Eternity Pillars of Eternity II Beta Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

That fight is one of the greatest in IE-game history. Dunno what you're smokin' mate. It's even better with SCS' AI changes and calls for help though. In fact it's downright fantastic. One of the most resource-testing low-level fights in any IE-game.

 

Does anyone else feel like the problem with PoE combat was not so much the mechanics but the combination of lackluster encounter design (putting it politely) and slow paced combat where it takes way too long to clear out trash mobs? Unfortunately, these two issues exacerbate each other: a fight that you know you're going to win decisively from the get-go should end quickly. There were plenty of trash mobs in the IE games, but you could rapidly steamroll your way through them, so you spent a lot less time in boring encounters.

In the fights that were actually meant to be even marginally difficult, the proliferation of abilities--the sheer clickiness of PoE's combat--actually struck me as a positive: everybody's potential got meaningful options that can change the course of the fight if you time them correctly. It's the filler combat where most abilities feel boring and pointless because you're picking them with the main goal of just getting it over with as soon as possible. If they'd just left more of this stuff on the cutting room floor, I bet it would've gotten a warmer reception around here.

I was very happy when Josh acknowledged the dull encounter problem in the stream. Hopefully he'll deliver on taking out the trash in Deadfire.

 

Why would anyone want mindless skeletons to act like they're being controlled by another human player?

 

It's not exactly a mystery why so many of PoE's encounters felt like busywork. It's because of the removal of any meaningful consequences, meaning combat has no stakes.

For example, here is how death works in the IE games:

• Reaching 0 HP results in a character's death. Resurrection is possible, but not readily available at lower levels.
• Reaching -10 HP, being struck while petrified or being disintegrated results in permadeath, with no possibility for resurrection.

Here is how death works in PoE:

• Reaching 0 hp doesn't result in death, as the character simply stands up after combat and regenerates. Only after 'dying' about half a dozen times is the character in any actual danger of permadeath.

Sawyer effectively adopted the same forgiving death mechanics Bioware has been using since Kotor. In the IE games (perma)death can occur at any time. In PoE, you get so many second chances a character can basically only ever die if you deliberately allow it.

 

Man, I expected that post to be triggering, but all this comedy material is too much for me.

Just for the record, reading the Saving Throw rules in AD&D2, they seem pretty convoluted and arbitrary. But that's a whole different topic.

 

The IE games mostly translate D&D rules without trying to be creative. This has good as well as bad consequences for the gameplay. With the ability to reload your game, permadeath's being implemented doesn't amount to much. PnP as an experience is just not directly translatable to a videogame.

 

You could say that about any game that allows reloading. You can reload after a character dies, yes, but barring a particularly unlucky roll, you're still going to have to something differently to prevent that character from dying again. The point is that dying in the IE games is enough of a setback that it can factor into how a player approaches combat, whereas dying in PoE is so forgiving that it's a nonfactor.

 

Attack nearest enemy is actually a very reliable AI targeting scheme and is used across a wide, wide array of games. As a baseline, it's very solid. The reason why it's good is it is the best way to keep enemy attacks on the player's units. If an enemy starts going for a specific unit and doesn't update targeting based on changes to the combat situation, then the player can really take advantage of that stupidity. The AI in Pillars of Eternity that automatically selects based on Deflection and doesn't change targets is worse at a baseline because you can retreat your low Deflection char back before melee engagement has begun and the enemies will keep chaing, and that means they spend less time at the beginning of combat attacking. This is, provided that the player has room to move their units back in such a manner, which they can, more often than not.

IWD:HoW also has the best AI targeting out of the vanilla games without any AI modding. Enemies do scan for the nearest enemy initially, but they will also update their targeting based on other factors.

U see how accurate my mouse movement is tho?

 

Ah, a classic. You said something completely idiotic, and since you can't defend it, LOL I TROLL U SO CLEVAR

What's laughable here is your estimation of PoE characters having an easier time "making their saving throws" vis a vis IE characters. It honestly makes it hard to believe you've played the IE games in recent memory, let alone fucking ever. If you did, at least you couldn't have understood much of what was going on.

 

Summed up:



The classy Arcanum portrait adds to the charm.

 

Savescumming is not a gameplay mechanic and should never be treated as such. Saves are merely meant to store your progress between sessions ad prevent the loss of it when you suffer a game over. It can be abused to make the game easier or even trivialize some of the gameplay mechanics, but that's not its purpose.

This is like saying combat doesn't amount to much because you can kill NPCs with the debug console.

 

So you never reload if somebody gets chunked in the IE games?

That's pretty cool. You ever run out of party members?

 

I try not to but I might from time to time. When I do, I recognize the fact that I'm abusing a feature.

Never happened so far. This is hardly a problem in BG since there's a ton of spare party members you can recruit when someone dies, especially in the first game. If I lost so many party members that I would be unable to progress, I would consider it a "game over" and reload the game. If I feel I can still finish the game even though some of my party members died, I welcome the challenge.

I'm not saying you should never reload when one of your NPCs dies. It's a singleplayer game so you are allowed to do whatever you like. I'm just saying games should not be designed around savescumming and similiar abuse of features that are not meant to be parts of the gameplay.

 

Feargus prefers his combat fast, which excludes a lot of turn-based implementations currently in existence http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...re-release-thread.104738/page-38#post-4458437

I imagine Josh Sawyer's turn based historical RPG will have basic, quick animations. At least it better.

 

What could it be? Can only guess it could be release date for consoles or stuff about DLCs... :/

He likes Xcom tho, suggested that an RPG with Xcom combat(referred to new ones I guess) could be good in fig comments.

 

To be fair, while running out of endurance doesn't kill you, running out of health does, and that is permadeath, which is not really a thing in vanilla IE games. No cleric spells, no temple, no scroll can bring them back. So while Pillars may be more forgiving on a battle to battle basis, it's much less forgiving in terms of resurrection. You can't really lose companions in vanilla IE games unless you leave someone petrified in a random encounter.

On the other hand, permadeath probably just encourages people to reload. Whereas death in the IE games was an inventory management hassle, but not so negative a consequence that you'd be super tempted to reload.

Not until someone makes a time travel RPG with my brilliant idea to integrate the save system into the protagonist's portable time machine/time amulet. Then the developers could make save-scumming the main gameplay mechanic and balance the whole game around it.

 

One thing that irks me about this (looping) discussion is that blatant double standard.

Grog: "Pillars combat sux because you can beat fights with boring repetitive rote tactics."
Sensible Person: "Well think of more creative fun tactics then."
Grog: "LOL it sucks why would I do that because I can beat them with boring repetitive rote tactics."
Sensible Person: "But you can beat fights in the IE games by rest-spamming and pre-buffing 'til you're a Christmas tree, isn't that also rote and boring?"
Grog: "LOL don't restspam n00b, learn to play it the fun way."

Right.

(For the record, I think the criticism is valid in both cases to the extent that each game encourages or permits such boring or rote -- <cough> degenerate <cough> -- strategies to beat fights. I also think the objection is valid in both cases. It's the double standard that's .)

 

My guess is full voice acting.

 

I disagree in the sense that I don't think savescumming in the sense of reloading when you die is a problem, because in most games with a fail state that causes you to reload, you have to start again at some point.

Some games try and combat the save scum with checkpoint saves, but people who want to complete the content as perfectly as they can will probably still reload a checkpoint save and re-do it until they get the outcome that they want to get, provided they can perform the play required to achieve it.

 

That's in theory. In practice, permadeath in PoE never occurs, because it can only happen after you've used up all your 'lives'. Dropping to 0 HP in PoE only results in death if you've already dropped to 0 HP numerous times before, or lost an equivalent amount of health. Why wouldn't you rest when you're low on health?

By contrast, a character in the IE game can die at any time. If a low-level character with a maximum of 20 HP takes 30 damage, that character gets gibbed, with no possibility for resurrection.

 

My barbarian died from full health during Alpine Dragon fight and I had to restart, I abused healing a bit too much and had to rethink that fight (had a paladin and a druid basically just keeping the barbarian full endurance). I think also there was a case where my cipher got literally one shot from a sun lance trap at full HP (or very close).

Both on POTD.

 

Can confirm, happened to my PC rogue too. Searing Falls Cave I think.

 

PoE's deaths being an "academic concern" was done specifically because players like Tygrende are the extreme minority.

If you would reload on most/all irreversible character deaths PoE system is a step forward, intent was to save time for the majority of players.

Does PoE2 have a instant permadeath option now, since it has only standard HP instead of PoE1 split?

 

Shadowrun Returns, Wasteland 2, and Hard West (I think?) beat him to it.

 

Nope, when you're out of HP you get knocked out and get an injury. The fourth injury kills you. There are insta-injuries though, some traps f.ex.