Pillars of Eternity Beta Discussion [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Surf Solar]

I'd rather have the game update my stats at levelup automatically than be presented with stuff like 'do I want 1% better in this or meaningless modifier on this?' If what Zed says its true.

Gee I can barely contain my excitement.

Guess I will enjoy the game like Rake. Put everything on easy so I can lawnmown the enemies and dont have to bother witb this stuff and enjoy the story and writing.

 

[Rake]

In other words: yes, the game deviates in a couple of spots where it's completely unnecessary, but the character development is the example of a necessary change.

While i agree in prinsiple, they way it was done is terrible. From what i have seen in PoE so far, i just won't care about CC. Even the itemisation and the buffs with the whole +% -%, + x attribute etc. is utterly boring to me.
Maybe i'm not in Josh's target audience (i'm propably not) but i can see myself leaving all attributes at 10, choose only passive talents, turn the difficulty to easy and just ignore the whole CC aspect of the game.
Even the automatic CC of IE made me care more. At least i paid attention to my spellbooks and my items

I'm not sure I understand this honestly. Even if you dislike the character system of PoE (I haven't seen near enough of the feats to decide), it's still infinitely more interesting than just clicking on a level-up button.

Don't mind me. As i said i'm not part of the targeted audience. The lack of hard counters, the unification of PoE's sustems, the toned down effects where you just manipulate registanses for softer +% , -% bonuses in attacks and stats, the magic system, the attribute system where honestly can't give two shits about since the effects of each attribute seem irrelevant etc.
I just can't be arsed to care about the whole thing.

Having all attributes being useful is a great goal. But the way i would like it to be is that if the effect of each attribute was so great that the attribute placement changed the way your character played fundamentaly.
So min maxing would come with huge benefits and gigandic drawbacks and figuring the way to play your character in a way which sidestep his weaknesses and exploit his strenghts was nessecery to win.
The way it is... meh.

 

[Infinitron]

I'd rather have the game update my stats at levelup automatically than be presented with stuff like 'do I want 1% better in this or meaningless modifier on this?' If what Zed says its true.

Your stats don't increase on level-up, this isn't Dragon Age. Set them on chargen and go.

The percentages ensure that the impact of your stats increases as you level up and become more powerful.

 

[tuluse]

Don't mind me. As i said i'm not part of the targeted audience. The lack of hard counters, the unification of PoE's sustems, the toned down effects where you just manipulate registanses for softer +% , -% bonuses in attacks and stats, the magic system, the attribute system where honestly can't give two shits about since the effects of each attribute seem irrelevant etc.
I just can't be arsed to care about the whole thing.

Having all attributes being useful is a great goal. But the way i would like it to be is that if the effect of each attribute was so great that the attribute placement changed the way your character played fundamentaly.
So min maxing would come with huge benefits and gigandic drawbacks and figuring the way to play your character in a way which sidestep his weaknesses and exploit his strenghts was nessecery to win.
The way it is... meh.

The attributes make a reasonable difference when you compare min vs max in each one. The problem is that the range is too big for their impact. If each attribute was a 5 point range you'd feel the appropriate impact. Maybe even 10, but certainly not the 17 point range it is now.

 

[Shadenuat]

+5 accuracy is roughly equal to +1 to hit in D&D. I don't know if something giving +1 to hit or -1 THAC0 would be considered cosmetic in BG.

As a feat you take per a few levels? Certanly would. It's nifty when combined in a sword with bonus damage and ability to hurt magical creatures, but even spells like Bless, I think many people prefered something else to them.

 

[mastroego]

Don't mind me. As i said i'm not part of the targeted audience. The lack of hard counters, the unification of PoE's sustems, the toned down effects where you just manipulate registanses for softer +% , -% bonuses in attacks and stats, the magic system, the attribute system where honestly can't give two shits about since the effects of each attribute seem irrelevant etc.
I just can't be arsed to care about the whole thing..

Man I feel bad for whoever the target audience IS.

I hope this game will fail HARD for daring to rape the beautiful memories of proper RPGs.
I'm afraid many will be misled by the looks, but I still can hope for a little while longer.
And I hope better game designers will finally have the chance to produce worthy successors of the gems of the past.

 

[Zed]

Normally, I wouldn't mind bastardizations and tweaks to the formula. I'm not a "grog" in that sense. But this is supposed to be a spiritual successor to a series of games that did things in particular way. This game deviates from them where it's completely unnecessary.

It is an absolute minority of players who want the static, choiceless level up system from AD&D and the IE-games. Making no choices when you level up is considered fun only by the smallest crowd of set-in-their-way-fans. While this is 100% OK of course, I think making character development less interesting is a prime example of paying misunderstood homage to the older games.

We expect Obsidian to take everything that worked from the IE games and re-implement it. While there are certainly points in the game where Obs can be criticized for not doing this (see the discussion on engagement, attributes and UI on the last couple of pages), character development certainly isn't one of them. I think if you want to name a spot where they really dropped the ball, it's multiclassing.

That's also where your "strong archetype" falls apart a little. The dual/multiclassing of the old IE games remains one of the sole very fun customization options in those games, and those broke completely with the stock and static classes the game otherwise presented.

Also note that one of the prime criticisms of the Enhanced Editions was that they did not take the opportunity to update the old IE-games to improved systems with more interesting character customization.

There could still be options at leveling up while keeping the classes very archetypical (?). Perhaps a rogue could focus more on traps rather than picklocking, or a fighter focus on different fighting styles (there are probably more exciting examples, I know).

I think a class should have a general role, e.g."high damage dealer, worthless damage receiver." In PoE the roles are "generally focus on AoE" or some such, but the class could still be played like a whole different class without any unique flavor. Granted I haven't seen the end-game stuff for classes in PoE, so I don't know how it looks in the end. But judging from the backer beta, I don't see a reason why they even bother to have so many classes. Could just as well go with two base classes, Fighter and Spellcaster, and make them both very customizable. Or maybe not. But that exemplifies one end of the spectrum which I think PoE is leaning too close to.

 

[tuluse]

As a feat you take per a few levels? Certanly would. It's nifty when combined in a sword with bonus damage and ability to hurt magical creatures, but even spells like Bless, I think many people prefered something else to them.

I think that's about exactly what putting the first proficiency point into a weapon did in the IE games. Except that in BG2 it was a super-restrictive group of weapons while in PoE you either get a bonus with a range of weapons or usually gives more than a +5 bonus.

 

[tuluse]

But judging from the backer beta, I don't see a reason why they even bother to have so many classes.

Because they made a stupid promise during the kickstarter ^_^.

I do agree fewer classes with some subclasses would improve the feel of the system a lot.

 

[Infinitron]

I think having many classes was an essential element in differentiating this game from nu-RPGs like Dragon Age. The banal "fighter-rogue-mage" trinity is something that absolutely had to be disposed of and we should applaud PoE for doing so. (It's something that the haters tend to conveniently ignore, of course)

Of course, having 8 or 9 instead of 11 would still have been "many" enough.

 

[Shadenuat]

I think that's about exactly what putting the first proficiency point into a weapon did in the IE games. Except that in BG2 it was a super-restrictive group of weapons while in PoE you either get a bonus with a range of weapons or usually gives more than a +5 bonus.

Uh, it was the only customization option at all (for fighters anyway). Not to mention you could put a lot of points into weapons right away. It's really apples & oranges.

 

[Grunker]

But judging from the backer beta, I don't see a reason why they even bother to have so many classes.

Because they made a stupid promise during the kickstarter ^_^.

Indeed. We agree completely here Zed, it restricted them from doing tons of stuff. But it is what is :/

I think having many classes was an essential element in differentiating this game from nu-RPGs like Dragon Age. The banal "fighter-rogue-mage" trinity is something that absolutely had to be disposed of and we should applaud PoE for doing so. (It's something that the haters tend to conveniently ignore, of course)

Obviously they shouldn't be restricted to three, but this many? It's overblown. They have more classes than Player's Handbook.

 

[One-and-a-half-Ivan]

Well, promising more classes helped to build hype and in the end allowed them to gather much more money.
I believe that if they went with a lower scope, the final kickstarter sum wouldn't be so impressive. Don't know if it would be bad for the game though.

 

[tuluse]

I think having many classes was an essential element in differentiating this game from nu-RPGs like Dragon Age. The banal "fighter-rogue-mage" trinity is something that absolutely had to be disposed of and we should applaud PoE for doing so. (It's something that the haters tend to conveniently ignore, of course)

Of course, having 8 or 9 instead of 11 would still have been "many" enough.

I think this class system would work a lot better. Even if you lost 2 of the overall classes to move the final 4 into subclasses, you'd have 5 "big" classes.

fighter
--rogue
--defender
--barbarian

nature person
--ranger
--druid

religious person
--priest
--paladin

mage class because I can't think of a good class to combine it with (cypher might work):
mage

cool classes which are actually original so don't have subclasses:
monk
cypher
chanter


Then when you get to level 4ish, you'd have another decision to make. Ok, I made a fighter, but I want more offense -> go rogue or barbarian. I made a nature dude and I want to be a bear -> druid, etc.

Edit:

Well, promising more classes helped to build hype and in the end allowed them to gather much more money.
I believe that if they went with a lower scope, the final kickstarter sum wouldn't be so impressive. Don't know if it would be bad for the game though.

InXile never had to promise more classes and they did pretty well. Fargo: 2, Feargus: 0

 

[Grunker]

^ of those even barbarian and chanter are arguably superflous.

I mean, I like the idea of having high class diversity, but less classes would almost certainly mean more class depth.

 

[Volrath]

Don't mind me. As i said i'm not part of the targeted audience. The lack of hard counters, the unification of PoE's sustems, the toned down effects where you just manipulate registanses for softer +% , -% bonuses in attacks and stats, the magic system, the attribute system where honestly can't give two shits about since the effects of each attribute seem irrelevant etc.
I just can't be arsed to care about the whole thing..

Man I feel bad for whoever the target audience IS.

I hope this game will fail HARD for daring to rape the beautiful memories of proper RPGs.
I'm afraid many will be misled by the looks, but I still can hope for a little while longer.
And I hope better game designers will finally have the chance to produce worthy successors of the gems of the past.

They won't. This is a close as we're ever going to get. Better enjoy the ride or just kill yourself now.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

I think this class system would work a lot better. Even if you lost 2 of the overall classes to move the final 4 into subclasses, you'd have 5 "big" classes.

fighter
--rogue
--defender
--barbarian

nature person
--ranger
--druid

religious person
--priest
--paladin

mage class because I can't think of a good class to combine it with (cypher might work):
mage

cool classes which are actually original so don't have subclasses:
monk
cypher
chanter


Then when you get to level 4ish, you'd have another decision to make. Ok, I made a fighter, but I want more offense -> go rogue or barbarian. I made a nature dude and I want to be a bear -> druid, etc.

That seems a bit like Titan Quest class system, could have worked.

 

[Athelas]

A classless system would've been better.

But I suppose that never was a possibility considering the game's heritage.

 

[Weirdstuffinspace]

There's a lot that is a possibility despite the game's heritage as we well know. 1st playthrough just for the story, and then it's waiting untill modders salvage what they can.

 

[Grunker]

I really don't get the people who are all "OMG this is nothing whatsoever like the IE-games." PoE beta is easily the most IE-like game I've played.

A classless system would've been better.

Cats and dogs, homeboy.

 

[Infinitron]

lol at all the posers ITT acting like they'll "play for the story" and won't powergame the shit out of this game the minute it comes out

 

[aeonsim]

So I don't quite understand Zed the problem with the archetypes for each class:

If you create a Rogue and pretty much follow the D&D style thing of put all your attribute points into Dex then the left over into Might (Strength) and/or Perception (admittedly new) or Intelligence, choose a background that gives stealth and mechanics (new again but hopefully obvious). Then as you level up grab interesting looking abilities/talents (Invisibility, Backstab etc) and the Weapon Style Rogue (Clubs, Sabre, Stiletto & Pistol) and throw all your skill points into Stealth and Mechanics and you'll end up with a character that is similar to a D&D Thief.
Can do high damage from sneak attacks, is good at sneaking and good at picking locks, laying traps and disarming traps.

Is the problem there are too many choices for the talents/feats or that the names of the skills/attributes are a bit different?

Because thinking about most of the standard classes you could simply choose the options that sound similar to what your'd do in D&D for creating a char and your'd end up with something that plays similar to a D&D character of a similar class. The biggest difference I can think of is the changed names and slightly different affects from some of the stats and the details of the talents/abilities that require a little bit of reading to work out.

 

[aeonsim]

Oh and by the way looks like a bug but Sword and Pistol can now be equipped together again if you want, and you can also dual wield pistols.

 

[Bleed the Man]

Oh and by the way looks like a bug but Sword and Pistol can now be equipped together again if you want, and you can also dual wield pistols.

I'm all for balance, but this needs to stay in the game, period.

 

[Athelas]

lol at all the posers ITT acting like they'll "play for the story" and won't powergame the shit out of this game the minute it comes out

Yeah, but afterwards they'll feel unclean and shameful.

Cats and dogs, homeboy.

It's very telling that the most discussed part of character building in the IE games by far is all the dual- and multi-class options, which basically allowed you be classless (to a limited extent).