Various role-playing RPG game stuff not deserving its own thread

[Jordy]

Ending slides would make sense in a game with a definite ending where the main character won't be able to see the aftermath of their actions. Like in Mass Effect 3, for example.

RDR games take care of this by having you play as a separate character in the post-game content.

Playing as Jack just wasn't the same.

[Rand]

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

Final content update for Pathfinder:WOTR- Golden Dragon Mythic.
In case if anyone’s curious.



Crusaders!

A few months ago, during the release of A Dance of Masks DLC, we showed you that the Devil is always in the details. You all seemed to really enjoy it, so it’s about time we take the next step and invite you to witness the flight of the dragons!

Yes, it is what you think it is! The long-anticipated finale of the years-long effort to flesh out the Mythic paths — the update to the Gold Dragon path — is here.

IMG_3821.gif

New Visuals

We’ll start with the shiny new visuals. While the original Gold Dragon always had a distinctive visual identity, we always felt that we could kick this up a notch.

With this update, the Dragon has received a few new spell effects and animations — this is how some of them look:

IMG_3822.gif

IMG_3823.gif

We also felt it was a good time to revisit the Corrupted Gold Dragon. Previously the followers of Dahak had no unique look, simply using the same visuals as the standard version. With this update, evil dragons boast an updated corrupted version of the portrait, updated scale color and texture, and their own alternative visuals for some of the spells.

IMG_3824.gif

IMG_3825.png

While technically not a part of this update, we felt that it would also be appropriate to remind you that in the last major patch, alongside the other Mythics, the Gold Dragon received a unique weather effect in Drezen and a gorgeous new animation for the Sword of Valor. Whether you’ve already seen it or missed this beauty, we invite you to enjoy chilling in Drezen under the rays of shining light and shadows of dragons flying overhead

IMG_3826.gif

Mechanical Updates

Let’s move on to the mechanics, and we’ve got lots to show here:

New Mythic Spellbook

The Gold Dragon has received a brand-new mythic spellbook with a total of 10 new spells, with followers of Dahak having their own, corrupted version of some.

Take a peek at a few of them:

Dragon Might

As a swift action, you increase your damage dealt by 50% for 1 round.

Summon Dragon

You summon 1d3+1 medium silver dragons (or 1d3+1 medium black dragons if you have vowed to serve Dahak). Summoned dragons attack your opponents to the best of their ability.

Thousand Bites

While in the form of a Gold Dragon, as a swift action, you gain 3 additional attacks for 1 minute. These additional attacks stack with the bonus attacks from haste and other similar effects.

Dragon Wrath

You blast your enemies with rays of focused dragon energy. You may fire one ray for every six caster levels you have (up to a maximum of 3 rays at 18th level) at every enemy within a 25-foot radius. Each ray requires a ranged touch attack to hit and deals 1d6 points of damage per caster level. Half of the damage is fire damage, but the other half results directly from holy or unholy power (if you have vowed to serve Dahak) and is therefore not subject to being reduced by fire resistance.

IMG_3827.gif

New Mythic Features

We have also added 10 brand new Mythic features related to various improvements to your dragon breath. Here are some of them:

Annihilating Breath

Your breath annihilates the life force of living foes. Living enemies struck by your breath take additional negative energy damage equal to your breath damage (a Fortitude save against the DC of your breath halves this damage).

Mind-Clearing Breath

Your breath dispels all mind-affecting effects applied by enemies from allies in the area. Additionally, you dispel all mind-affecting effects from enemies struck by your breath (including effects applied by your allies while affected by domination or charm effects).

Empowered Breath

Your breath damage increases by a number of damage dice equal to your mythic rank.

Rejuvenating Breath

Your breath heals allies in the area. The amount of damage healed is equal to your breath damage.

New Domain and Blessing

To support early-game affiliation with the Gold Dragon Mythic for dragon aficionados, we’ve also decided to add the dragon-themed Scalykind Domain and Blessing:

IMG_3828.png

IMG_3829.png

Improvement and Rebalance

After introducing new spells and features, we naturally felt it was necessary to also review and update the existing ones, such as:
Moving some of them to be accessed earlier
Having them Empowered and Maximized at Mythic level 10
Allowing you to alternate between damage types
Straight up increasing some of the damage and bonus numbers
Reducing or even removing the cooldown on higher levels (in particular, the cooldown of Gold Dragon Breath)

Our goal with all these changes was to bring the Gold Dragon mechanically on par with other Mythics and make it considerably more fun and distinctive to play. Enjoy your new toys!

IMG_3830.gif

Narrative Updates

Last but not least, let’s get to the storytelling.

Instead of focusing all our resources on a single large quest like we did with the Devil in the previous update, this time we’ve taken a lighter but more sweeping touch, placing an emphasis on reactivity throughout the story.

We started from a concern voiced by many of our players — that unlike other late-game Mythics (Legend, Swarm, Devil), the transition to the Gold Dragon felt somewhat rushed and ‘‘out of the blue” for the Commanders who lacked an existing connection to a draconic heritage.

To address this, we prepared two new full-scale (pun intended!) dragon-themed religions: Apsu and Dahak, available at character creation.

Each of these new religions will serve as a smooth buildup toward the Gold Dragon path for players who want their story to naturally tie into this Mythic but don’t want to be locked into picking one of the dragon-themed archetypes. Both of these religions have a lot of reactivity across the game, some of it exclusively to the Gold Dragon.

Additionally, we’ve added two new story beats available only for the Gold Dragon, where their wisdom of millennia has a chance to make two certain well-known characters take an unexpected turn to the path of good and redemption. This will, of course, be reflected in the epilogue slides.

Can you guess who these characters are? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

Oh, and while we’re at it, we’ve changed the corrupted Gold Dragon’s alignment to Chaotic Evil. Evil is evil!



What’s next?

While this update marks a very important milestone for us and for the game itself, we are not entirely done just yet. The game will continue to receive additional bug fixing updates, we will continue to accept your bug reports, and there might still be some QoL improvements in the future. However, we don’t have any more plans for new mechanics or story content after this update, so if you waited for the game to be complete — this is the time!

Stay tuned, and may your wings carry you forward!

Always yours,
Owlcats

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

Final content update for Pathfinder:WOTR- Golden Dragon Mythic.
In case if anyone’s curious.



Crusaders!

A few months ago, during the release of A Dance of Masks DLC, we showed you that the Devil is always in the details. You all seemed to really enjoy it, so it’s about time we take the next step and invite you to witness the flight of the dragons!

Yes, it is what you think it is! The long-anticipated finale of the years-long effort to flesh out the Mythic paths — the update to the Gold Dragon path — is here.

IMG_3821.gif




New Visuals

We’ll start with the shiny new visuals. While the original Gold Dragon always had a distinctive visual identity, we always felt that we could kick this up a notch.

With this update, the Dragon has received a few new spell effects and animations — this is how some of them look:

IMG_3822.gif

IMG_3823.gif


We also felt it was a good time to revisit the Corrupted Gold Dragon. Previously the followers of Dahak had no unique look, simply using the same visuals as the standard version. With this update, evil dragons boast an updated corrupted version of the portrait, updated scale color and texture, and their own alternative visuals for some of the spells.

IMG_3824.gif

IMG_3825.png


While technically not a part of this update, we felt that it would also be appropriate to remind you that in the last major patch, alongside the other Mythics, the Gold Dragon received a unique weather effect in Drezen and a gorgeous new animation for the Sword of Valor. Whether you’ve already seen it or missed this beauty, we invite you to enjoy chilling in Drezen under the rays of shining light and shadows of dragons flying overhead

IMG_3826.gif


Mechanical Updates

Let’s move on to the mechanics, and we’ve got lots to show here:

New Mythic Spellbook

The Gold Dragon has received a brand-new mythic spellbook with a total of 10 new spells, with followers of Dahak having their own, corrupted version of some.

Take a peek at a few of them:

Dragon Might

As a swift action, you increase your damage dealt by 50% for 1 round.

Summon Dragon

You summon 1d3+1 medium silver dragons (or 1d3+1 medium black dragons if you have vowed to serve Dahak). Summoned dragons attack your opponents to the best of their ability.

Thousand Bites

While in the form of a Gold Dragon, as a swift action, you gain 3 additional attacks for 1 minute. These additional attacks stack with the bonus attacks from haste and other similar effects.

Dragon Wrath

You blast your enemies with rays of focused dragon energy. You may fire one ray for every six caster levels you have (up to a maximum of 3 rays at 18th level) at every enemy within a 25-foot radius. Each ray requires a ranged touch attack to hit and deals 1d6 points of damage per caster level. Half of the damage is fire damage, but the other half results directly from holy or unholy power (if you have vowed to serve Dahak) and is therefore not subject to being reduced by fire resistance.

IMG_3827.gif



New Mythic Features

We have also added 10 brand new Mythic features related to various improvements to your dragon breath. Here are some of them:

Annihilating Breath

Your breath annihilates the life force of living foes. Living enemies struck by your breath take additional negative energy damage equal to your breath damage (a Fortitude save against the DC of your breath halves this damage).

Mind-Clearing Breath

Your breath dispels all mind-affecting effects applied by enemies from allies in the area. Additionally, you dispel all mind-affecting effects from enemies struck by your breath (including effects applied by your allies while affected by domination or charm effects).

Empowered Breath

Your breath damage increases by a number of damage dice equal to your mythic rank.

Rejuvenating Breath

Your breath heals allies in the area. The amount of damage healed is equal to your breath damage.

New Domain and Blessing

To support early-game affiliation with the Gold Dragon Mythic for dragon aficionados, we’ve also decided to add the dragon-themed Scalykind Domain and Blessing:

IMG_3828.png

IMG_3829.png


Improvement and Rebalance

After introducing new spells and features, we naturally felt it was necessary to also review and update the existing ones, such as:
Moving some of them to be accessed earlier
Having them Empowered and Maximized at Mythic level 10
Allowing you to alternate between damage types
Straight up increasing some of the damage and bonus numbers
Reducing or even removing the cooldown on higher levels (in particular, the cooldown of Gold Dragon Breath)

Our goal with all these changes was to bring the Gold Dragon mechanically on par with other Mythics and make it considerably more fun and distinctive to play. Enjoy your new toys!

IMG_3830.gif




Narrative Updates

Last but not least, let’s get to the storytelling.

Instead of focusing all our resources on a single large quest like we did with the Devil in the previous update, this time we’ve taken a lighter but more sweeping touch, placing an emphasis on reactivity throughout the story.

We started from a concern voiced by many of our players — that unlike other late-game Mythics (Legend, Swarm, Devil), the transition to the Gold Dragon felt somewhat rushed and ‘‘out of the blue” for the Commanders who lacked an existing connection to a draconic heritage.

To address this, we prepared two new full-scale (pun intended!) dragon-themed religions: Apsu and Dahak, available at character creation.

Each of these new religions will serve as a smooth buildup toward the Gold Dragon path for players who want their story to naturally tie into this Mythic but don’t want to be locked into picking one of the dragon-themed archetypes. Both of these religions have a lot of reactivity across the game, some of it exclusively to the Gold Dragon.

Additionally, we’ve added two new story beats available only for the Gold Dragon, where their wisdom of millennia has a chance to make two certain well-known characters take an unexpected turn to the path of good and redemption. This will, of course, be reflected in the epilogue slides.

Can you guess who these characters are? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

Oh, and while we’re at it, we’ve changed the corrupted Gold Dragon’s alignment to Chaotic Evil. Evil is evil!



What’s next?

While this update marks a very important milestone for us and for the game itself, we are not entirely done just yet. The game will continue to receive additional bug fixing updates, we will continue to accept your bug reports, and there might still be some QoL improvements in the future. However, we don’t have any more plans for new mechanics or story content after this update, so if you waited for the game to be complete — this is the time!

Stay tuned, and may your wings carry you forward!

Always yours,
Owlcats

Couldn’t add the last picture( Corrupt Golden Dragon- Chaotic Evil) because I already had to many attachments.

IMG_3831.png

[PixiGreen]

[1998]

After abandoning it for most of the year, they are picking up development again in January. I didn't read the full update, but it costs them 40k USD per Month to run the team. I am not sure where this money goes, but they are doing something wrong.

A game like that should never cost that much. They have an estimate 11k - 16k EA sales and by their own accord, reaching 20k USD in sales per month. If that is not enough to finish the game, they should have never started it in the first place.

[rusty_shackleford]

but it costs them 40k USD per Month to run the team.

wtf

[Zothique]

but it costs them 40k USD per Month to run the team.

wtf

I agree. This has to be ********.

[maidenhaver]

They've got to be adding groceries, gas, and cigarettes to the cost.

[Yankee Zulu]

Ive never seen an RPG with 'sex' in character creator being a slider. Banquet for Fools is the first one and probably the only one. The slider changes character appearance and attributes slightly but it is still impossible to tell whether it is a male or female. Probably because all races are some variations of elves or some ****.

[logincrash]

Ive never seen an RPG with 'sex' in character creator being a slider. Banquet for Fools is the first one and probably the only one. The slider changes character appearance and attributes slightly but it is still impossible to tell whether it is a male or female. Probably because all races are some variations of elves or some ****.

The only game I've seen do that is Saints Row 2.
Even the turboprogressive Veilguard actually had two different body models for male and female.

[Oyster Sauce]

Ive never seen an RPG with 'sex' in character creator being a slider. Banquet for Fools is the first one and probably the only one. The slider changes character appearance and attributes slightly but it is still impossible to tell whether it is a male or female. Probably because all races are some variations of elves or some ****.

Dark Souls has a male-female slider.

[Yankee Zulu]

Ive never seen an RPG with 'sex' in character creator being a slider. Banquet for Fools is the first one and probably the only one. The slider changes character appearance and attributes slightly but it is still impossible to tell whether it is a male or female. Probably because all races are some variations of elves or some ****.

Dark Souls has a male-female slider.

Which one did you choose?

Ive never seen an RPG with 'sex' in character creator being a slider. Banquet for Fools is the first one and probably the only one. The slider changes character appearance and attributes slightly but it is still impossible to tell whether it is a male or female. Probably because all races are some variations of elves or some ****.

The only game I've seen do that is Saints Row 2.
Even the turboprogressive Veilguard actually had two different body models for male and female.

Are you talking about the real slider or the slider with 2 positions?

[rusty_shackleford]

sex being a slider makes sense from a dev perspective if they're using a single base mesh and a morph target to change its sex, it's no different than a muscle slider

[A Chinese opium den]

sex being a slider makes sense from a dev perspective if they're using a single base mesh and a morph target to change its sex, it's no different than a muscle slider

Set mine to tons, please.

[Stack of Turtles]

sex being a slider makes sense from a dev perspective if they're using a single base mesh and a morph target to change its sex, it's no different than a muscle slider

Set mine to tons, please.

he wasn't talking about the body weight slider

[logincrash]

Are you talking about the real slider or the slider with 2 positions?

It's a real slider. It slowly morphs the player character's body from 100% masculine to 100% feminine. You can stop at any point in-between.

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

Odd how they never mention the Wokeless Wrath Mod

[1998]

What's going on with the Codex Steam curator? They are just recommending any game with an RPG tag now?

[Tangerine]

Woljif Romance Mod

Isn't Woljif underage?

[UltraFan123]

Woljif Romance Mod

Isn't Woljif underage?

Yeah he's a teenager.

But they will just start saying **** like "oh but in the medieval period it was normal to get married at the age of 15!" because now they care about historical authenticity. lol

[rusty_shackleford]

Woljif Romance Mod

Isn't Woljif underage?

On one hand, I don't really think the developer should be endorsing that. On the other hand, ****'s pixels. On the gripping hand, I hate owlcat and hope putin locks them up.

[rusty_shackleford]

I wonder what Daggerfall would have been like if they didn't have to one-up Arena in terms of scale, scope, etc., Would there have even been an open world rather than fast travel on the map exclusively?

[Oyster Sauce]

Failed BG3 review bomb attempt after Swen announced the TGA GOTY, presumably because Wukong lost.

[logincrash]

Failed BG3 review bomb attempt after Swen announced the TGA GOTY, presumably because Wukong lost.

There should be an Internet Apartheid.

[Oyster Sauce]

Failed BG3 review bomb attempt after Swen announced the TGA GOTY, presumably because Wukong lost.

There should be an Internet Apartheid.

Just a matter of time

[rusty_shackleford]

Swordhaven having near instant loading times just like the two ATOM games was refreshing, developers need to work on this **** already. ATOM's last two games probably look better than yours and have NPCs with full schedules, what the **** is your excuse?
Owlscat is especially bad at this, I spent a third of my time in rogue trader just staring at loading screens.

[Rand]

what the **** is your excuse?

Unity or Unreal Engine.

Lots of games ALSO have trouble shutting down immediately.
At least Bethesda games will as well. Hit the tilde and type in qqq and instant shutdown.

[rusty_shackleford]

what the **** is your excuse?

Unity or Unreal Engine.

Lots of games ALSO have trouble shutting down immediately.
At least Bethesda games will as well. Hit the tilde and type in qqq and instant shutdown.

ATOM team's games are all Unity.
Unity's builtin level loading is really slow tho, ATOM just uses it for loading static geometry and a custom loader for everything else.
Deadfire did the same which is why it loads so much faster than poe1.

[rusty_shackleford]

At least Bethesda games will as well. Hit the tilde and type in qqq and instant shutdown.

Bethesda games have issues loading saves properly, btw. If you're loading a save you should go to the title screen, otherwise it attempts to reuse the current gameworld which can cause issues. Don't know if this was fixed in FO4/Skyrim SE, but it definitely existed for a while.