can shove it out for the same price as the last one. Assume that the Owlcats are spending the same amount of time, but itā€™s just that more of it is being spent refining and testing.

#5

@Malril : I do not know if Kingmaker or BG2 has more and bigger maps, but I would definitely say Kingmaker has more interactions. Kingmaker has tons of skill checks and almost every quest has several different outcomes.
Well, Kingmaker does not have special content for specific classes.

I think both games are great but at the moment I would say Kingmaker is better (which is totally unfair because there are 20 years between them and BG1+2 set the path for all later games)

regarding size:

  • The devs said WotR will be smaller, but even the beta is a very large game.
  • I do not care much about size, quality is more importent. The only issue is that I do not have endless time so there are some games I only finished once because they are so large (Fallout NV, The Witcher 3).
    Its a miracle I finished Kingmaker twice.
#6

Iā€™m on PC & have played Baldurs Gate 1 and 2, Fallout 1 and 2 etc. These games have - without DLCs - the right size.

Iā€™m also not saying that any content should be cut - in fact, I would even add more details. Iā€™m merely saying the content might have benefited from being split into several games.

#7

Haha, sorry for stepping on your toes :sweat_smile: This is of course design philosophy - can a CRPG be too large or too long? I personally would say yes, but of course there are diehard fans who will crunch through months of gameplay :wink:

As for game quality Iā€™m completely on your side - but I would argue that a smaller game can be better polished, have more details, better writing. All these things take time and effort to do well.

#8

Yh i agree on the skillchecks btw and the way they apply the alignment system and other roleplaying elements. It is what makes kingmaker so enjoyable to me. In a roleplaying sense i agree that kingmaker is the better game then even the classic bg series.

The thing i meant with more interactions on the maps is that the areas had more interactions and quests and points of travel within the map. Both candlekeep and athkatla districts have in general more quests and points of interests or doors to inns and the like. So it alludes more to size really. I also really liked how some of those maps were designed. Most of kingmakers maps are either small or simple in design really.

And yh to me BG series seem way bigger cause i always feel compelled to be a completionist so i try to pick up every possible line of tekst or easter egg. Meaning i do all Stronghold quests and maintain them ( in modded game offcourse) and doing stuff like that and running all the romances (sometimes concurrently) can make the game way way longer then pathfinder kingmaker. Not to mention rotating npcs like Edwin for their quests and specific lines.In BG certain quests and developments were gated behind gametime others were related to actual playing time and many other factors like area.

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#9

Its been ages since I played Bg1+2, so I do not remember all details.

What I really like for all of those games are big dungeons and in the best case they tell a story.
Durlags tower in BG1 or the troll dungeon and Vordakais tomb in Kingmaker.

For me this was a problem in PoE2.
And BG3 will be a great game in many things, but it feels like a theme park with several points of interests being very close to each other (goblins do not find the druid grove when they only need to walk a minute there?) plus I dislike most of Larians changes to the rules.

#10

The problem with BG3 is the same as with Divinity Original Sin 2: It has a disjointed, sloppy worldbuilding and writing. The term ā€˜theme parkā€™ fits it quite well.

When I hear of Elves, Tieflings, Aasimar I want them to be special, rare and enigmatic. I donā€™t want to have them as everyday occurrence. You are meeting an entire settlement of Tieflings in the beginning, in the vicinity of Baldurā€™s Gate - and they act simply like staple ā€˜humans with hornsā€™, fearful of little Goblins - while sporting infernal eyes and looking like intimidating demons.

No, concerning writing & worldbuilding Pathfinder Kingmaker is leagues better. Which is a pity, because Larian could easily invest more time in crafting their worlds and writing their stories.

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#11

I wont say sth about BG3 ,cause its still in development, but after 3 playthroughs in DOS 2 i can say as well: worldbuilding isnt the strongst selling point here. I played DOS2 cause its one of the best combat and skill systems ive seen. (like combination of different skills, free to do what you want, action point managment). So i think devs focused more on interesting combats then the world, which i say did work for me. Combat can be quite difficult and interesting by combining different type of enemies (almost all encounters later on have this feature), special abilities (one enemie have two different stages) or different enviroment (one encounter is between hills, the other on the beach).
So i think these games just have their focus on different aspects and they are not better or worse then the other ones, its only about the taste

#12

The last few posts clarified something for me i never quite figured out. When dos2 came out and i played the demo i was so hyped and convinced it would be the perfect bg2 follow up in those type of games.

After getting the game i got to the third island and i just kinda felt unmotivated to keep playing the game. It is what the last few posters basically stated, their quests while very quirky and innovative make the world very diskworld like iā€™d almost say.

Mind you i never really read the series but i figure a slightly absurd sarcastic ironic fantasy world setting is what it was. Basically monty python fantasy world setting; while this is funny and interesting i guess it does not manage to keep me engaged to the story. It is also why i never finished any of their games in that worldsetting. And i think Ego Draconis was even trying to be somewhat more serious even.

So yh to me the story and worldsetting plays a big role in my enjoyment of the game. Their quirkiness within their worldsetting breaks the enjoyment for me.

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#13

Yes, the skill system is really nice. Combining various surfaces to generate new effects is fun.

Itā€™s just that after several RPGs, real time strategy & 3d Shooters Iā€™m not anymore interested so much in combat, but more in a potential story behind the game. In fact, I have begun playing many games in ā€˜story modeā€™, but this is also due to time constraints.

It was fun, I think once in a while such ā€˜quirkyā€™ stories are ok. But the world, the factions and characters were not memorable. I can still recite Imoenā€™s ā€œHeya, itā€™s me, Imoenā€. I canā€™t remember any line of DOS2.

#14

And you have to remember in DOS2 players dont have one specific main character, you can switch between them or make a custom one and you can skill everything with everyone. There are no limitations, which is a nice feature for gameplay and fun (if u for example think hey char background tells me he was a wizard once, now lets make him a melee two handed fighter), but its a terrible decision for worldbuilding, cause ofc engagment in the story goes hand in hand with Immersion and the story shoud be about your own personal journey, but thats difficult, if the game doesnt know your decisions. And at the same time Players are not allowed to engage in a character and his own personal environment. Ofc there are some banter and dialogues between specific chars, but nothing really world changing. People need to sympathize with their mc and as such they need to find his identity, his morality, but the game doesnt let u.

#15

My two cents:

  • I never finished DOS2, reasons:
  • stat inflation and level scaling. You start with a few points of damage, then some hundret, then some thousand. You are almost forced to do encounters in a specific order.
  • Totally random items. Your characters look terrible and a normal item of one level is better than an epic item one or two levels lower. This also means you do not care about your equipment at all. Most people remember the holy avenger or crom fayr from BG2, nobody cares about items in DOS2.
  • I disliked the armor system, but thats just my personal taste
  • You have almost zero connection to your character, it feels just like a walking set of stats.
  • I disliked the excessive surfaces and other effects. The whole map was filled with necrofire in almost every fight after a round. For me it feels wrong if enemies bleed poison when I hit them with a sword and suddenly there is a poison cloud all over the place that suddenly goes boom and enemies jump around like crazy.
  • I did not really care about the story.

I think Larians ā€œproblemā€ is the success of their first games. Divine Divinity had gameplay like Diablo, but with a hand crafted map, many quests and lots of stuff to explore. Random items besed on your level may be OK in a single character action game, but I feel they are annoying in a party based classical RPG.
I am happy they moved to DnD as bases to their latest games.

I have realized what I like about BG3: You do almost everything as normal gameplay and there are many things you can try and it can work what you normally do not see in computer games.
Two examples:

  • In the beginning you can get an intellect devourer as companion. Basically its just a series of skill checks but in BG3 you see what your char does with every step, in Kingmaker you would only have a dialogue box with skill checks and text.
  • In the goblin camp you can sneak to put poison in their drinks, you invite them to drink and pretend to drink yourself and then half of them die and you can convince the others that you did not poison them. In Kingmaker this would be a book event, in BG3 you do the sneaking yourself and have a cinematic scene when you talk to them.

I think BG3 could set new standarts for games and it would be perfect if it combines its own look, interactivety and story with the rule implementation of Solasta. Sticking closer to the DnD rules would mean for me that different classes feel more different and you have a stronger connection to your own char.

Kingmaker and WotR are great games and I enjoy playing them. They are good in telling an epic story. But they are ā€œa nerds wet dream and everybody elses nightmareā€. The pathfinder system is the most complex system I have ever seen and I can totally understand if many new players feel lost and might even quit the game. On my first playthrough I made a terrible char and I had to switch to story mode and even then some fights lasted very long. On my second playthrough I did much better and normal difficulty felt normal. And I am far from being an expert player.
Owlcat should stick to what they are doing because those games are great.
But I guess the % of players who finish the game will be rather low and there will be tons of comments like ā€œthe game is hard as hellā€ or ā€œthe game is cheatingā€ or simply ā€œit sucksā€.
No, it is not but it is really hard to understand this.

Well, it is still between the two extremes:

  • Disco Elysium is a great game that I enjoyed a lot and often its super funny to fail forward.
  • Age of Decadence tells you from the start that you will likely die if you fight or give a wrong answer. To some degree this enforces role playing because as fighter you should fight as unfair as possible and as talker you should avoid fighting at all costs.

Note: I have never played dark souls or similar games.
I am not good with action games and I like turn based much better.

#16

I think its great it that big, so much to do. And also its very obvious as you play it, that so many things you do could have been done differently had you chosen other options, which is good for replayability.

I do however wish that each individual map you enter would be much bigger, as some of them is just one monster standing there, which is a bit strange, which causes a lot of loading screens, which there are a lot of. So maybe map sizes like that of Divinity I think would be cool.

#17

Be careful what you wish.
In WotR there are some large maps and in some cases my computer slowed down a lot when fighting there. Well, I never had this problem in Kingmaker and WotR is beta so there is room for optimisation.

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#18

I have a good computer :smiley:

On a serious note though, surely they should optimize it and most of these things ,as far as I know, happens closer to the final release or afterwards. So, I wouldnā€™t be to worried about it, if you say that it only happens sometimes.