Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Lacrymas]

PotD isn't stat bloat, the other difficulties are undertuned.

 

[Grunker]

I don't play on PoTD because I don't like difficulties made through bloated HP and the immersion-breaking att+def boost of everything, common creatures included.
Even "hard" is a bit like that. Everpresent +2 to defend or attack on the rolls in the combat log with the explanation "Hard" is like, "Oh man, this is so hamfisted "
Not that the combat isn't harder like this, it just feels an unimaginative and crude way to go on about it.

I mean, I am lvl 3 and Goblin is lvl 10. Okay, let him waltz over me. But if we are roughly the same lvl, I should be the one giving a proper trashing to his whole tribe with relative ease.
Difficulties should be made through stronger opponents being even stronger, raising the mob numbers, creatures using more variety or deadlier tactics (e.g. normal means your backline doesn't get attacked all that much, hard would mean you have to protect your dmg-dealers most of the time), mob groups would be enriched by stronger monsters more often (e.g. xaurips and their drakes, skeletons and their champions, etc.)
Of course, that would mean a lot of added work on the game and I suppose not every developer can afford that.

I believe PoEs actually do both approaches.

a post that needs a “git gud” response if ever i saw one

 

[Nikanuur]

a post that needs a “git gud” response if ever i saw one

I don't agree, you missed my point. The topic of "hard is too hard, help" you refer to is unrelated to what I was talking about; the composing of difficulty levels.

 

[ferratilis]

Only on Codex you can find someone who's willing to beat a game they hate on the hardest difficulty, just to give themselves carte blanche to talk shit about said game. That deserves respect.

Now do the same for Kingmaker, I dare you.

 

[cvv]

Only on Codex you can find someone who's willing to beat a game they hate on the hardest difficulty, just to give themselves carte blanche to talk shit about said game.

Hey, times are tough, people find reasons to shit on things wherever they can, leave them be!

 

[almondblight]

Or maybe you are just wrong, the tanks are indeed useless, and you keep coping to justify liking a shitty combat system? Just a thought.

So how do you protect your back ranks?

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Or maybe you are just wrong, the tanks are indeed useless, and you keep coping to justify liking a shitty combat system? Just a thought.

So how do you protect your back ranks?

With a lot of stupid shit. My whole party wore heavy armor, cast a lot of defensive buffs, and of course cast a ton of cc (these shit games require you to spam cc because the enemies do). Even so, I still often had to micromanage the backline to escape aggro, instead of doing something interesting, like damage.

 

[Beans00]

Or maybe you are just wrong, the tanks are indeed useless, and you keep coping to justify liking a shitty combat system? Just a thought.

So how do you protect your back ranks?

With a lot of stupid shit. My whole party wore heavy armor, cast a lot of defensive buffs, and of course cast a ton of cc (these shit games require you to spam cc because the enemies do). Even so, I still often had to micromanage the backline to escape aggro, instead of doing something interesting, like damage.

Out of curiosity how does POE compare to BG1/2 on the hardest difficulty?(If you've played those on hardest)


I've beaten bg1/2 on the hardest setting before. When I played PoE I only did it on normal, didn't really like the game so I can't see myself ever going back to it to play it on hardest.

 

[almondblight]

With a lot of stupid shit. My whole party wore heavy armor, cast a lot of defensive buffs, and of course cast a ton of cc (these shit games require you to spam cc because the enemies do). Even so, I still often had to micromanage the backline to escape aggro, instead of doing something interesting, like damage.

That's funny, I have no armor on Aloth and Sagani, never use defensive buffs for either, and they almost never go down. Every so often someone breaks through the frontline and I have to paralyze them/knock them prone/mind control them, but the tanks keep 90% of the attackers occupied.

 

[Grunker]

Or maybe you are just wrong, the tanks are indeed useless, and you keep coping to justify liking a shitty combat system? Just a thought.

So how do you protect your back ranks?

With a lot of stupid shit. My whole party wore heavy armor, cast a lot of defensive buffs, and of course cast a ton of cc (these shit games require you to spam cc because the enemies do). Even so, I still often had to micromanage the backline to escape aggro, instead of doing something interesting, like damage.

Out of curiosity how does POE compare to BG1/2 on the hardest difficulty?(If you've played those on hardest)


I've beaten bg1/2 on the hardest setting before. When I played PoE I only did it on normal, didn't really like the game so I can't see myself ever going back to it to play it on hardest.

It's much harder. Not as hard as SCS, somewhere in between.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

With a lot of stupid shit. My whole party wore heavy armor, cast a lot of defensive buffs, and of course cast a ton of cc (these shit games require you to spam cc because the enemies do). Even so, I still often had to micromanage the backline to escape aggro, instead of doing something interesting, like damage.

That's funny, I have no armor on Aloth and Sagani, never use defensive buffs for either, and they almost never go down. Every so often someone breaks through the frontline and I have to paralyze them/knock them prone/mind control them, but the tanks keep 90% of the attackers occupied.

Storybook mode is a doozie.

Or maybe you are just wrong, the tanks are indeed useless, and you keep coping to justify liking a shitty combat system? Just a thought.

So how do you protect your back ranks?

With a lot of stupid shit. My whole party wore heavy armor, cast a lot of defensive buffs, and of course cast a ton of cc (these shit games require you to spam cc because the enemies do). Even so, I still often had to micromanage the backline to escape aggro, instead of doing something interesting, like damage.

Out of curiosity how does POE compare to BG1/2 on the hardest difficulty?(If you've played those on hardest)


I've beaten bg1/2 on the hardest setting before. When I played PoE I only did it on normal, didn't really like the game so I can't see myself ever going back to it to play it on hardest.

I played the BG saga on standard difficulty, because they tell you that on harder difficulties they inflate stats. But more importantly, BG games were just fun, you didn't play them for the difficulty, you played them cause you were enjoying yourself. These modern rpgs like PoE or especially Shitmaker, not really any reason to play them besides showing off the achievements.

 

[almondblight]

Storybook mode is a doozie.

As I said before, I've only played the game on PotD. One attempt before where I dropped the game when I got to the pit, and the current one I have now that I've been playing off and on for months (at Twin Elms now). Aloth and Sagani use no armor, have no defensive buffs (other than the per-encounter priest bless I give everyone), and usually never go down.

 

[The Limper]

Storybook mode is a doozie.

As I said before, I've only played the game on PotD. One attempt before where I dropped the game when I got to the pit, and the current one I have now that I've been playing off and on for months (at Twin Elms now). Aloth and Sagani use no armor, have no defensive buffs (other than the per-encounter priest bless I give everyone), and usually never go down.

Going no armor also means no magical protection buff from the armor….. no durganization either…..no stat bonus as well….. nor any other ability some of the better armors also have. Yet you’re still dominating the game on PotD with the backline never going down????? That seems…… questionable. The AI will go after that backline if their DR is much lower than the tanks. Yet still dominating, eh?

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Armour makes your recovery slow, if you nuke/CC the mobs first and faster they never even hit you. If your casters/archers need amour it's time to reload and try again. On PotD DR is pretty useless.

 

[almondblight]

Guys, I have no idea what game you're playing. Here's a video of me taking on some ogres in the White March:



You can see the difficulty is PotD. You can see that Sagani and Aloth are both wearing 0 DR clothing with no enchantments. You can see that the ogres are attacking my front line and the back doesn't get hurt. I honestly have no clue why you find this hard to believe.

 

[Axel_am]

This thread hasn't stopped going bonkers since someone said they like the ideas implemented in DA2.

Where does PotD rank among cRPGs difficulty in codex tier list? I find it impossible to believe PotD to be harder to beat than BG1/2.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Guys, I have no idea what game you're playing. Here's a video of me taking on some ogres in the White March:



You can see the difficulty is PotD. You can see that Sagani and Aloth are both wearing 0 DR clothing with no enchantments. You can see that the ogres are attacking my front line and the back doesn't get hurt. I honestly have no clue why you find this hard to believe.

4 ogres against 6 party members? Doesn't look like PotD. Every fight in PotD you re pretty much facing 1v2 numbers.

 

[almondblight]

4 ogres against 6 party members? Doesn't look like PotD. Every fight in PotD you re pretty much facing 1v2 numbers.

I literally showed that the difficulty level was set to PotD during the first 5 seconds of that video.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Yeah, no one has ever faked something like that... Maybe you munchkin-ed some way to do partial pulls, or some other cheese, I dunno man, but all I am saying is, I just completed PotD, and one of the distinguishing (and annoying) aspects of it was that pretty much every fight you are significantly outnumbered.

 

[almondblight]

Yeah, no one has ever faked something like that... Maybe you munchkin-ed some way to do partial pulls, or some other cheese, I dunno man, but all I am saying is, I just completed PotD, and one of the distinguishing (and annoying) aspects of it was that pretty much every fight you are significantly outnumbered.

Here's someone's PotD playthrough from 6 years ago showing the same exact fight, four ogres at the top (fourth one joined earlier in my fight than his) with one cannoner at the bottom:



It's not some grand conspiracy, you just apparently weren't paying much attention when you were playing the game.

Either way, you can see the ogres focusing on the tanks and not running past them to smash the back rows. So even if you think every single PotD let's play is a grand conspiracy, the behavior of the enemies still doesn't match your description.

(I actually uploaded another battle on that channel showing the same thing, but thought I'd use a White March fight because I was expecting a "that doesn't count!" response.)

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

You are trying too hard. Now PotD explicitly states that they increase the number of enemies, so if your fight has the party of 6 face 4, does that mean on Hard/Normal, you face 2 ogres? One? Something is fishy about your explanations.

But ultimately it doesn't matter. Like I said, I just completed the game on PotD, and every fight, you face very large numbers of enemies. So you can post however many youtube videos you want, but the truth is what it is.

 

[Grunker]

This thread hasn't stopped going bonkers since someone said they like the ideas implemented in DA2.

Where does PotD rank among cRPGs difficulty in codex tier list? I find it impossible to believe PotD to be harder to beat than BG1/2.

Way, way harder. It’s somewhere between BGs and SCS

 

[BlackAdderBG]

4-5 enemies is rarity even on lower difficulties, more often you will face groups of 10+ mobs and if you kite and pull another pack there can be 20 enemies at once.

 

[The Limper]

Guys, I have no idea what game you're playing. Here's a video of me taking on some ogres in the White March:



You can see the difficulty is PotD. You can see that Sagani and Aloth are both wearing 0 DR clothing with no enchantments. You can see that the ogres are attacking my front line and the back doesn't get hurt. I honestly have no clue why you find this hard to believe.

Ummmm, that battle only had a couple of enemy melee combatants, the others were Ogre missle troops. Lets see a video outside of Concelhaunt’s keep against the Bannerman or a fight against the Xuarips in the Paths Below or the Laugefeth. Or just show the
main throne room fight against the Ogres from White March….

 

[almondblight]

Or just show the
main throne room fight against the Ogres from White March….

Here you go:



Again, I show that it's PotD at the beginning and end. I show that Sagani and Aloth are wearing 0 DR clothing. When the fight begins, I hover over every single ogre, and you can see that they're all targeting my frontline (Eder). If you look at the end of the fight, you can see that Sagani and Aloth took no damage, and my tanks were the ones who took the most damage.

And this isn't to say I'm particularly good at the game. You'll probably notice that past a certain point I wasn't really sure what to do with Durance (I usually only pay attention to a fraction of the priest spells). I forgot about per rest items, the per rest abilities on my main, and didn't use any food. My character builds aren't great, and there's open slots for a lot of characters where they could probably get some buffs from items. I'm sure someone who's actually decent at the game would slice through the battle a lot more quickly (again, I've only played it once before, also on PotD, and stopped around the pit).

I'm starting to get the impression that a lot of the complaints about Pillars is coming from Codexers that don't know how to play the game.