Expeditions: Viking - Release Day

[Kordanor]

Yeah, I also don't get what the Prosperity or Power values are for. The only thing which was mentioned at some point was that it defines the outcome at the end. Was hoping that it was further explained upon leaving Denmark.

While I agree that lots of games are not getting crafting right, there are actually some, which do. Fallout 4 for example (minus the base building, just talking about the item crafting) or Jagged Alliance. It's actually easy to get it right: It needs to be completive to the normal item system rather than something which is competing with it.

But even a competing system can work, at least in a single player game. But in order to do so, it must be extremely gated. As in: In Dungeon level 5 you can find a weapon with 10 damage, or you can find 5 items, which, when put together give you an item with 13 damage. Up to Dungeon level 6 which drops an item with 12 damage.

But a free system which allows you to craft the strongest item in the first 10% of the game is the worst possible scenario.

 

[Archangel]

I agree the crafting system is severely flawed… However, I can't really think of an RPG with crafting that didn't mess it up somehow. Either crafted items are weak and useless or so powerful as to make the equipment you find or buy useless. It seems like it is impossible to balance. AoD probably has the best crafting I can think of but I probably only say that because it's fairly simple (not a lot of different materials to collect) and easy to ignore (as weapons / armor really only matter when playing the mercenary track (and to a lesser extent Assassins)… It just makes finding magic / special items less magic / special.

I'd pretty much be happy if all RPG developers would just forget about crafting altogether. Unfortunately there seems to be some unwritten rule that all CRPGs must now have crafting.

There's definitely something off about the HQ management, too. However, it's not really clear to me yet why I should care about that stuff… I can't say I really know how prosperity or power affect the game, nor how much I should strive to have. I've upgraded a few things but I'm not going out of my way to look for wood… it just isn't clear to me what the benefits are.

NWN2 OC had a powerful crafting system than was limited by usage of rare gems that you could get only in very limited quantity.

 

[Pladio]

I agree the crafting system is severely flawed... However, I can't really think of an RPG with crafting that didn't mess it up somehow. Either crafted items are weak and useless or so powerful as to make the equipment you find or buy useless. It seems like it is impossible to balance. AoD probably has the best crafting I can think of but I probably only say that because it's fairly simple (not a lot of different materials to collect) and easy to ignore (as weapons / armor really only matter when playing the mercenary track (and to a lesser extent Assassins)... It just makes finding magic / special items less magic / special.

I'd pretty much be happy if all RPG developers would just forget about crafting altogether. Unfortunately there seems to be some unwritten rule that all CRPGs must now have crafting.

There's definitely something off about the HQ management, too. However, it's not really clear to me yet why I should care about that stuff... I can't say I really know how prosperity or power affect the game, nor how much I should strive to have. I've upgraded a few things but I'm not going out of my way to look for wood... it just isn't clear to me what the benefits are.

I believe it is part of what dictates the ending.

You need either enough power or enough prosperity to "win" at the Althing


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[Pladio]

Yeah, I also don't get what the Prosperity or Power values are for. The only thing which was mentioned at some point was that it defines the outcome at the end. Was hoping that it was further explained upon leaving Denmark.

While I agree that lots of games are not getting crafting right, there are actually some, which do. Fallout 4 for example (minus the base building, just talking about the item crafting) or Jagged Alliance. It's actually easy to get it right: It needs to be completive to the normal item system rather than something which is competing with it.

But even a competing system can work, at least in a single player game. But in order to do so, it must be extremely gated. As in: In Dungeon level 5 you can find a weapon with 10 damage, or you can find 5 items, which, when put together give you an item with 13 damage. Up to Dungeon level 6 which drops an item with 12 damage.

But a free system which allows you to craft the strongest item in the first 10% of the game is the worst possible scenario.

I agree but to be honest, you are unlikely to be able to make a lot of top quality items early as they cost a lot of hides or salvage. You might have one or two but unlikely more until you get to Britain.


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[joxer]

Exactly. I did make two OP bows at that point, but IIRC that was it, didn't have enough junk to make something more and I didn't want to waste money on buying more because I wanted to get more thralls which were pretty expensive.
Since it was a first playthrough I didn't know how many thralls I actually need to max the village before the timer ends so I returned frequently to buy more.
On top of that, with investing 10K of $, you get +2 to prestige.

So instead of crafting stuff like crazy by buying salvage or hides, I used my $ for thralls and prestige. Plenty of looted items are not useless.

I've said a few days back, it's not the crafting system that's broken, it's those 3 additional party members you get who you'll spec into crafting, repairing, etc. If they were just "props" and not playable characters, we wouldn't talk about crafting here at all as you'd have to earn much more skillpoints to go max crafting and artisan on the default party.

 

[Kordanor]

At the end of the first campaign I crafted:
2 Maxed out Bows
1 Maxed out Sword
2 Maxed out Axes
1 Maxed out Helmet

And as I am only using one type of weapon per character I am kinda covered already. I think I need one more axes and one spear to have it all. And then ofc the armor which costs much more.

 

[joxer]

You mean Denmark part? Erm, I had time to "waste" after solving all quests, but I didn't camp, perhaps I should have.
Maxed helmets I don't use on any character. All are -20% aiming.

 

[Kordanor]

You mean Denmark part? Erm, I had time to "waste" after solving all quests, but I didn't camp, perhaps I should have.
Maxed helmets I don't use on any character. All are -20% aiming.

Resting didn't really make a difference there. Could have had much more of course. With the resting I only converted all my herbs and created 300+ rations which I didn't sell.

But I'd say all but one item is from the materials I got by normal gameplay. Which includes disassembling everything with Repair 5, and not repairing anything (don't see the point in repairing garbage)

Regarding the 20% - I only saw that after the first helmet I crafted. But as not everyone is using ranged that's ok. Guess that will be different in the second campaign. I basically already maxed out all the skills I wanted to have. I in the near future I should be able to also max out ranged weapons for everyone...which is kinda stupid design es well imho.

 

[joxer]

My crew weapon sets are:
1st (default): something + shield
2nd: bow or sling

Except gunnar who's 2nd set is duoaxes and forgotthename your village spear skilled female sidekick.

But I didn't make them them all ranged and all melee maxed or something. Shields maxed for everyone, yes, I did that to stop instadeath when the first round isn't on me.
However, my healer ended with maxed bows and support skills - him having maxed axes, swords or knives would be a waste of skillpoints escpecially when diplomacy or leadership are more desirable when it comes to a greedy character who wants to "negotiate" bigger prizes. Similarily, forgotthename hunter from your village has maxed bows, but also hunting and many different passives, there is absolutely no reason to have him using any melee weapon - he's my major damagedealer and I can't remember that he died on me in any fight ever unlike the rest of the party.

But it's 1st playthrough. When I replay the game, I'll go with a different protagonist class/role, and most definetly won't rush through Denmark.

 

[Kordanor]

My Healer actually ALWAYS died first and never was able to heal anyone in Denmark despite of having the "less likely to be attacked" skill

So I basically planned to go without dedicated healer later on. Maybe put a few spare points in healing. But killing your enemies fast always sounds like the better option.

 

[Pladio]

Well, I continued my playthrough today after 1.0.2 and the game is now much more stable. 1 crash in 5 hours of play almost. So I'm happy with that.

I like playing with characters that are part of the story, so my main combat party is:
- Roskva
- Nefja
- Eydis
- Ketill
- Gunnar

If anyone is wounded I then take Gunnar.

I have a few more people in the party now, but they are not doing much except for camping bits.

I still think this is an amazing game and I hope it does well enough for them to make another Expeditions

 

[Kordanor]

I still think this is an amazing game and I hope it does well enough for them to make another Expeditions

The more I play the more broken it appears to me though. I'd definitely not recommend to buy this game yet.

Upon entering Eoforwic the music was playing insanely loud. Ok, no problem, let's just lower the volume. Nope - music volume slider broken as well.

Reloading a save which you did on the minimap will potentially completely screw up your location. Happened quite some times already.

Even though your characters should not crits while in non lethal mode, they constantly do them (and I even saw in the forums that there is a bug that you can also accidentally kill them)

When ending the first campaign my herbs value was magically increased by 140. So I just got 140 herbs for free.

The camp calculations for hunting ground decrease are not working at all.

The quest npc which you sent away in the first location in britian just re-appears upon reloading the zone.

The game is stable now. But it's still just full of bugs. And of course there are all the game mechanics which don't make any sense / horrible balancing and the other major part of gameplay: barrelcollecting.

 

[Kordanor]

Here's a pic, no I didn't cheat or something:

I also found vendors with different prices now. That said, it seems to be reputation / zone based but not vendor based.

So all vendors in any particular zone have the same prices.

In Ribe that's 125 for 1 Salvage.

Now, the "funny" part:
When buying Stuff in Orkneyar you can buy under value.
You can buy 150 salvage for 135 hides, then buy these 135 hides back by paying 122 salvage and so on. Until the vendor basically has nothing but a few valuables left.

So the trading system is completely broken in two aspects actually.

 

[Dasale]

So Gothic 2 is broken as you have at least one infinite source of income.

It's not plain obvious your highlight is a bug, if it's tedious to get infinite income, it could be here just as an option, as it was in Gothic 2.

EDIT: Ha well with the toxic community there's now around RPG, I bet Gothic 2 couldn't survive its release.

EDIT: About this toxicity, I wonder what dev will be the scapegoat of RPG community, now that Bioware is shut down for making RPG.

 

[Kordanor]

I don't know which infinite income you have in Gothic.

But Buying something from a vendor and then selling it back for more can only be considered broken.

 

[Pladio]

I don't know which infinite income you have in Gothic.

But Buying something from a vendor and then selling it back for more can only be considered broken.

Don't know about Gothic II but in I, you could buy a blank and make a sword, selling it for double the price thus getting quite rich quickly.

 

[joxer]

EDIT: Ha well with the toxic community there's now around RPG, I bet Gothic 2 couldn't survive its release.

You're completely wrong. None of us here will say a game is an utter disaster just because of one omission devs did.

Also, some unbalanced stuff tend to pass unnoticed during patching cycles and gets discovered by the community way later - does that mean if we loved a game now we should hate it because someone discovered an exploit?

Also, we don't need any scapegoats. Ubisoft is still out there, alive and well, and is advertising a stupid MMO as RPG. Can you think of anything lower?
If only that MMO was worth something.
Okay okay, Ubisoft today, Vivisoft tomorrow, same shit, new wrapping.

 

[Kordanor]

Don't know about Gothic II but in I, you could buy a blank and make a sword, selling it for double the price thus getting quite rich quickly.

Ok, not the best design if you can do this in unlimited amount and little effort but at least there is some effort evolved.