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Pillars of Eternity 3.03 sans expansion: Final Judgment from the 1st Disciple of Sawyerity

Gord

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Feb 16, 2011
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E.g. I consider the animancer chick (who was funny btw) in Raedrics Hold and the necromancer (who was funny, too) in the sewers of Defiance Bay to be some sort of boss encounters and they are really easy compared to standard enemies like ghosts/phantoms or god beware lions and wild life in general. That's especially buffling since they are entirely optional. You can either completely avoid fighting them (and still getting xp) or you can choose to fight them whenever you want. And the unavoidable boss encounters like in the sanatorium I found to be really easy again.
I guess it makes a huge difference how many party members you have. You took a party of 5. I prefer 6 and won't go with less because I think a party of 6 is ideal for customization and diversity (no, not that kind of diversity).

Well, I had more problems with them in the 1.x versions, but that might also come down to experience. Especially the undead animancer (or his minions?) in the catacombs seems nerfed, however.
But you are probably right about party size. Back when PoE was released and I first played Act 2, I wondered whether the difficulty dive also was because they decided to allow for smaller parties to be viable at the point. So in a way I wanted to check it out this time.
I should note that when I say PoE has become harder in 3.x's "Hard" difficulty, I still don't consider (esp. Act 2) particularly difficult most of the time.
There are some exceptions, but I understand that some players might want more.


There are plenty of "crude and simple" spells in PoE, and even more of them were added by TWM; the enemies are just not using them. Imagine if enemy groups used the same mix of low-level (!) prone, stun and paralyze AoEs that the player has access to - the game would become far more difficult, probably to the point of frustration. Even something as simple as casting Stuck on your melee fighters could have a huge effect. But the devs clearly want the combat to be asymmetrical, and so they give you a lot of overpowered tools and throw hundreds of trash mobs at you to pad out the narrative a bit.
Unfortunately the enemy spell casters always were a missed opportunity in PoE. Either by design or due to AI, most of the time they use rather ineffective spells. There are only few exceptions and even those usually rely on damage-dealing spells (e.g. the insect swarm spell of Ogre Druids).

Status effects being too weak has always been one of the stranger PoE criticisms. Some of the individual ones might seam weak by themselves, but then you have to consider how readily available they are, i.e. being attached to per encounter aoe abilities. In general with even a bit of debuffing aoe hard CC is really strong, especially on Hard or lower. The higher defenses on PotD make a bit more reasonable.
It depends. It's not true for status effects like prone, stuck, paralyzed, but there are also the "minor" ones in buffs and debuffs.
And most of them are per-rest. Especially the early level priest buffs only bestow a minor bonus, which is hard to notice with the miss-graze-hit-crit system of PoE.
It does become important on PotD, were stacking buffs and debuffs can be necessary, but otherwise you can ignore most of them. Since they introduced immunities, some became a bit more useful due to granting a temporary immunity to one or two effects, at least.
 

Morkar Left

Guest
There are plenty of "crude and simple" spells in PoE, and even more of them were added by TWM; the enemies are just not using them. Imagine if enemy groups used the same mix of low-level (!) prone, stun and paralyze AoEs that the player has access to - the game would become far more difficult, probably to the point of frustration. Even something as simple as casting Stuck on your melee fighters could have a huge effect. But the devs clearly want the combat to be asymmetrical, and so they give you a lot of overpowered tools and throw hundreds of trash mobs at you to pad out the narrative a bit.
Unfortunately the enemy spell casters always were a missed opportunity in PoE. Either by design or due to AI, most of the time they use rather ineffective spells. There are only few exceptions and even those usually rely on damage-dealing spells (e.g. the insect swarm spell of Ogre Druids).

Could indeed be the reason enemy casters go down too swiftly. They have relative low hitpoints and not using cc spells allows me to quickly interrupt and kill them.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I think powerful single target spells, like the ones that certain Skeleton Wizards can spam you with if you're not careful, may have the most potential for making enemy spellcasters truly dangerous. AoEs are too easily avoided by a competent player.
 
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Hyperion

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Jul 2, 2016
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Call to Slumber

Some of the enemy mages in The White March fights, particularly the Bounty fights, can and have used it on me. It's not fun getting blindsided by it. Mages in Abbey of the Fallen Moon spam the shit out of Ninagauth's Shadowflame more than I do. Getting that spell as your Per Encounter mastery at level 15 is just wrong on so many levels. With Secrets of Rime and a good Might score you're looking at 70 damage crits and a 12 second Stun in a huge radius.

Maura's Tentacles is another spell that's OUTRAGEOUSLY poweful and is only a spell Level 4. Short ranged, but summoning 3 tentacles with 400 Endurance, a 3m range that hit medium geared enemies for 40 each is RIDICULOUS.

Enemy Druids are generally more dangerous than Wizards. Some of the ones you fight with Firedorn and the Barbarian bounty in Searing Falls (forgot her name) are equipped with full plate, and an Exceptional Large Shield. Their defenses are nothing to scoff at, and your party may very well get decimated by something like Firebug, Plague of Insects, Relentless Storm, or worse, Embrace the Earth Talon.

And enemy wizards rarely seem higher level than the player
Leveling speed is definitely too quick. When using IEMod, adding 25% more experience per level feels 'right' when you're doing all of the sidequests as they're available to you.

Status effects being too weak has always been one of the stranger PoE criticisms.
Also keep in mind every class has debuffs of some sort and debuffs stack VERY well. A Rogue can Blind, Priest can use Divine Mark, Cipher can Paralyze and bring a unit from 100 Deflection (pretty good amount) down to like 30 in a matter of 2 seconds.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
(Re)playing WM 1, at level 7. (Just hit 8 from XP gained there.)

It is not easy.

It's not punishingly hard either, but beating some of those tougher fights does take work. Meztla was quite challenging and his posse whupped me good on my first attempt.

The wilderness areas are too full though; they're busier than the damn village. And not all of the fights there are all that great, or fun, or make much sense.

Take Russetwood. There's more than a half-dozen fights on that little map, some of them which are almost mini-bossfights or parts of quests. There's also no rhyme or reason to them -- a lagufaeth party between two groups of slavers, some fampyr weirdo, a bunch of feral druids, some elemental-style trash mobs, an elder bear, and ogres? Come on.
 

Bleed the Man

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The wilderness areas are too full though; they're busier than the damn village. And not all of the fights there are all that great, or fun, or make much sense.

Take Russetwood. There's more than a half-dozen fights on that little map, some of them which are almost mini-bossfights or parts of quests. There's also no rhyme or reason to them -- a lagufaeth party between two groups of slavers, some fampyr weirdo, a bunch of feral druids, some elemental-style trash mobs, an elder bear, and ogres? Come on.

I thought it worked well in the context of the expansion. You don't have many areas to explore (2 optional areas in part 1, and 1 in part 2, without counting the new area for each part outside the White March as they work independently), so the ones there are need to be reasonably packed. It's not the ideal content density for a full game, though.
 

Azarkon

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No other system designer would have done differently. It's the modern paradigm of RPG design, including in PnP. People want characters with lots of abilities. CRPG developers will just have to learn to create better encounters and AI.

I'd argue it's the opposite for computer games. People want characters with less abilities, but which can be used in more creative ways. The rise of DotA and its clones is a perfect example. One can also bring up the example of World of Warcraft and its simplification of the character system, year after year. Pen and paper trends should not be confused with video game trends. The success of D&D as one of the few pen and paper rule sets that successfully broke into computer gaming was not random, and especially in party-based games designed to be played mostly in real time, care should be taken to limit the amount of actions the player can or should take each turn.

I'd also take issue with the statement that Pillars of Eternity is more strategic rather than tactical when compared to D&D games. Again, it's the opposite: Baldur's Gate is less tactical because there is less that you can actually do once the fight's begun. As you yourself observed, moment to moment decisions in Baldur's Gate did not make nearly as much of a difference as the random number generator at low levels, and the deployment of ridiculously powerful abilities at higher levels, the latter of which is a strategic decision because people don't think, "if the computer does this, I'll cast Wail of the Banshee" but instead think "I'll cast Wail of the Banshee, and then fire off my Chain Contingency with 3 x Horrid Wilting."

Pillars of Eternity, while it does not differ fundamentally from this style, still does require more reactive use of per encounter and per rest abilities in response to how the fight is going than did Baldur's Gate. Most Baldur's Gate fights were decided before the fight begun through the use of proper preparation and equipment. Believe it or not, this plays to its advantage - because as much as we might think otherwise, people enjoy pressing less buttons.
 
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GordonHalfman

Scholar
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Nov 5, 2011
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119
It depends. It's not true for status effects like prone, stuck, paralyzed, but there are also the "minor" ones in buffs and debuffs.
And most of them are per-rest. Especially the early level priest buffs only bestow a minor bonus, which is hard to notice with the miss-graze-hit-crit system of PoE.
It does become important on PotD, were stacking buffs and debuffs can be necessary, but otherwise you can ignore most of them. Since they introduced immunities, some became a bit more useful due to granting a temporary immunity to one or two effects, at least.

idk i mean you have daze from Arcane Assault and Interdiction. Weakened from Painful Interdiction. Sickened from Threatening Presence. Frightened from Barbaric Yell and the Chanter level 2 phrase. Blind from Blinding Strike and some low level Druid and Wizard Spells that are decent choice for masteries. Also deflection debuffs from Aspirants Mark is a decent choice imo. Individually these effects sounds kind of lame, but my point is they kind of have to be given how easy it is to stack them up.

Also keep in mind every class has debuffs of some sort and debuffs stack VERY well. A Rogue can Blind, Priest can use Divine Mark, Cipher can Paralyze and bring a unit from 100 Deflection (pretty good amount) down to like 30 in a matter of 2 seconds.

Yeah this. You can debuff deflection to the point that crits are almost guaranteed, which is good fun with a blunderbuss Paladin.

How did Hold and Stun effect AC in AD&D? -4 or something? I don't remember. I don't think it was always out of the question for an enemy to survive a hold person in D&D, in the low level game at least, the durations were much longer but the pace of the combat was slower when you only attacked once per round and might miss five times in a row.
 

Azarkon

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How did Hold and Stun effect AC in AD&D? -4 or something? I don't remember. I don't think it was always out of the question for an enemy to survive a hold person in D&D, in the low level game at least, the durations were much longer but the pace of the combat was slower when you only attacked once per round and might miss five times in a row.

A powerful enemy can survive a Hold, but it was much easier to cast & forget Hold Person or Hold Monster than it is to combine multiple status effects in Pillars of Eternity for a similar purpose. The simplicity of the concept is its own appeal. I go back to the opinion that for most players, less is more, and that's also the general direction of computer game systems.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
It depends. It's not true for status effects like prone, stuck, paralyzed, but there are also the "minor" ones in buffs and debuffs.
And most of them are per-rest. Especially the early level priest buffs only bestow a minor bonus, which is hard to notice with the miss-graze-hit-crit system of PoE.
It does become important on PotD, were stacking buffs and debuffs can be necessary, but otherwise you can ignore most of them. Since they introduced immunities, some became a bit more useful due to granting a temporary immunity to one or two effects, at least.

idk i mean you have daze from Arcane Assault and Interdiction. Weakened from Painful Interdiction. Sickened from Threatening Presence. Frightened from Barbaric Yell and the Chanter level 2 phrase. Blind from Blinding Strike and some low level Druid and Wizard Spells that are decent choice for masteries. Also deflection debuffs from Aspirants Mark is a decent choice imo. Individually these effects sounds kind of lame, but my point is they kind of have to be given how easy it is to stack them up.

Also keep in mind every class has debuffs of some sort and debuffs stack VERY well. A Rogue can Blind, Priest can use Divine Mark, Cipher can Paralyze and bring a unit from 100 Deflection (pretty good amount) down to like 30 in a matter of 2 seconds.

Yeah this. You can debuff deflection to the point that crits are almost guaranteed, which is good fun with a blunderbuss Paladin.

How did Hold and Stun effect AC in AD&D? -4 or something? I don't remember. I don't think it was always out of the question for an enemy to survive a hold person in D&D, in the low level game at least, the durations were much longer but the pace of the combat was slower when you only attacked once per round and might miss five times in a row.

Reminder: My real point here was that the status effects are weak for the computer. Doing that kind of coordinated stacking of effects to take Deflection down from 100 to 30 seems difficult for a (non-SCS-tier fan modded) AI.

IIRC, surviving a long duration Hold in the IE games was also something that often felt like it only happened because the AI wasn't really aggressive enough to do everything to exploit your vulnerability. It had more of a chance to at least do some serious damage, though.
 
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Roguey

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Sawyerism vs. Vinckeism -> I like these terms.

Vincke's design philosophy of "world simulation + item fever + multiplayer + miscellaneous things I can't think of right now" certainly deserves a term.

If we add Sawyerism vs. Vinckeism vs. Fargoism we get full circle of life.

Does Fargo have a design philosophy?

How long did it take you to write a review? Were you writing your thoughts in the notebook along you were playing or did you write it all afterwards ?

Several hours. I alt tabbed to write as I was going along, then organized and expanded when I was finished.

Leveling speed is definitely too quick.

Eh, I disagree. One shouldn't need to do the megadungeon and the bounties to hit the level cap.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
As you yourself observed, moment to moment decisions in Baldur's Gate did not make nearly as much of a difference as the random number generator at low levels, and the deployment of ridiculously powerful abilities at higher levels, the latter of which is a strategic decision because people don't think, "if the computer does this, I'll cast Wail of the Banshee" but instead think "I'll cast Wail of the Banshee, and then fire off my Chain Contingency with 3 x Horrid Wilting."

It is possible to play BG2 with a "tactical" approach though. Last time I was playing, I had a ranger-cleric teamed up with Jan Jansen, and I used magic mostly to counter enemy magic; the actual fighting was all about movement: which enemy to target, when to cut and run when in danger of being overwhelmed, how to avoid getting targeted, how to avoid AoEs etc.

I don't believe most players actually usually play BG2 that way, but it is most certainly doable.

Thing is... that's true for Pillars as well. You just need to build your party for it. Have a paladin with Zealous Rush on board, pick items, talents, and buffs which enhance speed and increase disengagement defenses, and have a ball. I've played with two parties built this way and it works really well, is fun, and is different from the way you'd normally play it (i.e., relying on spells and per-encounter abilities).
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Does Fargo have a design philosophy?

Fargo isn't a designer. He's a ... boss. He reminds me a lot of my boss actually: he has a nose for what the market wants, can sell it really well, and then he waves his hands in large arcs until the development team is headed vaguely in his idea of the right direction, such as it is. It's not that he knows exactly what kind of thing he wants to do, but he knows enough to run a business and he has the sense to let the people actually doing it until something workable comes out.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Still (re)playing WM1.

I had forgotten how damn pretty that expansion is. I just cracked Durgan's Battery, and little details like the way the ice flakes off those huge latches as they open... nice.
 

Rev

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Yeah, TWM is great. The only problem is that it was a mid-game expansions when it should've been set post-game, like MotB. Most players (the ones who liked the game, at least, the others wouldn't be interested anyway) had already finished PoE when it came out and had to play it with a level 12 char making the experience extremely easy, or start a new game and spend another 30 hours to get to level 7 and try the new contents, which is something only the most passionate fans would do.
 

FreeKaner

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Doesn't it have scaled up content if you go there late game?

Yes but it's allegedly not particularly fun or difficult fighting creatures with scaled up stats.

Oh, I definitely agree. Just that the option is there is fine I think. Personally I felt that White March very smoothly mixed into the story-line when you go there half-way through because there is a clue about Leaden Key being there but then you end up being pulled further into something you have to prevent.
 

Morkar Left

Guest
I still haven't fully understood how the level scaling works with the scaled up option. Do your enemies get e.g. +2 levels fixed to their original level or do the enemies scale proportional to your current level e.g. 25% more hitpoints or do they get the same level you have when you enter the location?
 

Roguey

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I still haven't fully understood how the level scaling works with the scaled up option. Do your enemies get e.g. +2 levels fixed to their original level or do the enemies scale proportional to your current level e.g. 25% more hitpoints or do they get the same level you have when you enter the location?

Fortunately Josh Sking actually answered this question in the past.

With high level scaling 'ON', selected encounters throughout the area it has been engaged will be increased in level difficulty by 33%. For example: a level 3 enemy will be increased to level 4.
 
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Prime Junta

Guest
I wasn't all that impressed with the fights in WM1 to be honest. They're pretty repetitive. Each location had a different type of mob, but you ended up fighting the same mob over and over. (Haven't done Crägholdt yet though.)
 

Bleed the Man

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I still haven't fully understood how the level scaling works with the scaled up option. Do your enemies get e.g. +2 levels fixed to their original level or do the enemies scale proportional to your current level e.g. 25% more hitpoints or do they get the same level you have when you enter the location?

Fortunately Josh actually answered this question in the past.

With high level scaling 'ON', selected encounters throughout the area it has been engaged will be increased in level difficulty by 33%. For example: a level 3 enemy will be increased to level 4.

Hey, that's not Josh!

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/8...act-iii-high-level-content-scaling/?p=1774188
 

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