Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is a better game than Pillars of Eternity

pippin

Guest
The Underdark can be challenging if you're stupid. The last fights where I felt truly challenged were those when you had an artifact that spawned creatures, but other than that the last section of the game is piss easy. I beat the final dragon in a few seconds and both of Irenicus' fights are quite easy as well. To be honest, the final part was really underwhelming imo.
Bioware cannot into properly closing their games. I can't think of any Bio game where the final part was something to remember.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,656
The downside of DAI is that I do not want to venture too far off the critical path because the vast majority of these garbage sidequests are "do x of y"
 

pippin

Guest
I kind of agree with his vision. It's unwise to introduce a challenge that wasn't there when you've been doing different things for more than half of the game (Bloodlines, although they had their reasons). Besides, you never really expect side quests to be challenging. At least imo, sidequests should provide opportunities to test skills and give you backstory and lore. I consider companion quests to be sidequests, btw. Anything related to the main quest should always have some degree of challenge, but always related in one way or another with all the mini challenges you had in those side quests. In the case of Baldur's Gate 2, everything you do after you discover the underwater kingdom has no degree of challenge whatsoever. It's not bad content, mind you (the battle of words with the beholder guarding that chest somewhere is still quite fun) but when you get bored you don't think "hey this might pick up later", you think of quitting the game. I haven't played DA:I but I'm going to assume it's Amalur+, and there, main quest and side quests were two different games.
 

pippin

Guest
What I meant is that you shouldn't ragequit due to a sidequest, while the main quest is nothing to write home about. Sidequests can be very hard, but it's a design flaw if a side quest is harder/more interesting than anything you see during the main quest imo. That's why open world games are doomed to fail.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,656
What I meant is that you shouldn't ragequit due to a sidequest, while the main quest is nothing to write home about. Sidequests can be very hard, but it's a design flaw if a side quest is harder/more interesting than anything you see during the main quest imo.

This is how RPGs have been made for well over a decade and it's intentional. :M

In BG2 all the sidequests are in chapter 2. Once you leave that chapter, it's almost nothing but critical path and you have the advantage of having all that great loot you picked up clearing chapter 2 of all its content (though none of the content was balanced with the expectation that you'd have all of it because it's not optional if it's mandatory).
 

gestalt11

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 4, 2015
Messages
629
The whole dragon age series, including origins, is mediocre. At least origins was a mediocre party based rpg rather than some god awful abomination with singing like DAI.

I would say that POE and DAO are roughly tied (although I think POE's setting and backstory is superior to DAO, w/e matter of opinion and flavor etc). Both cases have some rather serious class, mechanics and balance issues. Seems like some people are more butthurt about POE and have rose colored nostalgia glasses for Origins, but they both actually suffer similar problems.

All in all they are enjoyable offerings in a genre that is low on supply but they are solidly mediocre in some rather important ways.
 

gestalt11

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 4, 2015
Messages
629
Did they nerfed the engagement system on 2.0? Because on 1.0, most melee attackers were true gentlemen on seeking only your tanks to attack with exception of shadows.

They did nerf engagement to an extent, but mostly they changed the AI. It will now disengage actively to go after your squishies, and not just shadows. You can't park your tank in front and expect it to keep the back line safe, and if you have completely or nearly unarmored strikers, you will have to micro them a lot -- a LOT -- to keep them from getting stomped on.

In fact there are complaints that the fighter's engagement-based abilities are now borderline useless because of this. I never used them much so I couldn't say; I always built my fighters for damage.


I made a successful party entirely of rangers and one backstabber priest. I save scummed the sky dragon a number of times (I won each time) just to see how it plays out and I completely flawlessed it on one of them. I used pets to tanks and had the rangers all go max interrupt it worked quite well actually. POE is plenty diverse in how you can play it even if its system mechancis are wonky and what they stat do simply does not line up to what they are. There are a number of decisions that are just plain dumb, like how charm works where everything immediately bum rush charms your caster but you can't pre-buff to actually counter and casting the counter in combat is to slow to actually counter it. The game is flawed its not really arguable, its a provable fact. DAI is stupidly flawed as well, Knight enchanter can solo anything .... forever .... DAO was also very flawed.
 

Trashos

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2015
Messages
3,413
I don't know what you guys are talking about, the Underdark and its surroundings were pretty tough for me for several playthroughs. I still have to focus hard whenever I go there. I play BG2 without ToB though, so I don't know if that makes a difference on the available equipment. (I play on Hard difficulty, or whatever the difficulty before the hardest one is called).
 

FreeKaner

Prophet of the Dumpsterfire
Joined
Mar 28, 2015
Messages
6,908
Location
Devlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿErdogānīye
The reason people don't like the itemization in PoE is because it doesn't confer to MMO stat threadmill standards, you can find a fine arquebus early on and use it all game and unique items have unique properties, not necessarily outclassing their equivalents, also people carry weaponary by local standards and not necessarily in same power, more guns in bay area for example. I prefer this sort of itemization instead of the usual treadmill.

I also don't understand people unironically defending round-based-RTwP, it is a system stuck between pen & paper rules and real time that is worst of both worlds and inferior to both turn-based and RTwP. It is just clunky and unintuitive that movement transcends rounds, with loads of fake animations.
 

Ziem

Arbiter
Joined
May 17, 2014
Messages
324
The reason people don't like the itemization in PoE is because it doesn't confer to MMO stat threadmill standards, you can find a fine arquebus early on and use it all game and unique items have unique properties, not necessarily outclassing their equivalents, also people carry weaponary by local standards and not necessarily in same power, more guns in bay area for example. I prefer this sort of itemization instead of the usual treadmill.
:hmmm:
people hate it exactly because it's mmo style bullshit where everything is bland and unexciting, and the difference between early game weapon and a lategame weapon is just some accuracy and damage
the "unique" weapons are just as disappointing as everything else in the game
i mean, the unique twohander you can reforge after finishing the megadungeon is just a superb estoc with marking and slightly increased speed, hows that even remotely interesting?
I also don't understand people unironically defending round-based-RTwP, it is a system stuck between pen & paper rules and real time that is worst of both worlds and inferior to both turn-based and RTwP. It is just clunky and unintuitive that movement transcends rounds, with loads of fake animations.
"clunky and unintuitive", and somehow pilloe somehow manages to do even worse
even devs didn't have a clue how to calculate the damage output of a character in this shit ruleset (mainly because of the fact that the number of frames in an attack animation has an impact on attack speed LOL totally not clunky at all!)
luckily in the end none of this shit really matters since you can easily finish the game with anything by repeating the same sequence of plays in every encounter
 

Prime Junta

Guest
FreeKaner Another reason people don't like it is that there isn't anything genuinely epic and memorable in there (until they added the soulbounds anyway, which have their own problems). I think a lot of us -- myself included, for that matter -- were expecting BG2-level epic items there. In particular, the two extra-speshul ones in the base game -- Cladhaliath and the Blade of the Endless Paths -- don't particularly stand out, compared to what else is in there and what you can craft yourself.

As I said earlier, I had completely missed the point of Pillars itemisation back when I wrote the review here, largely because of this perception. I remember the disappointment I felt when I first crafted Cladhaliath and then the BotEP -- "this is it?"" -- and it cast a pall on the whole thing. It's only when I started looking much harder at what the unique properties on the items actually are, and thinking about how I could use them to maximum effect, that I started to like it, and it's been growing on me ever since.

My road-to-Damascus moment was, I think, when I came up with the Darcozzi Commander concept, and made it work: it's a second-row support+striker paladin built around an otherwise entirely forgettable item, namely the St. Garam's Spark pistol with the Marking property. After that, I started seeing possibilities like that everywhere.
 

FreeKaner

Prophet of the Dumpsterfire
Joined
Mar 28, 2015
Messages
6,908
Location
Devlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿErdogānīye
people hate it exactly because it's mmo style bullshit where everything is bland and unexciting, and the difference between early game weapon and a lategame weapon is just some accuracy and damage

Those people kid themselves if they think this is what MMO itemization looks like. MMO itemization is itemization in a great deal of rpgs with treadmill that has ever-increasing visual fidelity with ever-increasing stats as you progress through the game. People are disappoint because items "lacked that wow factor". I'd prefer even better if fine and above weapons were harder to find than it is and the crafting didn't exist in the game.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
FreeKaner I've come to quite dig the crafting too actually. It makes it possible to hold onto items with unique properties you like longer; without it you'd be pressured to swap for more powerful but less interesting/build-relevant ones, which would also pressure you to make "average" builds that can make use of all of them instead of specialising.

I do think the crafting could use some restrictions though, e.g. having to go to a shop or crafting station to do it. Just being able to slap on a Lash mid-dungeon feels ... off.
 

Delterius

Arcane
Joined
Dec 12, 2012
Messages
15,956
Location
Entre a serra e o mar.
MMO itemization is itemization in a great deal of rpgs with treadmill that has ever-increasing visual fidelity with ever-increasing stats as you progress through the game.
And you think this somehow describe the BGs and even IWD to some extent, games where itemization is all over the place and are filled with items that have unique, different and broken ass spell effects?

That is rather stupid. MMOs are balanced for player competition. Even WoW in its early incarnation was wary of introducing new and out of the box tools into the progression with fear that the players would be too creative for their own good. Over time all the tools that the player had at their disposal would be either phased out or weakened versus the overall needs of the games combat. The modern MMO progression scheme is a smooth and carefully Balanced ride with no bumps on the way.

Sounds familiar? This is what PoEs equipment, spells, consummables and character attributes are in comparison to their IE counterparts. A bunch of small effects that should be stacked as opposed to simply figuring out the correct tactic and using fewer more powerful spells and characters.

Which is not to say that PoE borrows from MMOs. It borrows from LoL instead.

You see, you wanted to bash ond game over the other in a disingenious manner. The buzzword that flashed in your mind was them MMOs. This reveals a great deal of ignorance on your part. BG2 isn't a threadmill, its a Monty Haul adventure.
 

FreeKaner

Prophet of the Dumpsterfire
Joined
Mar 28, 2015
Messages
6,908
Location
Devlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿErdogānīye
MMO itemization is itemization in a great deal of rpgs with treadmill that has ever-increasing visual fidelity with ever-increasing stats as you progress through the game.
And you think this somehow describe the BGs and even IWD to some extent, games where itemization is all over the place and are filled with items that have unique, different and broken ass spell effects?

That is rather stupid. MMOs are balanced for player competition. Even WoW in its early incarnation was wary of introducing new and out of the box tools into the progression with fear that the players would be too creative for their own good. Over time all the tools that the player had at their disposal would be either phased out or weakened versus the overall needs of the games combat. The modern MMO progression scheme is a smooth and carefully Balanced ride with no bumps on the way.

Sounds familiar? This is what PoEs equipment, spells, consummables and character attributes are in comparison to their IE counterparts. A bunch of small effects that should be stacked as opposed to simply figuring out the correct tactic and using fewer more powerful spells and characters.

Which is not to say that PoE borrows from MMOs. It borrows from LoL instead.

You see, you wanted to bash ond game over the other in a disingenious manner. The buzzword that flashed in your mind was them MMOs. This reveals a great deal of ignorance on your part. BG2 isn't a threadmill, its a Monty Haul adventure.

I am not a fan of Sawyer's balance down principle but that's unrelated. Regardless, PoE doesn't have a threadmill, it has most of its items available rather early, the "itemization" of PoE's is not in the tiers of its weapons but the types, with unique items having unique abilities to fill a niche. Rather than some longsword +2 with a status effect slapped on it.

Regarding the buzzword comment, I did not use the MMO to start describing items, it was others in this thread that has and it makes no sense, I commented on this fact. What I said is PoE couldn't be farther than it is already to MMO itemization. I didn't talk about BG in particular, still DnD rules tend to result in this too.
 

FreeKaner

Prophet of the Dumpsterfire
Joined
Mar 28, 2015
Messages
6,908
Location
Devlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿErdogānīye
The reason people don't like the itemization in PoE is because it doesn't confer to MMO stat threadmill standards
Indeed you did not.

That's opposite of calling items MMO items, like several people has done earlier in this thread. It is what is expected of itemization in RPGs these days is what I meant, not necessarily because of DnD ruleset but that certainly paved the way to later games that derived greatly from it. I personally prefer item types representing the itemization not tiers or uniques of it.
 
Last edited:

Delterius

Arcane
Joined
Dec 12, 2012
Messages
15,956
Location
Entre a serra e o mar.
The reason people don't like the itemization in PoE is because it doesn't confer to MMO stat threadmill standards
Indeed you did not.

That's opposite of calling items MMO items, like several people has done earlier in this thread. It is what is expected of itemization in RPGs these days is what I meant, not necessarily because of DnD ruleset but that certainly paved the way to later games that derived greatly from it. I personally prefer item types representing the itemization not tiers or uniques of it.
Oh my mistake. Your comment was just unrelated to reality. Lol people on the codex think a game should conform to modern standards of game design. Another way PoE is simply misunderstood.
 

FreeKaner

Prophet of the Dumpsterfire
Joined
Mar 28, 2015
Messages
6,908
Location
Devlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿErdogānīye
Oh my mistake. Your comment was just unrelated to reality. Lol people on the codex think a game should conform to modern standards of game design. Another way PoE is simply misunderstood.

Seeing how many people are playing Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 while shittalking PoE and not playing AoD, I wouldn't be surprised, even if they openly don't admit or perhaps realize it.
 

ZagorTeNej

Arcane
Joined
Dec 10, 2012
Messages
1,980
Hmm... trying to think back to the boss battles. Revenants, that dragon with the chalice, Morrigan's mom, the shit that went down in the Deep Roads... it's been a while since I played it but honestly? I don't really remember enjoying any of them much. It was either a matter of finding a simplistic tactic and applying it to win (e.g. the very first boss, the ogre in the tower -- kite it and have everyone shoot it to death, or the dragon with the chalice -- use that one spell that makes you invulnerable, slap it on your tank who draws aggro, then use the rest of the party to kill it).

I meant encounters like Jarvia (female dwarf mob boss, she feels the room with traps and often switches between ranged and stealth melee), Sloth Demon that has a variety of different forms (each with its own strengths and weaknesses), some ambushes like Cauthrien and Zevran's assassin pal, Gaxkang, the Demon boss in the Mage Tower that turns imprisoned mages into abominations during the course of the battle and switches between casting spells and melee attacks, Broodmother with tentacles and grabbing attacks etc.

Mind you, it's not just about challenge (we can all agree 99% of RPGs are relatively easy once you get a solid grasp of their systems) but set piece/boss fights throwing something new at you and standing out from trash fights leading up to it.

In PoE in vast majority of cases you were for example fighting 15 groups that all composed of a say fighter, mage, cypher and cleric and then faced a slightly tougher group of the same composition at the end as a boss fight, it felt repetitive.

Undead Raedric is a significant and materially different challenge, and some of the bounties are downright entertaining, as are some of the tougher levels of Od Nua and tougher encounters in White March 1.

Undead Raedric is a tough cookie (so is the Mind Flayer bounty fight, the rest of them not so much as far as I recall) but it's still something you faced before (vamps) just in a larger quantity (granted DeathKnights with Fear Aura /whatever they're called are pretty rare IIRC and Undead Raedric is a tougher version of one obviously).

I'd say my favourite fight in PoE is Thaos actually, a high level priest that can do a body switch with his statues that have a nasty ability to explode upon death definitely feels as a unique encounter compared to the rest. In that regard PoE certainly beats DAO and it's banal, shit, boring Archdemon by a landslide.

From where I'm at you're exaggerating a bit, but it's not entirely wrong. The main problem with the "sameyness" of fights was the AI -- it would just latch onto whoever was closest, and was not particularly aggressive or smart using its special abilities. This has changed dramatically with version 2.0 -- when it came out, there was a lot of whining that the Adra Dragon is now "impossible" for example. (They'd given it fire immunity and made it use its breath weapon aggressively, among other things. IOW it became a genuine challenge.)

Yeah, from what I followed of the post-release development I do think some of the changes/fixes sound promising, in particular the improving enemy target selection, ability usage and inclusion of immunities. I'll definitely do another run of the game down the road (probably after the 2nd expansion comes out).

That said, I never thought much of Adra Dragon fight, it's just a big monster that hits extremely hard compared to nearly everything else in the game, it's as one-dimensional as they come.

I far prefer Pillars' itemization. DA:O just had piles and piles of ever-more-epic loot with ever-higher numbers stacked on them. With Pillars, most unique items actually have some unique properties on them, and there are non-obvious ways of getting maximal advantage out of those properties. One major pro for Pillars is also that the usual linear progression isn't there: you get damn good items right from Act 1, so instead of just using them for a bit and then throwing them out for the next-greatest-thing, the challenge becomes finding the set of items with the unique properties that you want for the particular build you want to support, and, conversely, to optimally distribute the uniques you have at any given time.

DAO didn't exactly have linear item progression either, many of the most powerful items can be bough in shops or are acquired after solving puzzles (which granted are usually pretty simple) or doing side quests.

The key difference here is the lack of all-powerful crafting which means I'm motivated to explore to find good gear or raise money to buy it instead of just getting a regular version of the weapon my char's adept at using and then enchanting the shit out of it until it becomes a tool of mass destruction. Even in those rare instances the crafting is done right in PoE, such as collecting pieces of a legendary item and getting them to master smith (which one figures would be much better at it than a rag-tag party of adventurers) the results are disappointing to say the least.

Another difference is the accessory items like belts, rings, helmets etc. which are useful/significant in DAO but in PoE so bland and meaningless I could barely remember any of them right after finishing the game, you can't even stack +stat items to improve a char's weakness in a certain area. One exception are summoning items which are great and can be a game changer in tougher fights.

Some of the feel of "too many interchangeable uniques" comes from the fact that there really are many of them, and whatever your build or tactic happens to be, a lot of them won't be relevant to it. Trouble is, if you want to give enough uniques to support a big variety of builds and tactics, that's always going to be the case.

I actually missed the whole point of the Pillars itemisation system when I wrote the review here. I've only figured it out later, and it has seriously grown on me.

Quantity can be an issue (in low level games magic items stand out by the virtue of them being very rare) but I feel like quality is a bigger one in this instance. They just aren't memorable and impactful enough and they have to compete with an all-purpose crafting system (that yielded your rusty dagger of awesomeness). Even staunch criticizers of say BG2 (you can also use PST for example) itemization seem to know it's item selection by heart, that's hardly the case with PoE for a reason.

I get your point that some of them are apparently very effective/shine when combined with a specific build but I just didn't explore the game to that degree to experience it.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
That said, I never thought much of Adra Dragon fight, it's just a big monster that hits extremely hard compared to nearly everything else in the game, it's as one-dimensional as they come.

In 1.0 that's pretty much exactly what it was. In 2.0 and up, it's quite devastating and can kill you in lots of ways which you have to neutralise/find ways around, and then find ways to suppress/overcome its defences before you can start doing damage to it.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom