Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

[Yosharian]

I
I'm playing it again now, this time in TB mode, and TB mode while being an overall better experience, really emphasizes how there are actions which the player can perform to give himself an advantage with no cost attached to those actions, if the player doesn't mind the repetitiveness.

The problem is that the game isn't designed to be played in turn based, and very few changes were made to fit the game to that mode. DEX being effectively useless is only the tip of the iceberg, once you've played 20 hours of opening fights with the same buffs over and over and over again you'll want to hurl your computer off the nearest cliff

As opposed to playing standard Deadfire which merely makes you want to hurl yourself off said cliff

 

[luj1]

To give him credit, he didn't do bad with the system design at all.

Good thing you know jack about systems.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The problem is that the game isn't designed to be played in turn based, and very few changes were made to fit the game to that mode. DEX being effectively useless is only the tip of the iceberg, once you've played 20 hours of opening fights with the same buffs over and over and over again you'll want to hurl your computer off the nearest cliff

As opposed to playing standard Deadfire which merely makes you want to hurl yourself off said cliff

That's true, and I've found two workarounds to the frustration. The first is that I rotate companion NPCs often. My initial reason to replay was to give those NPCs I didn't use a try. The other is that I play on Veteran difficulty, with upscaling encounters and a modded reduced XP gain instead of vanilla PotD. This results in less crowded combat encounters which take less time to finish. I knew I would have to reduce the XP gain because it was never rebalanced to fit the three expansions.

It's fun to experiment with different party compositions, and some are noticeably better than others, regardless of all the normalization that goes on with effects and bonuses.

IMO the "Infinity Engine feel" of the game suffers the most from the small size of maps. I don't know if it was because of budget or memory constraints, but large maps like the three maps of the Old Neketaka, or the Poko Kohara ruins should have been the norm, and they are instead the exception.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

There is even a way to configure Deadfire difficulty so that its combat is challenging

I play on Veteran difficulty

 

[AwesomeButton]

You seem to believe that adding quantities of enemies makes for a fun challenge. Have you perhaps worked as a game developer?

 

[Yosharian]

I play on Veteran too, POTD is boring as fuck. But it's not lack of challenge that puts me off the game honestly.

 

[the mole]

arcanum is turnbased thus takes longer

There it is. The most retarded sentence I have ever read on the Codex. Congratulations.

only a retard would think that

 

[the mole]

He's too much of a soy beta to give a fuck about fixing his weak erections.

Ironically, he refused to fix core systems after the first game and focused on bloat, eye candy, minigames and talking parrots.

the "fanbase" of crpgs say they want less polish out of poe and more "soul" and "fun" so that's what you get you can't have it both ways

seriously

look through this thread and realize almost everyone here had issues with the "soul" or "feelings" the "setting" or the "story"

usually nothing to do with gameplay being their main reason for not liking it, what are you left with to solve the problem

it just wasn't "fun" enough

 

[the mole]

it's tough trying to make games for old men way past their prime and make it so it activates the long dormant dopamine pathways

it's like starting the large hadron collider, not easy, almost impossible

 

[Ismaul]

dos2 is a broken piece of shit

DOS2 is great, PoE doesn't even come close.

Nope. DOS2 has awful writing and the worst armor system ever and one of the worst mageries in the genre. Pathfinder Kingmaker is a masterpiece, Pillars is average and DOS2 is too modern.

I'd take DOS2's cheesy but quirky and sometimes fun dialogue over PoE's soporific loredumps anyday. PoE might've had a great idea with souls, but they grinded it into nothingness. The only thing that is good is Avellone's writing, and it's just a distraction from the main story. DOS2's animal dialogue is great.

I'd take DOS2's TB combat, impactful abilities, environmental interactions and ability combos over PoE's RTwP boring repetitive slog.

I'd take DOS2's interactive environments that favor creative experimentation and positioning over PoE's static follow-the-quest design.

PoE is mind-numbing.

 

[Orud]

The mechanics of DOS2 are awesome, the game is easily one of my favorites of the past decade. But the way the story wrapped up was a big MEH.

I'm not saying it's perfect, but it did a lot of things better (in one game) than many other games.

 

[Desiderius]

I like them both fine, but they both pull too many punches and fall into familiar ruts that keep them from being great. The problem isn’t old guys needing the hard stuff to feel the dopamine. More like the opposite.

Drugs/porn turn out to be pretty poor analogies to gaming/play in general. Regular play is what keeps those synapses in good firing condition, but it has to simulate a real process with some meaningful difficulty. Just as Squatting the Bar doesn't do much for you, but adding 5 a week ends up mysteriously clearing the head and spurring the libido.

The Good Old Games that Owlcat is reaching back to do have it, while PoE too often devolves into faceroll and D:OS into gear chasing Skinner box. Likewise on the meta-level as literature Soyer's painfully conventional risk aversion and D:OS just kiddingism preclude either one from plumbing the depth necessary to move men.

 

[Desiderius]

I’m playing Wizards & Warriors for the third time ten years apart and found this super comprehensive online walkthrough with maps and shit to make sure I don’t hose myself - like the man says not as sharp and don’t have as much time as I once did.

Still have found three new areas that even this guy didn’t (did you know that the Serpent Temple had a Belfry?), figured out how to open up both paths in Crypt etc...

Fort Joy is kind of like that and to some extent so was Raedric’s Keep but neither game consistently hits those kind of heights.

 

[Rean]

I like them both fine

You sure? But only in DOS2 you can stack the crate-throwing damage alongside your firebombs and water-piss balloons that you've kept in your pockets for 3 hours and 45 minutes. Way more tactical.

 

[Reader]

DOS2's animal dialogue is great

This shit was never great. In any game.

 

[the mole]

i feel like there's a mole among us working for Sawyer

I do deserve a bit of compensation for holding the line

maybe free dlc on avowed, free armor and weapons pack

 

[Grunker]

an unusual setting

I wish people stopped blaming the setting. A fresh and unusual setting is not a bad thing. Planescape Torment is a cult classic, Disco Elysium was a surprise hit, PoE2's setting is pirate-themed and many people like pirates.

The game's unusual setting didn't matter in its lack of success. It's the fact that it just plain wasn't a great game. Blaming the setting is a cop-out, like how Sawyer went "oh no I guess people don't like RPGs set in non-standard fantasy worlds so next time we gotta be more generic again". No, the real reason people didn't buy PoE2 is because PoE1 was such a disappointing borefest, and PoE2's main story picks up with all that boring god shit nobody cared about. Especially if you didn't finish PoE1, the intro of PoE2 is one of the worst intros to any game I have ever seen.

You're contradicting yourself. PS:T and Disco are both loved for amazing settings - PoE tried something like with a fresh setting but failed in the execution of it. As well as the premise, in fact

PoE1 and 2 are both vastly better games (in terms of gameplay) than PS:T

 

[JarlFrank]

You're contradicting yourself. PS:T and Disco are both loved for amazing settings - PoE tried something like with a fresh setting but failed in the execution of it. As well as the premise, in fact

PoE1 and 2 are both vastly better games (in terms of gameplay) than PS:T

PoE's setting didn't feel like it was very fresh tbh. Deadfire yes, PoE1 no.
But both games were very lackluster in gameplay so that's why PoE2 sold less than PoE1 - many players of the first one didn't translate into buying the sequel.

 

[pomenitul]

 

[Rafidur]

+X increments rather than PoE's percentage upgrades

+x to thing can have meaningful thresholds, such as "and at 20 charisma, you get double the followers maximum!" or "after investing 10 points in fire spells, you can unlock greater chaos magma maximized delayed chain fireball!". What are you going to tie to +15% fire damage?

 

[Brancaleone]

I'm an old asshurt boomer and I just want to be a kid again

This sums up the Codex to a T, and should be the 'Codex Inc' corporate moto/logo.

I just wanna be entertained. I want to enjoy a game when I play it. Why is that so bad?

Because some people hilariously see videogames as defining part of their own identity or as a reliable measuring tool for their worth as individuals and forget that they are, well, entertainment.

 

[Brancaleone]

I'll resurrect the poor nag with this:

The Minion is Sawyer, the flyswatter is Sawyeristic combat, the caveman is the unsuspecting player and the bear is boredom.

 

[luj1]

DOS2's animal dialogue is great

This shit was never great. In any game.

It was decent in NwN because it was telepathic (descriptions appeared in your mind). The white deer (Spirit of the Forest) had great dialogue. Also the one special animal you hunt in SoU.

 

[Grunker]

You're contradicting yourself. PS:T and Disco are both loved for amazing settings - PoE tried something like with a fresh setting but failed in the execution of it. As well as the premise, in fact

PoE1 and 2 are both vastly better games (in terms of gameplay) than PS:T

PoE's setting didn't feel like it was very fresh tbh. Deadfire yes, PoE1 no.
But both games were very lackluster in gameplay so that's why PoE2 sold less than PoE1 - many players of the first one didn't translate into buying the sequel.

You're not really responding to my point. Even if you don't agree with me that PoE's gameplay is great (which I think it is), there is no denying that PS:T's is much worse. So why is it a timeless classic? Because it's story and worldbuilding are exemplary. PoE's is trash both in premise and execution. I only play it for its gameplay. It has nothing else going for it. well, beyond being eye candy

 

[Brancaleone]

You're contradicting yourself. PS:T and Disco are both loved for amazing settings - PoE tried something like with a fresh setting but failed in the execution of it. As well as the premise, in fact

PoE1 and 2 are both vastly better games (in terms of gameplay) than PS:T

PoE's setting didn't feel like it was very fresh tbh. Deadfire yes, PoE1 no.
But both games were very lackluster in gameplay so that's why PoE2 sold less than PoE1 - many players of the first one didn't translate into buying the sequel.

You're not really responding to my point. Even if you don't agree with me that PoE's gameplay is great (which I think it is), there is no denying that PS:T's is much worse. S

You are confusing gameplay with combat.