Eternity Does Pillars of Eternity have feature parity with Baldur's Gate?

[MjKorz]

So far the only thing I'm getting is the opportunity to confirm what I already knew: the hardest complainers are always the filtered shitters.

 

[BING XI LAO]

I just remembered something else cool about pillars combat from when I played it 7 years ago
My druid had a persistent lightning spell up, an enemy confused him, and that made the spell start hitting people indiscriminately, including the party
I think pillars combat is actually good.

 

[Shaki]

Did people really dislike Pillars for its combat? I still remember that cool linear heal/damage spell priests get despite never replaying.
Ninagauth shadowflame was cool too. And the druid lightning spells.

Did often end up feeling like standing in a "buff/debuff puddle", but surely the real problem with both games was the notD&D unoriginal generic setting?

They literally reimagined everything and built a whoile detailed fantasy world from the ground up, only to make it generic. AND they put gods at the heart of the story and setting while having a full retard fedora-tipper attitude to them. I was an atheist back when I played these games and even then I found that retarded. At the end of the day the world was uncool and not immersive, especially the hipster undertones of game 2. If the writing was good I would replay those games and enjoy the combat.

Deadfire has decent combat if you go PotD + turn based + the mod halving the hp of everything in the game, your party included.

RTwP was dogshit in both PoEs, mainly because everything comes down to action/attack speed. You literally just stack it into oblivion on martials, then watch the game play itself. Also first PoE in addition had extremely simplistic classes and worst itemization of all time, which added even further to the impression of the game playing itself, and giving 0 choices and agency to the player when it came to character building and combat.

Deadfire improved it, with itemization being actually pretty damn good, and adding multiclassing which finally let you actually have some choices when building your chars, but it didn't help a lot with overall combat, due to action speed still being the only thing that mattered in the end. Turn based fixes that by making action speed worthless and completely flipping the balance, making much more builds and playstyles viable, but unfortunately it has the problem of everything being a bullet sponge, since base game is build around characters swinging 9000 times a second, and turn based only allows 1 attack/action per turn, while not adjusting hp values at all - This is why you need half hp mod. Overall, with this setup, Deadfire works actually pretty well as a purely exploration + combat game.

 

[MjKorz]

mainly because everything comes down to action/attack speed

No, no it doesn't. Might is extremely important when you're dealing with anything that has limited resources, be it spells or martial abilities. For example, the Paladin has abilities Flames of Devotion and Sacred Immolation which work best at high Might and Sacred Immolation is extremely powerful in PoE1. I did my The Ultimate as a mediocre dexterity, high might Paladin with Sacred Immolation burning entire hordes of enemies per encounter. However, dexterity is still very powerful due to being a damage multiplicator, but it's not all-powerful.

the mod halving the hp of everything in the game

There's a name for that: it's called cheating.

 

[Just Locus]

superior, tactically challenging encounter design

I enjoy PoE 1 but I wouldn't say encounter design is its forte, it doesn't give you XP for killing enemy types past a certain point, yet many locations are riddled with them, which just feels redundant.

I honestly think PoE's combat excels on harder difficulties, You constantly have to check the bestiary to see what kind of defenses and abilities they use and find skills that counter those, saving up camping gear is good as it gives you bonuses that are more important in combat, optimizing stats, characters with high deflection and resolve need to be on the front line constantly.

My main issue with combat in PoE is that the game basically plays itself, you can run from encounters easily, and with it being RTwP (with no option to make it turn-based like Owlcat's games) You don't really have to focus on positioning or anything, just surround your enemies and 9 times out of 10, your party will come out on top, the 1 time is just an uncommon inconvenience, but I found the combat to be much more enjoyable on Path of the Damned or preferably on hard (POTD just increases enemies stats which I always hated in games' difficulties).

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

When all of the above is taken into consideration, it is very clear that the PoE system is more intuitive and less abstract.

Sorry skipping all the details of armor penetration, but POE isn't really more intuitive. Sure you might consider it a problem if the game does away with softening the blows but it doesn't make the game less intuitive. A newbie player still knows that they need a heavier armor for more protection, and that unarmored targets are vulnerable. Lack of DR is an acceptable sacrifice when it comes to making a combat flow more smoothly. A lot of realistic rules are sacrificed in all cases. A newbie wouldn't be confused by lack of of DR since an intuitive choice (get heavier armor for more protection) is still reflected in game. It would only get unituitive if lighter armors offered more protection, or just as much.

Yet the AC system in AD&D does not simply represent the parrying of blows either with blade/shield or armor surfaces, it also represents complete dodging of blows. If one cannot connect with a blow, then the strength of the blow does not matter. An example where strength-based accuracy makes no sense is when a DEX-based dodge tank has to defend himself against a STR-based attacker.

A game assumes that a character isn't just dodging the blows, but also has to parry and block some. And parrying blows of stronger characters is just harder to do.

It does, though. Games like BG specifically operate on a scale of single strikes which are even animated as single strikes.

No it doesn't. It says so in the manual (AD&D 2dn edition).

"When making an attack, a character is likely to close with his opponent, circle for an opening, feint here, jab there, block a thrust, leap back, and perhaps finally make a telling blow. A spellcaster may fumble for his components, dodge an attacker, mentally review the steps of the spell, intone the spell, and then move to safety when it is all done. It has already been shown what drinking a potion might entail. All of these things might happen in a bit less than a minute or a bit more, but the standard is one minute and one action to the round."

What is displayed on the screen in an RPG game is also an abstraction that helps player communicate what is going on in the game. I mean when you play any RPG and you see character take mortal blows every turn you don't simply assume that since that is what the game is showing you it means that your PC is able irl to simply get pierced in the heart by the sword multiple times and still stand? Game shows him getting hit, but these aren't mortal wounds he's getting.

A fighter swinging his sword at an opponent needs to be focused as well. Moreover, it doesn't even matter if the fighter needs to be focused or not, a sufficient application of force should be able to stop the fighter in his tracks regardless of his focus. AD&D does not attempt to simulate such behavior and treats every fighter as an immovable object, PoE does. Again, PoE wins in terms of intuitiveness and having a lesser degree of abstraction.

A fighter swings his sword multiple times in a melee round which is why it cannot be interrupted by attacking first. Casting a spell can take multiple rounds and it would just be silly for a wizard to get hammered for 3 rounds and still cast a spell without problems. An event where a character is so skilled he can strike an opponent in a way it prevents him from making an attack is abstracted as winning an initative and bringing your foe to 0 HP in that case. In later editions disarming strikes cover that.

Interrupting a melee strike isn't really more intuitive because this is something that really doesn't happen in real life or in literature. You don't see stories about fighter who just "interrupted" their opponents attacks, making them unable to take a swing the entire fight. Adding interrupts to attacks simply adds another gamey situation, that isn't really abstracting anything that should be happening in game world. In fact it would be baffling for a nowbie to find out that his guy cannot attack once in 5 minutes because he just gets interrupted.

No, it doesn't. AC is a deeply flawed system for the reasons explained and is completely unintuitive in terms of real-life weapon behavior, because real penetration of armor is a non-binary affair: after-barrier performance matters.

D&D and most RPGs combat is on higher level of abstraction and doesn't cover such miniscule details. There's nothing counter-intuitive about lack of after barrier performance. In fact if you cover "after-barrier performance" you should also cover armour damage and fatigue.

No, the "phantasy world" is not being "bent", because the setting itself provides the explanation! The thing that is being bent are player prejudices and expectations, as they are already accustomed to certain settings and do not wish to recognize the rules of the new setting, even though those rules are clearly stated.

It only provides an explanation because it was forced to do so to accomodate the rules. Aumaua are big and tough which is why they get +2 might, makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that their posture is linked to their magic power as well. Gounteld of ogre might grants you +2 might. Are ogres really such spiritually developed creatures? They must be because of the ruleset. That means that logically in this world hitting the gym makes you develop your spirituality further, which doesn't really make any sense. It only works because the copyright holder said so. And he could just as well link charisma and HP and just say that joyful characters laugh in the face of death, which is why they're so hard to kill.

Regarding the player prejudices. When making a fantasy game ruleset that is 99% based on existing fantasy tropes (down to just copy-pasting majorit of the classes from D&D 3rd edition) people won't like when their favorite archetypes aren't supported. For over 50 years wizards were scrawny dudes, relying on their intelligence instead of might. If the game doesn't really accomodate this archetype why include the class in the first page? If Obsidian didn't want for people to come into their game with their own set of expectations they shouldn't have copied so much from D&D.

 

[MjKorz]

My main issue with combat in PoE is that the game basically plays itself

It plays itself, if you want it to play itself. If you make a martial-focused party and just pump dexterity while ignoring active class abilities, then sure, you'll do well. If you make a well balanced party (which will end up no less efficient in combat) with a plethora of spells and active martial abilities, you will have to tightly control your party members and leave virtually nothing to AI.

You don't really have to focus on positioning or anything, just surround your enemies

I only ever played on PotD which introduces extra enemies so I don't know the encounter compositions on lower difficulties, but on PotD there were many an encounter where your party gets outnumbered and you have to properly position your tanks (as in plural, because 1 is not enough) in order to engage all the enemies so any form of surrounding requires careful positioning. There are also plenty of encounters with teleporting enemies like ghosts who will simply swoop in on your backline, if you don't form a tight formation that bodyblocks your squishies.

And yes, PoE games are meant to be played on PotD simply because that is the difficulty where you get full encounters in terms of enemy numbers.

 

[Just Locus]

Yeah as I said, I think PoE's combat excels in higher difficulties, but most people on their first playthrough will play on Normal, which is arguably the worst way to play the game because it only reinforces what Pillars is arguably best at, being bland.

 

[Shaki]

the mod halving the hp of everything in the game

There's a name for that: it's called cheating.

The mod actually makes the game much harder, due to also cutting your own party HP in half, not that it would matter in the RTwP autobattler mode where everything explodes in 0,5 sec anyway to the max speed builds.

In TB tho, higher lethality straight up makes combat much harder, while also making it less boring, + it brings back dexterity from becoming useless, to being viable, since initiative starts mattering - normally you can easily survive TB enemy going first since your chars also have bloated HP, so dex became a pure dump stat, but with the mod, letting the full enemy group alpha strike you usually ends up with most of your party being dead before you can even act.

For me, cheating is "playing" the zoomer autobattler like you do, pretty sure even a monkey could finish PotD PoE 1&2 that way, since they literally play themselves in RTwP mode.

 

[MjKorz]

*snip*

Didn't read. All I see is a cheating shitter who never beat the game making excuses.

 

[Fedora Master]

*snip*

Didn't read. All I see is a cheating shitter who never beat the game making excuses.

Whose alt are you anyway

 

[MjKorz]

Whose alt are you anyway

Not an alt, but I am familiar with the dex since before 2011.

 

[Just Locus]

Y'know plugging your ears and yelling "LALALA" won't convince anyone of anything besides your immaturity?

 

[MjKorz]

I don't listen to cheating retards, they're not even playing the same game.

EDIT: Also, what he said is not even true. Alpha striking with all of your powerful resource limited abilities and spells vs half HP enemies just makes the game easier, if you know what you're doing.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Bugmaker right now has more active players than Pillows 1 and 2 combined. Wrath has 4 TIMES the players as Pillows 1 and 2 combined.

 

[Roguey]

Eh, could be better, could be a lot worse.

Could be Wasteland 2 https://steamdb.info/app/404730/charts/ https://steamdb.info/app/240760/charts/
Or Tides of Numenera https://steamdb.info/app/272270/charts/
Or the Shadowrun trilogy https://steamdb.info/app/234650/charts/ https://steamdb.info/app/300550/charts/ https://steamdb.info/app/346940/charts/

Of course DOS was the winner of the Kickstarter renaissance, Swen with his co-op and barrels https://steamdb.info/app/373420/charts/

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Oh shit, Choplifter HD has 1 person playing.

WHO IS IT?! WHO ARE YOU BRO?

 

[luj1]

Eh, could be better, could be a lot worse.

Could be Wasteland 2 https://steamdb.info/app/404730/charts/ https://steamdb.info/app/240760/charts/
Or Tides of Numenera https://steamdb.info/app/272270/charts/
Or the Shadowrun trilogy https://steamdb.info/app/234650/charts/ https://steamdb.info/app/300550/charts/ https://steamdb.info/app/346940/charts/

Of course DOS was the winner of the Kickstarter renaissance, Swen with his co-op and barrels https://steamdb.info/app/373420/charts/

Shadowrun games and Wasteland 2 are better than Pillars though. Meanwhile Tides of Numenera is perhaps the only KS-era CRPG that managed to somehow be worse than Pillars. Quite an accomplishment, not going to lie.

 

[Roguey]

Shadowrun games and Wasteland 2 are better than Pillars though. Meanwhile Tides of Numenera is perhaps the only KS-era CRPG that's worse than Pillars.

Despite how you feel, a decade later, more people are playing Pillars on a daily basis.

 

[Cryomancer]

They were clear it was a new system.

Josh Sawyer is a huge fan of D&D 4e's

http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/641429588 I'm currently in a 4th Edition D&D campaign. I've been playing D&D in one form or another since about 5th grade, starting with the red book Basic Set. Of the D&D editions, I like 4th the best so far, but I haven't done any high level play.

Thanks for explaining why Pillows sucks.

BTW :

 

[luj1]

Shadowrun games and Wasteland 2 are better than Pillars though. Meanwhile Tides of Numenera is perhaps the only KS-era CRPG that's worse than Pillars.

Despite how you feel, a decade later, more people are playing Pillars on a daily basis.

Millions of people are playing Call of Duty, Skyrim or some other shite. That doesn't mean it's actually good though. But the Codex knows, that's why Pillars is ranked #63 here.

 

[Beans00]

I played pillars on normal difficulty, beat it in 25 hours

normal difficulty

Sorry to inform you, but you didn't beat the game. In fact, you didn't even sniff the game since you played on anything but PotD - the difficulty the game was meant to be played on with everything else being journalist mode. Your case is that of a typical shitter who got filtered and can't stop seething about it. It's OK, you have a lot of company.

If games are good I will replay them on harder difficulty. Pillars was 1 and done. If I could go back I would have beaten it on easy in 15 hours.

 

[MjKorz]

Sure you might consider it a problem if the game does away with softening the blows but it doesn't make the game less intuitive.

It does, armor reducing the damage of a penetrating blow is a perfectly intuitive concept. If you discount this concept, you end up with full plate armor softening a penetrating blow just as well as robes (i.e. not softening at all) which is unintuitive nonsense.

A newbie player still knows that they need a heavier armor for more protection, and that unarmored targets are vulnerable.

Except unarmored targets are not necessarily vulnerable in DnD: a pajama tank can be harder to hit than a full-plate wearing warrior.

Lack of DR is an acceptable sacrifice when it comes to making a combat flow more smoothly. A lot of realistic rules are sacrificed in all cases.

The argument is about which system is more intuitive and less abstract. Armor not having DR increases the degree of abstraction and reduces the degree of intuitiveness. That's how things work in reality and that's how anyone at least somewhat familiar with physics, be it in theoretical or hands-on practical capacity, expects things to work.

It would only get unituitive if lighter armors offered more protection, or just as much.

Which can absolutely happen in DnD and does not happen in PoE, because the protection offered by armors in PoE is tied to DR instead of Deflection - PoE's analogue of AC.

A game assumes that a character isn't just dodging the blows, but also has to parry and block some.

The game assumes that the character can do both or either, which means that he doesn't necessarily have to parry or block anything and can just dodge. You can literally break down AC into components: dexterity bonus, dodge, natural, armor, shield, deflection, etc. You can create a character that will not have any armor, shield or deflection AC components, a character who is literally fighting bare-handed without even being some kind of monk with magically enhanced arms, a character who relies purely on dodging blows based on his AC breakdown, and yet a strength-based attacker will have his to-hit bonus derived from strength against such a target - something that makes absolutely no sense. In PoE, there is no such problem, because Accuracy that is not boosted by magical equipment is not derived from might, but from training (class, abilities, talents, level) as well as Perception - an approach that is both logical and intuitive.

No it doesn't. It says so in the manual (AD&D 2dn edition).

"When making an attack, a character is likely to close with his opponent, circle for an opening, feint here, jab there, block a thrust, leap back, and perhaps finally make a telling blow. A spellcaster may fumble for his components, dodge an attacker, mentally review the steps of the spell, intone the spell, and then move to safety when it is all done. It has already been shown what drinking a potion might entail. All of these things might happen in a bit less than a minute or a bit more, but the standard is one minute and one action to the round."

What is displayed on the screen in an RPG game is also an abstraction that helps player communicate what is going on in the game. I mean when you play any RPG and you see character take mortal blows every turn you don't simply assume that since that is what the game is showing you it means that your PC is able irl to simply get pierced in the heart by the sword multiple times and still stand? Game shows him getting hit, but these aren't mortal wounds he's getting.

This only strengthens my argument: actions not being depicted as 1:1 reduce intuitiveness (a player would expect for things to happen the way he sees them) and increase the degree of abstraction (an animated blow simply denotes a whole set of actions the player cannot see). There is no such problem in PoE: an animation of a blow is just that - a single blow.

Reminder: we are not talking about the mere presence of abstraction in either ruleset, because both rulesets have nothing to do with simulation, we are comparing the degree of abstraction present in both systems.

An event where a character is so skilled he can strike an opponent in a way it prevents him from making an attack is abstracted as winning an initative and bringing your foe to 0 HP in that case. In later editions disarming strikes cover that.

No, that is nonsense, you do not need to kill your opponent to interrupt them. In fact, you don't even need to damage them: a simple shove of sufficient strength can interrupt a sword swing, throwing the target off balance and even proning them. PoE accounts for such a realistic outcome, DnD does not.

In later editions disarming strikes cover that.

Disarm, Trip and other disabling martial maneuvers are not an equivalent to interrupts, because any blow should be able to interrupt, not just specialized disabling maneuvers which are also present in PoE.

Interrupting a melee strike isn't really more intuitive because this is something that really doesn't happen in real life or in literature. You don't see stories about fighter who just "interrupted" their opponents attacks, making them unable to take a swing the entire fight. Adding interrupts to attacks simply adds another gamey situation, that isn't really abstracting anything that should be happening in game world. In fact it would be baffling for a nowbie to find out that his guy cannot attack once in 5 minutes because he just gets interrupted.

Nonsense, interrupts are both representative of real combat and are an intuitive mechanic. I already provided an example: a swordsman being shoved mid swing, losing his balance and stumbling or even falling prone (prone as a possible effect of interrupts was added in Deadfire). Or a swordsman being hit mid-swing by a mace straight to the head. Or a swordsman being hit to the armored chest with a polearm and being literally pushed back by a non-penetrating blow. The examples one can envision are endless. A competent spearman or halberdier can literally shut down an opponent's offense by keeping them unable to attack by threat alone, not to mention by actual blows. There is nothing "gamey" about interrupts, they represent the reality of combat. Not having this mechanic increases the degree of abstraction and reduces intuitiveness of the system. PoE wins again.

D&D and most RPGs combat is on higher level of abstraction and doesn't cover such miniscule details. There's nothing counter-intuitive about lack of after barrier performance. In fact if you cover "after-barrier performance" you should also cover armour damage and fatigue.

But PoE does cover such details, because PoE is not DnD. Moreover, plenty of other RPG systems cover after-barrier performance. One of my favorites is Mordheim, a system that is even more advanced than PoE with even more fragmentation of defense into separate layers and is one of the few TB systems that actually approaches something at least somewhat similar to simulation of actual combat:

Note the separation of physical defensive layers: Dodge, Parry (includes blocking with a shield), Melee resistance (represents deflecting properties of the target that passively reduce attacker's chance to hit without the defender needing to block or parry). And of course, any blow that manages to penetrate defenses and inflicts damage has to contend with armor absorption which represents the after-barrier performance of the blow:

Another example of a game system that will include similar depth (including after-barrier performance) is the upcoming Swordhaven: Iron Conspiracy. Or we can also remember Age of Decadence. Or even Fallout 1. Truth is: plenty of RPG systems include mechanics to account for after-barrier performance of the penetrating object and/or blunt force trauma, because it is, in fact, absolutely intuitive.

Not having a representation of after-barrier performance is absolutely unintuitive for reasons I already described: an object that penetrates armor will not deliver equivalent tissue penetration and/or blunt force trauma compared to the case of an unarmored target. This is simple, observable real life behavior that is completely intuitive.

Armor damage and fatigue are indeed something that can be added to improve the depth of a combat system and reduce the level of abstraction, but remember: we are merely comparing the degrees of intuitiveness and abstraction in two different systems. PoE not having such mechanics does not make it worse relative to DnD, because DnD doesn't have these mechanics either. Note that in this case I mean fatigue and armor damage from mere fighting and not from supernatural means like spells - something that both systems actually have.

It only provides an explanation because it was forced to do so to accomodate the rules. Aumaua are big and tough which is why they get +2 might, makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that their posture is linked to their magic power as well. Gounteld of ogre might grants you +2 might. Are ogres really such spiritually developed creatures? They must be because of the ruleset. That means that logically in this world hitting the gym makes you develop your spirituality further, which doesn't really make any sense. It only works because the copyright holder said so. And he could just as well link charisma and HP and just say that joyful characters laugh in the face of death, which is why they're so hard to kill.

Regarding the player prejudices. When making a fantasy game ruleset that is 99% based on existing fantasy tropes (down to just copy-pasting majorit of the classes from D&D 3rd edition) people won't like when their favorite archetypes aren't supported. For over 50 years wizards were scrawny dudes, relying on their intelligence instead of might. If the game doesn't really accomodate this archetype why include the class in the first page? If Obsidian didn't want for people to come into their game with their own set of expectations they shouldn't have copied so much from D&D.

No, it provides an explanation, because that's how the system is designed to work in order to meet certain goals. There is nothing preventing Aumaua or Ogres from casting magic which they in fact do in the game.

Hitting the gym helps you cast stronger spells, because might is a cumulative attributive that includes both physical and spiritual strength and spell damage scales from this cumulative attribute, meaning it scales from both. Thus, by increasing your physical strength you increase your Might, but nothing in the game states that you are increasing your spiritual strength by hitting the gym - that is your fallacy.

And it doesn't matter what people like and what prejudices they have: no system is obligated to bend over to whatever tropes and cliches people have in their heads. If people don't want to fucking read the rules and lore, discard their prejudices and perceive the system the way it was meant to be perceived instead of the way they would want it to be, then those people are fucking morons.

 

[Beans00]

So far the only thing I'm getting is the opportunity to confirm what I already knew: the hardest complainers are always the filtered shitters.

Nobody plays on hardest difficulty first try except for autistic people. Why would I play on a difficulty that bloats HP and makes a bad 25 hour game turn into 40h?


I've beaten bg1/2 on the hardest difficulty(after playing them on core rules ect) because I enjoyed those games and wanted an additional challenge.


Come to think about it, I also beat wasteland 2 on supreme jerk lol(2 playthroughs, 1 normal one hardest). Pillars was just too trash for me to play again.

 

[Cryomancer]

If games are good I will replay them on harder difficulty. Pillars was 1 and done. If I could go back I would have beaten it on easy in 15 hours.

YES!!! I've soloed BG2:EE in Legacy of Bhaal with a pure RP char > https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/bg2-ee-legacy-of-bhaal-run-as-a-solo-necromancer.139827/

Re played BG2 original and EE with multiple difficulty mods and new class mods.

Have zero desire in re playing Pillows of 4e.

For me, is not a matter of how hard or easy is, is just that when game mechanics and lore become too disconect, the game fells more like a "chore".

filtered shitters.

If I want I probably can beat it in the hardest difficulty but why if I'm getting no fun playing it?

I have over 400 games in steam + gog. Why should I play a game that I don't like?