Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Lacrymas]

There's already a genre out there that makes you cycle through every possible interaction with every possible object - point and click adventure games. That's considered to be one of its worst qualities.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

There's already a genre out there that makes you cycle through every possible interaction with every possible object - point and click adventure games. That's considered to be one of its worst qualities.

That has perhaps more to do with the obtuse logic of some of those scripted interactions. I doubt anyone would care to brute force combinations in a system driven game.

 

[pomenitul]

You see, absent-mindedly clicking through an assembly-line’s worth of false options is the true definition of CRPG freedom. If you don’t like it, go read a book, nerd.

 

[Cryomancer]

laser show

I dont like flashy spells. Poe spells are too flashy and weak at the se time...

 

[Lyric Suite]

You see, absent-mindedly clicking through an assembly-line’s worth of false options is the true definition of CRPG freedom. If you don’t like it, go read a book, nerd.

Speaking of books, how's the Avellone novella lmao.

Just noticed i got that thing in my steam folder, plus some other shit as well.

 

[Roguey]

Speaking of books, how's the Avellone novella lmao.

Just noticed i got that thing in my steam folder, plus some other shit as well.

And finished. House of Leaves Wael is difficult to read at first, because of what Sannom mentioned, but it gets easier as it goes. If you thought Eternity's setting was too mundane before, this is the story to check out, because it's full of a lot of magical weirdness. I imagine some might not like all the questions that go unanswered or the immersion-breaking game description parts. There was a sentence at the end that didn't make sense ("using its waters... or is its reflection.") and I don't know if it's intentional or sloppy editing.

It takes place well after the events of Pillars of Eternity, so it'll be interesting to see if Obsidian ever does anything to contradict it.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

There's already a genre out there that makes you cycle through every possible interaction with every possible object - point and click adventure games. That's considered to be one of its worst qualities.

RPGs are part adventure game, yes, good point in my favor.

 

[Decado]

Not sure about a dedicated gun user, but re: rogues, I've played glass cannon rogues on POTD and their "shitness" is overstated unless you're just terrible at using them

This could very well be my problem. It could be that as melee characters, they need way more micromanaging than I was giving them credit for.

And these are nice, but they don't solve the fundamental problem of allowing you stay in the fight while continuing to dish out melee.

Have you tried equipping heavier armor?

Not particularly, no. I think my last melee Rogue (this was years ago) used the Jack of Wide Waters. I thought that was a good balance between DR and recovery which, as a two weapon fighter, I wanted to keep a low as possible. After that, upgrades went to things like Seven Skuldr's Worth or Scales of the Raven.

So I'm up to level 11 with my pistol rogue and as I wrote earlier, I think I just needed some more time with him. He's definitely more "playable" now but still, unfortunately, a little underwhelming.

I think it has to do with how a rogue is designed to do damage -- it's a combination of timing, accuracy, sneak attacking, stealth, and status effects on enemies. The problem with pistols is that it is much harder to take advantage of all these things in a way to maximize your damage output, because something is almost always going to be missing.

Sneak attack gives you a damage bonus if you 1) Attack a target with a list of status effects like Prone, Hobbled, etc. or 2) Attack within the first two seconds of combat. Backstab also offers a huge damage bonus but this can only be used from stealth or invisibility, which means it can only be used once per encounter (this is important, I'll get back to it). Then, you factor in some talents like Dirty/Vicious Fighting (turns some hits in crits). Finally, a talent like Deathblows will also increase your damage provided an enemy is afflicted with at least two conditions necessary to inflict a sneak attack (for example, an enemy must be Prone and Blinded).

The first issue is that Backstab can only be used once per combat, because once broken stealth cannot be reentered. Now, there is a rogue talent called "Shadowing Beyond" that allows you to drop all engagement and turn invisible, and according to the talent description any attacks made from this invisible mode count as a Sneak attack . . . except, this doesn't work. I've tried it several times, and either the talent is bugged or I'm not doing it correctly. Attacking from the invisible state does NOT confer a sneak attack bonus, and it also does not confer a Backstab bonus (remember, Backstab is supposed to proc from stealth or invisibility). So this is kind of a fucking bummer. I'm not sure if this is a bug, or something the devs never fixed, or some other issue. I also can't believe I'm the first person to have encountered this issue but a quick search revealed no previous conversations about it anywhere else. So. Uh. That sucks?

The other issue is that Deathblows is a highly situational talent to begin with. Consider that you need two status afflictions on a target. Because we're using pistols, the length of time between attacks -- and therefore the length of time between status effect applications -- is a lot longer. It is hard to drop two status effects on a single enemy with the slow-firing pistol, because they don't last very long. The other option is to rely on status effects applied by your other party members. So for example, Eder knocks an enemy prone, and then you are flanking them. Sounds easy! And it is, with melee weapons -- especially fast melee weapons, and especially fast melee weapons when you're dual wielding, since you have basically double the chance to hit.

But with pistols, it's a different story. They simply do not fire fast enough for you to hit the sweet spot between stacked status afflictions, especially if you are counting on you (the rogue) to apply one of them. It can happen sometimes, if you get lucky. But more often than not, these kind of tactics will only work on fights where you're clearly winning anyway, and therefore make little difference when you really need them. I should add that at this point in the game, I've cultivated several different methods to increase my firing speed including Gunner, the Chanter's spell that does it, and Gauntlets of Swift Action which I was lucky enough to get in a random drop. Even still, the pistol lags.

The end result: from what I can tell, even though the game offers a bevy of ways to boost damage for the rogue, the slow-firing pistol is not able to take much advantage of them.

Now of course, this could all be by design, since the base damage and DR bypass of pistols is quite high to begin with. It could be that the game's logic is simply this: what you lose in status affliction modifiers, you gain in raw damage from the pistol's natural punch. Okay! Fair enough. That's fine. But it takes some of the fun out of playing a rogue. The rogue is naturally a "spiky" damage dealer who dishes out crits once overlapping status effects and advantageous situations are both perfectly aligned. The pistol rogue is even more restrictive, effectively limiting your most damaging strike to highly specific circumstances: from stealth, relying on Sneak Attack and Backstab damage, and occasionally Dirty/Vicious fighting if it procs, and maybe just maybe a Deathblows opportunity if you've managed to stay stealthed while Eder and one other party member have managed to double-stack status afflictions on a single target, who is also within your 2m limit remember! If you can line all that up, you can do an absolutely massive amount of damage. One single huge spike, in the beginning of combat, and then a respectable but much lower damage output after that. Whereas a dual wielding rogue, simply by virtue of his attack speed, will likely have mutliple high spikes in damage -- never reaching the truly astronomical single-shot damage output of our pistol rogue, but perhaps doing more overall damage simply owed to higher procs on crits, sneak attacks, etc.

So the pistol build has been a fun experiment and I might continue it at some point. But, I am determined to give Deadfire a serious try once again and before I jump in, I'll likely roll a Paladin, Monk, or Fighter to carry me through both games.

All of this has to done before Elden Ring comes out, I should add. God help me.

 

[Haplo]

I think you need a cipher in your party.
Ciphers effortlessly afflict all enemies ensuring sneak attacks. Basically Phantom Foes + Secret Horrors are large aoes that will open all enemies to Deathblows (and make them far less threatening also).

As for Backstab damage, note it normally only works from a very close distance (<2m) - even when using a Firearm. Shadowing Beyond (and eventually Vanishing Strikes!) should allow for additional backstabs.

 

[Lacrymas]

Don't forget to have more than one pistol in your weapon slots in order to get even more damage at the start of combat.

 

[Decado]

Don't forget to have more than one pistol in your weapon slots in order to get even more damage at the start of combat.

I did this originally. I specced for multiple pistols, but the two talents necessary for it to work well ate into my damage dealing opportunities. While it was a cool idea, I think it works best if you pair w/ Aumaua and really invest in it. Because in the final analysis, switching between three guns was fun and all but it didn't increase my gun speed enough to reliably stack status inflictions and after the third gun, I was back to just using one pistol anyway.

In light of this, I respecced and poured my attention into increasing attack and reload speeds. That seemed to be the better way to spend my levels and in the final analysis, I think it ended up doing more damage.

 

[Decado]

As for Backstab damage, note it normally only works from a very close distance (<2m) - even when using a Firearm. Shadowing Beyond (and eventually Vanishing Strikes!) should allow for additional backstabs.

I've tried it multiple times now with a pistol. I cannot get it to work.

 

[gurugeorge]

I don't consider having more dialogue options to be the same. I see them as completely perpendicular to the argument I'm making, as dialogue is just another tool for solving problems.

At its core, dialogue is a tool for navigating a chain of evaluated expressions (if-else blocks)

Whether you use this chain to simulate dialogue or skill checks is a secondary thing.

Continuing from that, in essence we are arguing over input methods. You'd like RPGs to be more like the text-based adventure games, instead of a CYOA hyperlinked structure.

I guess we're coming closer to the technology to allow that, only that today's gamers would probably prefer to speak directly to the game instead of typing, but that's just a matter of adding a speech engine. Ultimately the voice will be converted to text. But this text will still have to be mapped to a pre-designed action the character performs.

I don't know if you've ever checked out this GTA V mod: https://www.lcpdfr.com/lspdfr/index/ It's compatible with MS' speech engine, resulting in the cop-larping player being able to speak commands to NPCs, in vehicle or on foot. I found it quite fun, though I couldn't overcome the embarassment to use it while there are others at home

I think a fair number of the perennial arguments people have about games boil down to input limitations (as a part of tech limitations generally). (It's one big tendency in gaming that) we want more control, and more vectors of control - same as we have in reality - but computers and input devices just aren't sophisticated enough yet.

There are probably lots of quite satisfactory alternative ways of controlling a computer waiting out there in possiblity space, but reaching those "fitness peaks" is difficult because you'd have to go via a trough. (For example, there are ways of controlling synthesizers that use light, and they work pretty well with music, but trying to get something like that to be adopted by the gaming industry would be a difficult slog for an entrepreneur, it would require enormous amounts of luck along the way. It might be done via government encouragement, but that brings its own problems - plus there would be questions of why the govt. is wasting time on such frivoloties.)

But yeah, just having an AI that you could have some simulacrum of a moderately intelligent conversation with would really be the next big step in these games. Voice synthesis for it is very nearly there (not quite, but pretty close), it just needs the brains and the game logic.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Any argument about games that focuses on tech rather than design is a dumbfuck argument that fails to get to the heart of the matter.

Games are technological and a lot of the fascination people have for them lies in seeing this medium evolve and progress. Doom was popular for its design as much as for the ways it pushed gaming technology forward, but ultimately it is only because of its design that the legacy of the game has endured as much as it did. If it was only about the tech the game would have been forgotten as soon as the initial novelty wore off.

Growing up in the 80s and the 90s i followed the technologial progress of games and was sold to the idea this progress mattered and i'm not saying it didn't on some level but looking back all the greatest games also happened to be masterpieces of design. Yes, i bought Thief because the reviews in the gaming magazines praised it's "revolutionaty" AI and sound design (strange to think there was a time when game reviewers noticed those things) but i loved the game because of its design, not because it had new tech.

The new frontier in "input technology" is VR now, but i'd like to ask what exactly did this new technology accomplish besides get Valvle off their lazy asses to make a new game again after everybody thought they were done with game development. I never played Alyx, but i got an hunch it's not even remotely close to the original Half Life, so i'm not seeing how this new focus on input technology has yielded anything in terms of good game design, and i cannot imagine any speech based input is gonna do much for text heavy RPGs either. More than 20 years later we still haven't seen a game match what Torment did so long ago, except maybe Disco Elysium (i haven't played it so i wouldn't know, but people who did may be free to chime in here). To expect a new form of input technology to solve the problem when the issue is VERY clearly a lack of good designers and good writers is just pure delusion.

There is no system, no philosophy, no design principle that is going to substitute sheer human talent and creativity. I understand why game designers have to speak in terms of said systems etc because they have to give the illusion there's a science behind what they do but we all know it's just billshitting, the audience if not themselves. Sawyer in particularly seems to have a profound fixiation for design systems and principles and apparently has yet to realize that if you have hacks in your writing or design team none of that shit is gonna matter. I vaguely remember that internal conflict during Pillars development managed to reduce Avellone's participation in the game and if that's true we can probably argue that was to the detriment of the final product. You can't substitute human talent with "ideas" let alone systems. Creativity and talent don't come out of any particular design principle. It is innate, it is rare for people to have them and if you alienate the gifted few that are out there your game is gonna suck ass, plain and simple.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Speaking of dialog systems lmao, how does Durance actually work?

When i talk to him, he tells me at some point to shut the fuck up until the next rest. Ok, but he sometimes tells me this after only a few conversation options have been checked and furthermore it seems retracing options i have already read count as well which is messing me up as by the time i get to rest i sort of forgot what he told me the last time i talked to him lul.

 

[Lhynn]

There is no system, no philosophy, no design principle that is going to substitute sheer human talent and creativity. I understand why game designers have to speak in terms of said systems etc because they have to give the illusion there's a science behind what they do but we all know it's just billshitting, the audience if not themselves. Sawyer in particularly seems to have a profound fixiation for design systems and principles and apparently has yet to realize that if you have hacks in your writing or design team none of that shit is gonna matter.

They had a an untalented and uncreative hack designing the systems too.

Systems and mechanics can help tell a story, they absolutely can enforce themes and be part of the storytelling itself. One of PoEs many problems was the huge separation between systems and narrative, its insane when you consider THE SYSTEM WAS DESIGNED TO TELL THIS STORY. Its incompetence and lack of understanding of your fucking job on a level that beggars belief.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Speaking of dialog systems lmao, how does Durance actually work?

When i talk to him, he tells me at some point to shut the fuck up until the next rest. Ok, but he sometimes tells me this after only a few conversation options have been checked and furthermore it seems retracing options i have already read count as well which is messing me up as by the time i get to rest i sort of forgot what he told me the last time i talked to him lul.

Just adventure around with him until he has a dialog box icon in his character portrait and then talk to him.

EDIT: I just realized this may not actually answer your question. The ones you've asked already are greyed out rather than white. But sometimes there are new options down the grey branches.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

and it gets even dumber the further you go in this 'lineage', here's how world interactions work in wrath of the righteous:

all you do is click it. That's it, that's your entire meaningful interaction. The game tells you what to click, and you click it.
I can't wait to see where it goes from here, maybe they'll take out that strenuous clicking part. Wouldn't want to waste anyone's time, after all.

The more I think on this, the more I realize that -- for lack of a better way to describe it -- context sensitive interactions in RPGs is a bad idea.
RPGs are inherently part adventure game. I'll admit I don't play a lot of "pure" adventure games, but I'm pretty sure this type of design would cause adventure game fans to seethe.
Fallout's "action cursor"(their term from the manual) preserves the adventure game aspect. Would Fallout be a worse game if the cursor was context sensitive rather than having the user figure out what to do? ...I think so, yes.
Although the screenshot goes even further beyond a hypothetical context-sensitive cursor by not even requiring you to identify what object you need to interact with.


I'll need to think on this for a while.

Stumbled upon an interesting perspective from an adventure game fan
https://community.telltale.com/discussion/423/shacknews-and-context-sensitive-click-interface

I think everything about the new Sam and Max game looks great, but I just read this preview at ShackNews and this disturbed me: "This game opts to filter the player's interactions with the world down to a context-sensitive click interface, rather than giving a list of verbs that the player can execute. Clicking on a person is likely to initiate a conversation, while clicking on an item may cause Sam either to examine it or pick it up."
Half the fun of adventure games is figuring out on your own what you're supposed to be doing. When you are held by your hand and guided through the whole thing, it becomes less an interaction and more just watching something play itself. I think this is probably being done so as not to intimidate those unfamiliar with adventure games, but I say, why not have both options available? Simply have an option that either the cursor automatically changes to whatever it is above, or the player manually cycles through the different cursors (say, with the right click). Those that are more experienced can go to the settings and choose to manually cycle -- and for those that aren't, it will be set-up initially to be automatic.
Now, maybe that wasn't done because of all the things the character has to say in response to things he can't do. But then, why not just record one broad line of dialogue? "I don't want to do that" or something (like Hoagie in Day of the Tentacle.)
This is such a simple thing, but it really would limit the fun of the game, I think, not to have the ability to do this manually.

 

[AwesomeButton]

"Figuring out on your own" merely means directing your attention in whatever direction the designer intended.

You find the thing too fast - "this game sucks". You can't find it for hours - "this game sucks". It's meant to be difficult for kids, and you're not a kid any more. Everything is shit. When you are old.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

"Figuring out on your own" merely means directing your attention in whatever direction the designer intended.

Why is this a bad thing?
Having the game point every little detail out to you is not a substitute for good game design. It's terrible game design masquerading as good design. It's like having the designer sitting next to you constantly interrupting your play to inform you about "whoa look at this totally cool thing I put right there!" and telling you to go look at it.

The designer is holding you by the hand and leading you through the game. This is no longer roleplaying, it is storytelling.

“Storytelling” games are not RPGs. Neither are “diceless” games.

An RPG creates a story, does not follow a script. That’s a play, possibly improv theater. In a real RPG the GM develops a backstory and plot, sets the scenes, and then the PCs interact with those and by their actions create the actual tale, the events and conclusion of which are indeterminate until that occurs.

I think modern cRPGs have strayed very far away from this. Yes, cRPGs have to make concessions that tabletop doesn't, but it's not even in the same ballpark anymore.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Why is this a bad thing?
Having the game point every little detail out to you is not a substitute for good game design. It's terrible game design masquerading as good design. It's like having the designer sitting next to you constantly interrupting your play to inform you about "whoa look at this totally cool thing I put right there!" and telling you to go look at it.

The designer is holding you by the hand and leading you through the game. This is no longer roleplaying, it is storytelling.

It's not a bad thing, but requires more effort, as you point out, for one thing. For another, designers are fearful nowadays - higher production costs lead to trying to cast the widest net for possible audience. For another, it's still supposed be "an involved game" for a much less experienced audience, so the experienced one will never feel appropriately challenged.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Well this is unexpected. I'm maybe about 1/2 to 2/3 through WM1 and it's pretty great.

The base game has been improved by some of the new abilities and rules tweaks that were backported in to the lower levels and general system as well as a few new items that were put into the OC either from WM1 or patches since I last played. The additions of immunities have made the game feel like less of a clusterfuck although sometimes the lighting puke all over the place still makes it hard to tell wtf is happening or where anyone is, although that can be a problem with various RTWP games.

I also forgot that I had appreciated some of the humour in the party banter even on original release.

One thing I've been noticing that I didn't remember happening before is sometimes if an enemy is sitting on top of another clickable field such as an examination point or a discovered trap, it can become impossible to attack them because the game thinks you're trying to interact with the other field even if your cursor is a sword icon on top of the enemy. Pain in the ass. It also sucks fighting anything in the edges or corners of the map where UI elements can interfere or they are basically difficult to target just because they're sitting in the very edge of the screen.

Other than that, WM1 has been great for filling in many of POE's original shortcomings such as shitty itemization, some uninteresting areas, etc. My only complaint is that the expansions didn't launch earlier before many people including myself were done/burnt out on the OC. As I recall, this was a complaint before and around the WM launch as well.

Actually, I have one other complaint and that's that Zahua is hilarious, but he sucks because he's a monk so I haven't used him much even though I'd like to see more of his weird stoner dialog. I've never been able to do much of anything with monks or barbarians on PotD without them basically disintegrating. I might have to tool around later to try and figure them out since I'm at least somewhat certain there's a way of playing them that doesn't make them completely suck. Maneha seems boring as hell, Devil might be interesting, we'll see. I just wish you could take more characters with you because there are certain classes I hate playing without and always have to trade one or more of them out in order to bring in other characters to see what they're about or hear their banters.

Anyway, if the rest of the expansion and WM2 keep delivering on this, I feel that ultimately the full package of POE actually did deliver on what I hoped for from their Kickstarter promises which is a nice feeling. What's not a nice feeling is I now have to walk back and reconsider a bunch of my shitting on POE and the design team. At least I still think a number of the system design ideas are wank, so...

 

[FreeKaner]

Monks are great at higher levels when built properly, but they do require a bit of babysitting to not get focus fired.

 

[Ninjerk]

I think one of the earlier successful TCS builds was a monk. Take the cone attack thing, chokepoint enemies, and just spam click it (because your wounds are going to stack like crazy).

 

[Haplo]

Haven't really played monks in PoE1, so can't tell.
But in Deadfire they are kinda broken - both SC and MC.