Pillars of Eternity Thread [Pre-Expansion]

[Krash]

Love many things, but the writing is pretty underwhelming in places - too long-winded, sluggish and overwrought. What happened to "brievity is the soul of wit" exactly? The writing's not always like that; Durance for example, or the other companions I've met so far, but the general feeling is like you're trudging through the words, not getting sucked in.

 

[Infinitron]

Can you increase attributes after character creation (from leveling, etc.)?

Yeah, with gear (permanent) or food and resting (temporary). This game draws more inspirations from Diablo and Skyrim than it takes from actual IE games.

The same IE games that featured hilariously OP items that not just increased but actually maxed out attributes

 

[bonescraper]

Love many things, but the writing is pretty underwhelming in places - too long-winded, sluggish and overwrought. What happened to "brievety is the soul of wit" exactly? The writing's not always like that; Durance for example, or the companions I've met so far, but the general feeling is like you're trudging through the words, not getting sucked in.

 

[Trodat]

The game can be fucking hard, not because i need to L2P or anything, but because of the retarded engagement system. Sensuki made his point already, but it can't be stressed enough. This shit doesn't belong in a real-time game. Especially if your goddamn game is so fucking shit when it comes to pathfinding. A swarm of shitty spiders will quickly surround all my melee characters while i'm sitting ildly with tears in my eyes, watching as my fucking rogue tells me to fuck myself when i try to reposition her.

Fuck Joshua Eric Sawyer.

This is the biggest issue I have with this game. You will get owned because of moving characters "accidentally" and breaking engagement - yeah I'm not sure if this is good kind of difficulty.

I mean combat has the outline for greatness, but the engagement mechanic just doesn't work at all currently.

(I like PoE despite what I just wrote.)

 

[Seari]

Use IE mod to remove engagement.

Don't shit talk Dark Souls sucka.

Someone mentioned that this doesn't solve the problem though. That while it does allow you to move your characters around, it causes the game to become much easier. That is, they said that the game was designed with this feature in mind and so disabling it kind of "breaks" the game so to speak. Can you comment on such?

Don't know. I'm waiting for patches and mods before I start playing it. Maybe Sensuki can aswer that.

 

[dragonul09]

I just don't get it ,why is my entire party limited to just 1 trap ,why not a trap per party member?

 

[Darth Roxor]

I'm having mild fun finding ways of breaking this game.

Apart from that, I'm not having much fun. Combat is bleh, character system is shit and writing is worse than R.A. Salvatore.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

Playing with a low-CON Chanter on Hard-Expert on my first try... getting my ass beaten tastefully at every turn.

I had to resort to dirty tricks to deal with Raedric and his men. At least now that I got a bigger party things are going better. I think I should have recruited someone at the inn.

 

[ArchAngel]

Did you guys notice how voice over often covers half a sentence that is on screen (and what is worse, the second half). This is most noticeable with Calisca at start.
Or they give a full VO to a NPC but for one screen. It really brings you out of immersion. You get used that all is VO and then few sentences are not and after that all is again VO.

 

[Gord]

I did find it a bit arbitrary at times, but it doesn't ruin my immersion.

 

[Johannes]

Can you increase attributes after character creation (from leveling, etc.)?

Yeah, with gear (permanent) or food and resting (temporary). This game draws more inspirations from Diablo and Skyrim than it takes from actual IE games.

The same IE games that featured hilariously OP items that not just increased but actually maxed out attributes

They were balanced against each other.

 

[Morkar Left]

I'm having mild fun finding ways of breaking this game.

Apart from that, I'm not having much fun. Combat is bleh, character system is shit and writing is worse than R.A. Salvatore.

To get some benchmark here:
Which rpg has the best combat for you?
Which rpg has the best character system for you?
Which rpg has the best writing for you?

 

[Trodat]

Did you guys notice how voice over often covers half a sentence that is on screen (and what is worse, the second half). This is most noticeable with Calisca at start.
Or they give a full VO to a NPC but for one screen. It really brings you out of immersion. You get used that all is VO and then few sentences are not and after that all is again VO.

Yes, but it really doesn't bother me at all.

 

[~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-AIN'T]

I don't need to trust his "opinion"(his scoring), rather I was trusting his mention of various features to be fact. If they are not fact, it should be easily disputed, which is why I asked "Is he wrong". I don't care what people "feel" or what they "opine" about something. I care about them relating to me the features of the game. Did he do that incorrectly? Did he lie about such? Everything else is irrelevant (ie the divination of social occurrences before and after a games release on these boards). So, is he wrong?

He's right about most of the stuff he wrote. The combat interface is pretty bad, having per encounter abilities generally encourages spamming the same abilities in every fight (having a wizard is refreshing just due to the per day focus on their spells), grazes are basically pointless, and endurance regeneration combined with per encounter abilities shifts the focus to be almost entirely per encounter, rather than having to manage abilities and health over the course of several encounters. No combat XP is more a matter of taste and I definitely don't agree that the game is graphically mediocre. I think it looks great. I also haven't come across many bugs, but YMMV.

Overall, I think it's a pretty fun game but it definitely has some issues.

 

[Sensuki]

Use IE mod to remove engagement.

Don't shit talk Dark Souls sucka.

Someone mentioned that this doesn't solve the problem though. That while it does allow you to move your characters around, it causes the game to become much easier. That is, they said that the game was designed with this feature in mind and so disabling it kind of "breaks" the game so to speak. Can you comment on such?

Don't know. I'm waiting for patches and mods before I start playing it. Maybe Sensuki can aswer that.

That quote is me talking about why we didn't change the Engagement AI. For the record - anyone playing with the No Engagement mod, turn off "Disable Party Stop on Engagement" or whatever as well, for best results.

having per encounter abilities generally encourages spamming the same abilities in every fight (having a wizard is refreshing just due to the per day focus on their spells), grazes are basically pointless, and endurance regeneration combined with per encounter abilities shifts the focus to be almost entirely per encounter, rather than having to manage abilities and health over the course of several encounters.

Definitely all true IMO.

 

[veevoir]

Yay, the bug where soul whip does not activate.. Wasn't that reported during beta?

 

[Sensuki]

Probably, yep.

 

[1451]

The interface is horrible for real time combat. Click on portrait, find the skill you want, click it. Repeat for the entire party for every encounter. If this was turn based it would have been ok. But for real time it makes combat tedious.

 

[Trodat]

The interface is horrible for real time combat. Click on portrait, find the skill you want, click it. Repeat for the entire party for every encounter. If this was turn based it would have been ok. But for real time it makes combat tedious.

I don't know if you know this, but you can assign quick keys by hovering your mouse cursor over the skill and pressing a key from your keyboard.

Like Q for Knock down

It's pretty neat.

 

[Necroscope]

Ugh, I'm still not sure how to roll up a good 2h fighter; my D&D instinct insist on boosting up Might, but the game tells me otherwise... Halp...

 

[Sykar]

So, is this game worth 40 bucks?

 

[Bubbles]

It's worth at least 22, which is what it currently costs.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Which rpg has the best combat for you?

All the ones I'd name are turn-based and some of them are blobbers, so they don't really count when it comes to this matter. But I can say so far that I've had much, much more fun in both IWDs and in BG2 when it comes to combat (maybe BG1 too, but I played that one so long ago that I can't remember shit about it).

I would even risk saying that I had more fun in Storm of Zehir than in PoE.

Which rpg has the best character system for you?

I honestly can't say, because I've never thought about it.

I could, however, provide by contrast a whole bunch of character systems that are really weak, but which I still find better than PoE. And this even includes the ones from Original Sin or SRR. Even SPECIAL was better than this, in spite of how broken it was.

To put it simply enough, everything about the character system is just samey as hell. There's nothing fiddly about it. There's nothing cool about it. Going up a level doesn't make you go "squeeeeeee~", all it does is make you go 'oh, some more numbers'.

Which rpg has the best writing for you?

This is not just about rpg writing, this is about fantasy writing in general, and PoE falls into the pitfalls of just about every c-grade fantasy wankfest out there. Not only are most of the texts way too BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH for their own good, but what probably kills the writing for me and makes me go all the time I play, is the Generic-Fantasy-Author syndrome of bombarding you with dozens upon dozens of stupid-sounding names that are apparently supposed to be relevant in some way, but only leave you scratching your head. It's just empty information, like empty calories. You are served texts that are filled to the brim with words, but their actual semantic value is so low, they could easily be trimmed by two or even three times their original length and nothing would be lost. PoE is simply in drastic need of a bunch of editors.

 

[Rostere]

I think the writing is good.

Apparently a lot of retards cannot into strategical positioning of their characters, it seems. I'm not having any trouble with the engagement system. I DO get the feeling that more classes should have abilities which can help break engagement/ protect against disengagement attacks/ give a short duration of good protection when gangbanged though. It wouldn't be necessary for the party configuration I'm currently running, but it would help with allowing for more diverse party compositions... If that is a goal to strive for, that is.

 

[Mortmal]

I just don't get it ,why is my entire party limited to just 1 trap ,why not a trap per party member?

I was surprised by that too, makes absolutely no sense. Even the priest trap spell prevents the rogue ones. Balance i guess , no fun with traps allowed!

Ah balance , quite odd too, the game is certainly not balanced theres classes able to spam their abilities at will while wizards have vancian few uses by day spells and those spells arent much better. Not a big fan of the character system either,just max some stas, anything will do for dialogue option, you are not even penalized for having 3 intellect.