Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

[Atchodas]

and if you don't count combat, PoE was a fun game to play (and PoE 2 was great).

What exactly do you mean by "play" in PoE games considering we dont count combat

 

[fantadomat]

This thread started well,then it turned in to a retarded spamming of pro/anti prebuffing authism! Go and make your own thread about that shit,stop cluttering this one.

 

[Daidre]

Me, I don't care much about combat, and if you don't count combat, PoE was a fun game to play (and PoE 2 was great).

For me combat and system was only things that made PoE 3.0 worth playing. Everything else was not exactly bad per se, but rather unattractive.

 

[Flou]

Can't be bothered to check but I think Pillars of Eternity 1 is/was on Origin. Not sure if Deadfire followed. Either way, Obsidian isn't the publisher in either one of those games. Paradox and Versus Evil might have their own plans for the games, rather than to get them on GamePass and there might be contracts that currently prevent the games being on GamePass.

Worth noting Tyranny fully belongs to Paradox and is on Game Pass.

Yes and like I said. Pillars of Eternity was at least on Origin Access (or what ever it is called) and if it still there, Microsoft can't get it until the deal Paradox has with EA has ended.

Edit: I checked. It's still there on Origin Access on both Basic and Premier. So, yeah. I doubt EA is going to let Microsoft get the game until their deal with Paradox has ran it's course. And if you can't get the 1st game on to the service, why would you put the sequel there?

 

[Trashos]

I find prebuffing extremely fun. I really missed it in PoE, and I am having a blast with it in Kingmaker again.

Honorable mention to the great BG2, where prebuffing and debuffing was like a puzzle game of its own, a game that was being played in parallel with the game of other tactics and strategies, and nothing like that was ever seen again to such an extend.

Of course, as everyone can understand, Obsidian didn't want prebuffing in PoE because they considered it too autistic for normies. And then Kingmaker outsold them. Great job, Obsidian, you made your games dumber in order to sell, and you got outsold by smarter games.

But there is nothing like failing after selling your soul in order to succeed, and I feel for Josh.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Somehow I don't' remember Gandalf casting bunch of buffs on the fellowship of the ring every time it looked like there's enemy in the distance.

Gandalf isn't a mage, as evidenced by his failure to ever cast fireballs and cloudkill and murder everything! He's almost certainly some kind of cleric/thief with a couple magic wands larping as a wizard.

Gandalf = 1 Wizard/ 3 Druid/ 17 Fighter

Of course, as everyone can understand, Obsidian didn't want prebuffing in PoE because they considered it too autistic for normies. And then Kingmaker outsold them. Great job, Obsidian, you made your games dumber in order to sell, and you got outsold by smarter games.

Sawyer didn't want pre-buffing because of his own design qualms. He doesn't like powerful magic in the players hands, and the thought of some players being buffed and others not was too overwhelming of a discrepancy for him to design around. In other words, BALANCE. Eeeeiiieee! The horror!

 

[Atchodas]

Like I said for like the fifth time already, you could be using that time to attack/CC/debuff/cast other spells. You can't cast all the buffs you want before the enemies come to you, and some enemies do want to target your casters immediately (like the Lagufaeth), this is splitting hairs on what "pre-buffing" means. If that is your criteria of pre-buffing, then PoE's system does have pre-buffing, but nobody thinks that.

You "could" but you will never do anything else except pre buff because thats what wins fights in Pillars and especially in Deadfire since Inspirations not only buff your characters but also prevent enemy Afflictions landing. Prebuffing is fundamental in PoE combat. I mean there is a reason Arcane Dampener is strongest spell in Deadfire because it instantly cancels out all buffs and wont let you re apply them for some time.

 

[fantadomat]

Can't be bothered to check but I think Pillars of Eternity 1 is/was on Origin. Not sure if Deadfire followed. Either way, Obsidian isn't the publisher in either one of those games. Paradox and Versus Evil might have their own plans for the games, rather than to get them on GamePass and there might be contracts that currently prevent the games being on GamePass.

Worth noting that Tyranny which fully belongs to Paradox is on Game Pass.

Also their official forum is on the paradox forum. It is and it was pretty dead.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?forums/tyranny.933/

 

[Lacrymas]

I like how everyone has a different interpretation of why PoE failed and it's conspicuously the thing they don't like about it.

 

[Atchodas]

I like how people defending Deadfire are usually completely clueless about the game because they played it on Classic for 5 hours and never opened it again because it is THAT good

 

[ga♥]

What I enjoyed the most about PoE

Spoiler

 

[Voids]

Can't be bothered to check but I think Pillars of Eternity 1 is/was on Origin. Not sure if Deadfire followed. Either way, Obsidian isn't the publisher in either one of those games. Paradox and Versus Evil might have their own plans for the games, rather than to get them on GamePass and there might be contracts that currently prevent the games being on GamePass.

Worth noting that Tyranny which fully belongs to Paradox is on Game Pass.

Also their official forum is on the paradox forum. It is and it was pretty dead.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?forums/tyranny.933/

That's because Tyranny was bad.

 

[fantadomat]

What I enjoyed the most about PoE

Spoiler

Meh,you could just double click mate. You are getting old.

 

[ItsChon]

I can't believe I read almost ten pages of people's shit arguments about pre-buffing. I like pre-buffing, and I see no reason to fuck with the mechanic. When it comes to circumventing it, just have someone cast dispell magic at the beginning of the fight, or make more scripted encounters where there is no opportunity to pre-buff.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Can't be bothered to check but I think Pillars of Eternity 1 is/was on Origin. Not sure if Deadfire followed. Either way, Obsidian isn't the publisher in either one of those games. Paradox and Versus Evil might have their own plans for the games, rather than to get them on GamePass and there might be contracts that currently prevent the games being on GamePass.

Worth noting that Tyranny which fully belongs to Paradox is on Game Pass.

Also their official forum is on the paradox forum. It is and it was pretty dead.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?forums/tyranny.933/

That's because Tyranny was bad.

It was a decent half of a game, can't wait for them to finish it

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Lol, the last two pages. I guess I must have imagined doing a POTD run of Deadfire using a party that had no active healer, no active buffer and relied entirely on crowd control and debuffs to mitigate the damage. Then again, I'm just a scrub who's shit at games, so perhaps I lack strategic expertise of story mode speed runners.

Deadfire isn't forcing you to buff, you're forcing yourself to buff by building your party full of buffers. It's not Josh Sawyer who secretly logs on your PC, rolls a generic Priest and levels him up picking generic buffs. It's you, because you lack imagination and understanding of the ruleset to come up with anything else.

It's funny how the most incompetent people are always those who think of themselves as super hardcore minmaxers and talk down to everyone.

 

[Atchodas]

Almost all classes has self buffs in Deadfire which you cast at the start of the combat

Only classes that dont have self buffs are : Paladin, Ranger non trickster Rogue and you definitely want to buff these at least with Perception inspiration or you are retarded oh wait you are retarded

Btw Deadfire is balanced for solo play (solo potd is not even hardest difficulty) and it has no real difficulty when playing in party however buffing yourself is still superior to whatever else you can do since most of buffs (inspirations)will not only buff you but also prevent your characters from getting CC'ed and afflicted during the combat

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

1. You gained a level
2. You now have new abilities to pick from, you chose self-buffs.
3. Hey guise, this game is forcing me to do a lot of buffing.

This guy.

 

[Atchodas]

And why would I not chose the best skills for the characters ?

So you play monk without Swift Strikes ?
Barbarian without frenzy?
Fighter without Unbending ?
Wizard without Arcane Veil ?

Dude I mean at this point is clear that you have no fucking idea what you talking about

Its either you have not played Deadfire and just spam random shit about it or you are actually a retard

 

[PrK]

And yes, of course sometimes you had to skip the buffing phase to conserve resources, that's the whole idea. You don't gain anything by skipping buffs when pre-buffing is allowed, you only ever lose by purposefully gimping yourself.

But you do gain resource conservation, the opportunity cost you mentioned is present. You chose to not pre-buff or just cast a few/one specific buff so you then have those spells available either during the fight itself or for the next ones, which you don't know when or if they'll happen.

I find prebuffing extremely fun. I really missed it in PoE, and I am having a blast with it in Kingmaker again.

Honorable mention to the great BG2, where prebuffing and debuffing was like a puzzle game of its own, a game that was being played in parallel with the game of other tactics and strategies, and nothing like that was ever seen again to such an extend.

All the talk is nice, but this is the crux of the matter, pre-buffing is fun, and it is fun mainly because it is an extra tactical choice you get to make while dungeon crawling.

 

[Atchodas]

Btw its funny that Obsidian got rid of per rest spells mostly because in PoE1 players would only use low level per encounter buffs and auto attacks to clear most of encounters and conserve higher level damaging/cc spells for bosses/tougher encounters where those spells were mostly shit on PoTD because enemies just shrug them off because of high hp pools and inflated defenses and you still had to buff yourself and then tank+auto attack them to death

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I know this is hard to figure out for snowflake millenials who grew up on MMOS, but tank/healer/buffer/dps isn't the only way to build a cRPG party. While you are buffing during ongoing combat, somebody else could already start blasting the enemy and have the same results. Somebody else could be CC'ing the enemy and have the same result. This isn't rocket science and there's no reason to be upset. You just feel a little sad because you discovered that your super special strategy is neither special nor interesting to other people. Keep taking long breaths and it will pass.

 

[Roguey]

Tyranny had prebuffing y'know, here's a redditor complaining about it near release https://www.reddit.com/r/TyrannyGame/comments/5efyt0/prebuffing_rituals/

Fortunately they it

Characters may only have 1 beneficial enchantment spell of each of the following types: Focused Intent, Material Force, and Guarded Form. Casting a second of the same type will replace the first.

Restrictions on how many buffs you can have on at a time certainly seems a good compromise for both sides.

For me it was reading on Sawyer thread that he's a St.Vincent fan.

I love Cheerleader, the song and the accompanying promotional video.

 

[DeepOcean]

I think Deadfire failed because PoE 1 failed, it scored the sales because it was riding on the kickstarter wave not because of its intrinsic qualities, once the time came for the sequel, they needed a decent portion of the people who played the first one to return but many of those people didn't like PoE 1 enough for its intrinsic qualities to return and the kickstarter wave was gone.

I said multiple times, the feeling of a game is extremely important and Sawyer underestimated that, people like to shit on BG 1 all the time (and many times they have very valid reasons to do it so) but that game plays like a low level DnD session including the cringe, it feels like you are going into an adventure journey and even the title music reinforce that.

PoE was too sterile, it lacked focus and felt like a game made by multiple people going on different directions. Avellone said that all RPGs need to feed a little the player ego and focus on him, I don't say doing undeserved praise and retarded pandering like Bethesda does, but focus on the personal story of the player and his role in the world, focus on what the player can see and the player experience. PoE felt sterile like fuck on that regard, many times I felt I was playing a character that didn't know what he was doing, why he was doing it and at some point the writers even attempted to push a backstory on MY character that I didn't give a fuck about claiming MY character was another person (sorry Obsidian, only Avellone can pull that kind of shit and make it work).

Most people don't give a shit about mechanics first , they like experiences: "I want to play as Conan, the barbarian!", then, when they are hooked, then they start caring about mechanics. RPGs need to hook you up on that base level, "I want to play as Conan the Barbarian!", if they don't... I think Josh is in part guilty and in part not, he is in part guilty because he should had been aware of the player experience (he only cared about how the game was accessible and not how it was enjoyable) but alot of the blame is also on the shoulders of Fenstermaker.

 

[Fairfax]

Restrictions on how many buffs you can have on at a time certainly seems a good compromise for both sides.

5E already solved that years ago with concentration. I believe they went overboard with the amount of spells that have it, but that was important to another part of their design philosophy and how they balanced casters overall.