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First off, the relevant comparison for PoE is 3.5e or pathfinder and secondly, unlike in PoE, a stat increase of the relevant stats in 2e actually has a measurable effect unlike in PoE. Getting a belt of hill giant strength is fun because something actually happens when you equip it.
You could also put it on someone with lower strength, like Viconia and see a drastic increase and open up new possible item choices.
I suppose this might be more of a question of itemisation but related to stats. As I said though, the relevant comparison for PoE is 3.5e and Pathfinder, not 2e.
That's not my "version", that's what I actually said page ago. And yes, you reduced it to just feed your anti-AD&D agenda. Did you learn arguing on internetz from sjw tumblr gal from Steam forums with all the quote changing and obnoxious attitude?
That's like my point. Marginal deficiencies in PoE are the subject of extreme scrutiny
that would be true if it was total multiplicator to all damage after all other bonuses, but it's an additive. High level weapon and pressing awesome button equals about +20 might which is not even 1:1 ratio. In fact, last time (which was long ago tho) I checked Obsidian forums for autism, Speed seemed to in the end benefit damage more than Might. Only DOS2 with its +5% and Elex where stats just gatekeep items are worse than PoE; and all games I played even recently have stronger and more varied ways of stats affecting gameplay than PoE. Kangmaker with its encumbrance cancelling dodge bonuses, classes and abilities turning stats pants on their head like adding INT to AC (twice if you want it) and stat damage/drain being a real threat shits on PoE on every level. Stats no give u extra points when uneven? Fuck it matters if everything about the system and how it interacts with classes items spells and enemies is more fun? This is what I would call searching for marginal deficiencies if anything.
And ATOM while I didn't like much, arguably stats are still very important there for your survival as enemies are quite minmaxed and have lots of AP, armor weights a lot, assault weapons make you invest into HP on everyone, not just a tank; and unlike Fallout, Sequence in combat matters more + stats affect your effectiviness strongly - with 100 in Guns but 1 Perception you will have like 20% chance to hit while standing right next to the enemy. Add all the stat boosting (or lowering) items and you do play with stats quite a lot in that game. Nevada I wrote a lot about, it's just a mod and most of the meat is done via scripting, but then Fallout with its formulas for leading mechanic to interact with the game (Skill Index) dependant on Stats & Traits (where you can easily start with 0% in Persuasion or with 60%) is already a better system.
PoE 1 character building just sucks, doesn't matter if you're d&d cultist or not.
This requires a much longer response, but I'm too busy for that now.
I can't really think of an RtwP RPG that I would call difficult in a smart way.
The effect I'm looking for comes from the principle that every action should have a cost, and I can only point to TB games where this is true - Underrail, BB, AoD.
I can see the first counter here - "but in Deadfire actions have a cost too!". So I answer in adance - I also have another condition for "difficult in a smart way". This is the condition that the combat rules should be simple and transparent enough for the player to be realistically (assuming we agree on what's "realistic") able to calculate the outcomes of his actions.
This second condition is where PoE/Deadfire fail for me. All of the active effects' effects are neither completely transparent, nor realistically possible to calculate the bottom line of. The player either has to spend like 10 mins on a combat encounter (RtwP), or just shut himself off from what's happening, and just stack positive effects on himself, negative on the enemy, when he has time for it, and watch the fireworks. That's your principle in PoE, from the first combat to the last. Dumb Difficulty comes from beefing up enemies aka scaling up their stats and abilities, and scaling up the numbers of enemies in the combat encounter.
The combat system tolerates this amount of leniency, simply because it's not realistic to expect the player to follow everything that's going on. Compare that to, let's say Battle Brothers, the one party-based of my examples. If the player is as lenient there about his actions, punishment will come immediately.
I don't know if that's enough explanation but the post got too long already.
If anyone ever had questions about the Neutral Positive Disciples, here it is: they are a joke at their own game and want to tell you all about the quality of POE combat xDDDDD
Good God, how do you even lose here with 6 maxed chars? What the fuck? Aloth alone should be able to straight up MELT all the trash including Llen and bring at least one of the dragons to half health by sheer nuking power. And he has a priest and TWO palladins. What kind of larp is this?
People, people, why are you talking to a certified utter noob about mechanics? He doesnt understand them.
The idiot is now claiming that POE2 is easier than POE1! Maybe Deadfire v1 was. But Pillars v3 vs Deadfire v5 is not even a comparison.
This, Devotions, AOE nukes and unlimited figurines solve 99% of fights in all of Pillars at level 7.
Deadfire massively nerfs Blind, nerfs Chillfog because its not ticking every 3s anymore, nerfs Devotions, nerfs nukes casting times, cannot haste and literally spam fireball, severly limits figurines, limits you to 5 chars so that you cant carry a priest and a wizard without sacrificing dmg output, nerfs shield deflection, lets enemies bypass AR with crits, enemy rogues now actually target your backline!
And thats of the top of my head.
If anyone ever had questions about the Neutral Positive Disciples, here it is: they are a joke at their own game and want to tell you all about the quality of POE combat xDDDDD
Good God, how do you even lose here with 6 maxed chars? What the fuck? Aloth alone should be able to straight up MELT all the trash including Llen and bring at least one of the dragons to half health by sheer nuking power. And he has a priest and TWO palladins. What kind of larp is this?
Bro, you literally bragged for multiple postings that you're better in a niche crpg than someone who clearly just had a fun fight and wanted to share his excitement. Do you realize how you come across in this? Not good, I'm telling you. Next time you better control your temper.
What part of 'memento mori' didnt you understand?
I didnt brag that I was better, I shat on his head because he has severe Dunning Kruger, telling us all about stats roffles. He doesnt deserve fun. He should grab a rope a go back to xir allies Twitter.
See, this is what I'm getting at. We both obviously enjoy RPGs, so we can theorize about the perfect one for as long as we want to, but I think it's a misnomer to label something "not smart" if it has a lot of strengths and our criticisms of it are purely based on hypotheticals.
Now before you reply, I do agree with everything you say following this. It's one of the reasons I agree with the PoE-detractors who said Pillars would work better as a turn-based game - and indeed, Deadfire's turn-based mode makes this pretty obvious even if it does have some weirdo side-effects from the conversion.
As an addendum, I do the think the BGs live up to your second condition fairly well, which also shows why it's hard to distill the functionality of these games to a few basic principles. The best way to live up to your second condition is to make everything exceedingly simple. This is also why I dislike AoD's combat even if it is extremely well thought out and tested. It doesn't really feel like you're juggling that many choices beyond the immediate tactical ones. BG2s magebattling is brilliant in this regard and the rest of the spell system is decent as well. The other parts of its combat? Not so much.
Still, is SCS "less smart" than AoD or Battle Brothers? I would definetely say no. When you reduce everything down to one or two principles like you do, you neglect other parts of a combat system that can be enjoyable. But then, reductionism is a defining trait of Codex' tastes and I've been guilty of it myself many times before
Well, it was for me. Post level 10 I auto-attacked my way through 95% of the encounters on PotD in Deadfire, even if my party wasn't exactly the pinnacle of awesome. I never spam-abused the mechanics you're talking about in the first game which might go a long distance towards explaining it, but even if I did, that would at least mean using active abilities, which I rarely had to do for the last half of Deadfire.
The notable exception this was the dragon in BoW, which, because my party was not very optimized but did had a lot of survivability, ended up in +15-minute stalemates were neither side could kill the other.
I am saying it's useless to argue further since you show remarkable disregard for substance. You claimed that PoE stats didn't have impact, so I said "they do", so you said "no I meant relative to other games", so I ask which ones and in the absence of your example provided a lot of examples to the contrary. As a side note, I point out that it seems weird to attack PoE's allegded lack of attribute-importance meanwhile ignoring a much, much bigger lack in similar games.
To this, you then solely address the side note with a straw man - "stats not mattering is a small flaw?" - You don't reply to my call for examples, you don't reply to my own examples, you don't address anything related to the argument we're having - instead, you move the goalposts once again.
You now further this refusal to address the argument by stating that:
Only DOS2 with its +5% and Elex where stats just gatekeep items are worse than PoE
ignoring examples of games that you have expressed liking where stats can do absolut nothing. Zero. Silch. Nada. The above is factually, objectively untrue - which you probably realize yourself.
It's like arguing with someone who's just having a conversation with himself.
You do eventually get to saying that Pathfinder's stats matter more - but not without moving the goalposts *again*, because instead of arguing how the stats themselves matter, you point to how other parts of the system *relies* on the attributes. That's correct, of course, but how does that tell us anything significant about the relative strengths of the system? It's like saying a dog is shit because it's not a cat. Pillars chose to design around ability combos instead.
Lastly, I'm not going to argue that Pathfinder has more build diversity, you'd have to be a complete idiot to do so - and lo and behold, I state this very fact in my review (it's why I adore Pathfinder so much). But Pathfinder's build diversity comes at an obvious cost. The wealth of assets in the system have been implemented without much regard to how it all fits together, and the net result is a mess. A beautiful mess, sure, but now we're arguing design philosophies, not quality.
Saying that PoE's attributes don't matter is patently untrue - they matter more than in most RPGs (if you count AD&D RPGs and such, that is). That they don't make individual, passive talents that change the functionality of the attributes isn't an argument that "stats don't matter", it's moving the goal posts again by arguing about something else entirely: the way attributes are tied to talents/abilities.
I guess maybe we could meet each other at a statement like "Pillars' attributes matter only isolation, whereas Kingmaker and NWN2 (are there other games that do this properly?) tie them into other system assets", but that's a far cry from:
You provided no substance to argue over, you just made one bullshito ad&d cultist post which more or less comes to "but you like BG right?". What does me liking BG has to do with anything?
Says person half of whos replies is "no, no, that is not what you said - this is what you said", even when being corrected by said person on what they said.
You do eventually get to saying that Pathfinder's stats matter more - but not without moving the goalposts *again*
Stats matter by themselves as well - they do affect AB, AC, saving throws, skills, etc. And of course other parts of the system rely on attributes. Which leads to builds variety as well. That is how a good system is supposed to work and it works and is fun, unlike PoE.
Pillars chose to design around ability combos instead.
The substance here is quite simple. You claim that stats in PoE matter less than in "most RPGs", I claim not. I point to a lot of RPGs where RPGs matter less, you have not replied to this even once except with the less-than-sturdy argument "they're old." So what? That somehow excludes them from "most RPGs"?
So you want examples, but providing examples is moving goalposts?
Never claimed they didn't - said that by themselves not more so than PoE's.
Look, if you're actually interested in having this debate, then let's boil it down and take it from there. Here are the two claims I think are patently absurd:
Firstly, you say I have twisted your words. I interpret this as you moving the goalposts because your intent seems to have moved. But instead of arguing over that, let's take your second quote word for word and adress that:
Now, 1) Do you still stand by that quote 2) How do you explain sticking to it in the face of the wealth of games where stats also matter less than or in a similar way as PoE (e.g. BGs, GoldBox Games, VtM, Wiz, NWN, kotors, toee, witcher, M&M, kotc, AP to just pick a few from the Codex top 30).
Because the whole PoE narrative set by lead designer is that old was worse, and he's going to do much better. And because old is old. It was made by fewer people, with fewer resources, with different design goals. It does not matter to me as much in dungeon crawler that CON only affects a bit of hitpoints as in a game which is "story of Planescape, fighting of Icewind Dale, adventuring of Baldur's Gate".
Providing 1 example does not support your claim that "most RPGs" have stats that matter more than PoE's.
I provided 3 examples actually. In PK they serve similar roles to PoE, but greatly enjoy increased relevance through things like unlocking spellcaster levels which leads to all the crazy build combos, or rules like death/being disabled if your stat goes to 0 - that is intristic value of a stat inside a stat system, isn't it? I mean, in PoE if your stat goes to 0 nothing happens, right? In Fallout stats are linked to much of your character performance and can be set so low you can barely speak or so high you can be very effective and specialized from the start - this a freedom players enjoy. Can PoE system be taken to such a great extremes? ATOM is an example of a game where stats fluctuate greatly sometimes, which makes working around problems by increasing them (or sometimes even lowering them for that 3 INT dialogue check) engaging. Gameplay didn't change for me enough to even pay attention when my Fighter's Might lowered by 10 from a trap in PoE 2.
Your example is not of the stats themselves but of other assets in the system that depend on those stats
If you only care for numbers, I provided an example as well. Pressing an ability button provides same, if not sometimes bigger, difference than a game lasting strategic choice of having low Might or high Might. That is how you defeat the enemies in PoE, you see, even with what people consider suboptimal characters or companions - your inherent accuracy increases from levels trump everything, weapons and scrolls which you don't use "because it's cheating" easily overcome enemies regardless if you're min-maxed or not. You do not use these scrolls Grunker, because you know what stat truly matters compared to all your other choices, and so you reject them because it doesn't provide you the real difficulty and makes your character building choices, if any, irrelevant.
How do you explain sticking to it in the face of the wealth of games where stats also matter less than or in a similar way as PoE
Those are basically same, and I can say that at least there strength affecting all damage doesn't break my immersion. So what are we going to argue here? It all began with minmaxing, right? Do you think that minmaxed character in BG is less different from non-minmaxed one in PoE? Is starting Planescape with 18/00 Strength really the same as starting PoE with 20?
Basically a study on stats dramatically changing everything from your speed in combat, amount of supported spells and NPC reactions + each maxed out stat gives you a unique perk.
Isn't Storytelling supposed to be relatively light system with dots and that is how they went with it? Nevertheless, stats affect your skills which are your basic way of interacting with things in game. Is there a problem with this? Those affect stuff like gun spread etc.
Extremely important and have quite a formulas. Basically a study on stats affecting every action you do. DraQ made quite a few comments on it in Morrowind Mage playthrough, like how you can lower enemy Agility (by casting spell, which succeeds depends on skill, Willpower, Luck, stamina, stamina depends on Endurance, I believe what armor you're wearing we can go for a long here) and use a summoned skeleton with increased Strength to permastun the enemy with 0 Agi since they can't pass their save etc.
Is literally stats, you can't proceed with bad stats. However you put it, be stats good by themselves or not, you can't deny AoD stats are more important in the gameplay than PoEs.
Spell requirements, many of types of damage (unlike PoE, where Might affects all damage, in Dark Souls you can say increase Faith, which affects holy damage, but not only spells, but weapons with Holy property, etc.), for action game - pretty strong stats, you can be killed in one hit or become an invulnerable tank, encumbrance affects your invulnerability frames, etc.
Wizardry? Which one? In the 8th not one, but combination of stats affects skills (imo much better system than 1 stat affecting 1 skill), initiative, accuracy, you get unique trait on max stat, races and classes are very different in stats and resists, stats affect how fast your skills grow.
Feels like you two are getting too worked up over a slight difference in opinion. The way both pillar games handled attributes was novel and refreshing - but perhaps the end result ended up being worse than games using D&D as their backbone.
3 or 18 int for most classes does nothing. At all. Hell how about just the Mage? The game certainly claims intelligence matters a lot for a mage, right? Well, while you do need 18 to be required to function, it doesn't do anything, it just allows you to use your actual abilities as you level-up. Then Above 18 yields you a massive increase of a whopping 1% additional scribe scroll change all the way up to 25. That is, I guess, more than can be said about Intelligence for nearly all other characters, because there, it does nothing. I guess it's pretty impactful that you can't play your character if you don't just set an attribute to 18, but you're probably an honest enough fellow to admit that when you said "stats mattering" you obviously did not mean "hey it's very interesting how 1 stat allows you to play the game and the others do very little or nothing."
And that's not counting dialogue which again, you think is incredibly important for Fallout - so important stats are more crucial here than in PoE simply because of 1 stat having 1 unique effect on the game - but apparantly is not important in PoE even though they have the same wealth of fluff options, just designed in another way. Focusing of strengths in one game while criticising flaws in the other - even if in the substance, they're not really that different.
To say that BG is "basically the same" as PoE is so evidently untrue we have the whole crux of the argument here. If that comparison makes sense from your point of view we can just give up, because I'm not sure how to argue it besides stating the fact that a system where increases and decreases to every attribute changes some aspect of every character and his fluff dialogue, and most builds will min/max differently let alone off-kilter builds, is more impactful than a system where there are attributes that literally do nothing save very few, very marginal cases (such as being the target of a Maze spell or whatever).
As for the rest of your examples, I disagree with many of them, but it's pointless to argue further because the goalposts are in the other side of the field now. We were discussing your claim that PoE's attributes were less significant for most other RPGs (in fact, much more literally - that only Elex, DivOS and similar systems had less important stats) - but now you argue as if I had made the claim that there are not other RPGs with stats more significant than PoE's.
I did not. If I was to make a statement about PoE's attributes it would be something like this: "Compared to most AD&D RPGs, stats matter way more, but otherwise the attribute system matters to a roughly comparable degree as in other RPGs."
You do not use these scrolls Grunker, because you know what stat truly matters compared to all your other choices and so you reject them because it doesn't provide you the real difficulty and makes your character building choices, if any, irrelevant.
And so we arrive at the crux of the matter: "PoE is easy because you can do X" expressed here as "the other stats don't matter because one is so important." While the latter is certainly the case - I argued as much to a PotD-playing mate 3 days ago when we argued about Weapon Focus - this importance a) doesn't diminish the absolute impactfulness of other stats b) is a balance issue present in any RPG, including each and everyone you mention. Again you absolve your favourite games of the same criticisms you level against PoE.
With regards to diffulty, I made the argument against you before, multiple others as well as here that this "spin" on the argument obviously leads to nowhere. There is no RPG that cannot be made easier by you utilizing some broken end of the system. No RPG (in fact almost no game system) where you can't point to one asset being surperior. The fact that this is cast as a unique flaw with PoE is pretty ironic since grognardian criticism of PoE often boils down to the game being "too balanced" and there not being enough ways to break it. "You have to hamper yourself to make the game difficult" is true for nearly all RPGs, and it's obvious why.
You are technically correct that it matters a lot if you play a 3 int wizard in Baldur's Gate, but come on, you aren't dumb enough to actually stick to that case. Even when I was 9 I knew to just set my Wizard's int to 18 and carry on - the choice there is much, much simpler than in PoE's case. Again: damning PoE for something it actually does better than the games you put level with it or above it.
One thing I praise PoE for in the review is that PoE makes it more awkward and non-obvious HOW to abuse the system compared most RPGs, but none the less, OF COURSE you can reduce the intentions of RPG design by using optimal strategies. There is no RPG where this is not the case in one way or another.
I think The Witcher 3 speaks most to your bias out of these examples. Five minutes ago you were arguing how absolutely horrible PoE was because levels determine more than your attributes. Then you point to a system defined by levels being all-important.
Feels like you two are getting too worked up over a slight difference in opinion. The way both pillar games handled attributes was novel and refreshing - but perhaps the end result ended up being worse than games using D&D as their backbone.
I've been thinking about this as well but I don't think it's the case - and the example of the IE-games highlight it. I think if you're talking 3.5/PF, then we are talking about relative strengths and weaknesses. If we're talking attributes in AD&D vis a vis Pillars, Pillars is clearly a much, much stronger system.
You can indeed play POE if you set some of your attributes to 3. Which is why many character builds look something like: MIG 18 CON 3 something something RES 4.
Now answer me this. Would you be completely at ease to play in D&D a character with 3 Constitution and is this design really differs so much from a more traditional one? Is it more healthy for the game? Like, you see no problems with this, no similar questionable trend?
BG and PST are same system so I put them into one point, I didn't say they are completey same as PoE.
And that's not counting dialogue which again, you think is incredibly important for Fallout - so important stats are more crucial here than in PoE simply because of 1 stat having 1 unique effect on the game
What? How? I don't like Witcher system, it is just 15th in the list: https://i.imgur.com/a5BkfjD.png
Which is why I said "hope not lose points for this" - cause its system is bad but it is there in the top, higher than many games with better systems; but it is obvious AAA game and thus I don't think it is so relevant to discussion.
I didn't cherry pick anything, just followed the list exactly. (Except Wiz but you asked about it yourself)
If we're talking attributes in AD&D vis a vis Pillars
Which for some reason is the only thing you're literally obsessed with. You only want to talk about that.
You are technically correct that it matters a lot if you play a 3 int wizard in Baldur's Gate, but come on, you aren't dumb enough to actually stick to that case.
I won't. Stats in PoE are more varied and allow some more variation on characters.
However, it did not improve the overall gameplay for me when compared to IE games, and like most people I still find dressing Viconia in superbelt and heavy armor (because Strength affected armor requirements back then u see) or mass casting Strength on weak premade companions & summons more fun than most play with stats in PoE much of which I just sorta played on autopilot regardless if my Slicken was 20% larger or not - enemies would fall into it all the same. Sorry.
Off to play FNV with mod which makes strength affect recoil, sneak/agi fov of enemies like in Deus Ex and PER accuracy; hoep I am dumb enough to handle this
Feels like you two are getting too worked up over a slight difference in opinion. The way both pillar games handled attributes was novel and refreshing - but perhaps the end result ended up being worse than games using D&D as their backbone.
I've been thinking about this as well but I don't think it's the case - and the example of the IE-games highlight it. I think if you're talking 3.5/PF, then we are talking about relative strengths and weaknesses. If we're talking attributes in AD&D vis a vis Pillars, Pillars is clearly a much, much stronger system.
AD&D = 2.0? Yes, that's true with everything but Strength and to lesser effect Con and Dex. But Shadenuat had a good point when he called that old - the newer D&D editions have fixed those flaws. So in reality PoE and PoE 2 were competing vs 3.5 or even 5th edition. I can't honestly say that they improved on those... Maybe tied them if we think about Might and Intelligence as Power and Endurance or something.
Quite possibly the most boring RPG I have ever played but slogged through it to bring a save over to the sequel. Then ended up playing Kingmaker in turn based mode instead.
I am returning to PoE after playing it in 2017 and losing interest halfway through.
I liked the art, the voice acting, the text adventure bits, some of the NPCs. The story so far (end of Act II) is entirely obscure and not very engaging. But I love maps, and love exploring them.
I did not care for the system at all, for several reasons.
First, any system which makes magical attacks use the exact same system as physical attacks, immediately removes anything "magical" about magic, and turns it into just another type of "stun grenade" "fragmentation mortar" "caltrops" or "flamethrower." Vancian poetry departs, and scientific mechanics intrude, to the point where magic no longer feels like magic. Magic should feel utterly different than a physical attack, and be a precious resource and dramatic in its effects. AD&D excelled in this regard. In PoE, magic felt underwhelming. Worse, it felt mundane, using Accuracy and Might.
Second, the incremental nature of the system - character attributes and combat effects - was obtuse, tedious, boring, or in hard encounters, frustrating. The last game I played like this - which I also lost interest in halfway through - was Icewind Dale 2. I really disliked D&D 3 for a lot of reasons, including its generic races and classes such that anyone could be a mix of anything, removing all flavor. In terms of IWD2, attributes were boring, but the boringness particularly showed in its crappy unexciting magic items which made finding magic items about as exciting as finding copper pieces. The items were very incremental in their effects and usually did not stack. I was immediately reminded of this in PoE. Loot stinks.
PoE takes this to a new level with attribute/spell/item effects (via stat changes) like "increases radius from 3.1 meters to 3.4 meters" or "5.1 seconds to 5.7 seconds" and the like. Really? Give me six-second rounds, entire-round actions, and round-denominated effects please. Maybe if I could let the game just run I might notice the difference between 5.1 seconds and 5.7 seconds (but I doubt it), but with constant CONSTANT pausing, no chance. I have no idea how effective anything is, because it is so well hidden behind tiny incremental effects and stack/no-stack combos that are tedious to figure out.
I don't play MMOs, but I have heard endless conversations about them, and the mechanics of PoE immediately reminded me of them, in a bad way, with its tanking, aggro, DPS, etc. Obviously some people love min-maxing the PoE system and are quite good at it, but it strikes me as a tiresome exercise because of how much work it is to figure out all the cumulative effects which are so tiny in themselves, and which often don't stack, making a lot of items/spells/abilities turn out to be worthless, in a non-obvious way.
Is there anything more annoying than looking at your character sheet and seeing "(suppressed)" next to what you thought was a cool item or power? "How long has it been like that?"
Frankly it reminds me of a realism thing in some operational wargames. In classic wargames, you might make an attack using a combat results table which has force ratio columns. So if the defender had 10 strength, you would attack on the 2:1 column if you had at least 20 attack factors, and the 3:1 column (which is better) if you had 3:1 attack factors.
This bugged some people, since they thought it was "gamey," and that "every rifle should count," so they started using rules such as, if you had more than 20 but less than 30, you could calculate the fractional odds, and roll to see if you got bumped up a column. For example if you attacked with 23 factors, you would start on the 2:1 column, but you would roll a d10, and if you got a 1, 2 or 3, you got bumped up to the 3:1 column. If you attack with 26 factors, you would get bumped up if you rolled a 1 through 6 on a d10 and so forth. Each additional factor over 20 increased the chance of getting to roll on the 3:1 column by 10%. Every little point counted, in a sense.
This had the effect of making the game more realistic (possibly - that is an argument for military historians) but it also killed the game aspect. The skill and fun of the game was about bringing exactly what force you needed at the critical points - 20 factors in this attack and 30 in that one, to get a 2:1 and a 3:1 in two attacks, in the most efficient way possible with no points wasted. There was a dramatic difference between having 29 factors and having 30 (a "hard breakpoint"); it really paid off to somehow bring exactly 30 points to bear on an attack. More, and you were wasting some that could have been used somewhere else. Less, and you fell down to the next lower column, 2:1, which was not nearly as good.
With the "realistic" system, you could just throw whatever was available - maybe 24 here and 26 there - and let the dice decide whether you were a genius or not. Exact unit placement, careful movement using the terrain, stacking limits etc didn't matter anymore. The simulation might have been better, but the game was much worse, because the "hard breakpoints" of the combat results table were what created an incentive for clever play.
In AD&D terms this is a 14 strength being the same as an 8 for all practical purposes, but an 18 is fantastic. The idea was to put points where they really, really counted, both in character creation and in terms of allocating magic items, and see dramatic rewards. Giving Gauntlets of Ogre Power to Viconia is far more efficient than giving them to your fighter who already has an 18/91 strength. There was a huge payoff for hitting that hard breakpoint and getting her out of the "weak" category into being able to easily wear plate armor and make good melee attacks. It was night and day.
D&D 3's incremental attribute system, like PoE's, is just inferior from a gameplay and satisfaction point of view. Every point counts, and no point is exciting. Everything is math, and nothing feels dramatic. AD&D has bald guys and guys with thick hair; PoE has everyone with some hair, some more or less than others, with varying amounts of modest sun protection on the scalp, which can be somewhat increased with a magic grease of 6% hair thickening, for 7.2 seconds.
Gradual incremental curves of effectiveness are terribly boring, and if the encounters are hard, terribly hard to understand when you are trying to figure out what works, because nothing makes an obvious difference. Ultimately that is what happened to me - after cruising through Acts I and II and a lot of the Endless Paths mostly due to the easiness of the base game and not my skill at this system, I got White March and tried that, and proceeded to get TPK'd at
the Bluffs
, then by
the Alpine Dragon
, with no idea how to win either fight, so I just gave up in disgust and moved on to more fun games.
I recently decided to start playing again, on Storytime mode if necessary just to get to see the rest of the content, and (LOL) got TPK'd again by
the undetectable/undisarmable traps in the Hall of Remembrance in Durgan's Battery
. Not a fan of White March so far - the deaths felt cheap, and made it clear to me how hard it was for me to see what I was doing wrong, which has never happened in Fallout/FO2/Arcanum/BG/BG2/IWD/Wasteland2/PS:T. (IWD2 had some irritating areas but I have blotted them out of my memory. I did eventually go back and finish it for lack of any other RPGs to play after playing DA:O, KOTOR and KOTOR2 multiple times.)
I decided to read some impressions by other people. It goes without saying White March is popular with people who are really good at the system and love crunching all the character/item/spell/weapon numbers to maximum incremental stacked effect.
It was interesting to read Grunker's and Darth Roxor's reviews. Particularly this contrasting pair of statements:
Darth Roxor: "The first is the engagement system, which is basically a glorified set-up for attacks of opportunity. When it comes to reasons, I can think of four....Fourth, which is just about the only one that kind of makes sense, is trying to contain the clusterfuck most fights would otherwise devolve into – the general game speed of PoE is much higher than that of the IE games."
Grunker: "Sawyer also turned the extremely fast (even faster with the 'Haste' spell) and frantic combat of the IE games into a slower, more methodical beast by severely limiting the movement speed of characters and with the inclusion of the Engagement system that punished player and enemy alike for moving indiscriminately across the battlefield."
I am curious where people come down on this. I find the combat in PoE to be so fast - and always in tiny maps where the enemy charges you at very high speeds - that it is impossible to play without pausing constantly, to the point where I never see a combat animation or hear a complete sound - just tiny fragments of them between pauses. I am not sure if other people actually like this, or they just have figured out how to minmax the system to the point where they can let the combat animations run. I definitely miss the pace of BG1, or better yet, the turn-based fun of the post-apocalyptic games where you always get to experience the full animation and sound of every action.
Anyway trying to slog through White March I and just avoid the TPK situations, maybe do them later on Storytime mode just to see them to some kind of conclusion.
I guess the bottom line is I don't like PoE enough to try to get good at it, since doing so seems like a lot of work given the way the system works. It makes me wonder if I should skip POE2 entirely.
Generally, as someone who enjoys POE1/2, I wholeheartedly agree with the discussion around 'hard breakpoints'; the system erred in favour of too many continuous mushy scales, forcing you to line up your 2.4 second graze pararlysis with your 1.6s flame strike in RTWP.
To your final question about pausing, I micromanage & pause like a maniac in any RTWP game, and I don't really think I do it massively more than IE. The only difference is that on average, a POE party has way more abilities to use than an IE party (which is another reason POE2 goes to 5 party members). I've grown fond of using 3-4 party members on both POE and IE games, as a way to find the pace that I like.
