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

[Delterius]

I also don't know why you think people should try to rest as little as possible. What do you gain out of that? You can win the game by playing either way, soooo. Humans, and even life in general, are drawn to the Path of Least Resistance

The path of least resistance is called Story Mode, not rest spam. And humans, above all, have an inflated ego that must be sated by their own performance. Efficiently managing your resources is a standard for success in games in general. It could be the wizard's spellbook or health pickups in a shooter. Doesn't have to be grand strategy to realize something so intuitive.

In fact, PoE communicates it very clearly that rest supplies are a factor in difficulty. The harder the difficulty the less rests you should get to clear a map. Therefore, the better you are at the game the fewer times you need to rest.

The vast majority of people should play this game on Normal. They can start off on Hard and rise to the challenge, they can realize their limitations and lower the difficulty or they can make their own lives miserable by resting 10 times a map and backtracking all the fucking time. That person is an unicorn of fail. You can't try and please them. They are the odd combination of scrub asshole who'll post in a forum demanding the game be rebalanced so that they aren't tempted to be complete dumbfucks, ever.

Pokémon is a game for 10 year olds and, yeah, you can totally go back to the pokémon center all the time. You can spend all your money and buy potions while somehow sucking at the game. But nothing stops the child from learning the about how the game works and, eventually, even ignoring the game's supposed limitations altogether. It shouldn't stop adults either.

 

[fantadomat]

Well, I suggested this before: limited safe rest "sanctuaries" at strategic positions, acting as sort of attrition "checkpoints", generally safe for one-time use only before dungeon clearance.

I wouldn't necessarily mind a checkpoint system, but the freedom to save wherever and whenever is a major sticking point in PC communities.

Console peon!!! Checkpoint system is retarded,real life happens! If you want to waste your time by not saving,that is your prerogative,the other 99.5% prefer to have the ability to save when they need to.

 

[Lacrymas]

The path of least resistance is called Story Mode, not rest spam. And humans, above all, have an inflated ego that must be sated by their own performance. Efficiently managing your resources is a standard for success in games in general. It could be the wizard's spellbook or health pickups in a shooter. Doesn't have to be grand strategy to realize something so intuitive.

In fact, PoE communicates it very clearly that rest supplies are a factor in difficulty. The harder the difficulty the less rests you should get to clear a map. Therefore, the better you are at the game the fewer times you need to rest.

The vast majority of people should play this game on Normal. They can start off on Hard and rise to the challenge, they can realize their limitations and lower the difficulty or they can make their own lives miserable by resting 10 times a map and backtracking all the fucking time. That person is an unicorn of fail. You can't try and please them. They are the odd combination of scrub asshole who'll post in a forum demanding the game be rebalanced so that they aren't tempted to be complete dumbfucks, ever.

Yet all of that doesn't matter. Neither to other people who are playing the game, nor to the devs (obviously). It's your own personal mental paradigm that you've encapsulated the game in and think that's how people in general view it or it's some kind of Ultimate Standard to which people should "rise", while that can't be further from the truth. Like I mentioned several times now, Obsidian have already decided to go to a different route rather than go my way and truly limit resting or continue this pointless charade. You can try to go through the entire game with the least amount of rests, but that's your choice, the game doesn't encourage that (botched loading times notwithstanding) nor requires it, making it meaningless outside your own bubble. If that is enough for you, which is fine, you have low standards, plain and simple. Don't expect other people to view it like that, though, nor Obsidian to take it into consideration, which they haven't.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

The mental gymnastics required to bitch about other people having low standards, when you couldn't hack the game on Hard without abusing every choke point on the map and rest spamming.

:kwanzania:

 

[Delterius]

Neither to other people who are playing the game

We'll have to agree to disagree. To me understanding and gradually improving in a game is a natural and enjoyable process. Even when the game isn't particularly hard, I still try to understand what is going on and to experiment with things. I tend to think most people act like that, even if they don't all aim for the hardest difficulty mode possible.

If you think that's some sort of authoritarian viewpoint, then, frankly, its probably for the best that Sawyer just gave up and decided to phase out vancian little by little.

 

[Krzysiek]

 

[Lacrymas]

Oh, right, the Intellect change, I forgot to mention that. Given that thing, you can dump INT in the beta with almost no worry since the bonus/malus to AoE is so small. It's good they are looking into that.

 

[Icewater]

I'd be happy with this as well -

Haha, I was just about to reply to your post above with that song when I saw this.

 

[Haplo]

Well, I suggested this before: limited safe rest "sanctuaries" at strategic positions, acting as sort of attrition "checkpoints", generally safe for one-time use only before dungeon clearance.

I wouldn't necessarily mind a checkpoint system, but the freedom to save wherever and whenever is a major sticking point in PC communities.

Well, it's not really necessary to limit saving, only resting (single use). Of course most dungeons would still allow exiting and retry-ing - but then I would be in favor of full enemy respawns (the bestiary xp limit system works very much in favor of this).

 

[FreeKaner]

The problem is the game shouldn't need to compromise like this, it only does because Sawyer decided the audience is not in favour of this type of strategic element and he doesn't want to implement a system that will encourage reloading (I.E entry only dungeons). Now whether this is right or not is not relevant on the whole because Sawyer decided to compromise instead and I think the compromise is unnecessary. It's like how in D:OS/2 you click a sleeping bag on your skill bar to restore your HP after a combat, was that really necessary? It's there only to pay homage to "sleeping" and that point it jsut gets silly that sleeping bag is healing you when "resting" encompasses something entirely different.

I think new Shadowruns does this best, you get automatic healing for the last wounds you took but overall you are in a mission with no way out with the resources you got. Obviously that preparation fits that game's theme and gameplay elements much better but it's still a new example that has strategic elements. What PoE could do if it doesn't have vancian spellcasting to encourage resting would be to not have automatic restoration of health as the game no longer has health/endurance, this would put "food" resources for your resting to be divided between "healing" and "empowering".

 

[AwesomeButton]

For example, the engagement system was meant to stop frequent kiting

This is one of them Sensuki Myths. It's not what it was meant to stop, it's just something that it happened to affect and annoyed him

Sawyer said it is designed to stop abusies of the AI in the kickstarter update, which includes kiting. Didn't he?

 

[Infinitron]

Sawyer said it is designed to stop abusies of the AI in the kickstarter update, which includes kiting. Didn't he?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/415136

Melee engagement is a solution to two common problems in the Infinity Engine games: melee characters' inability to control an area and ranged characters' ability to "kite" melee characters. In the Infinity Engine games, melee characters could be quite powerful in toe-to-toe combat, but many opponents found ways to foil those characters with little difficulty. Fast characters could easily rush around a slower melee character with impunity and ranged characters could backpedal perpetually out of reach.

I was wrong! It was about kiting also.

 

[Lacrymas]

You can still kite, though. At the end of my run, I had Durance with Boots of Speed + Fast Runner talent + Movement survival bonus and I was running circles around every mob in the game. He also had an item which made him invisible if someone attacks him, so he was basically untouchable. Engagement only works to "prevent" kiting if you allow the mobs to close in on you, if you just run around they can't get to you to trigger AoOs anyway.

I don't think kiting is a degenerate tactic if the encounters are designed well. If the enemies consistently have only melee combatants, then that's the fault of the devs, not including enemy casters, ranged or melee who are fast enough to be unkitable frequently enough.

 

[Infinitron]

Nobody is denying that, I just didn't remember that engagement was explicitly announced as a solution to kiting. I only remembered the update's video where he didn't mention kiting.

 

[FreeKaner]

You can still kite, though. At the end of my run, I had Durance with Boots of Speed + Fast Runner talent + Movement survival bonus and I was running circles around every mob in the game. He also had an item which made him invisible if someone attacks him, so he was basically untouchable. Engagement only works to "prevent" kiting if you allow the mobs to close in on you, if you just run around they can't get to you to trigger AoOs anyway.

I don't think kiting is a degenerate tactic if the encounters are designed well. If the enemies consistently have only melee combatants, then that's the fault of the devs, not including enemy casters, ranged or melee who are fast enough to be unkitable frequently enough.

I think that's okay combined with slower recovery while moving. It isn't anything close to BG's movement being out of rounds and there being no reason to not move and kite.

 

[Trashos]

We can't get one good fight in whole games, and you are basically arguing "what's the ideal number of good fights before rest". Sigh.

EDIT: Talking generally about the vancian/resting system, in light of the discussion above. I never understood why a fight should be trying to reduce my resources instead of outright kill me.

 

[frajaq]

this is why turn based games will always be superior

 

[FreeKaner]

We can't get one good fight in whole games, and you are basically arguing "what's the ideal number of good fights before rest". Sigh.

EDIT: Talking generally about the vancian/resting system, in light of the discussion above. I never understood why a fight should be trying to reduce my resources instead of outright kill me.

Ideally it should be doing both, the encounter should be challenging enough that there is risk of wiping out if you do not do it properly (I.E no trash fights there to grind) but if you manage to overcome it you should have less resources after you come out of it. This would again ideally lead to both strategical and tactical depth where you need to contend with least resources possible for just enough impact.

 

[Trashos]

Yes, I understand that. The way I wrote my last reply was silly.

Here are my thoughts, more carefully: Resource management is a secondary gameplay element. In no RPG I love was it the reason why I loved it. I see people in the previous pages asking for no saves permitted, respawning enemies and wonderful things like that in order to cater for the resource management layer. But things like that actually make a game worse. (replay a battle I won because I lost the next one?! Hell no! Make every battle count and don't give me that crap.)

So. Resource management, since it's important to some people, can be done through limited consumables. E.g. here are 10 stealth boys for the whole game (New Vegas- kinda). Here are two potions for this dungeon etc. Resting produces a number of problems that have been discussed here, and my major issue with it is that it does not help encounter design (here is a hard battle, unless you can rest and then it becomes an easy battle- it's kinda silly). No need for resting, afaic.

 

[FreeKaner]

I agree actually I think there should be some strategical element in terms of progressing through the game to provide some suspension but it shouldn't be a game about resource management, like say how games like Mordheim or Expeditions:Conquistador work. I think Shadowrun hit a nice balance but it's almost hard to go wrong there due it's system and theme being built around doing missions.

 

[Sensuki]

PoE wasn't trying to eliminate kiting as far as I know.

They were actually - with slowed recovery while moving (and engagement).

The idea was that I think movement should have an opportunity cost

Movement already has an opportunity cost if you can't move and do something else at the same time, which you can't.

BG's movement being out of rounds

??????

There is no 'out of rounds'.

 

[aweigh]

You mean "Stride", lol.

 

[Kem0sabe]

TB combat is a better system but it isn't inherently superior just because it's turn based as opposed to real time with pause.

You don't need to overdesign, overcomplicate. Keep it simple, keep it fun.

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[frajaq]

what will actually happen: you're gonna CC and kill that easily and never see that animation