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

[tuluse]

But yes, PoE classes primarily matter in combat. This has been known for many months now. I know you knew it.

We knew many things, and i didn't like many of them. But Sawyer responded to critisism saying that people often react negatively on things on Paper, to discover that in practise they work just fine.
So i was waiting for beta to come out before i start worrying. Now the beta is out, and people are reporting that the things that sounded like bad design 6 months ago, remain bad in practise.
So the "we knew from the start" doesn't mean much.

I think what people want from classes is strange. I literally don't understand most of the complaints.

 

[Hegel]

I hate to be that guy, but people are right, Da:O had better magic and certainly more variety (even in terms of cross-spell interaction), the game needs a lot of work and I'm not talking about mere bugs, they need to get back to the design stage.
I'm at a loss for words as they nailed the hard parts (building a narrative, dialogues, the feel, something they had to do from scratch) but absolutely missed stuff they could have merely imported from their previous games, it would have been easier to start from there (UI and feedback, character models, the lack of decent portraits, combat and PC differentiation, the absence of meaningful customization, attributes, itemization/descriptions, magic, skills, maps and exploration like in SoZ). What they call innovation is clunky at best, however it's all fixable (otherwise modders will have to do their job).
It's as if they had forgotten their previous games; combat feedback for example, had they played BGII again, they would have realized why UI and combat sounds/animations have a purpose outside of their aesthetical nature.
This game is the very definition popamole/simplification for casuals, I mean the streamlining has gone so far that they actually choose to remove the role part from RPG. It's all percentages and active skills, it's as if an Aspie designed the system while playing MMORPGs.
Everything is so railroaded, you might want to try different builds but in the end the results won't change, you can't escape their diktats (damage/heal, whatever build you run). I'm hating this, I know it's a beta but I feel like I'll end up disliking this game if I keep playing, unless they opted for a rehaul.

 

[felipepepe]

I think what people want from classes is strange. I literally don't understand most of the complaints.

Having non-combat skills helps to flesh out the classes and the party. Maybe your BG Rogue deals less damage, but he's very useful for traps and locked doors.

PoE just discards that layer, making every class identical when out of combat. This means you don't really need a complete party, you can play with 6 Barbarians without any problem. They are resistant, deal a lot of damage and can use guns for ranged combat.

 

[Liston]

I think what people want from classes is strange. I literally don't understand most of the complaints.

Having non-combat skills helps to flesh out the classes and the party. Maybe your BG Rogue deals less damage, but he's very useful for traps and locked doors.

PoE just discards that layer, making every class identical when out of combat. This means you don't really need a complete party, you can play with 6 Barbarians without any problem. They are resistant, deal a lot of damage and can use guns for ranged combat.

Clearly being able to play without rouge and cleric is ruining the game. Oh the horror.

 

[Maculo]

I think what people want from classes is strange. I literally don't understand most of the complaints.

Having non-combat skills helps to flesh out the classes and the party. Maybe your BG Rogue deals less damage, but he's very useful for traps and locked doors.

PoE just discards that layer, making every class identical when out of combat. This means you don't really need a complete party, you can play with 6 Barbarians without any problem. They are resistant, deal a lot of damage and can use guns for ranged combat.

I am not sure I agree with that. Even if the classes are identical outside of combat, they are not identical inside of combat. With an all barbarian party you would certainly have the AOE and they could switch to range, but you would not have access to priests buffs. Barbarians can only do so much, especially on the harder difficulties.

What difficulties have you cleared? I am playing Path of the Damned with my barbarian now, and I am not sure a 6 barbarian party would be superior in some instances, especially without a buffer, summoner, and/or mage. That being said, I not confident I have a perfect grasp on barbarians.

 

[tuluse]

Having non-combat skills helps to flesh out the classes and the party. Maybe your BG Rogue deals less damage, but he's very useful for traps and locked doors.

PoE just discards that layer, making every class identical when out of combat. This means you don't really need a complete party, you can play with 6 Barbarians without any problem. They are resistant, deal a lot of damage and can use guns for ranged combat.

If you actually compare this game to the IE games and not some idealized game in your head. It's not that different.

Out of combat specialization in IE games was basically thieves and bards getting thief skills and wizards being able to do everything they could do, but better.

So Sawyer got rid of wizard trivialization to make characters feel more distinct. While he let any class invest in any skill they want to (something 3E and thus IWD2 did as well), with a small bonus for some skills with each class.

 

[Once more unto the Codex]

I think what people want from classes is strange. I literally don't understand most of the complaints.

Having non-combat skills helps to flesh out the classes and the party. Maybe your BG Rogue deals less damage, but he's very useful for traps and locked doors.

PoE just discards that layer, making every class identical when out of combat. This means you don't really need a complete party, you can play with 6 Barbarians without any problem. They are resistant, deal a lot of damage and can use guns for ranged combat.

Wait, wait, wait, so the complaint now is that PoE gives too much flexibility and freedom? If you want to build an BG Rogue, just pump stealth and and mechanics. If you don't, then don't.

 

[Rake]

So Sawyer got rid of wizard trivialization to make characters feel more distinct.

And doing so made magic boring. Right now it's just another way to do damage.

 

[Hegel]

They removed several layers of abstraction from the combat. I'm clearly unable to understand your point. While in BGII you needed mages for their AOE and utility magic (as the opposition tended to instacast several magic defenses or slow you down), clerics for their buffs, and warriors for their damage dealing capabilities, and out of combat every class actually had a purpose (healers, summoners, traps/locks, buffers), in PoE you merely need to dish out as much damage as possible (doesn't matter if it's from a fireball or a sword, unless you factorize different immunities all you need to do is kill, doesn't matter how), outside of combat every character is the same.
It really removes variety, where are the teleport fields, charm spells, illusions. I love variety, it adds replayability, it's fun and allows me to solve encounters by employing different approaches moreover it lets me customize my character the way I want. Should I use imprisonement or a maze, is my warrior rushing into the room or should I send my invisible thief?
PoE is something only a control freak could have designed, you cannot stray from the common path. Look at magic in ToEE or Original Sin, spells have a purpose, they are intertwined with the general mechanic, au contraire magic in PoE is something ancillary, it doesn't have any effect other than damage/protection, it lacks in variety and appears to be, above everything else, a faux and contrived system randomly stitched to the main game just because.

 

[Rivmusique]

fireball does 20-60 in AoE and I believe it goes through stamina right onto hp

Enemies health is irrelevant unless they have priests to around to cast in combat resurrection, and they could do that ~4 times for most classes (barbarians have a different ratio for taking health damage, if an enemy gets healed before he goes down he will lose more than 1/4 of his HP by the time he drops). All it would do is let the ones you downed get up after they wipe your party, which doesn't matter.

1. No auto-attack (this is a bug, will be fixed)

What do people mean when they say this? I would say auto-attack is somewhat inconsistent, a character might stop attacking a target maybe ~5% of the time (though on a barbarian I played with a pike, it was more like 90%). Using an ability also often stops an attack, so I need to reorder after it goes off.

Or do you mean beginning to attack a new target after one dies? I notice this doesn't happen much (I prefer it not to happen at all. I would play with auto-pause on target destroyed and then re-assign targets for the people who killed him, don't want to waste a recovery time on a low priority target), but I have seen it. Most noticeable event was when I ended a combat against one beetle group with a second I hadn't pulled near by. After it ended I only moved one character around to start looting, and some ranged with a gun had switched to a beetle in the second group, pulling them with my group out of position and low on stamina .

How do people feel about attack and spell recovery time being the same? It creates a different feeling from the IE games, where you could be auto-attacking with your wizard, beginning your six-second round (at 30fps), notice a need for a spell 2 seconds in and have it begin casting as soon as you order, even though you had really already used your round to use an attack. In this, if your auto attacking with your wizard and you see a need for a spell, you need to wait for the recovery time from your attack to end before the cast starts (sometimes it doesn't start at all, but this is just beta issues with queuing I suppose). If you want your wizard ready to cast at any moment, better not attack with him.

 

[felipepepe]

If you actually compare this game to the IE games and not some idealized game in your head. It's not that different.

Out of combat specialization in IE games was basically thieves and bards getting thief skills and wizards being able to do everything they could do, but better.

So Sawyer got rid of wizard trivialization to make characters feel more distinct. While he let any class invest in any skill they want to (something 3E and thus IWD2 did as well), with a small bonus for some skills with each class.

You are oversimplifying. Every class had a role in the game, and you had to consider that when building your party. A party without a spellcaster would suffer when facing certain enemies, such as other spellcasters. A party without rogues or bards would have a hard time with traps and locks. Clerics and priests were great for fighting undead. Restrictions also played great part in that, you had to keep a varied party to fully explore the range of weapons and armors the game provides. PoE has nothing of that, all that a class means is "what it does in combat".

It's true that BG mages could banalize skills IF you intentionally exploited rest-spam. Sawyer "solved" that by simply removing any utility the wizard had. That's not improving a game, is removing stuff that you don't know how to do better.

 

[Bubbles]

You could also multi- and dualclass in most IE games, which gave you a lot more options in party composition do deal with those restrictions and access the different types of flavour. PoE takes a completely different approach.

 

[tuluse]

You are oversimplifying. Every class had a role in the game, and you had to consider that when building your party. A party without a spellcaster would suffer when facing certain enemies, such as other spellcasters. A party without rogues or bards would have a hard time with traps and locks. Clerics and priests were great for fighting undead. Restrictions also played great part in that, you had to keep a varied party to fully explore the range of weapons and armors the game provides. PoE has nothing of that, all that a class means is "what it does in combat".

It's true that BG mages could banalize skills IF you intentionally exploited rest-spam. Sawyer "solved" that by simply removing any utility the wizard had. That's not improving a game, is removing stuff that you don't know how to do better.

I thought combat differences weren't enough for you. PoE classes have plenty of combat differences.

 

[imweasel]

It is probably a good idea to have a priest in your party, for healing spells and such, but other than it doesn't make a difference how you build your party. There are no more roles, just characters that do damage in different ways.

It is all fluff without any content or substance.

 

[roshan]

PoE is something only a control freak could have designed, you cannot stray from the common path. Look at magic in ToEE or Original Sin, spells have a purpose, they are intertwined with the general mechanic, au contraire magic in PoE is something ancillary, it doesn't have any effect other than damage/protection, it lacks in variety and appears to be, above everything else, a faux and contrived system randomly stitched to the main game just because.

You are right, the guy is a control freak. The problem with Sawyer is that he engages in "metadesign", he wants players to do exactly what he wants, and when he sees them do something different, he gets upset. He actually watches people while they play. It's fucking creepy. The narcissist doesn't get that players actually have FUN doing their own thing their own way.

 

[roshan]

You could memorize one knock spell, rest between every unlock, and use it to not need any one with lock picking in the whole party.

If you didn't do this, you're a dirty larper since it was the most efficient way to get through locks.

Therefore lockpicking was a useless skill in the IE games.

By contrast, mechanics is actually useful in PoE because you can't bypass it. However, you still don't need a rogue since any class can learn to pick locks.

Wow. Such idiotic exaggeration, only a control freak would try to plug every loophole in the game at the expense of player enjoyment.

What you are describing is a THEORETICAL exploit, not what happened IN REALITY. In reality, knock was a waste of a spell slot, only useful in two circumstances:

1. You encountered a lock that was just too complicated for your thief to pick. IE knock was a backup just in case the thief couldn't do the job, so you didn't have to revisit the area just to have him pick that one lock.

2. You were playing a solo mage or multi/dual class mage, in which case you would be able to use knock for locks that you couldn't bash open.

Also, didn't you lose XP in BG2 by using knock instead of lockpicking?

 

[Hegel]

Knock wasn't a spell you would keep in a slot (at low levels), you memorized it in a specific instance and that's it. And you know what? You could have bashed that lock instead, if your mage couldn't, then polymorph was there for a reason, you had a CHOICE. Yeah, because attributes mattered, so using that +5 str hammer or turning into a werewolf would have been useful outside of combat as well. Wish and Limited wish were the best spells gameplay-wise.
If removing mechanics and exploits produces a game devoid of any fun, then it's cleary wrong. Go, design an MMORPG and leave single player games alone.

 

[Bubbles]

Also, didn't you lose XP in BG2 by using knock instead of lockpicking?

Yes, you did. And since losing out on xp is a deadly sin to powergamers (see the kill xp thread), that means no powergamer would ever use Knock. Tuluse must be getting sleepy.

 

[roshan]

I have to chime in here. The die roll is a d20, and assuming the AC range is 20 (10 to -10) for a 2e (NOT 3!) game, i.e. every IE game except IWD2, +1 on a d20 is ~+5%. In the above example, +1 does NOT = +5, +4 is +20% and +5 is +25% so the incremental increase from +1 to-hit is +5%, ffs. The +4 has NOTHING TO DO with the bless spell! Or, for the mathematically disenfranchised, +4 was +20% and +5 was +25% so that the total change in your chance to hit was +5% (don't get confused and think about it as a change in the bonus to hit, which is a 25% bonus to the bonus (4 to 5)).

Both you and Volourn are wrong. DnD used dice rolls, not percentages or absolute values. Bless is a +1 bonus to a D20 dice roll. This is not at all the same as 5%. AB is not chance to hit. It is a bonus to a dice roll. The dice roll VS your opponent's armor class is the real "CHANCE TO HIT".

THEREFORE, It is a minimum increase of 5.26% and a maximum of 100% (if you previously could only hit the enemy on a 20). That's what made D20 such a balanced system. Every plus 1 was always useful and meant something.

I also explained this in a previous post:

This is completely incorrect. Bless is a +1 to your AB which does not necessarily translate into 5% increase chance to hit.

If your enemy has an AC of 15, and you have an AB of 6, adding the roll gives you a range of 7-26, which means you have a 45% chance to hit. Bless adding to this means you now have a 50% chance to hit the enemy, but your chance to hit has actually increased by 11.11%. If you previously only had a 5% chance to hit, bless would actually increase your chance to hit by 100%.

Now bless is a fairly minor spell but that +1 AB is always relevant because numbers in DnD are small and not bloated. Anytime you find an enemy that you actually miss against fairly often is always a good opportunity to use a bless spell. On top of this, the spell as opposed to more powerful buffs lasts a long bloody time. I recall in IWD2 being able to clear maps before my bless ran out. There is almost no excuse not to cast it all the time.

Honestly, pretty fucking awesome for something you get at level 1.

 

[Maculo]

It is probably a good idea to have a priest in your party, for healing spells and such, but other than it doesn't make a difference how you build your party. There are no more roles, just characters that do damage in different ways.

It is all fluff without any content or substance.

I respectfully disagree. I am not saying PoE's system is complex, but I think there is more to it than just damage.

• Rogues do have debuffs/cripples that warriors and barbarians do not have to my knowledge.
  
• Warriors have defense abilities that do not overlap.
  
• Ciphers has charms and mind control in puppet master, etc.
  
• Chanters seem like an inbetween of priests and wizards from what little I have played of them.
• Priests have buffs.
• Barbarian is AOE.

Each class seems to have a utility of its own (not all the equally significant). I am not sure about rangers, druids, and monks though. Barbarians and wizards in my opinion do fall within your criticism of just damage with different strokes. Obsidian should really push farther, but at the same time I cannot fully agree with your assessment of the classes from playing on Path of the Damned.

I would also make an argument at this stage that a straight damage party of just one class would not work on every difficulty (6 barbarians, etc). Exceptions would likely be priest or chanter, since they can do so damn much without sacrificing much from what I have seen.

edit: In addition to a priest, I would probably also just add a mage for web. It seems to work well for parties that use guns and arbalests.

 

[Menckenstein]

I think what people want from classes is strange. I literally don't understand most of the complaints.

Having non-combat skills helps to flesh out the classes and the party. Maybe your BG Rogue deals less damage, but he's very useful for traps and locked doors.

PoE just discards that layer, making every class identical when out of combat. This means you don't really need a complete party, you can play with 6 Barbarians without any problem. They are resistant, deal a lot of damage and can use guns for ranged combat.

Wait, wait, wait, so the complaint now is that PoE gives too much flexibility and freedom? If you want to build an BG Rogue, just pump stealth and and mechanics. If you don't, then don't.

Sup Josh.

 

[Lilura]

Clearly being able to play without rouge and cleric is ruining the game. Oh the horror.

No, the horror is that you, and so many other gamers, can't even spell "rogue".

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

I wondere why despite trying to make system "better than DnD" they decided to basically copy their class list. Not only they forced themselves to design 11 classes at the start using system that has not been tested yet, they also forced themselves to design their games around archetypes created for a different universe and game system. It's like trying to make a new, better sci-fi Franchise than Star Trek but still putting in Volcans, Romulans and Klingons. Of course while also making everyone able to use Volcan nerve pinch and reducing Volcan's strength for balance reasons.

 

[ActinBob]

Hi, I would like to give away my beta key. I am not going to have time to play the beta.
I am asking for 2 conditions:
1) already be a project eternity backer
2) give feedback to Obsidian

 

[Zeriel]

I wondere why despite trying to make system "better than DnD" they decided to basically copy their class list. Not only they forced themselves to design 11 classes at the start using system that has not been tested yet, they also forced themselves to design their games around archetypes created for a different universe and game system. It's like trying to make a new, better sci-fi Franchise than Star Trek but still putting in Volcans, Romulans and Klingons. Of course while also making everyone able to use Volcan nerve pinch and reducing Volcan's strength for balance reasons.

Fear of not making profit vs. hubris of assuming they must be able to do better.

So everything has to sort of just look like Baldur's Gate, but fuck those idiots who actually enjoyed Baldur's Gate, they just didn't realize how bad and unfun it was.

It's all sort of weird considering these guys made a lot of the Infinity Engine games. At what point did they decide all their old work sucked?