Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[RIT_SKUA]

I liked Devil of Caroc a lot

Devil was definitely my favorite companion, followed by Grieving Mother > Pallegina > Durance > Hiravias

 

[Parabalus]

Zahua is also pretty good, and his quest in WM2 can be very fun depending on who you bring.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Man, the modern swearing in this game is so fucking try hard.

BTW, i soloed the wolves near those ruins in the first forest.

Me: 1
Avellone: 0

The bear still beat my ass though. Guess i'll have to come back for it.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Yeah, ok, I got it. Anyone else care to explain to me why PoE's combat (system) is bad?

It has been a while that I played it but I found the systems to be convoluted. The Infinity games are pretty binary and granular, effects are clear and direct. In Pillars I need to run a excel calculation before I can evaluate all the effects. There were a bunch of straightforward buffs and those were the ones that I always used but the rest of the system carries a lot of unnecessary bloat. And all those weird times on buffs and effects, like 8.4 seconds, 3.2 seconds 17.5 seconds etc. I had a hard time judging if that is long enough to be worth it or not or how it compares to other stuff. And then this gets again affected depending on being a graze or hit or critical, etc. Just a ton of bloat.

It might look good on paper but it wasn't fun for me to play it. And the attack speed/recovery system is also pointlessly complicated and not exactly intuitive. The tooltips and descriptions also often didn't explain properly how they affect your speed. The encounters and bestiary were also bland. Standard fantasy stuff except that they made up some retarded names. The only combat encounter that got stuck in my memory were the annoying ghost thing in the first village and the Adra dragon.

It seems that you have to put in a lot of time just to extract a fair amount of fun from combat. I had no such troubles with Divinity:OS, Pathfinder Kingmaker, Wastelands 2 or the Infinity engine games. I enjoyed PoE combat the least when compared with the aforementioned games. The combat is not a total downer but also not something that would mention as positive aspect recommending the game.

 

[Lyric Suite]

BTW, i agree the spells in this game are no where near as interesting and lore rich as those in D&D. I read through the manual and almost right away all the spells started to blur with one another.

I'm not gonna comment on the combat system yet as i want to wait until i have a large party and i start fighting enemy casters etc but so far i approve of the engagement system. Shows that they could have implemented attacks of opportunity in the IE games, real time or not, which would have prevented a lot of cheesy kiting tactics.

Then again, i already discovered the first cheesy tactic in this game: exploit the shit out of choke points lmao.

 

[Lyric Suite]

BTW, good to know there's a mod to remove the backer shit. I won't do it in this run so you can all enjoy my reactions in real time but i'll definitely install it for future plays, assuming i like the game enough to replay it more than once.

 

[Ninjerk]

Honestly, I found the combat fun when I went PotD solo, and if I ever get WM I'll probably do a run through that way.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Never been a solo guy. I like to play with all the toys the game offers. Same reason i never take two of the same class in those games.

 

[mediocrepoet]

For the sake of fairness, since I spend a lot of time shitting on this game: One thing I will say that's good about the game is that many RPGs these days expect you to 1, 2, 3, 4 through all the dialog options, but here you shouldn't do that.

It also requires you to use your synergies if you play on POTD (either that or spend forever grinding something down with all your 0.2 grazes, etc.)

 

[NJClaw]

This dude really needs to calm down.

 

[Lyric Suite]

BTW, turning off dialoge checks in the option menu was the best thing i did.

For instance, when i met Aloth i was able to prevent the peasants getting slaugheted by picking the options I thought were the bests. Out of curiosity i reloaded that save to see what the checks were and if i had to follow my disposition it would have led to violence, and then further play out of character by making a clever quip about slaughtering them.

Now that i have some party members i'm pondering if i should actually respect into getting an higher resolve to see what options i get there (especially since i can't know whether there's a check or not). I didn't like the first resolve check in the encampement (literally egging them to kill that rogue on porpose).

Is resolve really the asshole dialogue stat or can i roleplay a good guy with it?

 

[Lyric Suite]

Haha, i just noticed the Black Hound art in the inn. Funny. My brain was too retarded to make the connection at first. Need more coffee shiiiiiet.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Wait, are there any quests with the gold NPCs or do they just have some retarded back story?

 

[Ninjerk]

Wait, are there any quests with the gold NPCs or do they just have some retarded back story?

We tried to warn you. You didn't listen!

 

[Lacrymas]

Everyone said the gold-plated NPCs are to be avoided at all costs because they are backer stories...

 

[Lyric Suite]

There are so many of them...

 

[NJClaw]

Wait, are there any quests with the gold NPCs or do they just have some retarded back story?

The only gameplay interaction with gold NPCs that I'm aware of is a soulbond weapon that requires you to kill 3 of them to unlock the next tier.

 

[Butter]

Given Sawyer's contempt for his players, it's a wonder there's no achievement for talking to all of them.

 

[Lyric Suite]

To be honest that makes them not so bad. You can just pretend they are part of the crowd of background NPCs. If you remove them the world might look a bit depopulated. Unless the mod actually replaces them with the regular passive NPCs.

 

[Napalm]

To be honest that makes them not so bad. You can just pretend they are part of the crowd of background NPCs. If you remove them the world might look a bit depopulated. Unless the mod actually replaces them with the regular passive NPCs.

They look really out of place in some places though. Like you reach that first miserable village with unwashed peasants and gallows tree, and suddenly see backer NPC godlikes standing around in shiny armor and looking super important.

 

[Lacrymas]

A lot of them are godlike, yes, which is not lore-friendly. They are supposed to be exceedingly rare.

There are so many of them...

Do all the backer NPCs concentrate all in one location or there's really so fucking many of them? WTF.

They are many and they are everywhere. How's that for a horror opener.

 

[TedNugent]

What exactly is bad about PoE's combat?

What exactly isn't bad about PoE's combat?

This is an illuminating conversation.

 

[Faarbaute]

It's amusing that the most common advice to enjoy the game is to discourage someone from interacting too deeply with most of the systems or aspects of the game. As in this thread, don't obsess about building a character, don't talk to npcs, don't read text, don't bother with the stats, don't bother with the companions, don't bother with the stronghold, don't bother with the reputation system, absolutely don't talk to any backer npcs and so on. It really stands as a monument to Josh Sawyers failed design decisions that you're encouraged to interact with his systems in onley the most superficial ways possible.

Just eat the slop. Don't ask any questions.

 

[Lacrymas]

Just eat the slop. Don't ask any questions.

Literally the other way around - don't eat the slop we encourage not to eat. If you choose to eat it because you are a rebel and nobody tells you what to do, then that's another issue entirely and you can't really complain about the flavor of the slop.

 

[TedNugent]

Yeah under a microscope, the combat falls apart pretty bad. The mechanics are not great, and are very inferior to AD&D.

But, I still remember quite a few encounters years later, so there’s some good stuff. I think 90% of what I remember is from White March, though. The Ice Dragon, the different adventurer parties that you fight in the snow for bounty hunting, the encounters at Durgan’s Battery. Finding the Stormcaller Bow. The monks at the Moon Pool place or whatever it was called. All very fun, for me at least.

Combat encounter design is better in the White March expansion, but the combat system is still obsfucated.

I don't particularly understand this comment.

Can you please explain what you mean, when you say that the combat system is obfuscated?