Codex Review RPG Codex Retrospective Review: Pillars of Eternity Revisited

[Ulfhednar]

That is on story mode though

The only explanations for excessive FF are 1) you don't know what you're doing or 2) you are being careless.

3) FF is disabled (ie story mode)

I think FF is permanently turned off in PoE2, regardless of difficulty mode.

Really... why keep the different circles on fireballs, etc?

It's entirely possible I could be confusing it with something else.

I hope not, this is half the reason Tyranny was a sub-par game.

Not exactly half, but it certainly helped :D

I rounded up...

 

[Infinitron]

Don't spread FAKE NEWS plz https://forums.somethingawful.com/s...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=14#post461780845

 

[pomenitul]

Considering the sheer amount of pixel ink that's been furiously spilled over PoE on the 'Dex, I think it's time for you, dear contributors, to take your prestigious insight to the next level. Here are some titles to get you started:

http://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=282989&p=4172214

Don't be shy.

 

[Ulfhednar]

Considering the sheer amount of pixel ink that's been furiously spilled over PoE on the 'Dex, I think it's time for you, dear contributors, to take your prestigious insight to the next level. Here are some titles to get you started:

http://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=282989&p=4172214

Don't be shy.

I read enough of this bullshit in grad school - I'd rather examine ppls stream-of-consciousness bitching and moaning on an internet forum.

 

[Prime Junta]

MotB solved the rest issue perfectly. Spam rest and soon you will run out of SE and forced to sacrifice xp to stay alive.

It did at that. The spirit eater mechanic is a pretty good dumbfuck detector.

Sadly, there are a lot of dumbfucks, many of them even valued members of great Codexia.

 

[Zeriel]

I played Pillars of Eternity for the first time with all the latest patches and White March installed... I never made it past Act 1. Game's just fucking boring as all get out. I really don't know how to process this review. I guess "isometric art" and "RTWP" is enough to for some people to call PoE "a joy to play - glorious in all its complexity".

 

[almondblight]

That would be like saying the only right way to play Fallout 2 is to make a beeline straight for the Power Armor as soon as you get out of Arroyo. I mean, it's a game feature, it's doable - that must mean it's supposed to be played like that.

Let's leave aside the fact that this requires metaknowledge and that it's possible because of silly design decisions ("Hello stranger! Here, have some free power armor!"). You can tell some one that they shouldn't go to Arroyo. You can tell someone they shouldn't use the harm spell. No one is telling people they shouldn't rest in BG2, though - just that they shouldn't rest "too much", without being able to define what "too much" even means. Yes, "don't rest after every fight," but that's a straw man since just about no one is blowing through some orc trash mob, getting a slight cut, and then deciding to rest. The people who rest once in a dungeon and the people who rest twice and the people who rest 4 times and the people who rest 8 times will all tell themselves that they only rested when they needed to and weren't resting after every fight.

It's an issue when you need to add self-imposed rules in order to make a game challenging. But it's a much bigger issue issue when no one is even able to articulate what those rules are. And for all the words that have been spent defending the BG2 rest system, no one's been able to come up with a rule beyond "rest whenever you feel like as long as you don't feel like it's too much."

 

[Delterius]

"isometric art" and "RTWP"

Ever played Arcanum.

but that's a straw man since just about no one is blowing through some orc trash mob

That is precisely what is being suggested in this thread.

 

[Jasede]

It's something you need to do for yourself. I think BG2 is quite tough actually for average players even if they rest spam.

The good thing about the no-enforcement is that you can decide for yourself at all times. And you can measure your improvement by how often you rested, too. It's actually a nice way of letting the player pick his difficulty. It'd be nice if there were an 'iron rest' mode, but there is no realistic way of implementing that.

 

[Sizzle]

but that's a straw man since just about no one is blowing through some orc trash mob

That is precisely what is being suggested in this thread.

Exactly. No one is saying that the IE games' rest system is ideal - it's not, far from it.

But making it out like everyone rested after every fight, and if they didn't - they were gimping themselves - is equally silly.

And for all the words that have been spent defending the BG2 rest system, no one's been able to come up with a rule beyond "rest whenever you feel like as long as you don't feel like it's too much."

"Rest whenever your health/spell selection is depleted, or when you think you will need all the HP you have for an upcoming tough fight" - sounds like it could work.

 

[Azarkon]

...or as I put it elsewhere...

Sort of like assuming your fellow Codexians are that stupid.

(In all fairness, they often are. In both cases.)

Stupid, not necessarily; possessed of an agenda, always.

Putting it another way - why did you bring it up as an example of how horrible Advanced Dungeons and Dragons' design was, given that you knew the purpose behind it? The Infinity Engine games chose to give players infinite re-rolls, which was not intended by the system they were using. The fault lies not, therefore, with the original rules, but their adaptation.

Later editions of Dungeons and Dragons, with consideration to the popularity of the point buy system and the desire of players to improve their characters' ability scores over time, introduced more diversity to the system for just this reason.

 

[Lhynn]

Sort of like assuming your fellow Codexians are that stupid.

I hesitate to call you a fellow codexian, but you are that stupid.

 

[Quillon]

lol I forgot to check the next page this morning and haven't been getting notifications for this thread, since then 10 pages have passed...

 

[Grunker]

SA has noticed this review: https://forums.somethingawful.com/s...rid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=209#post474087410

Making a game that a plurality of the Codex claims to hate but somehow can't stop talking about is Obsidian's finest achievement.

PoE arguably accidentally had hard counters in the form of certain battles that could be extremely challenging without a Priest's Prayers.

this is why u play w/o priest if u a real manz

How about a no-priest, no-scrolls playthrough?

Actually pretty much how I played

 

[Sentinel]

How did you kill the menace of Mowrghek Îen - Llengrath, Gafonercos and Turisulfus?

 

[almondblight]

"Rest whenever your health/spell selection is depleted, or when you think you will need all the HP you have for an upcoming tough fight" - sounds like it could work.

That seems like a pretty backwards system. If you nuke all your enemies by throwing all of your spells against them you get to rest more often than if you play more conservatively? Also, the definition of "tough fight" is going to vary greatly depending on the person.

That is precisely what is being suggested in this thread.

Literally after every fight? I doubt it. The thing is, if you have a dungeon with 30 encounters, the person who rests 10 times is going to have a very different experience from the person who rests once.

 

[Grotesque]

RPG Codex Retrospective Review: Pillars of Eternity Revisited

Bubbles rolls in his grave

 

[Jaedar]

SA has noticed this review: https://forums.somethingawful.com/s...rid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=209#post474087410

Making a game that a plurality of the Codex claims to hate but somehow can't stop talking about is Obsidian's finest achievement.

PoE arguably accidentally had hard counters in the form of certain battles that could be extremely challenging without a Priest's Prayers.

this is why u play w/o priest if u a real manz

How about a no-priest, no-scrolls playthrough?

Actually pretty much how I played

So to make game challenging, you had to play on highest difficulty and with self imposed rules to cripple yourself?
:updatedmyjournal:

 

[Riddler]

SA has noticed this review: https://forums.somethingawful.com/s...rid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=209#post474087410

Making a game that a plurality of the Codex claims to hate but somehow can't stop talking about is Obsidian's finest achievement.

PoE arguably accidentally had hard counters in the form of certain battles that could be extremely challenging without a Priest's Prayers.

this is why u play w/o priest if u a real manz

How about a no-priest, no-scrolls playthrough?

Actually pretty much how I played

So to make game challenging, you had to play on highest difficulty and with self imposed rules to cripple yourself?
:updatedmyjournal:

The issue is more the priest immunities than the difficulty setting. It trivializes all encounters regardless of difficulty setting. Just blanket immunities against all negative status effects for the whole party with no discernible downsides? Great design right there!

Playing with or without a priest are two almost entirely different games.

 

[Azarkon]

1) Start arguing that AD&D has just as much or more build diversity as PoE

2) Have this assertion refuted based on the honestly obvious evidence to the contrary

3) Suddenly argue that yeah, there's lacking build diversity, but it's actually a strength, not a weakness!

If they say "convoluted", you say "you need handholding faggot?" If they say "no customization" you say "simplicity is beautiful." If they say arbitrary, you say "it works."

Pivot pivot pivot, deny deny deny - above all never concede to a flaw in the immaculate, perfect vision of our Lord and Saviour Gygax.

You people are a cult.

FYI, I stopped replying to you because you have a habit of picking and choosing only the parts of an argument that you can take out of context and "refute," usually through semantic exaggeration, which I might have been patient enough to spend an afternoon counter-pointing back when I was in graduate school, but certainly not today.

So to make it short: build diversity in a game is not determined by the amount of talents you can fold through origami; multi-classing, dual-classing, weapon and spell school specialization are legitimate customization options in Dungeons and Dragons; and most importantly, way to miss the point about verisimilitude, which was never about Pillars of Eternity having "too much customization."

And for the record, there are all kinds of flaws, inconsistencies, etc. in the Dungeons and Dragons rule sets, but unlike Pillars of Eternity, the principles behind their design are solid, insofar as they can be in a class-based game. This is because Dungeons and Dragons didn't set out to solve ideological problems in design, but to create a set of rules for a bunch of basement-dwelling nerds passionate about tactical fantasy roleplaying.

Sawyer's problem is that, throughout the architectural process, he never sat down to think about whether the system he was creating would be fun, as opposed to functional. Or perhaps this is a consequence of his German upbringing by which "fun" and "functional" are equivalent; but that'd be too easy of a joke.

The bottom line is, only like-minded people can enjoy like-minded games. Sawyer's entire approach to CRPG design is rooted in a highly theoretic and academic mindset that for many people, is the antithesis of "fun." I'd go one step further and say this: those who don't get "it" by now, likely never will, and by "it," I'm talking about those ingredients that, in classic systems, are not remotely balanced, but which create a feeling of pure joy during play, that is the systemfag equivalent to what a storyfag might call "genius."

 

[Lhynn]

Azarkon great posts mate, i am humbled by your insights, both well versed and more articulate than i could ever hope to be.

Grunker stop embarrasing yourself, even you should be able to tell you are getting your ass whooped so horribly that if i were in your place id seriously consider quitting. Its always fun reading someone debunking your stupid and uninformed claims, your insipid and incoherent beliefs, and your frankly embarrasingly wrong thought process. But i do consider you basically a good guy and your attempts at replies already feel sad and pathetic.

 

[Roguey]

What data? These ridiculous assumptions go way back, before PoE was even on beta. There is no data. There's a handful of retards on the internet and a legion of people who think they are reasonable.

Josh has his data from testers and LPers.

I suppose for true accuracy there should have been hidden achievements for resting x number of times (though that unfortunately adds the additional problem of encouraging people to rest a ton, to swipe those achievements once they've been identified)

KotC handles it beautifully, but it's also a simpler design with instanced missions. Do you think PoE detractors would commend a decision to instance dungeon crawls in an open world RPG?

Josh's original idea was a variation on the KotC way, limited use campsites scattered throughout the wilderness/dungeon maps. Ultimately he and other Obs people considered it too punishing.

Can't fathom how anyone who has completed an IE game can play PoE on less than PoTD. It's the intended difficulty for RPG gamers, everything below is an insult.

I thought Hard was difficult enough for me both times. I was never a master tactician/strategist, just competent.

SA has noticed this review: https://forums.somethingawful.com/s...rid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=209#post474087410

Their view is NMA is extremely outdated. They became a welcoming, inclusive forum years ago. The Rosh days are long dead.

It did at that. The spirit eater mechanic is a pretty good dumbfuck detector.

Sadly, there are a lot of dumbfucks, many of them even valued members of great Codexia.

The time pressure it added was pretty terrible though. The meter itself should have gone down only through resting or traveling. Having to pause the game all the time to read flavor text or look at the map to consider where to go was not fun.

 

[Delterius]

Josh has his data from testers and LPers.

Let's disregard for a second the fact that these assumptions about looting and resting have been with us since before PoE was even on beta. How many testers and LPers are in that database? Narrow that number down to a third to the people who act in this bizarre fashion. Narrow it down further to reach the number of people dense enough to feel that this level of pedantry is warranted.

Yeah. This is just Sawyer avoiding stepping on eggs. Scratch that. This is Sawyer desperately trying not to hit the one imaginary egg in the middle of the golf course.

 

[Infinitron]

The bottom line is, only like-minded people can enjoy like-minded games. Sawyer's entire approach to CRPG design is rooted in a highly theoretic and academic mindset that for many people, is the antithesis of "fun." I'd go one step further and say this: those who don't get "it" by now, likely never will

"My fun is the TRUE FUN because I'm a basement-dwelling nerdy good ol' boy unlike your newfangled FAKE FUN" is not the kind of argument that's going to win over many converts

 

[Lhynn]

"My fun is the TRUE FUN because I'm a basement-dwelling nerdy good ol' boy unlike your newfangled FAKE FUN" is not the kind of argument that's going to win over many converts

All of Sawyers core philosphies are trash, they were proven incorrect beyond any reasonable doubt.

This means we have to reevaluate over 20 years of what has been said of those elements that were present in AD&D, because as counterintuitive as some of them were, it still made for an extremely enjoyable experience. We cant really explain, even today, how all the moving parts work to make it fun, but at the end of the day you cant deny that they do.

But by all means, keep pushing your bullshit and lies.