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Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

Joined
Jul 28, 2020
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one of the companions is a cute girl monk

You seem to mistake me for Anonymous Wife Scholar Nonetheless. It's not a game I'm interested in.
Thank you anons! You are both bestest friend forever anons anons! You are! I did think anons I would love Xoti wife anons but I did hate Xoti not wife anons because she does have nonsense cuckold ending anons! She does! Xoti not wife does leave you anons in all endings anons but she does not leave Maia not wife anons in Xoti Maia nonsense romance ending anons! Does not! It is nonsense anons! It is! All Deadfire female wifes do leave you in ending anon but they do not leave other NPC romance in ending anons and only Aloth male elf wife does not leave anons in ending anons so it is excessive homosexual anons! It is! I do hate American California brain disease Deadfire Sawyer Obsidian cuckold game anons! I do! You are both bestest friend forever anons!
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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Am I the only going "u wot m8" that someone would find PoE the pinnacle of wonderful RTwP combat yet finds Deadfire completely uinteresting to the point they won't play it?

I mean: I get thinking it's worse, even significantly worse, but surely it'd be worth a playthrough at least :lol:

Sunri said:
It's just stat bloat

There's two reasons for calling PoE/Deadfire's PotD 'stat bloat': either you are really, really baed or you don't even know what you don't even know. PotD-stats are "reasonable stats" i.e. balanced for the system, while "normal stats" leaves quite a gap to exploit for the player.

I'm betting on the latter since your statement that stat-increases is all there is is false.
 

FreeKaner

Prophet of the Dumpsterfire
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Difficulty modes in Pillars don't touch enemy stats. Hard replaces some creatures with stronger versions and adds more on top of that. Path of the Damned is the one that inflates their stats, and story time does the opposite, increasing your stats.
What the fuck - does PotD change the enemy base stats or not.

I don't care about story time/hard mode. I just want to know if PotD level scales enemies or artificially gives them free stat budget.

It's more like rest of the difficulties operate on a reduced statline for enemies. POTD is when a similarly equipped enemy will have closer defences and accuracy to yours. However not even that considering you can get 145+ defences and only dragons and such will ever reach that.

It's just stat bloat no new enemies behavior or any additional content, this is the worst kind of higher difficulty that just waste your time with sponge enemies.

No? Higher difficulties adds more and more type of enemies to encounters. That's actual difficulty. POTD just does the final retouche of actually giving them competent stats. There is no bloat, the enemies don't significantly exceed your own party's stat at all. You can have Eder and Pallegina vastly exceeding most enemies defences without much effort and if you do make some effort they'll have as much defences as the dragons on POTD.

I speak against stat bloat frequently but there is none in PoE1 whatsoever. It also allows the game systems to work properly because the stat differences become normalized enough that you want to cast debuffs targeting enemy's lowest stats first, rather than blanket nuking everything. Even then a Wizard with 190+ deflection can solo encounters with Fetid Caress into Gaze of Adragan into Shadowflame.
 

wishbonetail

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Which difficulty would you recommend for a first play-through?

Depends on your own level skill. If you're really bad at games and don't care to understand them, easy/story-time. If you have the level of skill of the average Obsidian designer and kinda/sorta have an understanding of RPGs, normal. If you're like me and have a good understanding of RPGs but can't be bothered to put in the effort to master systems, hard. If you powerbuild and powergame everything and can't not play this way, damned path.
I finished everything this game has to offer with full party on PotD and I didn't care to understand the systems. Only solo runs on highest difficulty can bring you enlightement and true undestanding of the game mechanics.
 

FreeKaner

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This is how I feel playing what's meant to be a party RPG solo, regardless of mechanic knowledge required to pull it off:

825a41151c5098d49361916e2d65b8fa3a86ab6dba3663dd8a4d52fb435eca30-1.jpg
 

Grunker

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Which difficulty would you recommend for a first play-through?

Depends on your own level skill. If you're really bad at games and don't care to understand them, easy/story-time. If you have the level of skill of the average Obsidian designer and kinda/sorta have an understanding of RPGs, normal. If you're like me and have a good understanding of RPGs but can't be bothered to put in the effort to master systems, hard. If you powerbuild and powergame everything and can't not play this way, damned path.

That's hilariously wrong for someone who's followed this game as much as you. I intentionally never powerbuild AND I never bring a priest or use scrolls, yet I've beat everything on PotD. Hell on my first PotD run I didn't even really understand the underlying system mechanics (that playthrough was kindda painful in some spots though).
 

plem

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PoE has a mitigating feature for its easy difficulty in the form of the suboptimal companions. priests may have super OP buffs, but with Durance's low dex you'll only be casting one or two per encounter. Pallegina's low int and might undermines the paladin's best features like auras, flames and healing. and so on.
 

Pink Eye

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I'm very into cock and ball torture
Am I the only going "u wot m8" that someone would find PoE the pinnacle of wonderful RTwP combat yet finds Deadfire completely uinteresting to the point they won't play it?
What? I'm going to assume this is directed to my prior comments. Otherwise, I never said the game is "uninteresting" I specifically said I have no interest in playing it. That doesn't mean the game's bad or anything. You're just looking too much into it. I have countless games that I'd like to play. Deadfire is currently very low on that list. Besides. At the moment I'm currently obsessing over Colony Ship. Such obsessions can last several years or months at a time.
 

Roguey

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That's hilariously wrong for someone who's followed this game as much as you. I intentionally never powerbuild AND I never bring a priest or use scrolls, yet I've beat everything on PotD. Hell on my first PotD run I didn't even really understand the underlying system mechanics (that playthrough was kindda painful in some spots though).

Perhaps I should have said powerbuild *or* powergame. Regardless, it requires a lot of comprehension and understanding (strong tactics can compensate for a weak build and vice versa as it is with most RPGs). I thought hard mode was difficult enough and had no desire to go even higher. According to Josh Sawyer himself, most of the designers responsible for creating the content couldn't even go higher than normal.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=13#post439744778
Sawyer said:
I'm not sure what you're expecting. Individual creatures are tuned around the idea that their level is "worth" an equivalent PC level for a challenging Normal encounter. E.g., a party of five 5th level characters should be reasonably challenged (but ultimately win out) against a party of five 5th level monsters. That's one of the most straightforward ways we can establish a baseline of equivalency for what a creature's level means. On Hard difficulty, the party should be facing superior numbers in terms of overall levels in one of three ways a) more creatures of the same level b) the same number of creatures but some are higher level or c) fewer creatures who are mostly/all higher level. Whether a) b) or c) are used depends a great deal on the individual level and creatures that make sense there. We can't flood a map with creatures if it's cramped. We can't use a higher level companion creature if the jump in levels is too severe (e.g. Wood, Stone, and Adra Beetles all span several levels).

I can personally test things on Hard, as can Bobby and a few other folks, but most of the other devs cannot. Or rather, they wouldn't really get anywhere. If I listened to them for tuning advice, Hard wouldn't be hard at all.
...
And while I have put about 400+ hours into Hitman: Blood Money and can roll through most levels with any weird goofball strategy (fiber wire every person in the level, shotgun every person in the level without ever being detected by a guard, get Silent Assassin in couple of minutes, etc.) I wouldn't want IO to base their game difficulty on my level of knowledge/familiarity. The first time the vast majority of players run through the IWD or BG games, they tend to take a lot of damage or spend a lot of time using area denial and kiting tactics.
 

Lacrymas

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Pathfinder: Wrath
What they should do is get a person from the community to test things on PotD, like the AoE: DE devs did with their toughest AI.
 

Blutwurstritter

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There is good difficulty and dumb difficulty in RPG combat. Examples of good difficulty: Battle Brothers, Underrail, Age of Decadence. Examples of bad difficulty: PoE/Deadfire, D:OS/2, Witcher 3.

A characteristic of dumb difficulty is that no matter how you set it, it's never fun. Either it's select all-right click, or it requires some kind of cheesing.

Underrail and AoD are all cheese.

PoE and Dumpsterfire are 0% cheese.

Just like dreaming about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time.
 

Grunker

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That's hilariously wrong for someone who's followed this game as much as you. I intentionally never powerbuild AND I never bring a priest or use scrolls, yet I've beat everything on PotD. Hell on my first PotD run I didn't even really understand the underlying system mechanics (that playthrough was kindda painful in some spots though).

Perhaps I should have said powerbuild *or* powergame. Regardless, it requires a lot of comprehension and understanding (strong tactics can compensate for a weak build and vice versa as it is with most RPGs). I thought hard mode was difficult enough and had no desire to go even higher. According to Josh Sawyer himself, most of the designers responsible for creating the content couldn't even go higher than normal.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=13#post439744778
Sawyer said:
I'm not sure what you're expecting. Individual creatures are tuned around the idea that their level is "worth" an equivalent PC level for a challenging Normal encounter. E.g., a party of five 5th level characters should be reasonably challenged (but ultimately win out) against a party of five 5th level monsters. That's one of the most straightforward ways we can establish a baseline of equivalency for what a creature's level means. On Hard difficulty, the party should be facing superior numbers in terms of overall levels in one of three ways a) more creatures of the same level b) the same number of creatures but some are higher level or c) fewer creatures who are mostly/all higher level. Whether a) b) or c) are used depends a great deal on the individual level and creatures that make sense there. We can't flood a map with creatures if it's cramped. We can't use a higher level companion creature if the jump in levels is too severe (e.g. Wood, Stone, and Adra Beetles all span several levels).

I can personally test things on Hard, as can Bobby and a few other folks, but most of the other devs cannot. Or rather, they wouldn't really get anywhere. If I listened to them for tuning advice, Hard wouldn't be hard at all.
...
And while I have put about 400+ hours into Hitman: Blood Money and can roll through most levels with any weird goofball strategy (fiber wire every person in the level, shotgun every person in the level without ever being detected by a guard, get Silent Assassin in couple of minutes, etc.) I wouldn't want IO to base their game difficulty on my level of knowledge/familiarity. The first time the vast majority of players run through the IWD or BG games, they tend to take a lot of damage or spend a lot of time using area denial and kiting tactics.

You can win normal after level 5 by autoattacking with default companion builds
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
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pomenitul

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By contrast, this is yet another way in which Josh is closer to the Codex than the Codex would like to admit. Mein bester Feind is what his detractors secretly call him in their restless sleep.
 

Lacrymas

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Pathfinder: Wrath
Josh has the right ideas, he just doesn't know how to implement them or how to fix the genre's issues he recognizes. QED - damage reduction and penetration. He was right that damage reduction had multiple issues, but the solution he came up with (penetration) was worse.
 

mediocrepoet

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Codex 2012 Codex+ Now Streaming! MCA Project: Eternity Divinity: Original Sin 2
At the moment I'm currently obsessing over Colony Ship. Such obsessions can last several years or months at a time.

I feel this. I have ridiculous hours in both Pathfinder games, including before ever beating them, just from tooling around and my time in Wrath is almost identical to my time in PoE despite never coming anywhere near finishing it (or even half waying it) while I finished PoE multiple times and had many partial playthroughs.
 

vortex

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We all know. In order Pillars3 to succeed, Sawyer needs to adopt Swen's victorious white knight mentality and put on hardcore armor. There is no time to falter.

sw-en.jpg
:whiteknight:
 

TedNugent

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Admittedly, even as (apparently deliberately) hamfisted as Blizzard is with class tuning, it is still extraordinary that they continually make world class raid encounters that puzzle some of the top guilds in the world expansion after expansion when it is doubtful most of the developers could down a current raid tier on heroic mode.

For me, I struggle with the idea of adding +15 Accu/Defl to enemies when this is the equivalent of 5 fucking levels worth of the same. It is also asinine if it is only deflection, as most spells completely bypass this by targeting will/fort/reflex.

As far as spell bloat, the article I was linked on gamefaqs essentially said there are spells that mobs will not use on hard and lower.....wow, seems like two problems that could be fixed by A) tuning levels of mobs based on the xp pool up to that point and B) having each mob use all the correct spells for said levels.

The one thing that I have been consistently impressed by is the AI's abilities to both spot and obsessively track Squishies unless (typically) denied by engagement. In every other regard I suspect the AI is lacking, especially considering the atrocious pathing and friendly AI's apparent obliviousness to damage/ailment immunities. Nothing like watching Durance emergency cast holy radiance because a character is low on health, not endurance.

If adding +15 accuracy/+15 deflection was all it took to make some encounters challenging, they simply aren't the appropriate level relative to the PC.

Honestly, I really do wonder about progression systems. With level scaling, the entire concept is essentially negated. Isn't the entire point of leveling mechanics to have some fights that are easy (you out-level them) and some fights that are beyond the pale until you catch up with them in power level?
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
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Pathfinder: Wrath
It's +15 accuracy and all defenses and +25% endurance. The mobs need these stat boosts in order for the system to make sense. You are essentially playing a different game when below PotD.
 
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