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Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread
- Thread starter Perkel
- Start date
Quillon
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2016
- Messages
- 5,297
Thought this guy was full of himself and almost closed the tab and be done with it at the beginning but I was bored and listened to it a bit more...to the end, nice vid. Haven't really thought much about Tyranny's setting but its interesting that he points out Pillars' setting is darker than Tyranny's, liked his analysis of the characters. Also that Thaos was the one who stopped the world from progressing by preventing animancy...now that he's out, I guess we'll see tanks and machine guns by the time PoE V happens
Progressive fantasy world ftw!
Doktor Best
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2015
- Messages
- 2,877
I know some of that guys videos. Cant listen to him bitch about the combat of Baldurs Gate 2 while in other videos he praises Oblivion and other Bethesda shit as the second coming of Jesus. He had some good analsysis videos on the classics when he still had long hair, but with his hairloss came the loss of his sanity.
LESS T_T
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2012
- Messages
- 13,582
Looks like they just created a package for the complete edition : https://steamdb.info/sub/107937/depots/
I guess it will be available soon.
Depots in this package
- DepotID 291651 - Pillars of Eternity Base
- DepotID 291652 - Pillars of Eternity Windows
- DepotID 291653 - Pillars of Eternity OSX
- DepotID 291654 - Pillars of Eternity Linux
- DepotID 291661 - Pillars of Eternity Original Soundtrack
- DepotID 291662 - Pillars of Eternity Campaign Almanac
- DepotID 291663 - Pillars of Eternity High Resolution Game Map
- DepotID 291664 - Pillars of Eternity Making of Documentary
- DepotID 291665 - Pillars of Eternity Ringtones
- DepotID 291666 - Pillars of Eternity Novella
- DepotID 291667 - Pillars of Eternity High Resolution Concept Art
- DepotID 291668 - Pillars of Eternity Strategy Guide
- DepotID 329082 - Pillars of Eternity Cookbook
- DepotID 329083 - Pillars of Eternity Collector's Book
- DepotID 329084 - Pillars of Eternity Wallpapers
- DepotID 329085 - Pillars of Eternity Korean Loc Windows
- DepotID 329086 - Pillars of Eternity Korean Loc OSX
- DepotID 344552 - Pillars of Eternity Korean Loc Linux
- DepotID 344553 - PX1 Windows
- DepotID 344554 - PX1 OSX
- DepotID 344555 - PX1 Linux
- DepotID 344556 - PX2 Windows
- DepotID 344557 - PX2 OSX
- DepotID 344558 - PX2 Linux
- DepotID 344559 - Pillars of Eternity PX1 Korean Loc Windows
- DepotID 349186 - Pillars of Eternity PX2 Korean Loc Windows
- DepotID 349187 - Pillars of Eternity PX2 Korean Loc Linux
- DepotID 349188 - Pillars of Eternity PX2 Korean Loc OSX
- DepotID 351133 - Pillars of Eternity PX1 Korean Loc OSX
- DepotID 351134 - Pillars of Eternity PX1 Korean Loc Linux
I guess it will be available soon.
Fry
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2013
- Messages
- 1,922
I find the mysterious gloves very distracting. Just going to assume he's got a woman tied up in the basement.
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 99,715
Zboj Lamignat
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2012
- Messages
- 5,779
I tried playing this for the second (and the last) time, but it just can't be done. Whenever I see stuff like a spell that applies debuff for 3,26 seconds I want to murder someone.
- Joined
- Sep 14, 2016
- Messages
- 6,566
Get moar Int (duration) and/or Per (accuracy, grazes are x0,5 duration, crits are x1,5 duration) ? Also stack other accuracy sources.
Parabalus
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2015
- Messages
- 17,511
Most games round the numbers in the tooltip but actually use the full decimals in practice, which is by far the worst option.
TheWorld
Educated
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2017
- Messages
- 44
New user here, hi all!
Finally gotten around to playing the white march. I played pillars back in 2015 and the combination of shitty third act, bad encounter design, and meh writing didn't make me feel like trying the expansion. Since I read good about it i decided to give it a shot. It's pretty decent for now (still in part 1). Encounter design is definitively better. That's not saying much, but it feels like they actually thought about encounters for a couple of seconds instead of just taking a couple of mobs and placing then randomly. In one instance there was even *gasp* some sort of advantage that could be had by taking a parallel path in the dungeon to get to the monsters from a better position.
The thing i like the most is the bigger focus on the choose-your-adventure style encounters.
The actual quests... meh nothing interesting. Go here kill these guys, go there bla bla bla take these stuff. Very little C&C for now. Then finally I encountered a quest with riddles that tries to make the player think:
Overall nothing spectacular by now but pretty decent.
Finally gotten around to playing the white march. I played pillars back in 2015 and the combination of shitty third act, bad encounter design, and meh writing didn't make me feel like trying the expansion. Since I read good about it i decided to give it a shot. It's pretty decent for now (still in part 1). Encounter design is definitively better. That's not saying much, but it feels like they actually thought about encounters for a couple of seconds instead of just taking a couple of mobs and placing then randomly. In one instance there was even *gasp* some sort of advantage that could be had by taking a parallel path in the dungeon to get to the monsters from a better position.
The thing i like the most is the bigger focus on the choose-your-adventure style encounters.
Both the camp battle, the house on fire and the listening to the temple where definitively highlights of the game for me
The actual quests... meh nothing interesting. Go here kill these guys, go there bla bla bla take these stuff. Very little C&C for now. Then finally I encountered a quest with riddles that tries to make the player think:
The sword in the stone quest with the riddle. Good idea, in theory, but how stupid is the actual implementation? I expected to have to look for areas in the region and instead you have to rememeber about places you met at the start of the game (which is two years ago for me). Luckily we live in the world where answers are a click (and some swearing) away on the internet.
Overall nothing spectacular by now but pretty decent.
I just finished my third and final PoE playthrough. For the first time I played with the companions and with the expansions. The game has grown a lot in quality for me, with the addition of the new elements and especially in TWM2, which is amazing. Really, REALLY fun. (8,5/10)
Now I'm going to start The Age of Decadence, which is the first game on my list of games I did not know before joining Codex.
Now I'm going to start The Age of Decadence, which is the first game on my list of games I did not know before joining Codex.
I've been working very very hard at trying to enjoy this game and I feel like I've had some degree of success. It plays a lot differently now at 3.05 than it did on first release. PoTD is actually hard now. Even with a full party. I thought I was going to have to solo to get challenging battles in PoTD based on my first play experiences, but nope. This game is really hard if you play some of the more serious battles even slightly underleveled. Unfortunately part of this difficulty is due to the fact that pretty much all of the classes have been nerfed to such extreme degree that they are pretty strange to play. The spell casters are the weakest I've ever played in any cRPG ever and many of the spells are so worthless that they should really just be deleted.
CC spells that last 3 seconds...please. Summons that last 8 seconds? These are a joke. In fact I don't think there is a single crowd control or summon or disable spell in the entire game that is worth taking. Well maybe the high level monk summon without a timeout or the cipher puppetmaster CC/Summon/Disable spell that actually lasts 30 seconds maybe because it is the only cipher spell that is worth using at all. Even if these short duration spells are effective in the larger picture because everything is balanced around these short durations it's really tedious and unfun for me. So for me a wizard is just an AoE damage dealer with a few very useful defensive spells to counter enemy disables.
Druids have been nerfed into utter uselessness due to all the cries of the storm spells being 'OP' on the forums probably. After the storm spells were nerfed into total 'let's just delete this spell' uselessness the class is a complete joke. Probably Druids are the most extreme example, but most of the classes that used to have strong powers are now nerfed such that their special abilities are only slightly different or better than the special abilities of any other class. Yawn.
Nevertheless, despite the beyond-MMO effort the team has made to balance every class to play and seem completely equal they failed very badly imo. Priests and Wizards and Monks before level 9 and Chanters after level 9 are the best classes after all the dust has settled from the nerf-buff frenzy. When I finally figured this out it helped my enjoyment of the game a lot. Now I have a party of 2 Monks, 2 Priests of Skaen (the best priests), and 2 Wizards all with min-maxed stats. At level 7-9 I'll swap out one of the monks for a chanter because they actually are sort of a fun class in a way but are just too weak until at least level 6 and are probably the most powerful class by level 9.
Where they did succeed with balance is in the PoTD combat difficulty and with the hair pulling difficulty of trying to find a stat that can be dumped even a little when rolling a character. Dumping a stat even a little has big consequences in combat. Every single one is very useful and yet if you leave them all balanced you'd have a character with all 13s. Although to be fair that character would probably be strong enough to be useful if the class is one of the stronger ones.
As far as the PoTD combat encounter difficulty with slightly underleveled battles (or maybe leveled ones if you don't minmax or choose weak classes etc) that is probably the most major change since first release and it is a big one. I was shocked when I finally got to a place called Caed Nua and encountered a mixed party of phantoms, shadows and will o wisps. Now *that* is a fight that might even compare to something from BG2 w SCS. The only thing that makes such battles a bit too easy sometimes is the fact that every party member has to get 'knocked out' before your party actually dies.
Admittedly the battle is not as tactical as a BG2 w SCS mage-vs-mage battle in a place like Watchers Keep or the Sphere and one of the things that makes fighting phantoms and will o wisps and shadows so challenging is the fact that they are almost unhittable with any weapon or spell because of their high stats and can spam disables like stun and confuse at will with a high accuracy that makes it almost impossible for them to miss your party. So there still isn't a lot of smart enemy tactics.
That leads to another improvement: enemy AI. It is much better than when I played at release and it is trivial to avoid tank n spank game play. I don't tank n spank and if I tried a lot of enemies would I think go after my back line anyway. Lots of enemies make a beeline for my wizards or whatever char has the lowest deflection or other low defense stat depending on the attack. Caed Nua was the first Pillars fight that I really had fun with and I still haven't really won it except with my whole party except one dying in a long battle of attrition and that wasn't even against a full enemy party that included the will o wisps.
CC spells that last 3 seconds...please. Summons that last 8 seconds? These are a joke. In fact I don't think there is a single crowd control or summon or disable spell in the entire game that is worth taking. Well maybe the high level monk summon without a timeout or the cipher puppetmaster CC/Summon/Disable spell that actually lasts 30 seconds maybe because it is the only cipher spell that is worth using at all. Even if these short duration spells are effective in the larger picture because everything is balanced around these short durations it's really tedious and unfun for me. So for me a wizard is just an AoE damage dealer with a few very useful defensive spells to counter enemy disables.
Druids have been nerfed into utter uselessness due to all the cries of the storm spells being 'OP' on the forums probably. After the storm spells were nerfed into total 'let's just delete this spell' uselessness the class is a complete joke. Probably Druids are the most extreme example, but most of the classes that used to have strong powers are now nerfed such that their special abilities are only slightly different or better than the special abilities of any other class. Yawn.
Nevertheless, despite the beyond-MMO effort the team has made to balance every class to play and seem completely equal they failed very badly imo. Priests and Wizards and Monks before level 9 and Chanters after level 9 are the best classes after all the dust has settled from the nerf-buff frenzy. When I finally figured this out it helped my enjoyment of the game a lot. Now I have a party of 2 Monks, 2 Priests of Skaen (the best priests), and 2 Wizards all with min-maxed stats. At level 7-9 I'll swap out one of the monks for a chanter because they actually are sort of a fun class in a way but are just too weak until at least level 6 and are probably the most powerful class by level 9.
Where they did succeed with balance is in the PoTD combat difficulty and with the hair pulling difficulty of trying to find a stat that can be dumped even a little when rolling a character. Dumping a stat even a little has big consequences in combat. Every single one is very useful and yet if you leave them all balanced you'd have a character with all 13s. Although to be fair that character would probably be strong enough to be useful if the class is one of the stronger ones.
As far as the PoTD combat encounter difficulty with slightly underleveled battles (or maybe leveled ones if you don't minmax or choose weak classes etc) that is probably the most major change since first release and it is a big one. I was shocked when I finally got to a place called Caed Nua and encountered a mixed party of phantoms, shadows and will o wisps. Now *that* is a fight that might even compare to something from BG2 w SCS. The only thing that makes such battles a bit too easy sometimes is the fact that every party member has to get 'knocked out' before your party actually dies.
Admittedly the battle is not as tactical as a BG2 w SCS mage-vs-mage battle in a place like Watchers Keep or the Sphere and one of the things that makes fighting phantoms and will o wisps and shadows so challenging is the fact that they are almost unhittable with any weapon or spell because of their high stats and can spam disables like stun and confuse at will with a high accuracy that makes it almost impossible for them to miss your party. So there still isn't a lot of smart enemy tactics.
That leads to another improvement: enemy AI. It is much better than when I played at release and it is trivial to avoid tank n spank game play. I don't tank n spank and if I tried a lot of enemies would I think go after my back line anyway. Lots of enemies make a beeline for my wizards or whatever char has the lowest deflection or other low defense stat depending on the attack. Caed Nua was the first Pillars fight that I really had fun with and I still haven't really won it except with my whole party except one dying in a long battle of attrition and that wasn't even against a full enemy party that included the will o wisps.
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All my casters have 19 or 20 INT and use every other source of duration extension and the short spell durations still kill a lot of the fun of spell casting classes for me. They are just ridiculous. Do MMOs do that or something? I don't even know where they got the fucked up idea of such short spell durations. Or maybe they were trying to innovate by making spell disables as useless as fighter special abilities like knockdown.
I wish I knew exactly who to say 'fuck you' to but I'd start with Josh Sawyer. What a cunt. But then I guess these games are designed for children and I don't know what kids are into these days. Maybe this is the sort of thing preteens like these days. After all everyone is awesome in their own way amirite? Why should character classes in games be any different?
Lacrymas
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2015
- Messages
- 18,739
I don't think Josh has ever said to himself "let's balance this game for children". It just sounds absurd. He balances them for himself. Maybe he is right to have such short duration for CCs (3 seconds does sound too short though, but I haven't seriously played the game since release), in the IE games you can basically make any fight trivial when the mobs aren't immune in some way. Sleep is ridiculous at low levels, especially with ring of wizardry. Then it gets replaced by Chromatic Orb when it no longer functions.
The other alternative for tough encounter design is generously sprinkling random mobs with immunities, just like an MMO. Or have no CC at all.
The other alternative for tough encounter design is generously sprinkling random mobs with immunities, just like an MMO. Or have no CC at all.
Parabalus
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2015
- Messages
- 17,511
The 3 pure spellcasting classes are still the strongest, I have no idea what you're smoking. With the custom characters and team setup you have you should be outright bulldozing through the game, maybe the early levels would be harder than with a standard party.
Most CC spells will last around 10 seconds, more on crits. That's 2-3 castings for a normal encounter, you might be lacking damage (too defensive character builds?), since you have 4 casters and 2 monks. Spell disables are incredibly powerful compared to DD spells, especially on wizards, dunno why you would consider them useless.
Druids are still very good, only their lvl 7 and 8 spells suck comparatively.
FreeKaner
Prophet of the Dumpsterfire
I don't understand the CC complaint, cipher literally has a paralyse at level 3 you can crit for 20 seconds.
- Joined
- Sep 14, 2016
- Messages
- 6,566
Yeah and charm at level 1...
The paralyse reduces enemy deflection by 40 points, almost guaranteeing melee crits all the time. That's a mechanic that wasn't present in DnD (only dex/doge AC was reduced). Plus it has a secondary root effect in a small radius, which also reduces armor by 10 or 20 points on everyone near.
The paralyse reduces enemy deflection by 40 points, almost guaranteeing melee crits all the time. That's a mechanic that wasn't present in DnD (only dex/doge AC was reduced). Plus it has a secondary root effect in a small radius, which also reduces armor by 10 or 20 points on everyone near.
- Joined
- May 29, 2010
- Messages
- 36,771
That kind of thing is inspired by third edition's coup de grace. In Icewind Dale 2, all attacks against helpless enemies would succeed.
The Bishop
Cipher
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2012
- Messages
- 406
You really didn't dig into the system much yet if you think so. From the top of my head, Wizard's Ryngrim's Enervating Terror + priest's Devotions for the Faithful is -40 accuracy, -10 might, - 28 will and fortitude, with +20 accuracy for your own guys in the AOE, all in huge radius and for pretty much entire duration of a typical fight. That's not bad. Not bad enough that most battles are effectively over once you got this stuff out. If you rely less on Codex memes (like Sawyer lul balanced), and just look into the system more, you will find a lot of neat and powerful stuff in there.
- Joined
- Sep 14, 2016
- Messages
- 6,566
If I remember correctly, coup de grace was usually only effective vs low HD enemies, like goblins, after a sleep spell. But that might be my NWN bias. Anyway theres still a big difference between hitting all the time and critting all the time, which PoE system almost guarantees, given enough Accuracy over enemy defence.
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