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

[Crescent Hawk]

I still prefer Expeditions Conquistador over DivOS. Again I hope they improve 3d models and animations in POE.

 

[Grunker]

I still prefer Expeditions Conquistador over DivOS.

I certainly prefer the concept more, but not really the execution. Expedition was really neat, but it ran into big problems once it got to the second part. The resource management and heroes exploration didn't play very well with backtracking and fortress management. Also the combat, while cool in concept, ended up playing out awfully similar once you had a main team of fighters structured. I played ironman on the hardest settings and took every encounter to school without trying after a certain point. And I don't pride myself on being that great at RPG combat. Typically I need a couple of playthroughs or I have to read some guides before I get really good.

EC's strength where the "random" events and the story quests. Those were phenomenal. The entire tone of EC was an incredible feat for such a small outfit of people. But then, they made The Nameless Mod, another fantastic title with a few glaring, unignorable problems. So why be suprised?

 

[Frusciante]

I still prefer Expeditions Conquistador over DivOS. Again I hope they improve 3d models and animations in POE.

YEs me too. But that's mostly because I don't like the tone of dialogue, the story and the art style in D:OS. In terms of combat I also think I like EC better.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I think that from the perspective of most laymen, DivOS definitely has a wider scope than than Pillars (or any other purely Kickstarter-funded game). However, from a pure "systemfag" perspective what Grunker is saying isn't inaccurate.

Well, I guess since everybody is disagreeing with me on this I should throw in the towel here. I just don't equate breadth of content with scope. Maybe I should. But that would mean conceding that Skyrim has a vast scope

Perhaps it has. Then I will accept your definition and change my statement to this: PoE has more depth of content and more complexity in its systems (and I'm not refering to just the character system here, obviously, also stuff like reputation mechanics etc).

The Skyrim comparison is disingenuous, imo. It's not just about "breadth of content". It looks to me like you can't recognize D:OS for what it is, which is much more -- more significant and wider in scope -- than merely a combat-focused RPG with good encounter design that you're presenting it as. I think D:OS goes in a completely opposite direction to the CRPGs most people here have been used to (i.e. the BG2 template or the Fallout template), it does many sweeping and revolutionary things that haven't been there in any CRPG than came before it, and it manages to create a full-grown RPG based on those "experimental" things. Whereas Skyrim's "sandbox" is based on breadth of content, D:OS' "sandbox" is in fact systemic; it's just not the same kind of "systems" as character development or reputation -- which is something that Obsidian/Troika/Black Isle/Bioware have been iterating on since the 90s, and which may or may not reach its next peak in PoE. These games focus on different things and approach the very groundwork of RPG design differently to a point where it even becomes pointless to compare them directly.

Just wanted to explain why some people (e.g. me) disagree with you there, and why your Skyrim comparison shows you don't really understand the nature of that disagreement. Not willing to argue this any further

 

[Grunker]

The Skyrim comparison is disingenuous, imo. It's not just about "breadth of content". It looks to me like you can't recognize D:OS for what it is, which is much more -- more significant and wider in scope -- than merely a combat-focused RPG with good encounter design that you're presenting it as. I think D:OS goes in a completely opposite direction to the CRPGs most of people here have been used to (i.e. the BG2 template or the Fallout template), it does many sweeping and revolutionary things that haven't been there in any CRPG than came before it, and it manages to create a full-grown RPG based on those "experimental" things. Whereas Skyrim's "sandbox" is based on breadth of content, D:OS' "sandbox" is in fact systemic; it's just not the same kind of "systems" as character development or reputation -- which is something that Obsidian/Troika/Black Isle/Bioware have been iterating on since the 90s, and which may or may not reach its next peak in PoE. These games focus on different things and approach the very groundwork of RPG design differently to a point where it even becomes pointless to compare them directly.

Just wanted to explain why some people (e.g. me) disagree with you there, and why your Skyrim comparison shows you don't really understand the nature of that disagreement.

I disagree with you but I just went to bed and my tablet is ill-equipped to write a proper responce, so I'll see if I get time to whip one up tomorrow.

Not willing to argue this further

Well, you'll forgive me if I reply. You can take it from there or not, up to you

 

[Hegel]

Finally managed to get to level 8. Pure luck, game crashed once but reload did not wipe out quests. I also got experience triggers right, like visiting some places and dealing with the ogre, for example.
Now I understand why Sensuki things leveling is dull. Empty levels, feats that just pump already existing abilities, and abilities that just pump stuff class is already good at. Fighter gets more defense in various ways, Rogue more DPS. And holy hell, the spells. Say Cleric, he gets seal you can put on the floor on level 2, another one at level 3, another one at level 4... neither Wizard or Cleric get summoning spells, or new utility spells, or something that just feels fresh compared to previous levels. Magic missiles too. You get a level 1 magic missile, level 3 missile, level 4 missile... wtf. I hope you get more interesting spells during adventuring at least. Some stuff looks interesting like Phantom (BG Projection), and Invulnerability Sphere is in, but there's also a spell every level that does same shit Wizard's starting ability does - improves deflection. +10, +20, +25, urrh
Fact that Wizard's spells are actually Feats, so on level 6 or what you can improve your grimoire or take 4 level spell... wat.

And blank levels with only skill points suck.

Game would be better with say... 10-12 level being max level, but you'd get feat every 1-2 levels.
You also get levels too fast in beta, 1 level/quest basically.

I agree with you on the banality of the spell-design, and I think this is partially a result of designing a system where the "power" of the spells do not progress with the caster's levels, therefore the caster has to get a new version of the same spells every few levels.

In regards to the speed of progression in the beta, IIRC, the noted in the beta update that the experience points given in the beta quests were intentionally overinflated so that characters would level up at a faster than normal rate.

I wonder where did they get the inspiration for such magnificent system. Oh wait, MMORPGs and Mass effect, fucking hell!

 

[Infinitron]

In a shocking turn of events, the RPG Codex finds itself asking for spells that scale to your level

 

[Hegel]

A bit more of variety wouldn't hurt. They could have been more creative with magic, if power scaling was a problem then they could have added more flavour to low level spells so that they would have been useful and fun to use at higher levels and without the need of copycats. Make them scale (in power and by adding different effects) with intelligence (for the matter, awarding a bonus stat point for every odd level should have helped and more customization for us).

 

[Infinitron]

A bit more of variety wouldn't hurt. They could have been more creative with magic, if power scaling was a problem then they could have added more flavour to low level spells so that they would have been useful and fun to use at higher levels and without the need of copycats. Make them scale (in power and by adding different effects) with intelligence (for the matter, awarding a bonus stat point for every odd level should have helped and more customization for us).

They already do scale in power with Intelligence, and Might also. No different effects though.

D&D does have some spells that do this too - most famously the Cure Light/Cure Medium/Cure Serious/Cure Critical set of spells. I don't consider it a disaster if it's not overdone.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

SCS is definetely a question of man hours and testing. The mod wouldn't have been possible without the first iteration of Tactics, multiple years of forum discussion and 22 iterations of the final version of compiled scripts. It's a result of one of the most extensive periods of playtesting for a game, and someone with the time and skill to react properly to said testing. There's no way anything like SCS could make it into a game developed with short external testing time. Which, incidentally, defines nearly all actually released games.

Apologies to you and Infinitron for not being clear. What I meant to say was that I don't believe that significantly better AI than vanilla Infinity Engine games (though not nearly as tuned for the system nor as sophisticated as SCS2) is an impossible (or overly expensive) task for modern RPG developers and thus not an unreasonable thing to expect. That informs one of the

It's part of my overall thrust that Sawyer was incorrect in blaming hard counters, a systemic feature, for uninteresting gameplay experiences as opposed to one-dimensional enemies and lackluster AI, a content problem.

I'm not saying I consider this type of limited immunity to be terrible and game-ruining. I'm just saying I don't see anything wrong with bringing the game's saving throw system into the mix and making things more involving.

How is it more involving? How is it more interesting? To me, it's pointless mechanical bloat, requiring more system pieces/mechanics to achieve the desired effect. Much better, and more elegant, in my eyes to simply make BG2 style Spell Turning and the cost/balance it appropriately. A fourth level spell that can only be used once-per-rest seems like enough of a cost.

Plus, involving saves/checks and whatnot in everything makes for clunky, inelegant design. Take PoE's rendition of Mirror Image versus the IE's version. The IE version is extremely easy to understand in function and utility; one image negates one attack. Eternity's version...not so much. It's harder to value an arbitrary stat bonus without extensive knowledge of systems and content. You know it's good, and possibly useful, but can't necessarily say how good until you've amassed a certain familiarity with the gameworld, know which defensive statistics the toughest enemies have trouble against, etc.

Sawyer's Spell Turning suffers from the same sort of problem; players don't necessarily know the Will values of enemies. It could be a great spell against Blue Mages, who happen to have low Will, but terrible against Fuchsia Sorcerers who have high will. It's not elegant, not intuitive because of the integration of statistical checks and, ironically enough, punishes lack of metagame knowledge...the thing Sawyer tried to reduce by kicking out anything that stunk of hard counter.

If you can pump your resistances enough, or reduce the enemy's resistances enough, you gain an effect that's practically identical to those beloved hard counters.

For one thing, that won't happen. Sawyer dislikes hard counters because he believes they lead to “degenerate gameplay”, boring encounters, and metagaming. There's little reason to believe he would make it possible to stack effects such that hard counters are effectively built into the system.

Do you want your cool exploit-like tactics? Fucking earn them, I say.

How is spending character resources to protect said character from a small subset of offensive techniques, a subset only utilized by a subset of enemies, now an “exploit-like tactic”? Things aren't exploits if they were designed that way, and you'd have a hard time arguing that this sort of effect is broken on a power-level basis.

In any case, I do wonder if you're not being disingenuous, because I suspect you want a lot more than that limited low-level Spell Turning effect.

Yeah, I want interesting, elegantly designed abilities. Sawyer's Spell Turning is one example, among many, of failure to reliably achieve that sort of design. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of things I like: Ciphers, Monks, Chanters, a “universal” Lower Resistance spell. But there's also a lot of things I really don't like. And this is a thread to discuss the game, so....

 

[Hegel]

A bit more of variety wouldn't hurt. They could have been more creative with magic, if power scaling was a problem then they could have added more flavour to low level spells so that they would have been useful and fun to use at higher levels and without the need of copycats. Make them scale (in power and by adding different effects) with intelligence (for the matter, awarding a bonus stat point for every odd level should have helped and more customization for us).

They already do scale in power with Intelligence, and Might also. No different effects though.

D&D does have some spells that do this too - most famously the Cure Light/Cure Medium/Cure Serious/Cure Critical set of spells. I don't consider it a disaster if it's not overdone.

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough.
My experience is limited to IE games as I've never played pen and paper D&D. In BGII, spellcasting was tridimensional. As spellcasters levelled up they would gain access to higher level spells, obtain more slots per level and improve the bottomline of their spellbooks. The system required serious tactical considerations on the side of the player, as you were forced to make choices before an encounter, lower level spells (think about dispel, chromatic orb, armor, summons etc) would retain importance, higher level copycats added accessory effects and were outright better on paper but the composition of your spellbook varied with the challenge, given the tactical constraints, lower level spells had their use (think about Limited Wish rabbit summon and Wish), it was a game of tweaking the system to achieve the optimal output.
In a game where magic doesn't scale accordingly, the lowest option becomes useless, you're going to load up on higher level spells as their minor counterpart turns inferior in every way, at the expense of dynamism and fun. As lower level spells fall into oblivion (immunities), the player will be prompted to shift to a very narrow selection of choices, there is no clever approach, no optimization. It doesn't make much sense in a game with per combat/encounter skills and limited resources, I mean BGII spellsystem would have been better in this instance, moreover from the designer's POV the planned obsolescence of so many items is certainly wrong, with less and less options to tinker with, the game is going to look shallow. That's the reason why this game needs more utilities and an out of combat magic system.
IMHO, it all comes down to the designers wanting absolute control over the player.



Bottom line. They took a strategically rich and tridimensional magic system, removed several layers of abstraction and complexity and gave us a monodimensional (shallow) mechanic. There is little depth as it's all ancillary, they should have improved what they had (especially since I like the limited resources dynamic, which would have been perfect in a game with a decent encounter design).

 

[Infinitron]

For one thing, that won't happen. Sawyer dislikes hard counters because he believes they lead to “degenerate gameplay”, boring encounters, and metagaming. There's little reason to believe he would make it possible to stack effects such that hard counters are effectively built into the system.

Why not? As long as there's a small chance of the saving throw failing, you have a chance of breaking through. I could definitely see tactics like that emerging at high levels. After all, this game is going to have plenty of "boring" saving throw enhancing items, right?

Plus, you fail to consider another fairly appealing option. Time-limited absolute immunities. Not a hard counter because you can wait them out. (of course, I mean a reasonable time limit, not 15 minutes of real time or something)

 

[Lhynn]

In a shocking turn of events, the RPG Codex finds itself asking for spells that scale to your level

Wait, people in the codex actually think low level spells should be a thing to deal with demons and high level undeads?
Because other than some minimal utility those creatures should laugh at that petty magic.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

In a shocking turn of events, the RPG Codex finds itself asking for spells that scale to your level

Wait, people in the codex actually think low level spells should be a thing to deal with demons and high level undeads?
Because other than some minimal utility those creatures should laugh at that petty magic.

I don't really remember vampires and demons laughing at petty magic missiles in Badur's Gate but what do I know.

 

[Hormalakh]

As the game is in a nearly unplayable state at this point, I continue my suggestis on mechanically uninteresting parts of the game. This time it's about the Grimoire.

http://www.hormalakh.blogspot.com/2014/08/taking-look-at-grimoire-v257.html

 

[Hegel]

You know what's odd. In a game as obsessed with Active combat as PoE, they made magic (which in BGII was extremely counteractive) passive.

 

[Infinitron]

As the game is in a nearly unplayable state at this point, I continue my suggestis on mechanically uninteresting parts of the game. This time it's about the Grimoire.

http://www.hormalakh.blogspot.com/2014/08/taking-look-at-grimoire-v257.html

I thought you were talking about another game for a second.

Nice blog, you should send the link to Anthony Davis/badler if you haven't already

 

[Lhynn]

In a shocking turn of events, the RPG Codex finds itself asking for spells that scale to your level

Wait, people in the codex actually think low level spells should be a thing to deal with demons and high level undeads?
Because other than some minimal utility those creatures should laugh at that petty magic.

I don't really remember vampires and demons laughing at petty magic missiles in Badur's Gate but what do I know.

Oh yeah, you mean the exception?

 

[Rake]

In a shocking turn of events, the RPG Codex finds itself asking for spells that scale to your level

Wait, people in the codex actually think low level spells should be a thing to deal with demons and high level undeads?
Because other than some minimal utility those creatures should laugh at that petty magic.

I don't really remember vampires and demons laughing at petty magic missiles in Badur's Gate but what do I know.

Oh yeah, you mean the exception?

My demons didn't laugh at the Protection from evil a level 1 spell...
Exception my ass

 

[Hegel]

Not to mention chromatic orb, grease (loaded in sequencers), identify, shield, spook.

 

[Zed]

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,4432.0.html
^ my impressions

Sounds like you gave it as much of a spin as I did. That is, a very short one.
I agree with the impressions you share.

"I'm going to go with this fire dude. I wonder if anyone's going to notice that my face is on fire (hint: nobody did)."
I find it very weird that godlikes don't invoke a much more noticeable reaction from pretty much every NPC. Too bad the godlikes have all the good player portraits, because I think the game would be better without them.

 

[Once more unto the Codex]

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,4432.0.html
^ my impressions

Sounds like you gave it as much of a spin as I did. That is, a very short one.
I agree with the impressions you share.

"I'm going to go with this fire dude. I wonder if anyone's going to notice that my face is on fire (hint: nobody did)."
I find it very weird that godlikes don't invoke a much more noticeable reaction from pretty much every NPC. Too bad the godlikes have all the good player portraits, because I think the game would be much better without them.

In what way does their mere presence make the game "much" worse?

 

[Lhynn]

I said said they have minimal utility, as in not game changers.
Magic missile was good to finish off enemies before they healed, pfe had a very interesting use against outsiders, chromatic orb was only useful if you used other spells to lower the opponents chance of shrugging it off. Grease? why bother if you have web. etc.
Plus magic resistance and below 0 saving throws fucked over most of them in the first place. The real changers where the higher level spells that either made the low level ones actually matter, or the ones that provided hard counters, etc.

 

[Zed]

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,4432.0.html
^ my impressions

Sounds like you gave it as much of a spin as I did. That is, a very short one.
I agree with the impressions you share.

"I'm going to go with this fire dude. I wonder if anyone's going to notice that my face is on fire (hint: nobody did)."
I find it very weird that godlikes don't invoke a much more noticeable reaction from pretty much every NPC. Too bad the godlikes have all the good player portraits, because I think the game would be much better without them.

In what way does their mere presence make the game "much" worse?

I edited the post before your reply and removed "much."

 

[Vault Dweller]

http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,4432.0.html
^ my impressions

Sounds like you gave it as much of a spin as I did. That is, a very short one.
I agree with the impressions you share.

"I'm going to go with this fire dude. I wonder if anyone's going to notice that my face is on fire (hint: nobody did)."
I find it very weird that godlikes don't invoke a much more noticeable reaction from pretty much every NPC. Too bad the godlikes have all the good player portraits, because I think the game would be better without them.

Pretty much. In a world filled godlike beings my character's appearance would be totally normal, but the village seems as ordinary as it gets and can fit into any fantasy RPG. A demonic looking character with his face on fire strolls in and nobody bats an eye. It makes you feel that the godlike character is nothing but a modifier. It's not an actual character but a walking "+1 to Dex +1 to Int" that doesn't serve any other purpose.

IWD2's aasimar and drow didn't have much 'personality' either but at least you had to pay for the bonus stats with ECL penalty. Here it's a freebie. Might as well roll all races into one and give the player extra 2 stat points to distribute however he wants to.