Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Patch 1.0.7c

I must say, I played PF:K in RtwP but having used the TB mode in Wrath, I can't go back (well, except for real trash mobs - and the fights can drag...). So many abilities in PF are move equivalent, free, swift etc actions - and you have very little control of ordering that in real-time. Often, they are subtle effects, so they won't impact that much. But other times times if you start moving, you delay that action from firing until a later time, which may be fatal. Example: cackle is a move-equivalent action, so if a witch has put misfortune hex on someone, she can stand still, fire another spell and cacke (*teeeheheheeeeeee!!!*) to sustain that. I never really effectively used those kinds of abilities before TB mode - I'd alwas end up moving when I didn't really want to. And of course, targetting spell effects works properly - no more hitting the wrong target because some character moved into the wrong place. You can sort of do that in RTWP (and I did in PF:K, BG etc) but many times I cursed because I could not deploy a spell because the setup was just wrong. I'm happy that they have both modes though. I think once the game is patched to the same degree as PF:K it will be a great experience.
 
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The MC user score of WotR actually dropped to 7.7 now. It seems the longer the game is out, the more its user score drops - I believe it was 8.4 for a couple days at launch.

I wonder if this is because of the patches not being good enough, or people just finding the game loses appeal the longer they get into it. Maybe it's just people who actually waited to play more before giving an informed opinion.

I'm assuming releasing a bugged game which then gets more bugs doesn't help :D
 
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Regarding your RTwP vs TB discussion: one of the greatest things about this game (and the new versions of Kingmaker) is that they are both and you can choose! At least as long as both modes work as they are intended.

More work for the devs and more difficult for level designers but perhaps that is the future of these kinds of games? BG3 would certainly benefit from the free choice too. As you say here, the chess marathons can go on nerves over time but it's nice to have some TB action in between to keep your brain trained.

I agree, it would be nice to have the option in most of these games. The ruleset allows for both time and turns anyway, so I don't see why not.
 
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And we are back on topic of RTwP vs TB again sigh.

I'm a sad panda as I always see people wanting TB more than RTwP.

I will just have to treasure these rare RTwP games while they last since so many elitists seem to think RTwP is a trash.

Why can't we have both in the market?

But all businesses need to make profits so I guess RTwP will probably phase out - would love it if Owlcats continue to produce both but I doubt it.

/sad panda out.

Back on the topic - looking forward to more WotR session this weekend :D

I'm still with you though! I still prefer RTwP by a huge margin. I only used TB once on Core in WotR:

Hand of the Inheritor. I don't know how this plays out in most difficulties, but on Core and beyond he simply goes straight for the MC every time during his 2nd phase and kills him/her. Also, he's immune to pretty much everything, and has way too many buffs (including True Sight) to remove them all before the MC is dead. After 20+ minutes of watching him run over to my MC and kill him in a few seconds, I tried TB and destroyed him. It's much, much easier in TB.

Edit: Oh yeah, he also has some sort of fear/shaken effect that goes through immunities, so my MC was always 100% stun locked on RTwP. In TB, I could just start far enough away to get a full round off with everyone, making the fight trivial in comparison.
 
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Where's ChienAboyeur? He'd say we're engaged in UgoIgo. :)
Ah OK, I had to search for that. What a heavy past this subject has. :D

Well, all it needs is a spark to make any thread on any forum explode, even if the game pretends to have both modes. And we know who brought the spark, we have a name. ;)
 
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And we are back on topic of RTwP vs TB again sigh.

I'm a sad panda as I always see people wanting TB more than RTwP.

I will just have to treasure these rare RTwP games while they last since so many elitists seem to think RTwP is a trash.

Why can't we have both in the market?

But all businesses need to make profits so I guess RTwP will probably phase out - would love it if Owlcats continue to produce both but I doubt it.

/sad panda out.

Back on the topic - looking forward to more WotR session this weekend :D
No, even if we've tried to ignore it, the new trend is card-based combat. That will just make those conversations more complicated *sighs* ;)

Do you think Owlcat will choose one mode? Now that they have (almost) the base to support both in any future game, and a lot of people are over the moon because they can choose. It would be sad if they dropped any of the two modes! (and I don't want a card mode, ugh, please quickly delete my post).

I don't have a clear preference. TB makes it more clear and relax, and RTwP remains the most practical I suppose, I don't mind much either way.
 
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I'm personally fine with both being in the game if both work well and one doesn't compromise the other, but we all know that is rarely the case (or ever?).

In an ideal world, definitely, more choice = more happy players = more sales = more games of the same kind for everyone to enjoy and rejoice.

As for Owlcat, seeing how much influence RPGCodex seem to have in them, as to force them into making a section of the game stricty turn based, I don't see them dropping it for next game. If they have the resources for it, the best approach would be to make their own graphics engine that supports full fledged TB combat, not the adaptation from a fan-made mod that it is in WotR, but I feel their projects so far are way too ambitious to afford something like that on top of everything they want to do.
 
The MC user score of WotR actually dropped to 7.7 now. It seems the longer the game is out, the more its user score drops - I believe it was 8.4 for a couple days at launch.

I wonder if this is because of the patches not being good enough, or people just finding the game loses appeal the longer they get into it. Maybe it's just people who actually waited to play more before giving an informed opinion.

Vast majority of low score reviews mention bugs. Perhaps the longer you play the higher probability to encounter more significant bug? And while I wouldnt disregard bugs as not being valid con argument I definitely wouldnt give WotR 0 or 1 score because of that. Would personally account it to usual immature rage bursts of the internet generation.
 
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Do you think Owlcat will choose one mode? Now that they have (almost) the base to support both in any future game, and a lot of people are over the moon because they can choose. It would be sad if they dropped any of the two modes! (and I don't want a card mode, ugh, please quickly delete my post).

Well, I hope not but who knows? I'd assume implementing both mode will be costly - I mean, it seems like you get different bugs depending on whether you use RTwP or TB :/
 
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Vast majority of low score reviews mention bugs. Perhaps the longer you play the higher probability to encounter more significant bug? And while I wouldnt disregard bugs as not being valid con argument I definitely wouldnt give WotR 0 or 1 score because of that. Would personally account it to usual immature rage bursts of the internet generation.

I agree that some negative scores may be generated by the game being unplayable due to bugs (unplayable as in, a fair number of people can't even progress through the main questline. In some cases, they were fine before a patch and the new patch broke something that destroyed their save files irreversibly), I don't know if I would call that an immature rage burst, or a fair protest for something they invested £40 on, and they feel they deserve to get their worth for their hard-earned money.

The other way to read it is that the fanboys rushed on day 1 to give it 10/10 without having even played the release version of the game, and the more that the neutral, unbiased public actually get to play it, the more obvious it is that the game is quite flawed. Perhaps this is not detrimental to people who are willing to overlook the design flaws to enjoy the bits that are enjoyable, but we should be glad for customers having a critique point of view in terms of the quality standards they demand from any service. Being complacent and giving pats in the back to poorly made games only because the studio behind them are liked only decreases even further the global standards of quality that we can expect from future products.
 
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I agree that some negative scores may be .....

Being angry and disappointed is possible, but shooting around "educational" 0 scores to games like WotR is just as immature as giving game 10 without playing it.

Owlcat is one of few who are reviving niche of long and complex party based cRPGs. Worth of some back patting from my side. Its quite clear they are determided to provide active support by patching the game and people have many options including refunding, postponing gameplay, etc. Personally dont see point of endless grumbling, but thats just me.
 
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Well, some people seem to enjoy grumbling about the game more than actually playing games ;)

It's a long weekend where I live so its time for a long WotR session for me from tomorrow morning! :D
 
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Yesterday was the first day since September 2nd that I didn't play WotR. Just too busy (and sick). I love the game.

It's funny, bugs and people's reaction to them. I can become overwhelmed by bugs if they constantly jar me out of the game, or take away options that I should have because they make them not work. And if there's a major bug, like crashing every 5 minutes, certainly that will negatively impact my experience. But that's exceedingly rare. More often it's like this game has been for me. Aivu stops fighting with me in TB mode. I save, reload, and it's fixed. My tooltip is a little circle thing no matter what I'm clicking on. I save, reload, and it's fixed.

It's like anything. A continuity error in a movie or TV show, for example. Is it "wrong" if someone goes from wearing their coat to not to wearing it again in the space of 10 seconds? Sure. I might not even notice. If I do, it's not going to ruin the movie for me. If there's a couple of typos in an 800 page book I'll notice them, but it won't ruin the book for me. If there's are two typos on every page that would be maddeningly distracting, but it takes that kind of pervasiveness for me to care.

I had one endless loading thing in Drezen that I had to reboot my computer to get out of. Other than that, no crashes or anything of that nature. All of my bugs have been pesky and largely insignificant (Woljif has a blue ability loss hexagon on his display forevermore despite having full stats).

This isn't me letting them off the hook or whatever. It's not me being forgiving of something they should have caught/fixed. It's me seeing the forest and not getting hung up on the trees. It's me not wanting to ruin my own experience of a very good game by being needlessly aggrieved.

Now I'll probably play today and I won't be able to click on NPCs anymore or something and it'll serve me right, haha. But this has been my experience with 99.9% of games that get ripped to shreds over bugs, so I'll bet it'll continue to be my experience with this one.
 
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The reason I don't see WotR with rose-tinted glasses is that its success comes mostly from the lack of competition. Everyone who is willing to overlook its many glaring flaws will say something along the lines "well, we don't get a lot of games like this, so I'm happy to support them".

While that is alright, it just keeps their games from ever being better, because why would they bother? Their fans are already happy with the mediocrity they grew to accept and love.

However, I remain optimistic. WotR was definitely a step above KM after their wake up call back then. And hopefully, another wake up call will follow with the launch of WotR, after seeing how they had a potential masterpiece in their hands, and they rounded it down to a 7.7 user score, and a fraction of the sales or popularity that they could have achieved - mostly because of trying to bite more than they could chew, and not being quite cut out for the job. They could have been in the discussion for the best CRPG of all times, and all they achieved is potentially being the RPG of the year in some small Western niche sites, likely with the lowest ever user score to achieve such a thing.

But with the feedback from those who have an informed, unbiased opinion, hopefully, they learned from their mistakes and their next game (assuming they gathered enough funds from this one to embark into such an enterprise - here's hoping) should be yet another step up, slowly bringing it to more acceptable standards of quality that consumers ought to demand from a product.

Unfortunately, this will not be thanks to the people who lack a sense of criticism for the game or the studio and were there just to pat their back, which is ironic, because they will be the ones puffing their chest loudest without any merit in it, as it was others doing the fight for them.
 
Funny. Im quite sure it were those biggest and most biased fans, who willingly spent money and time playing unfinished game months before release and kept reporting to developers, which helped shape-up the game.

Also, most people, when they like something, do not automatically become chanting imbeciles. But I suppose we all judge others by our own standards, no?
 
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Funny. Im quite sure it were those biggest and most biased fans, who willingly spent money and time playing unfinished game months before release and kept reporting to developers, which helped shape-up the game.

"Helped" is such a big word. Like RPGCodex "helped" to make the worst section in the game, I suppose? Kickstarter has done some things right, but definitely making people think that because they coughed up 30 bucks ahead of everyone else they're a higher class citizen must be one of the most rotten parts of it.

And the worst part is that the companies have to pretend that they actually are, since afterall, they are taking their money to feed their families. Pittance systems never resulted in any healthy relationship.

Also, most people, when they like something, do not automatically become chanting imbeciles.

Well, we're not talking about "something", we're talking about Pathfinder games, I don't like generalising. I do feel a little sad when some posters in RPGWatch feel the need to apologise beforehand when about to say something even minimally negative about the game. You can feel the tension in their speech, as if walking on eggshells, making sure to repeat every couple lines things like "but other than that, the game is great" or "I want to make sure I mean no criticism". The fear to even give their honest opinion.

Fortunately, there are people who do have a spine to complain about things like dishonestly releasing a broken, unfinished product after months upon months of paid alpha and paid beta, in which it was made clear to them that the game wasn't ready to be released, but they wanted to get more people's money anyway, since alpha and beta testers weren't coughing up more cash anymore.

Thanks to those people, next game may be a little better.

Or maybe not. Maybe they listen to all the back-patters out there and it will be another 7/10 game. :shrug!:
 
This isn't me letting them off the hook or whatever. It's not me being forgiving of something they should have caught/fixed. It's me seeing the forest and not getting hung up on the trees. It's me not wanting to ruin my own experience of a very good game by being needlessly aggrieved.
Well said. I think it's either that or waiting for the game to be cleaner before playing. We may have underestimated the number of issues at the beginning, but we perfectly knew that it wouldn't be bug-free right after the release.

I'm not entirely happy they released it early September instead of October-November, but they surely had their constraints, each day must cost them dearly. They took a risk and made a great game instead of just making it very good; I was mostly concerned it would get them serious flames from their fans and from the critics, but what many people say is similar: "yes, there are issues that shouldn't have been there, but I'm enjoying this too much to let that get to me".
 
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Ah OK, I had to search for that. What a heavy past this subject has. :D

Well, all it needs is a spark to make any thread on any forum explode, even if the game pretends to have both modes. And we know who brought the spark, we have a name. ;)

Yeah, I guess that was before your time. Coincidently, he stopped posting the same month you joined.

Wait a minute.. Chien is that you?! ;)
 
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Also, most people, when they like something, do not automatically become chanting imbeciles.
Get real, we are currently living in the facebook world where every idiot's opinion is added to the heap.
Visit any site with numbers users can put, on each and every single one there are numerous 10s and 0s (or 1s if 0 doesn't exist).
Doesn't have to be a gaming site, you saw numerous 10/10 for garbage movies on imdb where not a single one is at least close to masterpieces like Casablanca.

Honestly, I don't care about totals/averages on such sites.
Metacritic is one of those, as you wrote, "chanting imbeciles" sites.

If you asked for my opinion on wotr, I'd without remorse slap 8/10 on it.

Pros in short are it's so much fun with an epic story, full of humor and crazyness where every player perhaps has too much of options and freedom yet it's exactly what rpgs IMO should have.

Cons would of course be bugs, but also low quality engine (not owlcat's fault, but was their choice), horrible dialogues for evil characters, grindy final chapters and music not as brilliant as in the first game (it's acceptable, but lacks of spectacle).
Add to it too many of myth paths. The game would have been a better place if instead of 10, only 4 or 5 would have been in (so a trickster for example would play a prank on three witches instead of fighting them as every other myth "buster").
And DLC. I mean what bloody DLC, do not do that!

The thing is I've expected a game so huge and crazy from BlackIsle/Obsidian.
Sadly, from them we got a smaller scope rpgs Eternities and Tyranny, each fun but just not as epic as Pathfinder1 and now Pathfinder2.

But all this what I wrote, including that number, in the end is meaningless.
A potential buyer needs to know only that the game is so fun, once they start playing it, they won't be able to stop. Not for days.
It's addicting because it's fun, not because of some predatory phonegame gambling scam.
 
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Fortunately, there are people who do have a spine to complain about things like dishonestly releasing a broken, unfinished product...

You undermine the good points you make when you call WotR "broken." Broken means non-functional. There has not been a single solitary way in which WotR has been non-functional in my 120 hours of playing it.

Every quest has worked. Every script trigger has fired. Every spell and ability and class I have used or seen has worked. I have had zero crashes. I have had zero pathfinding errors (like being stuck on scenery). An ability doesn't have text? It should have text. Nobody would dispute that. It's annoying. But does it break anything? It does not.
 
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