Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

[luj1]

Infinitron please merge

Thread is an elegant way to get the Codex talking about this irrelevant persona again though, Roguey stepping up his game.

 

[Lacrymas]

I spent two hours with a Ranger before I realized that combat was useless since it doesn't give experience points.

Except it does, it's called filling the bestiary.

But you do gain resource conservation, the opportunity cost you mentioned is present. You chose to not pre-buff or just cast a few/one specific buff so you then have those spells available either during the fight itself or for the next ones, which you don't know when or if they'll happen.

Resource conservation is also present in PoE and it's not an inherent problem of the lack of pre-buffing, so this is irrelevant.

 

[Lichtbringer]

I spent two hours with a Ranger before I realized that combat was useless since it doesn't give experience points.

Except it does, it's called filling the bestiary.

How many experience points are received from filling the bestiary in relation to the total amount of experience points received from quests? Also, is filling the bestiary required to hit the XP cap or is it a cosmetic feature?

Honest question.

 

[Lacrymas]

You get more xp from quests obviously, but I don't know the ratio. You hit the xp cap like halfway through the game (a huge problem btw), so half the content is cosmetic in terms of xp.

 

[Riddler]

I spent two hours with a Ranger before I realized that combat was useless since it doesn't give experience points.

Except it does, it's called filling the bestiary.

How many experience points are received from filling the bestiary in relation to the total amount of experience points received from quests? Also, is filling the bestiary required to hit the XP cap or is it a cosmetic feature?

Honest question.

It is absolutely not needed.

 

[Atchodas]

You need to kill enemies so your bestiary updates and you know what defences those enemies have

Spoiler

wait ... that does not make any sense ...

 

[MajorMace]

Bestiary filled after defeating enemies is taken from m&mx by the way.
Or from pokémon depending on your references.

ps : hey guys isn't sawyer, like, stupid ? ahah high five !

 

[Verylittlefishes]

The story and lore in PoE was actually good.

It's the execution of that story in game format that was a disaster.

I.Hate.Loading.

 

[cvv]

Sawyer doesn't seem to realize how consumers think.

PoE1 sales were based on their love of BG.
PoE2 sales were based on their "love" of PoE1.

There, mystery solved. PoE1 was never good.

 

[Jezal_k23]

I think PoE was eventually fine but then it was too late.

 

[santino27]

I think PoE was eventually fine but then it was too late.

Mechanically, I think I'd mostly agree. POE 3.0 was a huge improvement over what launched. The narrative issues didn't go anywhere though.

 

[Beastro]

Mmm... collecting pine cones and faggots for fire sounds boring.

For me it's the situational aspects that RPGs often use specifically with blood magic where your enemy needs to have blood for it to effect them. Head in with a weapon and other mundane equipment as you engage in melee combat then use the environment to fight your enemy, pick up wood to make the best fire spells you can, whatever water is around can be used to some end, maybe bring gunpowder with you to use magically in the way Gandalf suped up his fireworks with it, etc.

The point though is to make mage users more than just death rainers who stand in place but engage more and require more equipment than a robe and wand. The Fellowship of the Ring tried to do more with the Saruman's reveal but even that has a weird vibe to it and leaves me asking why Gandalf wouldn't dedicate himself to counter Saruman's magic and then charge with his sword (The book gives the impression more that Gandalf realized resistance would get him killed and surrendered hoping to bide his time).

Arwen's wall of water, ftw.

T'was Elrond's in the book and created as a magical trap as the first line of defence of Rivendell, effectively just being water held back in a reserve until the Enemy might to cross which triggers it; could be seen as a good equivalent of the Watchers of Cirith Ungol.

Even then Gandalf later brags to Frodo that it was he that added the horses to the water as he helped add power to it that made it so more potent than a simple flood.

What Arwen does in the movie is simple RPG spell casting.

I'm reading the Malazar series right now and they have the proper power level for mages, basicaly they are worth about ten thousand fighters each.

I find that kinda thing boring as it just makes wizards a simple tier above others. Still is good in a game like Dominions.

LOTR wizards are less than and more an amplifier of those they help. It's a reason why Saruman is dangerous but fragile reliant upon trying to use his charming less to directly dominate the way enchanters usually do in RPGs and more swaying them and causing chaos, effectively being a magical sneaky rogue or thief the way they usually play in RPGs.

In the book there's weird moments of that with Saruman off on his own hiding himself to do things like sabotage Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli by chasing their horses off and avoiding direct confrontation with them.

 

[Lilura]

Arwen's wall of water, ftw.

T'was Elrond's in the book and created as a magical trap as the first line of defence of Rivendell, effectively just being water held back in a reserve until the Enemy might to cross which triggers it; could be seen as a good equivalent of the Watchers of Cirith Ungol.

Even then Gandalf later brags to Frodo that it was he that added the horses to the water as he helped add power to it that made it so more potent than a simple flood.

What Arwen does in the movie is simple RPG spell casting.

Which is why I mentioned it. Glad it gave you an opportunity to show off common Tolkien knowledge, though.

 

[Beastro]

LotRO’s Loremaster started out* that way. Now it has a pet who can solo most of the content on top of nuking.

* - DreadLocked by goblins in Limuel’s Vineyard. Good times.

I liked that game. They really put a lot into it even if it didn't pan out all that well in the end.

Best WoW clone/theme park MMO made I'd say.

Arwen's wall of water, ftw.

T'was Elrond's in the book and created as a magical trap as the first line of defence of Rivendell, effectively just being water held back in a reserve until the Enemy might to cross which triggers it; could be seen as a good equivalent of the Watchers of Cirith Ungol.

Even then Gandalf later brags to Frodo that it was he that added the horses to the water as he helped add power to it that made it so more potent than a simple flood.

What Arwen does in the movie is simple RPG spell casting.

Which is why I mentioned it. Glad it gave you an opportunity to show off common Tolkien knowledge, though.

I only said something due to you referencing Arwen, and as I said, how different the movie portrays it.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

I almost forgot how fucked up Saruman's arc becomes towards the end of the book, compared to the movie.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

POE made me think I didn't like IE games anymore unless it was those with heavy nostalgic ties like IWD or BG1. I remember many people praising POE at first and I couldn't get into it. I tried for twenty hours but just couldn't do it. It didn't feel satisfying, there was no sense of wonder, no want to keep exploring. I truly thought that maybe the IE games I loved from yesteryear came at a perfect time in my life.

Then Pathfinder: Kingmaker came out and made me realize that wasn't the case at all. It's more that POE really was a boring slog I was supposed to like because it was pitched as a spiritual successor to a game like BG when deep down POE couldn't hold a candle to it. I didn't keep up with Kingmaker's development cycle but I don't remember it being heavily pushed as the second coming of Baldur's Gate and did its own thing which turned out to be to its advantage since when it did come out, with all those bugs and all, I was stunningly surprised.

POE was pretentious, Kingmaker was ambitious. I'll always take ambition because it at least showed the developer had their heart in the right place. POE felt like I got catfished for years.

 

[commie]

Bestiary filled after defeating enemies is taken from m&mx by the way.
Or from pokémon depending on your references.

ps : hey guys isn't sawyer, like, stupid ? ahah high five !

Zoomer detected....there WERE games before the 21st century on PC no less that did the same thing...even way back when procolophonids walked the earth in the 1980's....

 

[rusty_shackleford]

bestiaries you fill yourself are stupid
go fucking open a book god DAMN are you really the first person who encountered a fucking goblin in generic fantasy world #329 with millions of goblins?

 

[Xeon]

Yeah, I kinda liked Witcher's approach, where you read a book or something to get a bestiary on the monster and act on it, tho I kinda wish it had a little more impact maybe.

 

[MajorMace]

Bestiary filled after defeating enemies is taken from m&mx by the way.
Or from pokémon depending on your references.

ps : hey guys isn't sawyer, like, stupid ? ahah high five !

Zoomer detected....there WERE games before the 21st century on PC no less that did the same thing...even way back when procolophonids walked the earth in the 1980's....

Sawyer himself mentioned m&mx

 

[HoboForEternity]

#3. Terrible, boring spell system. After playing around with Eladir Aloth (whatever his name is) and the Chanter, I had no interest whatsoever in the game's magic system with cookie recipe spell effects

spells themselves are ok imo, but the spells effect is implemented badly. "10 seconds buff on X stats" on top of you spending alot of time micromanaging, the buff/debuff expire before you can act. in D&D ruleset based game they are usually counted / round so there is less pressure to you to decide how to act on those buff/debuff period, and ffs tracking buffs/debuffs that are counted in seconds is literally painful.

 

[apostrophe]

The worst game I somehow forced myself to finish. Everything was bad.
- Stats, leveling, and whole char development is terrible. They managed to make a well-balanced system without dump stats by making everything boring and meaningless. 3% damage bonus from Might, great when I reach level 10 and put a point after rounding I will do 1 damage more per strike, exciting. And when you factor in that classes meant do to damage, like cipher or rogue, already have a 40% bonus it gets even more pointless. Only stats worth it are those that give you saving throws (or however this game chose to name them) and only for tanks since the game forces MMO tank, healer, DPS system. Accuracy, the main combat attribute is on a linear progression curve.
- Itemization is terrible. Only a couple of weapons have unique mods that you can not craft or buy and they are not fun or powerful (except maybe retaliation). There is no excitement from finding better gear. The same goes for crafting when you finally get the mats for something you can be 100% sure you can buy it in the next town or it will drop in the next dungeon. This also makes weapon and armor selection quite boring, you could not equip everyone in BG2 with katanas, there were simply not enough good ones in the game. In PoE entire back row can use muskets and shotguns.
- Combat is just a mess, everything was badly designed or badly implemented. And with combat speed and the micro required you had to hit pause every 5 seconds completely runining the experience. Also, you could not cast buffs before combat for some reason witch effectively made every spell in that category useless because at lower levels if you don't CC you die, and at higher levels, it was just a waste of time. This and all of the above combined with no combat experience made exploration pointless.
- Writing. If I remember correctly this game actually bragged how many text is in the game, because Planescape. Who the fuck thinks that is important? Do people go and ask for book recommendations based solely on number of pages? Not to mention that PST didn't even have that much text, BG2 had more text. There is a bar in PST filled with interesting characters including a divine letter of the alphabet, burning man, a couple of demons, bartender who can sell you eyes etc. and they all combined have less to say than any village idiot in POE. Now the average POE village idiot does have some beautifully written lines about local history and surrounding areas but most of it is just pointless boring information with a lot of fluff. Also, I really don't expect every beggar on the street to have Shakespeare's mastery of the English language, it just looks dumb, pretentious and breaks immersion.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

There is no excitement from finding better gear.

Just remembered that most fun gear management I experienced was in Rage of Mages II.

 

[Daedalos]

Okay, apologzy accepted, Josh. Can we have a TB mod for Pillars 1, now? Thanks in advance!

In seriousness though, it's perfectly understandable why POE2 sold poorly.

I mean, you already had questionable interest in poe1 in the later stages and expansions, and you had few people invest and complete the game.

Then you want to make a sequel that even convolutes the story even more, but this time you mix in it with all kinds of weird tones and places - pirates? ancient cultures and civilizations, religious themes and gods all over, a giant god walking across the water, quirky ship combat, island hopping.
You try to go hard on the LORE, but its genuinely uninteresting and fails to capture peoples attention.

The entire world, setting and story felt like such a staunch departure from the setting from poe1, that people rightfully felt put off, and was kind of wtf?

Even if POE2 mechanically was a better game than 1, it ultimately overshot what made poe1 great.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Okay, apologzy accepted, Josh. Can we have a TB mod for Pillars 1, now? Thanks in advance!

In seriousness though, it's perfectly understandable why POE2 sold poorly.

I mean, you already had questionable interest in poe1 in the later stages and expansions, and you had few people invest and complete the game.

Then you want to make a sequel that even convolutes the story even more, but this time you mix in it with all kinds of weird tones and places - pirates? ancient cultures and civilizations, religious themes and gods all over, a giant god walking across the water, quirky ship combat, island hopping.
You try to go hard on the LORE, but its genuinely uninteresting and fails to capture peoples attention.

The entire world, setting and story felt like such a staunch departure from the setting from poe1, that people rightfully felt put off, and was kind of wtf?

Even if POE2 mechanically was a better game than 1, it ultimately overshot what made poe1 great.

The lore in Deadfire is fucking broken, I couldn't care less about these indistinguishable from each other Negroes native tribes with unpronouncable names and weird accents. Also I didn't get the final talk with Eothas. I get the ending in PoE. Okay. I return souls, or I release souls, or whatever, and also Gods are Mortals. Okay. But wtf was that about in the Deadfire final? Honestly, I can't even remember it. Was the world lost and hopeless because Eothas gone? But he is not God, as we've learned before. Or is he?