Game News Pillars of Eternity II Fig Update #61: Patch 5.0

[Russia is over. The end.]

After three games in the same engine (and now a TB mode in it), I think it's pretty good.

You don't understand.

Torment took a very early version and rewrote everything not related to rendering, so forget about that.

Between pillars 1 and 2, drastic changes weren't required, it was just a continuation.

But as soon as you start making big changes in an engine with tightly coupled systems, everything just breaks and it's a mess to work with. Who knows what they got under the hood there right now.

 

[vortex]

The opinions of edgelords aside, it is a great engine and their graphics guys actually know what they are doing - in contrast to another recently bought Microsoft subsidiary.

In fact, if Sawyer ever decides to do his Darklands TB-game, it could be done in the same engine now.

Sawyer would greatly displease RTWP players of Pillars. I can't see Obsidian game would be TB only. And it shouldn't be.

 

[Ismaul]

I can't see Obsidian game would be TB only.

You might be right. Or not, it's Microsoft now. And Obsidian previously did a TB only game: South Park.

But if the next game's got dual combat systems, it might be possible it's designed with TB first in mind, with combat encounters tailored for it, while RTwP is the legacy side-show.

 

[Thonius]

Time to replay I ques.

 

[Lady_Error]

After three games in the same engine (and now a TB mode in it), I think it's pretty good.

You don't understand.

Torment took a very early version and rewrote everything not related to rendering, so forget about that.

Between pillars 1 and 2, drastic changes weren't required, it was just a continuation.

But as soon as you start making big changes in an engine with tightly coupled systems, everything just breaks and it's a mess to work with. Who knows what they got under the hood there right now.

I'm not talking about Torment. The three games are PoE 1 and 2, as well as Tyranny.

 

[hpstg]

The engine testing part makes sense, and nobody from the game's wider audience would be upset if it was sold with a TB combat system.

Rtwp is just a relic from the original Pillars Kickstarter days, where Obsidian was afraid to trigger people counting pixels from the BG engine.

Sales successes like Dos 2, most likely show that TB can have wide appeal, even if it is relatively complex.

It is also much easier to manage on a console. If I would bet something, it would be that along with TB, they are most likely integrating a controller interface on their tool level now.

 

[Nano]

but imagine if Arcanum or KOTOR2 were able to get half this amount of post-release attention.

Which makes it even sadder, don't you think?

 

[Diggfinger]

Does the story/setting/side-quests contain any dark/interesting set pieces?
After being spoiled for years by wonders like Fallout, Arcanum, Bloodlines, Dark Souls I hesitate to go back to generic fantasy-settings ;/

(But will probably end up buying this, to support Sawyer and the troops and reward Obsidian for their dedication to the genre).

 

[Xzylvador]

Just started the game to try the TB gameplay and see if the extra content is worth it. (Finished my first playthrough before the expansions.)

So far, TB seems to have made combat much easier. It gets rid of the rtwp chaos, which is always good; but so far the possibility of winning through kiting seems ridiculously easy.
I've encountered multiple enemies with skulls above their heads - iirc supposed to indicate that the fight is too far above my level to consider - and won each fight without even being wounded. As long as your characters have as much or more movement/turn than the enemy, they can shoot from a distance and they'll never have a chance to get to you.
Maybe too soon to judge but I'm guessing it's caused by the fact that 'action points' and 'movement points' are entirely separate, without an option to spend action points as extra movement. This allows long-ranged characters to snipe enemies without the enemy having a chance of getting closer, as they can't use their unused attack actions to close the distance, instead just wasting their turns doing nothing.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

So, finally... is it worth to play now? In particular for someone that has not yet bought it, waiting so far for these inevitable patches/updates? Or is it better to wait for another year?

 

[Grotesque]

that I think it deserves a second codex review

...and some brexiters want another referendum.


What is Randall up to these days?
Was he fulfilled by the cloud shadows in this game?

 

[Dr Schultz]

So far, TB seems to have made combat much easier. It gets rid of the rtwp chaos, which is always good; but so far the possibility of winning through kiting seems ridiculously easy.
I've encountered multiple enemies with skulls above their heads - iirc supposed to indicate that the fight is too far above my level to consider - and won each fight without even being wounded. As long as your characters have as much or more movement/turn than the enemy, they can shoot from a distance and they'll never have a chance to get to you.
Maybe too soon to judge but I'm guessing it's caused by the fact that 'action points' and 'movement points' are entirely separate, without an option to spend action points as extra movement. This allows long-ranged characters to snipe enemies without the enemy having a chance of getting closer, as they can't use their unused attack actions to close the distance, instead just wasting their turns doing nothing.

Yah, a quite amateurish mistake. I've noticed this issue in the very first dungeon... And you don't even need a double-move option in order to prevent it, strictly speaking. You just need the basic rule that any attack/spell ends your turn paired with attack ranges that are smaller than movent ranges.

It's quite strage that they didn't notice this macroscopic problem during the beta. It's blatantly obvious

 

[Safav Hamon]

Kiting with ranged weapons might work against boars and skeletons in Port Maje, but it's not a viable strategy for most of the game.

Particularly when it comes to the DLC, where you will often be overwhelmed by enemies in tight spaces.

 

[Dr Schultz]

Kiting with ranged weapons might work against boars and skeletons in Port Maje, but it's not a viable strategy for most of the game.

Particularly when it comes to the DLC, where you will often be overwhelmed by enemies in tight spaces.

It might work against any melee opponent fought in a map that allows you to retreat. Considering that solving this issue is extremely easy, I'm puzzled about this oversight

 

[Xzylvador]

Kiting with ranged weapons might work against boars and skeletons in Port Maje, but it's not a viable strategy for most of the game.

Particularly when it comes to the DLC, where you will often be overwhelmed by enemies in tight spaces.

After some more playing, I have to admit that in some encounters kiting isn't possible due to cramped space.
First semi-boss fight I got into though, was taking care of easily dropped minions followed by what felt like 100 rounds of kiting without the boss ever getting close enough to land a blow.

 

[Lyre Mors]

felt like 100 rounds of kiting without the boss ever getting close enough to land a blow

It is an odd oversight that you can so easily get away with kiting in a number of encounters, but I can't imagine playing this way. I don't mind the pace of TB mode myself, particularly when you have the option to speed it up at any point. However, not only would the combat get agonizingly drawn out if I was kiting everything, but I'd be missing out on using a bunch of the fun abilities, spells, equipment, etc by doing so. It's a cheese that exists, but I can't see how anyone would actually want to play with kiting tactics. It's kind of a self-defeating thing.

 

[Zakhad]

You also don't need to. If you're playing on harder settings, surely the fun is in the winning, not cheese; and if you're playing on easy, you don't need cheese to win.

 

[Xzylvador]

I'm certainly not trying to say it's fun or necessary; simply giving an example of an obvious error made in the TB conversion for a game that is so obsessively balanced.
(I actually did play that fight again without excessive kiting, although I have to say that in this fight I had to really try hard not to kite. The boss was pretty much permanently hobbled, stunned or paralyzed.)

Thinking about the issue though, I have to say that I can't come up with a fight in the TB-playthrough so far where my ranged characters got engaged by melee opponents, except for one fight where enemies spawned behind the party after combat was initiated. Enemies engage who they can reach and then don't seem to try getting past the frontline to attack the rear squishies.
I seem to remember that in the RTWP game it was trickier to keep your ranged chars out of harms way; when you tried to disengage from melee, the enemy would simply follow. In TB though, you get your ranged char away, place a melee guy closeby and the enemy starts targeting the guy they can reach. (I could be remembering the trwp combat wrongly. Combat hasn't really been a memorable part in either playthrough so far.)

 

[aweigh]

Did anyone check Nexus for mods to fix the over-effectiveness of kiting in TB? Someone's probably made some mod already that helps minimize/prevent the effectiveness of it.

PoE2 has a pretty healthy mod scene, well at least as far as these type of games go (obviously it's no Skyrim or whatever in terms of mods).

(I'd check myself but I'm feeling lazy).

 

[Xzylvador]

So, finally... is it worth to play now? In particular for someone that has not yet bought it, waiting so far for these inevitable patches/updates? Or is it better to wait for another year?

After some more playing, I have to say that despite the kiting issue, the Turn-Based version of this game is actually pretty fun to play and overall a pretty decent RPG.

In the rtwp playthough, I didn't enjoy the fights at all. Things were just too chaotic and because everyone in the fight had their own timers, you either had to pause every half second to get some tactics in a fight -and you'd still miss half of what's going on. So the game was played speed up the fights and letting the combat pretty much autoplay so it'd be over quickly. I never even learned the effects of half of the abilities of the characters because everything got lost in the chaos.

In turn-based combat I'm finally seeing the difference between the abilities of my party members and the enemies; and playing on the hardest difficulty, some of the fights really are hard enough to warrant tactical approach.

I did have to bump up the difficulty to 'Path of the Damned'; even playing on Veteran everything seemed so simple that I ended up checking if I hadn't accidentally set the difficulty to easy. So I moved it up to PotD and ever since the fights are tactical puzzles where mistakes will end up in defeat.

I never thought I'd be saying this about a Pillars game, certainly not after the dread that was PoE1. But PoE2 in TB is really worth playing.

 

[Jedi Exile]

Yeah, with TB combat PoE 2 plays very differently. I've finished it a couple of days ago and I think this is one of best modern RPGs I've played.