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Codex Review RPG Codex Retrospective Review: Pillars of Eternity Revisited

Delterius

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Entre a serra e o mar.
Can't go any more straman-ish than this.
Of course, I agree with you. Your posts are just strawmans that I put together and display for everyone to see.
When I see people shit on Pillars of Eternity I wonder what are those magical great RPGs they've played that are better.
Is it possible? A Better Game than Pillars? Blasphemy!

Oh wait, we play all sorts of RPGs here. We even supported Pillars as a spiritual successor to PS:T, IWD and, of course, BG2.

I enjoyed it at the time.
Combat system in those game is just bad.
figuring out which spells are added to game as a useless trap choice.
Except that AD&D is not all trap choices. Its magic system is vast and pretty varied. Even St. Sawyer Himself approves it.
I disagree with the notion that you can't criticize BG2.
As I said, touchdown. The goal posts have been moved far out the field. In here we see all stages of shitposting grief, crowned at last with plain old denial.
 

Lacrymas

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Pathfinder: Wrath
We should compare PoE to BG1 in terms of content tbh, BG2 is huge and I don't think any other RPG comes close to the amount it offers. I'd be surprised if PoE2 comes even close to BG2 though.
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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^ Pillars isn't that far off in terms of magnitude with WM, but BG2's content is more interesting/engaging/whatever in most cases. Of course that's just like, my opinion, man
 

Delterius

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DotAheads will prefer BG2 because it's more DotAlike, for example you can learn to cheese the AI in ways Pillars doesn't let you because of engagement.
I think the Moba link is stronger in Pillars, actually. League was cited as an inspiration for the kind of balance Sawyer wanted. To maximize choice via careful balancing of all possible actions is a motto of RTSs, Mobas and post-WoW MMOs.

Sure, you can cheese the AI in BG2 and kite things to death. But you can also kite slow monsters in Pillars such as trolls and giants. You can also use stealth to bait individual monsters from their packs.

The major impediment to these tactics in either game is lack of room and variety of encounters. Its of course harder to kite trolls if there's a bunch of burrowing beetles with them. Its even harder to kite giants due to their reach, impossible in Od Nua's tight confines. However, there's one thing in Pillars that is really exploitable and that's the disengagement area. You can lure giants away from their rooms and kill them one at a time, then you run away and get them to walk back to their spawn points.

I wouldn't measure how 'Dota like' these games are by how exploitable their AI is. Hell, the whole kiting meme of Sensuki's is only really there in the low level IE games. I don't think people bothered doing that in ToB. I think the design paradigm is a more solid choice. And Pillars 1.0's carefully balanced and completely boring game design was a stronger throwback to a bad RTS or boring Aeon of Strife clone than the IE games ever were.
 

Shevek

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Like, compare Watcher's Keep or even Durlag's Tower to Od Nua. It ain't even no contest sista

Watchers Keep, sure. Durlags Tower...hmm, not so sure. Fun dungeon crawl but it didn't exactly blow my mind. Perhaps on par in my book.

I would also state that BG2 is very compelling content wise when you are gathering cash and doing odd jobs in whatever order you wish. The content is far less interesting (IMO) when the game gets on rails in the second half.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
- Party ability scores count towards your score checks, making the player character even more irrelevant than they were in PoE1.

Do you mean they'll make it so that my guy with biggest Might will be able to intimidate people? This is... bad indeed.

? AFAIK this is not the case for attribute checks, only for skill checks.

Of course PoE did allow you to use your companions' attribute scores in the scripted interactions and that doesn't seem to have been too horrible.
 
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Grunker

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Durlag's Tower has much more varied content than Od Nua, which is hampered to the extreme by the necessity of meeting the Kickstarter promise of a billion levels. I even think Durlag's Tower is a bit overhyped because it's very uneven in spots, but it's far more appealing than Od Nua with its copy pasta and poor pacing (basically, all fight little puzzling compared to Durlag that throws puzzle after puzzle at you). The story is also much better, I think, and it is constantly delivered in different ways, whereas Od Nua has very, very little storytelling environmental or otherwise and what it has is often delivered literally as opposed to Durlag's that have little cutscenes or rooms that tell you what's going on.

But I guess by talking about this I'm doing injustice Delterius point by keeping the constant comparisons alive. The fact is that both games are nothing short of excellent and I'm not sure I see the milage in comparing them in this minute way though the autistic pedantry inherent in the excersise certainly fits the Codex.
 

Delterius

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Of course PoE did allow you to use your companions' attribute scores in the scripted interactions and that doesn't seem to have been too horrible.
Dialogue is a place where the MC is tested. Scripted interactions tested the party as a whole. The former is about the protagonist interacting with other characters, the latter is the party adventuring. Succeeding or failing according to their own skills. Wether they had enough athletics to jump over a hole, or wether someone was strong enough to bash a door. Its a nice distinction to have and one they should safeguard for Deadfire.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I'm sure it's only for skills. PoE2 will have like 20 of them including a bunch of dialogue-only skills, the balance is all different.
 

FreeKaner

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The BG2 magic system is still richer and more engaging. Loads of stuff there.

As to the core gameplay, it's six of one, half-dozen of the other. DotAheads will prefer BG2 because it's more DotAlike, for example you can learn to cheese the AI in ways Pillars doesn't let you because of engagement.

Content is key though, and there BG2 is head and shoulders above Pillars, even with the WMs.

Systems-wise, other than magic, BG2 is far inferior in almost every way.

Not true I played tons of Dota and as much RTS (sue me that's what you do in 3rd world countries).

While it's true IE engine has a lot of these RTS functions, because well it was built upon a RTS engine, just having a loose-form combat with RTS "tactics" (not even tactics more like minute micro) such as cycling healthbars, kiting or focus fire doesn't make it interesting by itself. IE games (obviously by design) lack all intricate combat aspects of a proper RTS, such as true counter-plays (rock-paper-scissors), macromanagement, build orders, combat tactics and all else. In the end if that's all you focus what you are left is a degenerate subRTS combat with only unique spells going for it.

I don't play AoE2 because I like kiting a boar to my settlement with 6 villagers with bows, that's just something you do for efficiency that's part of a general, greater concept of macro and micro management to build up an advantage. That layer doesn't exist in IE games and it's what you do if you are playing with anything but with a mage, there has to exists something more to it, which there is.

Similarly all arguments about dota or any other similar goes out the window when you play such games, things like kiting in a game like dota is bare minimum mechanical ability to play the game, the game itself is about teamplay and mindgames not kiting someone around. Having such mechanics that are mere basis of a multiplayer game as core challenge against AI is an insult to everyone's intelligence.

What these type of games offer that RTS or Dota-like games don't offer is complex character building, exploration, roleplaying, writing and narrative. If you are playing IE games because you like to this type of minute micro plays you are playing the wrong genre. BG2 isn't good because cheesing AI with a fighter makes for a good system, it's good because it offers unparalled amount of good content.

It's important to focus on what makes these type of RPGs good, such as character builds, diverse encounters, rewarding exploration and entertaining writing instead of creating a cargo cult around basic RTS/Dota mechanics.
 
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Grunker

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I liked Storm of Zehir better in that regard but it requires much more effort put into what is often just flavour dialogue so I can live without it.
 

Stokowski

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ifkAVI3.gif
 

Sentinel

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I'm sure it's only for skills. PoE2 will have like 20 of them including a bunch of dialogue-only skills, the balance is all different.
Sawyer posted a screenshot of the party's physique (? whatever it's called) score being added up to complete a skill check successfully in a dialogue scene.
 

ilitarist

Learned
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- Party ability scores count towards your score checks, making the player character even more irrelevant than they were in PoE1.

Do you mean they'll make it so that my guy with biggest Might will be able to intimidate people? This is... bad indeed.

? AFAIK this is not the case for attribute checks, only for skill checks.

Of course PoE did allow you to use your companions' attribute scores in the scripted interactions and that doesn't seem to have been too horrible.

That's ok, I guess, as long as they make skill use not the objectively best option every time.

Numenera disappointed me with every problem being easily solvable after first hour of a game.
 

Ulfhednar

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Valhalla
Durlag's is a pretty mixed bag for me: I like the level with the four spirits, the one with fireball trap and the four elemental rooms, and the level with the slime caverns. The upper levels of the tower are all 'meh.' I hate the floor with all the locked doors because it's so tedious on multiple playthroughs, and the chess game is just broken so I tend to resort to wand cheese past the line of sight.
 

Ulfhednar

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Chess game is a neat idea but the execution sucks yeah. On SCS it's pretty annoying.
You can actually get stuck in the elemental rooms right before the chess room (not sure if the bug is specific to SCS) and have to reset one of the global variables by using the console. Had that happen to me on my last SCS playthrough.
 

Azarkon

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Oct 7, 2005
Messages
2,989
Let me try to explain.

I believe that for the majority of CRPG players, certainly experienced ones, the "feel" of a game's ruleset is something that quickly recedes into the background and becomes a kind of second nature. It does not factor heavily into their sense of fun in the long term. In the end, whether it's D&D or PoE, what they're doing is fighting monsters, engaging in dialogue, solving quests. You know my mantra - content is king.

The "feel" of a game's mechanics - and CRPG rule sets are the foundations of their mechanics - is the center piece of its enjoyment to anyone who values gameplay over aesthetics, story, etc. The idea that it does not factor heavily into their sense of fun is ridiculous.

As such, any attempt to convey some sort of appealing idiosyncrasy via a game's ruleset is a wasted effort that will only appeal to a few. The role of the ruleset should thefore be to provide a sensible platform for CRPG content creation, first and foremost.

I think that we can divide PoE's critics into two groups - the "ruleset is the problem" group and the "content is the problem" group (they're not exclusive, of course) and that the latter greatly outnumber the former. People who genuinely despise PoE on account of Josh Sawyer's failure to evoke the spirit of 1970s Lake Geneva, Wisconsin are a minority within a minority.

Funnily, against all odds they were actually given a game not long ago that would appeal to them, but they refused to buy it because it had a tranny in it (lol). You didn't though, so good on you.

Gameplay mechanics and content are not independent. As I've said in my very first post in this thread, poor rule sets constrain the development of effective content. When core mechanics are broken, content can only take you so far, unless of course you create a "game within a game" in which you throw away the core mechanics and engage the player through an entirely new set of mechanics. But that's the equivalent of ignoring the problem.

Consider a game like Diablo 2. The game's core mechanics are so solid that randomly generated content could sustain a large community for years. Now consider a game like Diablo 3. The game's core mechanics are so mediocre that even its carefully scripted encounters feel dull. The only major differences between the two games ARE rule set, and it makes all the difference. Saying that rule set doesn't matter is like saying gameplay mechanics doesn't matter - it's completely and utterly false.
 

Lacrymas

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Sep 23, 2015
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Pathfinder: Wrath
You can actually get stuck in the elemental rooms right before the chess room (not sure if the bug is specific to SCS) and have to reset one of the global variables by using the console. Had that happen to me on my last SCS playthrough.

Yeah, it happens if you don't kill the jelly with fire. It's a bug with SCS, it shouldn't be able to die at all to a non-fire attack
 

Ulfhednar

Savant
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Yeah, it happens if you don't kill the jelly with fire. It's a bug with SCS, it shouldn't be able to die at all to a non-fire attack
Good to know... took me awhile to find that console code on the forums.
 

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