Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

[Jedi Master Radek]

My point was that the typical "theres an encounter ahead -> throw on all the buffs you got -> enter encounter & win much easier" makes buffing before encounters pretty much mandatory.
Maybe you won't perish without (sorry if my hyperbole hurt your fanboy feelings), but if you are not doing it you are just gimping yourself.
I'm specifically talking about the inane +1/+2 to "everything" buffs and "always got to put this on" buffs here, not the ones meant to counter certain abilities.

The same could be said about debuffs or offensive skills.

 

[the mole]

throughout the entirety of poe1 on a replay on veteran I almost exclusively only micromanaged my priest, I only micromanaged my paladin to cast spells as I needed them because my party usually didn't need the help and because the ai management for paladin doesn't autocast all the spells you have to take control to cast some that aren't utilized by the specific ai scripts, maybe on potd I'd need a bit more management with the paladin

I didn't even use a wizard because I wanted to reduce micro as I just tend to favor passive bonuses over spell spamming and I think wizards are overated, no cipher either

everything else was set up to use abilities on auto ai, which was knockdown on my fighter, and wounding shot on my ranger, chanter auto summons

debunked

begone you senile old man

my main character was a barbarian who just stood in the backline and chunked people with a 2 handed spear

literally no micro required throughout the entire game, I specifically built him with passives in mind and auto attacking and he did 10 fold the damage that my other characters did

 

[the mole]

boomers played the game for 3 minutes and got mad

fact check: true

 

[the mole]

and of course a fucking ROGUE will have active abilities to take advantage of, because you aren't supposed to be a frontline fighter, you're supposed to flank and hit people when they're weak with your stab abilities, you know microing, I don't know what games you people play but yes a rogue require a bit of micro makes sense, although that could also be an auto attacker depending on what you want

 

[Cryomancer]

boomers played the game for 3 minutes and got mad

Wrong.

The reason which I only got 32% archivements, is that I become so bored and stop playing after some time... But as you can see, 711 hours on kingmaker, 99 on Pillars and 8 on dos2.

 

[the mole]

boomers played the game for 3 minutes and got mad

Wrong.

The reason which I only got 32% archivements, is that I become so bored and stop playing after some time... But as you can see, 711 hours on kingmaker, 99 on Pillars and 8 on dos2.

I'm guessing you rate dos2 over pillars

 

[Cryomancer]

boomers played the game for 3 minutes and got mad

Wrong.

The reason which I only got 32% archivements, is that I become so bored and stop playing after some time... But as you can see, 711 hours on kingmaker, 99 on Pillars and 8 on dos2.

I'm guessing you rate dos2 over pillars

Nope. Never. DOS2 is extremely worse than pillars.

IMO : Pathfinder Kingmaker > Pillars > DOS2.

 

[thesheeep]

The same could be said about debuffs or offensive skills.

Nope. Because those are utilized during combat, not in a mantra-like style beforehand when they are not competing for actions/resources/etc.
If you do something like an automatism before combat, why not make it automatic to begin with and just have an aura?
Or, even better, nothing at all that just blanket pumps your stats and instead have more interesting combat spells.

 

[Desiderius]

When did playing the fucking game become “micro”. If you don’t want to control your toons what are you even doing? Just watch Twitch or some shit.

As for having to throw on buffs for every fight, you don’t if you don’t play classes that rely on them, and even there most of the good ones are long-lasting. There’s all kinds of trade-offs you’re ignoring/assuming away.

No brainer indeed.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Yeah, I think that's one of the less intuitive reasons that BG's gameplay flowed so much better: despite having up to a 6-man party, you only focused your attention on a couple for any given encounter. Some classes had dramatically fewer gameplay features than others, but this made controlling a RTwP party a much more balanced gameplay experience.

In my opinion the true attraction of the IE games' combat was the dazzling effect of watching the little characters swing at each other and tremble in fear or in anticipation of whether they will miss or hit whether it was an enemy or a party member respectively. It was a bit like watching a boxing match where you've bet money. The high was there, regardless of the fact that you've made a savegame just before the combat, the emotional reaction was still getting provoked. This was what made non-caster NPCs in my party more fun to "play" than caster NPCs.

PoE/Deadfire's combat is a qualitatively different experience - it's more similar to a puzzle where you have to determine which defenses to target and which enemies to prioritize. You spend your paused time decyphering the situation and deciding which thread to pick up in order to untangle the knot.

And on a related topic, I also think 2E's differring level tresholds yielded better progression pacing in aggregate, since every once in a while you'd level up a character or two and then get back to it. In most newer 3E+ games and PoE, you typically go much longer without looking at a char sheet, and then you get levelling fatigue when you gotta up the whole party in one go. A good example to the opposite is ToEE, where implementing the ruleset's death and crafting features breaks the XP lockstep and restores a more balanced progression pacing in the long run.

I agree on the fatigue of having to level up everyone at once, but this is very much avoided if you swap party members often. They gain XP at a different rate while out of the party, so you end up with everyone being a bit apart from each other.

Wrong.

The reason which I only got 32% archivements, is that I become so bored and stop playing after some time... But as you can see, 711 hours on kingmaker, 99 on Pillars and 8 on dos2.

Spoiler

 

[Desiderius]

The same could be said about debuffs or offensive skills.

Nope. Because those are utilized during combat, not in a mantra-like style beforehand when they are not competing for actions/resources/etc.
If you do something like an automatism before combat, why not make it automatic to begin with and just have an aura?
Or, even better, nothing at all that just blanket pumps your stats and instead have more interesting combat spells.

Spell slots aren’t resources? The most scarce resource there is is character slots and if you’re burning one on a buffer you’re giving up a threat.

 

[Desiderius]

I didn’t realize that people played these games without playing the fucking games.

 

[thesheeep]

There’s all kinds of trade-offs you’re ignoring/assuming away.

Cool, name a convincing one. So far, you've failed at that.
Please bear in mind I'm talking about video games here - some of these limitations you have in mind are somewhat more valid in a PnP environment.

Spell slots aren’t resources? The most scarce resource there is is character slots and if you’re burning one on a buffer you’re giving up a threat.

That might be an argument if you couldn't rest at-will (or practically at will by returning to town, etc.), making spell slots effectively unlimited, which is the case in almost all games.
Hell, if you are not a sorcerer (or favored soul-like class) you even have every spell at your disposal after nothing but a long rest to change a slot. Encounters that actually burn through your entire spellbook all at once are... exceedingly rare.

But even if it wasn't so and the game actually made rests rare (more games should do that, btw, for many reasons)...
Unless you are doing a very specific build, generic allround buffs are almost always your best choice, because they are almost always more useful than more situational alternatives.
Having a bless-like pre-combat buff as a cleric or a similarly generic pre-combat buff as a mage is never a bad choice.

Guess that is more or less my problem with these pre-combat buffs like bless - beyond the annoying "should do the pre-battle buff ritual....".
They are too generic, too all-round. Even a fireball can be useless against the right (or, well, wrong) enemies. It's not that rare to have element-resistant enemies.
What's the "counter" to a bless? An enemy that slings non-stop buff-removals? Has that ever happened in a game?

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

That might be an argument if you couldn't rest at-will (or practically at will by returning to town, etc.), making spell slots effectively unlimited, which is the case in almost all games.
Hell, if you are not a sorcerer (or favored soul-like class) you even have every spell at your disposal after nothing but a long rest to change a slot. Encounters that actually burn through your entire spellbook all at once are... exceedingly rare.

But even if it wasn't so and the game actually made rests rare (more games should do that, btw, for many reasons)...

I always do self imposed rest restriction in BG, I go as long as I can without resting. I prefer this to having dev imposed resting restrictions.

What's the "counter" to a bless? An enemy that slings non-stop buff-removals? Has that ever happened in a game?

Many enemies use dispell in BG2.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

The repeated resting sperging and all similar stuff are utter non-arguments. You can break a game if you have autism, who knew. Remove hp in shooters because you can f5+f8 without limits to complete a game without getting hit.

 

[Desiderius]

Time is literally money in P:K. I broke the game using five things:

1) Freebooter’s Bond - one shot partywide pre-buff before every fight

2) Freebooter’s Bane - in combat ability

3) Inspire Courage - in combat ability

4) Good Hope - partywide min-lvl buff

5) Archon’s Aura - AoE min/lvl debuff

I also threw Barkskin and Shield of Faith on some melee but those were marginal over what you could get from equipment.

The above require one to play specific classes. The trade-offs are not getting a pet on Freebooter, not getting fast spell/BAB progression/martial weps on Bard, and having to bring specifically a Cleric.

 

[Tigranes]

When did playing the fucking game become “micro”. If you don’t want to control your toons what are you even doing? Just watch Twitch or some shit.

As for having to throw on buffs for every fight, you don’t if you don’t play classes that rely on them, and even there most of the good ones are long-lasting. There’s all kinds of trade-offs you’re ignoring/assuming away.

No brainer indeed.

A surprising amount of Codexers appeared to have played IE games / NWNs / etc on half-autopilot, delegating half the party to AI.

I can only assume that those people (1) also thought Dungeon Siege was alright, and (2) have no problem with a party of 4 or 5, since they don't even use it all.

 

[almondblight]

I always do self imposed rest restriction in BG, I go as long as I can without resting. I prefer this to having dev imposed resting restrictions.

Yeah, everyone on the Codex claims that, but I'm skeptical that's actually the case. Look at comments like this:

Yep. People say "but you also have trash trivial encounters on BG1/2" But you end that encounter with a single fireball.

You get, what, 3 fireballs per rest at level 10?

Or the complaining about limited rests in PoE:

2. What's the point of limiting the number of camping supplies to 2 in hard mode, exactly? Once I'm out of them (and thanks to trash mobs it does happen fairly often, especially with lenghty dungeons), and my casters are out of their per-rest allowed number of spellcastings - I have to return to some tavern and purchase them, return to where I left and continue. What? It makes no sense logically either: 2 camping supplies can be used by 1 party member (the player for example) as well as by 6. The cost is the same.

Further on you have the argument that mages can't be played as mages if you aren't able to rest spam:

In order to minimize rests you need to refrain yourself from actually using quite a few available classes. If you want to play a mage as a mage, not auto-attacking-with-wand-retard-pseudoarcher-from-eraly-shitty-hns-games then you need to rest quite a lot, especially on the early levels. And when you make a decision like that, another shitty decisions follow, like complete lack of mage duels which were super fun in BG2 and typically used up a lot of spells and so on and so forth. And then you get PoE. And codex makes 7 reviews. And things get super weird.

So yeah, everyone claims they don't rest "too much." But reading how people play these games suggests the opposite, and this is also the site where someone was caught lying about playing PoE in PotD.

 

[Cryomancer]

You get, what, 3 fireballs per rest at level 10?

On BG1. And you have a big party, if 3 characters can cast fireball, you can end 9 trash encounters. One rest per 9 encounters is not "rest scumming"

Or the complaining about limited rests in PoE:

Limited rests on BG2 would be OK, like it is on other D&D games. Limited rests on Pillars is not. Why? Because spells on BG2 are great, spells on pillars are awful. Having 2 cloudkills per rest is fine. Having 2 "malignant clouds" which deals almost no damage and lasts nothing is not fine. You don't see me complaining that resting requires specific places on knights of the chalice for example.

Tier 9 spells on PoE2 are far weaker than tier 3/4 tier magic on D&D. Doubt? Name one illusionist spell on Pillars 2 which can OHK enemies like Phantasmal killer can on 3e. And Phantasmal killer is a 4th tier spell which you can obtain on chapter 1 of Pathfinder Kingmaker if with a small party

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Yeah, everyone on the Codex claims that, but I'm skeptical that's actually the case. Look at comments like this:

I am not like the other guys, you can trust me, almondblight.

site where someone was caught lying about playing PoE in PotD

What? Seems like an amazing story, full of glorious drama. Gimme, gimme a link.

 

[Old Hans]

Yeah, everyone on the Codex claims that, but I'm skeptical

better believe it honey buns. I did no rest path of damned with no saves or reloads. beat the game first try. I had a vlog of the entire run, but it was deleted under mysterious circumstances

 

[almondblight]

I am not like the other guys, you can trust me, almondblight.

The thing is, even if everyone is being honest, everyone's definition of how long they can go or what's "not that much resting" is going to be different. If someone thinks (as you can see above) that casting a level 3 mage spell at every trash mob encounter isn't too much, there are going to be plenty who think casting a level 1 cleric spell at every encounter isn't too much.

Either way, thesheep's argument that buffs aren't particularly interesting is spot on. You're either going to be casting them as much as the game allows, or casting them as much as you allow yourself to given self imposed restrictions. Pillars slightly improves upon this (buffing during combat creating an opportunity cost, as well as limited resting), though you still run into a similar issue (there isn't much to consider when you decide to actually use them).

What? Seems like an amazing story, full of glorious drama. Gimme, gimme a link.

I remembered wrong, they were claiming to be playing it on hard. Here you go.

 

[Cryomancer]

hat casting a level 3 mage spell at every trash mob encounter isn't too much, there are going to be plenty who think casting a level 1 cleric spell at every encounter isn't too much.

And that depends a lot on many factors. Party size, party composition, the encoutner, the level of the player and so on. An party of 6 mages, all of then specialized at lv 16 can cast way more fireballs than a single lv 5 mage.

Pillars slightly improves upon this (buffing during combat creating an opportunity cost, as well as limited resting),

Nope.

Pillars did in the worst possible way. By making classes which doesn't need to rest extremely better like Cipher. And Pillars 2 traded spells to "per encounter" cuz they was too weak to be per rest. Wanna see games with good resting mechanics? Pathfinder Kingmaker. Why? Time matters in that game and you need to bring rations and supplies to rest and takes time to rest.

Wanna see other game where resting mechanics are improved? Knights of the Chalice. There are specific places where you can rest.

And for non combat buffing. It is AWFUL. Imagine that I an in a place full of undead, why not cast deathward before? Or that I will fight a fire dragon, why not cast protection from fire? He obviously should try to dispel this effects.

 

[Vladimuar]

This is how true expertise in cRPGs looks like, you clueless kids:

 

[thesheeep]

I always do self imposed rest restriction in BG, I go as long as I can without resting. I prefer this to having dev imposed resting restrictions.

But that is very much gimping yourself - which is perfectly fine, of course. I do that, too, in some games (just never by not resting when I could).
Anyway, it is equally valid to use all tools a game's mechanics offer - if a developer gives you a game mechanic and doesn't restrict it, it is the accepted default that you make you use of them as you see fit.
Therefore, it has to be judged as that instead of putting blame on the player for using what mechanics are on offer.

The repeated resting sperging and all similar stuff are utter non-arguments. You can break a game if you have autism, who knew. Remove hp in shooters because you can f5+f8 without limits to complete a game without getting hit.

Using game mechanics the way the developers offer them is not autism. It's not even min-maxing or anything like that, it's just playing the game normally.

Saving and loading are not game mechanics - they are a separate game feature, just like graphical options or subtitles. Which is why a game can be designed around certain save implementations (like, ugh, checkpoints) but will always work with any other implementations as well.

In no way do they influence what is happening in the game. At least usually - I think some games do implement a saving/loading mechanic that actually does influence the game, and I could see some interesting ideas coming from that.

Wanna see games with good resting mechanics? Pathfinder Kingmaker. Why? Time matters in that game and you need to bring rations and supplies to rest and takes time to rest.

Only in theory.
I remember resting as much as I wanted to (which was a lot) and had no problems with time whatsoever.
The problem was also that the time restrictions were not communicated well or, at all, really. The game kind of gave you the "feeling" of needing to move quickly, but it's all smoke and mirrors.
They went for a very generous time limit with 0 communication. A tighter limit with clear communication would have been vastly superior.