My collected criticism on Pillars of Eternity (very minor spoilers)

[IHaveHugeNick]

Wha, thsi guy basically wrote Lord Of the Rings IV - My Opinion On Everything In Pillars Of Eternity.

I'll pass.

 

[Shadenuat]

Wha, thsi guy basically wrote Lord Of the Rings IV - My Opinion On Everything In Pillars Of Eternity.

Thing is he didn't even touch on things like encounter design, magic or writing, mainly just the problems of a system, and for the most part those that were promoted by developers themselves as issues and how they're solving something in previous games (armor system, attributes, murderxp, things like that).

I'd add 10 topics more to that post and that's not subjective stuff like narrative or writing.

 

[Whisper]

Actually Wizards have strong spells.. it's just most people have no idea how to build them. They immediately dismiss the class because they can fighter/mage/theif/goku the game.

I had 2 wizards in game, aloth and main character - most spells are crap, i never did feel the need to change grimoir, because there is hardry more then 4 good spells per spell level.

 

[Hatred]

Actually Wizards have strong spells.. it's just most people have no idea how to build them. They immediately dismiss the class because they can fighter/mage/theif/goku the game.

I had 2 wizards in game, aloth and main character - most spells are crap, i never did feel the need to change grimoir, because there is hardry more then 4 good spells per spell level.

I am curious if you even have different spells for each wizard or just the same grimoire copied over more or less ?

 

[Zero Credibility]

Lol, wizards. Ok, I'm curious too: has anyone here ever actually bothered switching grimoires at all? And if yes, why? I just pick 4 most useful (or least useless) spells per level and run with that.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Wha, thsi guy basically wrote Lord Of the Rings IV - My Opinion On Everything In Pillars Of Eternity.

Thing is he didn't even touch on things like encounter design, magic or writing, mainly just the problems of a system.

Mainly just problems that don't exist, yeah.

He whined for like 3 days about XP, desperately looking for some big overarching problem, when its actually just the bounties that need to be hit with a giant nerfbat and the rest of it its fine.

And what's with whiining about the stash?This isn't Deus Ex where managing your inventory is an important mechanic that has a lot of impact on how you play. Its not Wasteland where carrying 500 rocket launchers would completely break the game. There's no ammo here, there's no tactical advantage in carrying 5 million swords. The stash literally exists for the sole reason of hauling stuff to the shop. Limiting the stash improves absolutely fucking nothing about the game at all, and just makes people waste their miserable lives on backtracking and hauling loot to vendors.

 

[Ellef]

The game suffers from a lack of good dungeons too.

Raedric's Hold (castle; pretty good overall)

This one disappointed me the most. I was geared up for the biggest dungeon yet, and the guy is 2 rooms away from the front door.

He's a feudal lord with more soldiers and priests than peasants. How big is it supposed to be?

Well i'm not really sure how you can make it a realistic setup, but I completed the main objective of their most promoted place in 10 minutes, which isn't ideal.

 

[Sensuki]

Mainly just problems that don't exist, yeah.

You must enjoy banal encounters and boring combat then I guess.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I'm quite sure limiting the stash will turn the combat into fascinating experience worthy of telling my grandchildren.

 

[Ziem]

Mainly just problems that don't exist, yeah.

i dont agree with every single one of his points but most of them are pretty accurate

-after all that talk about balance and "all the rpgs do it wrong" crap, attributes ended up being banalshitboring max con res per on tank / max might dex int on dps. con fuckign gratys sawyer, amazing design, 10/10.
-armor being a cool design in theory but pretty disappointing in practice (he didnt even mention how dr affects the balance of the weapons, and how the high damage slow weapons are pretty much always going to be the king - another pretty lame aspect of the game. i use some shitty ass arquebus on my mage because it outperforms a "unique" wand with blast talents, how nice)
-party stealth is awful and pretty much makes stealth pointless
-lvl9 and 11 caster class bonuses, making their lvl1-2 spells per encounter is kind of broken, and makes the combat more tedious on top of that. its pretty hilarious to read some shitposts about how supposedly micro intensive the IE games were because you could move in combat (!) and swap aggro on frontliners, while in pillars you fucking spam 439087 per-encounters in every fight after midgame. its not even tactical, you just fucking use your abilities because they have no cost.
uhh, yet another trash mob fight spacebar, lets go, tank runs in, cipher casts amplified wave on him, druid uses mark/sunbeam/bolts/blizzard at random, priest uses blessing, wizard uses fan/slicken, alright, spacebar, ok, they used their shit, spacebar time to queue another amplified wave, blizzard or whatever, some random priest buff, fan/slicken, spacebar, ok, they're all ded, in the next room theres another trash mob encounter lets.. zzzz... zzzz...
it would be nice if i had to change something depending on the encounter or something
lol not in this game
killing ghosts with chill fogs and blizzards works just fine
as does petrifying the dragon made of some living stone
because no hard counters

and inbetween these trash or a-bit-less-trash-but-still-pretty-trash-since-you-use-1-tactic-throughout-the-entire-game fights you get to find some items which are fuycking copypasterinos of the items you found earlier, except they might be "exceptional" instead of "fine" which doesnt change shit because a) the difference is negligible anyway and b) you could use enchanting to create the same or even better items

 

[Haba]

Jesus that derps ideas are great. Make int increase friendly AOE as well? Yea, permanently make certain spells even less usable than they are now, punishing people for having high stats. Makes perfect sense.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

i dont agree with every single one of his points but most of them are pretty accurate

-after all that talk about balance and "all the rpgs do it wrong" crap, attributes ended up being banalshitboring max con res per on tank / max might dex int on dps. con fuckign gratys sawyer, amazing design, 10/10.
-armor being a cool design in theory but pretty disappointing in practice (he didnt even mention how dr affects the balance of the weapons, and how the high damage slow weapons are pretty much always going to be the king - another pretty lame aspect of the game. i use some shitty ass arquebus on my mage because it outperforms a "unique" wand with blast talents, how nice)
-party stealth is awful and pretty much makes stealth pointless
-lvl9 and 11 caster class bonuses, making their lvl1-2 spells per encounter is kind of broken, and makes the combat more tedious on top of that. its pretty hilarious to read some shitposts about how supposedly micro intensive the IE games were because you could move in combat (!) and swap aggro on frontliners, while in pillars you fucking spam 439087 per-encounters in every fight after midgame. its not even tactical, you just fucking use your abilities because they have no cost.
uhh, yet another trash mob fight spacebar, lets go, tank runs in, cipher casts amplified wave on him, druid uses mark/sunbeam/bolts/blizzard at random, priest uses blessing, wizard uses fan/slicken, alright, spacebar, ok, they used their shit, spacebar time to queue another amplified wave, blizzard or whatever, some random priest buff, fan/slicken, spacebar, ok, they're all ded, in the next room theres another trash mob encounter lets.. zzzz... zzzz...
it would be nice if i had to change something depending on the encounter or something
lol not in this game
killing ghosts with chill fogs and blizzards works just fine
as does petrifying the dragon made of some living stone
because no hard counters

and inbetween these trash or a-bit-less-trash-but-still-pretty-trash-since-you-use-1-tactic-throughout-the-entire-game fights you get to find some items which are fuycking copypasterinos of the items you found earlier, except they might be "exceptional" instead of "fine" which doesnt change shit because a) the difference is negligible anyway and b) you could use enchanting to create the same or even better items

You have to micro a lot because you've build to micro a lot. I have passive builds on everything except Durance. I just send them to attack, and they slaughter the trash mobs while I jerk off and eat chocolate.

I'm not saying its all wrong, but he makes most problems a lot more dramatic than they really are and his solutions are equal to shooting a fly with a tactical nuke. Bounties give too much XP, so let's just rework the whole XP system. Genius at work.

And do people really still bitch about min-maxing in point-based attribute system? As long as there are points to spend, there's going to be a way to min max it. They even warn you on harder difficulties that you'll have to min/max, since the whole point of these modes is that you have to go tryhard. On normal you can smash your face against the keyboard while distributing attributes and it's going to be just fine.

Itemization in this game is unbelievably shitty, no arguments here.

And I agree that most combat is generic. There's not nearly enough mechanics that force you to adapt your approach. Charm/Dominate late game and those teleporting ghosts early. Otherwise, other than occasional boss fight, every encounter is the same.

BUT, the one thing the ruleset has going for it, is there's a great deal of fluidity to combat, which makes RWTP a lot less sshitty than it usually is. IE's prebuffing and rest abuse was about as entertaining as poking my eye with a fork.

 

[Ziem]

i dont really have issues with minmaxing or microing
i do, however, have issues when some aspects of the game are mindnumbingly boring and dont provide any interesting choices

 

[Hatred]

I'm not saying its all wrong, but he makes most problems a lot more dramatic than they really are and his solutions are equal to shooting a fly with a tactical nuke. Bounties give too much XP, so let's just rework the whole XP system. Genius at work..

The xp issue stretches a lot further than the bounties. You can hit level 8/9 in defiance bay without doing a single bounty.Since the game is tuned for you to finish it at level 8 don't you think that surpassing that so early on is a bit of a joke ? How can you claim the entire issue with XP comes from just the bounties when you can hit max level just a bit over halfway through the game without the bounties

Edit :failure to quote properly

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Er, I've done pretty much all the content and my custom rogue was still level 11 until the very ending of Act 3.

That's sounds like there's some XP scaling situation going on and depending on your route.

 

[Hatred]

Er, I've done pretty much all the content and my custom rogue was still level 11 until the very ending of Act 3.

That's sounds like there's some XP scaling situation going on and depending on your route.

Well I quit the game with everyone level 11 before hitting twin elms. Even hitting level 11 at all with the way the game is right now is broken. The whole idea of having a game scaled to level 8 and then having people hit level 12 before finishing it is borked. It isn't related to the bounties, they are just one of the numerous xp fountains which kill the game. So asking for the xp system to be reworked so that the game doesn't become steadily more boring and easier as you go along isn't unreasonable or an overreaction in my opinion.

 

[Hatred]

You have to micro a lot because you've build to micro a lot. I have passive builds on everything except Durance. I just send them to attack, and they slaughter the trash mobs while I jerk off and eat chocolate.

I didn't even notice this first time around. What is wrong with you that you can want combat to be so easy that you don't actually have to participate. No wonder you like the XP the way it is.

 

[Brayko]

Why is there no spell categorization? Shit sucks.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I didn't even notice this first time around. What is wrong with you that you can want combat to be so easy that you don't actually have to participate. No wonder you like the XP the way it is.

Just because I found a party build that makes combat a breeze, doesn't mean I want easy combat. It just means my build is smarter than yours. But I apologize that I'm amazing at games.

And my XP was absolutely fine and nowhere near max level in DF.

 

[Hatred]

Just because I found a party build that makes combat a breeze, doesn't mean I want easy combat. It just means my build is smarter than yours. But I apologize that I'm amazing at games.

And my XP was absolutely fine and nowhere near max level in DF.

So you over level and don't participate in combat and this makes you amazing.

 

[Haba]

Well I quit the game with everyone level 11 before hitting twin elms. Even hitting level 11 at all with the way the game is right now is broken. The whole idea of having a game scaled to level 8 and then having people hit level 12 before finishing it is borked. It isn't related to the bounties, they are just one of the numerous xp fountains which kill the game. So asking for the xp system to be reworked so that the game doesn't become steadily more boring and easier as you go along isn't unreasonable or an overreaction in my opinion.

I was level 10-11 when I got to Twin Elms. I did all side quests and unlocked almost all chests and defused traps. There is nothing wrong with the gains experience, unless you did the bounties, which breaks it all.

The key to interesting and challenging fights is not lowering the XP nor is it artificially increasing enemy deflection.

 

[J_C]

Lol, wizards. Ok, I'm curious too: has anyone here ever actually bothered switching grimoires at all? And if yes, why? I just pick 4 most useful (or least useless) spells per level and run with that.

I switch them, because it is bullshit that you don't have more than 4 good spells per level. I don't even understand why people are bitching about spells. Each spell has its uses. Just like in D&D. I would even argue that D&D has more useless spells than PoE. From this list, the following level 1 spells are totally useless. http://playithardcore.com/pihwiki/index.php/Baldur's_Gate:_Arcane_Spells_List#Reflected_Image
Chromatic Orb (at low levels), find familiar, friends, infravision, protection from petrification, reflected image (mirror image or GTFO), spook. That's 1/3 or all the spells, and I could add all the touching damage spells to the list because they are a waste of spellspace.

Well I quit the game with everyone level 11 before hitting twin elms. Even hitting level 11 at all with the way the game is right now is broken. The whole idea of having a game scaled to level 8 and then having people hit level 12 before finishing it is borked. It isn't related to the bounties, they are just one of the numerous xp fountains which kill the game. So asking for the xp system to be reworked so that the game doesn't become steadily more boring and easier as you go along isn't unreasonable or an overreaction in my opinion.

I was level 10-11 when I got to Twin Elms. I did all side quests and unlocked almost all chests and defused traps. There is nothing wrong with the gains experience, unless you did the bounties, which breaks it all.

The key to interesting and challenging fights is not lowering the XP nor is it artificially increasing enemy deflection.

I can't wrap my head around what Josh was thinking. He was so proud that he made the exploration and side questing optional, so you could finish the main storyline just by focusing on the crit patch. But FFS, it means that the whole game is balanced around the crit path, if you go and finish some sidequests, you will be overlevelled in an instant. I just can't understand this.

 

[Hatred]

I was level 10-11 when I got to Twin Elms. I did all side quests and unlocked almost all chests and defused traps. There is nothing wrong with the gains experience, unless you did the bounties, which breaks it all.

Considering that the game is built to be finished by level 8 I cannot agree with you. I hit level 7 and I'm pretty sure 8 also while in defiance bay. So I was high enough level to finish the game before leaving defiance bay or doing the bounties. How is this 'fine'

Edit : I do agree about deflection not being the way to improve the fights. Over inflated accuracy and deflection and endurance and spells to cast of your own is an issue though.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Lol, wizards. Ok, I'm curious too: has anyone here ever actually bothered switching grimoires at all? And if yes, why? I just pick 4 most useful (or least useless) spells per level and run with that.

I switch them, because it is bullshit that you don't have more than 4 good spells per level. I don't even understand why people are bitching about spells. Each spell has its uses. Just like in D&D. I would even argue that D&D has more useless spells than PoE. From this list, the following level 1 spells are totally useless. http://playithardcore.com/pihwiki/index.php/Baldur's_Gate:_Arcane_Spells_List#Reflected_Image
Chromatic Orb (at low levels), find familiar, friends, infravision, protection from petrification, reflected image (mirror image or GTFO), spook. That's 1/3 or all the spells, and I could add all the touching damage spells to the list because they are a waste of spellspace.

Well why not name those must-have PoE wizard spells then. And then tell me why I should bother switching which disables casting for a very considerable time in combat instead of just spamming the 4 spells I already have instead. Also, chromatic orb is awesome.

 

[Shevek]

The gameplay is fine and the mechanics are fine. The game could be a bit better with enemy and encounter design to force the player to mix things up (like in that named Drake fight). Its already better than BG1 and PST in this respect (maybe even early IWD1 without HoW). I am sure the xpac will pretty much be all about adding in better AI, dungeons, enemies, etc since they have core systems already in place. This is obvious since areas created later like Raedrics Hold seem a bit better encounter and area design wise than other parts of the game.

For a first game in a franchise with a brand new engine and a brand new system, this is phenomenal work.