Quickfire Systemic Criticism that contributes to banality of gameplay

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

PoE's pantheon of gods is indeed amazing. I suspected Ziets contributed to it. So glad he's heavily involved with Torment.

 

[Jarpie]

badgame people complaining about the encounter design and endless paths is one of those things what I think comes from the fact that people don't know what they want, and if I've understood correctly, it bite Sawyer in the ass.

 

[Ninjerk]

badgame people complaining about the encounter design and endless paths is one of those things what I think comes from the fact that people don't know what they want, and if I've understood correctly, it bite Sawyer in the ass.

I've gotten the feeling for awhile that the feedback he's been most receptive to is from scrubs, which would explain that weird design idea he was espousing about how players don't like what they think they like or w/e it was.

EDIT: For clarification, that the players he's listening to don't actually know what's going on with the game and have a bunch of irrational ideas about how the game works (ie. basically "scrubs" in the way that Sirlin defined it).

 

[Jarpie]

badgame people complaining about the encounter design and endless paths is one of those things what I think comes from the fact that people don't know what they want, and if I've understood correctly, it bite Sawyer in the ass.

I've gotten the feeling for awhile that the feedback he's been most receptive to is from scrubs, which would explain that weird design idea he was espousing about how players don't like what they think they like or w/e it was.

EDIT: For clarification, that the players he's listening to don't actually know what's going on with the game and have a bunch of irrational ideas about how the game works (ie. basically "scrubs" in the way that Sirlin defined it).

Yeah that makes sense. I don't think that the goons and badgamers actually knows fuck about crpg design or mechanics, so I have to wonder why the hell Sawyer actually listens to them? When you're making a game, you should listen to the core audience of it, you don't go asking from sport-hating people what they want to see in Football Manager-series for example because they actually don't know shit about football.

Go ask from scrubs about rpgs and you get shit ideas, what a coincidence!

 

[Gord]

When you're making a game, you should listen to the core audience of it

Although the "core audience" in this case wouldn't be able to agree on anything anyway.

 

[Athelas]

Ultimately, I think most of the combat issues stem from the game wanting to appear like D&D but not actually wanting to be like D&D. I.e. it's somewhat absurd how enemy rogues will typically wear leather armor and enemy wizards wear robes when it makes no sense - there are no armor restrictions, and those armors aren't necessarily best suited for their combat roles. It's almost schizophrenic.

 

[Jarpie]

When you're making a game, you should listen to the core audience of it

Although the "core audience" in this case wouldn't be able to agree on anything anyway.

Very true, the desginer needs to be able to take good ideas from here and there and combine them, but with rpgs that's fucking hard, if not even impossible.

 

[J1M]

I agree with the OP. Not sure if this has been discussed on pages 3-7, but I found the engagement system pretty silly. Zone of control and similar concepts are good, but there was really no reason why enemies shouldn't run by my tanks. Unlike monsters, the tanks would not have done significant damage during the disengage. It felt very artificial, and not like the AI was avoiding a big hit, hamstring debuff, or similar by standing there swinging away.

Another issue I had was how my back line was incentivized to wear very little armor, but also had no tools to protect themselves against something like insect swarm. It seemed like healing them was the only option.

Finally, not allowing the paladin to cast the spell that causes a character to ignore a debuff's duration on someone who is mind controlled was really fucking stupid. That was the whole reason I picked up that ability.

 

[Ninjerk]

badgame people complaining about the encounter design and endless paths is one of those things what I think comes from the fact that people don't know what they want, and if I've understood correctly, it bite Sawyer in the ass.

I've gotten the feeling for awhile that the feedback he's been most receptive to is from scrubs, which would explain that weird design idea he was espousing about how players don't like what they think they like or w/e it was.

EDIT: For clarification, that the players he's listening to don't actually know what's going on with the game and have a bunch of irrational ideas about how the game works (ie. basically "scrubs" in the way that Sirlin defined it).

Yeah that makes sense. I don't think that the goons and badgamers actually knows fuck about crpg design or mechanics, so I have to wonder why the hell Sawyer actually listens to them? When you're making a game, you should listen to the core audience of it, you don't go asking from sport-hating people what they want to see in Football Manager-series for example because they actually don't know shit about football.

Go ask from scrubs about rpgs and you get shit ideas, what a coincidence!

Can't argue with that.

 

[Hatred]

One more area of the game I think could have made that list is visuals. Having to fight behind a tree/wall/anything can be annoying. The FX you get from spells didn't seem to be designed around communicating clear. There are so many spells which add a crap tonne of visual mess to the screen. Finally the camera angle. Makes it harder to see over people. I really noticed this after booting up bg1 then poe to compare the two. Soooo much easier to recognise who is who and wtf is happening in bg1. The package of the game as a whole feels so broken I'm not sure any amount of mods and expansions could turn PoE into something I could enjoy.

 

[roshan]

One more area of the game I think could have made that list is visuals. Having to fight behind a tree/wall/anything can be annoying. The FX you get from spells didn't seem to be designed around communicating clear. There are so many spells which add a crap tonne of visual mess to the screen. Finally the camera angle. Makes it harder to see over people. I really noticed this after booting up bg1 then poe to compare the two. Soooo much easier to recognise who is who and wtf is happening in bg1. The package of the game as a whole feels so broken I'm not sure any amount of mods and expansions could turn PoE into something I could enjoy.

There are other issues too with the graphics other than the retarded "next gen" glowy spell effects... The fog of war is so intense that you can't make out dungeon areas that are fogged, they look like indiscernible blotches. Another unbelievably stupid "design" decision is that the minimap is also affected by fog of war which makes it unusable at night time...The devs at Obsidian are just unbelievably inept, you would expect that these guys who raked in millions of dollars via Kickstarter would have at least managed to put together a working minimap and functional fog of war like Numantian who only pulled in 35K.

 

[J1M]

One more area of the game I think could have made that list is visuals. Having to fight behind a tree/wall/anything can be annoying. The FX you get from spells didn't seem to be designed around communicating clear. There are so many spells which add a crap tonne of visual mess to the screen. Finally the camera angle. Makes it harder to see over people. I really noticed this after booting up bg1 then poe to compare the two. Soooo much easier to recognise who is who and wtf is happening in bg1. The package of the game as a whole feels so broken I'm not sure any amount of mods and expansions could turn PoE into something I could enjoy.

There are other issues too with the graphics other than the retarded "next gen" glowy spell effects... The fog of war is so intense that you can't make out dungeon areas that are fogged, they look like indiscernible blotches. Another unbelievably stupid "design" decision is that the minimap is also affected by fog of war which makes it unusable at night time...The devs at Obsidian are just unbelievably inept, you would expect that these guys who raked in millions of dollars via Kickstarter would have at least managed to put together a working minimap and functional fog of war like Numantian who only pulled in 35K.

The sad part is that the current state is after they have "made it less dark" as per latest patch notes.

 

[Sensuki]

One more area of the game I think could have made that list is visuals. Having to fight behind a tree/wall/anything can be annoying. The FX you get from spells didn't seem to be designed around communicating clear. There are so many spells which add a crap tonne of visual mess to the screen. Finally the camera angle. Makes it harder to see over people. I really noticed this after booting up bg1 then poe to compare the two. Soooo much easier to recognise who is who and wtf is happening in bg1. The package of the game as a whole feels so broken I'm not sure any amount of mods and expansions could turn PoE into something I could enjoy.

Yeah the visual design is another thing all together. The lower camera angle choice is a very poor idea for combat. They chose it during pre-production to make structures look more impressive, without really thinking about how it would affect combat gameplay, and they deliberately let their VFX guys go buck wild even after being warned, and the end result is - combat can be really fucking confusing.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Having to fight behind a tree/wall/anything can be annoying.

That's what you get with fixed angle and 2D backgrounds, and it still beats full 3D with obligatory fucked up camera.

 

[Sensuki]

It wasn't a problem in the IE games though, is his point.

The camera angle is lower in Pillars of Eternity inside by a little bit and way lower outside. The dithering/occlusion used in PE also sucks - wireframe lol.

 

[KK1001]

The game lacks a consistent direction in many ways.

Like people have said, it wants to be D&D and it wants to not be D&D. It wants to emulate IE combat but it doesn't. It wants to be like Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment at the same time.

To give a concrete example of the contradictions in design, you have combat encounters filled with boring copy pasta enemies that you fight in the same way. They're in your way and unavoidable most of the time, but there's no reward for fighting them. The XP gains are minimal, and unless they're dropping Fine items to sell to go buy real magical items, it's too fucking tedious to loot them. The game is fundamentally based around combat (or at least that's what we were told) and yet the amount of effort that went into designing and polishing the combat was fucking minimal.

 

[J1M]

Having to fight behind a tree/wall/anything can be annoying.

That's what you get with fixed angle and 2D backgrounds, and it still beats full 3D with obligatory fucked up camera.

While it is better than a 3D camera, they can certainly add the scenery to a layer that becomes transparent when the characters are under it.

 

[Hatred]

While it is better than a 3D camera, they can certainly add the scenery to a layer that becomes transparent when the characters are under it.

Yeah. Why on earth did this not happen.

 

[potatojohn]

In contrast, in the Infinity Engine games you have to manually heal HP either via spells or potions (unless you have regeneration). Healing spells are a per-rest resource, and healing potions are (technically) a finite resource. You might want to save your healing spells/potions for when you need them rather than healing characters straight away, and often you are not at 'full strength' when facing encounters, and as the adventuring day goes on you are gradually whittled down. This led to situations where due to not being at full HP you might have had to alter encounter strategy or tactics based on who was wounded. Personally I would often leave wounded characters behind, and take on encounters with less party members. You cannot/shouldn't do this in Pillars of Eternity. When characters got badly wounded in combat, I would have them quaff a potion, or move them out of the fray. You don't really do this in Pillars of Eternity either. If that character is engaged - you leave them where they are. Potions do not heal Health, so you don't drink potions unless they're in danger of being KO'd and because being KO'd has no negative impact on the character other than them not being able to take part further in the encounter, whether or not you heal a wounded character is debatable, so changing what you are doing whether strategically or tactically because of considerations to do with the Health system comes into play way less often in Pillars of Eternity.

In BG2 you could get a ring of regeneration 30 seconds out of the tutorial dungeon.

 

[ArchAngel]

In contrast, in the Infinity Engine games you have to manually heal HP either via spells or potions (unless you have regeneration). Healing spells are a per-rest resource, and healing potions are (technically) a finite resource. You might want to save your healing spells/potions for when you need them rather than healing characters straight away, and often you are not at 'full strength' when facing encounters, and as the adventuring day goes on you are gradually whittled down. This led to situations where due to not being at full HP you might have had to alter encounter strategy or tactics based on who was wounded. Personally I would often leave wounded characters behind, and take on encounters with less party members. You cannot/shouldn't do this in Pillars of Eternity. When characters got badly wounded in combat, I would have them quaff a potion, or move them out of the fray. You don't really do this in Pillars of Eternity either. If that character is engaged - you leave them where they are. Potions do not heal Health, so you don't drink potions unless they're in danger of being KO'd and because being KO'd has no negative impact on the character other than them not being able to take part further in the encounter, whether or not you heal a wounded character is debatable, so changing what you are doing whether strategically or tactically because of considerations to do with the Health system comes into play way less often in Pillars of Eternity.

In BG2 you could get a ring of regeneration 30 seconds out of the tutorial dungeon.

Where? I don't remember one. If it is something you needed to steal, where only a small amount of people did that and knew who to steal from.

And even with that ring it was too slow to heal everyone and took too much micro management to keep moving it from one character to the next.

 

[Sensuki]

For one character, yep (Adventurer's Mart). There were a few items that granted regeneration in the game such as the Sensate Amulet.

 

[Copper]

I have a minor 'bug' with the UI being about as responsive as a keyboard filled with spilled Coke, which really exacerbates some of the system issues - especially for micro-heavy classes like Monks, with Torment's Reach living up to its name (for me). Why it's not a modal ability is beyond me.

It's a pain for other classes too, but at least the Wizard's spells or rogue's strikes have enough impact to make clicking, checking, realising the ability's not going to fire for 'reasons' and re-clicking worth it/necessary.

Being a graphics person, there are some other UI issues that are really annoying and also make me inclined towards the path of least resistance with the game, such as equipping items without seeing the impact on stats / knowing the change in deflection / accuracy / real damage. Personally, I don't care what the damage calculation is, that's the point of the calculator sitting on my desk. The rest of the tool-tips are largely rubbish as well, either too fucking long for tooltips, or too vague, and they don't use hyperlinks so you can get a good idea of what a Wilder is, and whether getting Slaying is a good idea.

I also play without any sound because the jogging footstep noise is Satan's tapdance, but that might just be me.

 

[Athelas]

Being a graphics person, there are some other UI issues that are really annoying and also make me inclined towards the path of least resistance with the game, such as equipping items without seeing the impact on stats / knowing the change in deflection / accuracy / real damage.

Unless the left side of your screen is being cut off, you should be able to see the change in stats when you equip something.

 

[Immortal]

ITT: Fanboys in Act 2 Defend the game to the death.

 

[A horse of course]

PoE's pantheon of gods is indeed amazing.

I don't see how. It's a rudimentary generic fantasy pantheon.