Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Alpan]

Yes, respecs are possible. Pilllars 1 PotD is quite fine after you get over the initial spikes in difficulty.

 

[Lacrymas]

Pilllars 1 PotD is quite fine after you get over the initial spikes in difficulty.

I'd say the beginning is pretty good in terms of difficulty, along with WM part 1 depending on when you decide to do it, but everything else is a cakewalk.

Character building just isn't interesting in the first game, even if you can look past those points.

Well, it depends on how you look at it. There are pretty interesting and cool builds you can come up with, but those are fringe cases. The problem is the feats are just extremely boring and optimal, or extremely situational. They are also mostly for damage dealers, it's very hard to choose feats for support characters because all of them are so nonsensical in the context of the actual gameplay. The actually interesting builds use certain items or class features to pull something off. For example, Rogues who use scepters and cast spells from scrolls, or a Barbarian who relies on getting knocked out to produce powerful effects, or a twin-Cipher "duo" build who rely on chaining their spells on each other. Those are indeed outliers, however, and most builds use the exact same feats with the exact same items regardless of class (mini-Sneak Attack, mini-Barbarian Rage, Scarlet Plate, those boots which create Consecrate on crit, etc.). They somehow managed to make Druids ridiculously boring, to the point I abandoned my iron man run with my Druid because it was soooo drab and dreary.

 

[Desiderius]

Every so often i get the itch to try this game. I mean, i bought it, so why not. But then i start looking for guides to build my character and the desire goes away.

I mean, i want to do a simple Paladin, so let's see:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=416939844

Paladin with stilettos and daggers? Lmao, let's move on. Might to increase healing le fuck is this?

Just fucking hell i think i genuinely hate Josh Sawyer now.

So you want to play the difficulty you did before you ran out of fucks to give and the time to give them?

Many such cases.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I always play games at the hardest setting, no matter what, but stuff like heart of fury is something else and wouldn't work for a first playthrough.

I want to give a shit, but every time i look at how this system works i end up rolling my eyes.

 

[Desiderius]

It's borderline worth it, but any system that is is worth it due to the time spent fucking around with it not starting out on highest difficulty.

Wright Brothers didn't test in a typhoon.

 

[Lacrymas]

Wright Brothers didn't test in a typhoon.

This isn't a good analogy. PoE's system doesn't make sense on anything lower than PotD, so it would be like the Wright Brothers never having left the ground if playing on something else.

 

[NJClaw]

Wright Brothers didn't test in a typhoon.

This isn't a good analogy. PoE's system doesn't make sense on anything lower than PotD, so it would be like the Wright Brothers never having left the ground if playing on something else.

I bet the Wright Brothers didn't look for help for their build on the Steam forums though.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I'm so hardcore bro I always play on max difficutly bro just make me a build that works bro.

 

[Desiderius]

Wright Brothers didn't test in a typhoon.

This isn't a good analogy. PoE's system doesn't make sense on anything lower than PotD, so it would be like the Wright Brothers never having left the ground if playing on something else.

Well, we ran into the same thing on P:K. Both systems make plenty of sense on lower difficulties on the first few levels and/or if you suck, and in any game worth a damn (i.e. not Deadfire at release) everyone is going to suck until they get their footing, which is why Lyric is here asking for advice.

As a young man Lyric would have figured shit out for himself whatever the difficulty because either the Clue Book wasn't out yet or the hint line cost too much. This was known as fun. Now he's skipping that step and bitching about the missing fun. Could be the game's fault (and yeah Soyer wussed out on a good bit) but I'd lean toward circumstances changed to be closer to death and thus preferably downplayed.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Can't you guys read i was only wondering whether Path of the Damned was like Heart of Fury.

Apparently it's like insane on the BG games which is fine for me.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

sometimes I think of revisiting these gaems
then I laugh at myself

 

[Sharpedge]

Some time ago I looked at the steam guides for RPGs that I am very familiar with out of curiosity to see what other people were doing. Considering the... dubious quality of steam guides for those games, I wouldn't want to touch a steam guide for a game that I am unfamiliar with. There is no way to evaluate whether the guide is good or not without already knowing something about the system yourself and it seems like the average steam guide for games is relatively poor quality. If I am going to suck my way through a game, I would rather do it on my own terms based on my own choices then based on someone else's.

 

[Lyric Suite]

The fuck is that got to do with anything?

I can post a gamefaqs guide for you but it ain't making this system look any better:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/687020-pillars-of-eternity/faqs/72035

 

[Lacrymas]

What the actual problem with PoE's system is is that it fell into the same kind of traps as D&D. It has nothing to do with muscle Wizards or stiletto Paladins.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I don't know i never had a problem with D&D.

But the fact you need muscles for healing just fucks with me.

 

[Lacrymas]

Everything can be explained away - you need a healthier and sturdier body to channel the energies needed to make others healthier and sturdier, i.e. giving your power to them. The explanation can be whatever you want it to be. The actual problems are how the system is entirely too random (1d100, instead of 2d50 or even 10d10) and binary, and relies on ever-increasing bonuses and numbers as opposed to a more horizontal progression. It ties numerical power to levels too much (accuracy increasing with lvl for example), and it gives new abilities every two levels leading to power creep and lack of ideas. It has nonsensical design for feats because it mixes (questionable) utility and damage/accuracy increases in the same pool. On top of that, it homogenized the classes and their roles, leading to samey gameplay styles (of which there are at best 4, in comparison to 11 classes).

 

[Technomancer]

Everything can be explained away - you need a healthier and sturdier body to channel the energies needed to make others healthier and sturdier, i.e. giving your power to them.

The problem is it is never used or characterized like that in-game. Might only get used as a strength attribute in all interactions. Would be much better if magic scaled fully from int or other mental stat. Those were simply certain someone's unfortunate balancing and design choices. In the same way it makes zero sense when might affects weapons with preset mechanisms that do not benefit from muscle strength like crossbows and guns.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Yeah well, i'm not a fan of ad hoc rationalizations either.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Everything can be explained away - you need a healthier and sturdier body to channel the energies needed to make others healthier and sturdier, i.e. giving your power to them.

The problem is it is never used or characterized like that in-game. Might only get used as a strength attribute in all interactions. Would be much better if magic scaled fully from int or other mental stat. Those were simply certain someone's unfortunate balancing and design choices. In the same way it makes zero sense when might affects weapons with preset mechanisms that do not benefit from muscle strength like crossbows and guns.

My beef with this is that you are forced to look at the numbers in order to understand what anything does.

It's not even that you have to pay attention at the meta exclusively and ignore the roleplaying like in MMOs. In this case there's nothing BUT the meta.

 

[Parabalus]

Everything can be explained away - you need a healthier and sturdier body to channel the energies needed to make others healthier and sturdier, i.e. giving your power to them.

The problem is it is never used or characterized like that in-game. Might only get used as a strength attribute in all interactions. Would be much better if magic scaled fully from int or other mental stat. Those were simply certain someone's unfortunate balancing and design choices. In the same way it makes zero sense when might affects weapons with preset mechanisms that do not benefit from muscle strength like crossbows and guns.

If you do that you lose all the interesting tradeoffs in the system, it'd be brainless like 2ed DnD.

 

[GloomFrost]

I don't know i never had a problem with D&D.

But the fact you need muscles for healing just fucks with me.

Out of curiosity why even waste time on POE again. Plenty of DnD games out there (sale on GOG). Solasta is out soon, then Pathfinder 2. I mean that retarded system Sawyer created is not just going to disappear or get better all of a sudden.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Well, for one, i own the game, so it feels like a waste. Second, i feel i need to at least try.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Bland itemization and progression are a 1000 times bigger faults of the first game than attributes ever were, I don't know why people obsess about that shit. I've actually started to appreciate the attribute system because it makes builds with non-minmaxed distribution of attributes perfectly viable. Rulesets where you have to max CHA WIS INT and tank everything else or you suck, are just as illogical as might increasing the healing.

 

[adddeed]

PoE has way better character creation system than DnD. Not even a contest.
You can create many more types of characters.

 

[Desiderius]

Resolve being irrelevant or whatever sux but Lyric Suite is just embarrassing himself here with old fogeyism.

Might/STR has always been too narrow in exactly an MMO oversimplified way so this Soyer innovation was one of good ones. He’s just casting about for a rationalization for the dis-ease that comes naturally with age.

Breaking through it can in fact ward it off for a time.

If you own the game play it, it is worth your time, but you will need to dedicate ~ 100 hours or so to get the value. That includes an initial playthrough with a high Perception Main and all the info turned on so you can get a feel for the Mechanics and C&C. There's enough interesting hidden and not so hidden gems to make it worth it for first two chapters and WMs.

After that if you want to go hardcore you'll be sufficiently equipped and not flailing around complaining about the game and Steam forums or whatever.