[Anti-Piracy built into game?]

Tell him people like him are the reason a good studio like Obsidian nearly went under.  I doubt it's true, but it might make him feel bad.

 

I mean it's because Alpha Protocol bombed out with a truckload of entirely deserved criticism after a bad job on Obsidian's end, but alright.

[Let's talk race balance...]

The question is, for main tank/off tank, what's better.  Wild Orlan or Moon Godlike?

 

Like Will attacks from the enemy don't seem common at all relatively speaking, whilst the moon Godlike's proc, IS extremely common on the harder difficulties relatively speaking.  

 

 

Are you seeing Will attacks vs Spirits?  The Adra Dragon fight?  When are they coming up.

[Let's talk race balance...]

 

Hearth Orlan is 10% on crits.

No.

 

It's 10% HITS are upgraded to crits. Huge difference.

 

Let's take two ends of the spectrum and compare the +5 accuracy of elves with the +10% hits upgraded:

 

1st scenario is low accuracy - you have 25 less accuracy than your enemy and try to hit it.

Midget DPS: 0,4 * 0 (miss) + 0,35 * 0,5 (graze) + 0,23 * 1 (hit) + 0,02 * 1,5 (crit) = 0,435

Elf DPS: 0,35 * 0 + 0,35 * 0,5 + 0,3 * 1 = 0,475

 

2nd scenario is high accuracy - you have 25 more accuracy than your enemy and try to hit it.

Midget DPS: 0,25 * 0,5 + 0,45 * 1 + 0,3 * 1,5 = 1,025

Elf DPS: 0,2 * 0,5 + 0,5 * 1 + 0,3 * 1,5 = 1,05

 

If you want to build something that will be at least 4m away from the enemy elves are simply superior DPS. No question, midget is for melee only, for ranged/caster elves are the way to go.

 

I mean you should probably graph this instead of using the values like that, but yea.

 

Accuracy also reduces the amount of variance in your damage output, always a useful trait

[Pillars of Metagaming]

"Me and my wizard self, so badass. Spells and ****. I'm gonna go kill this bear! I don't care if I've got no armor and about 10 hitpoints, I'm the PC and I'm a badass!"

 

*mauls* *screams* *dies*

 

"This game is to hard! It sucks!"

 

Severely tempted to roll a Wizard on PotD just to show these kids how its done

[Ultimate Paladin tank build?]

qq 

 

Just wondering, what do people think is the next best option other than Shieldbearers?  Kind just don't want to run them because RP reasons.  

[Pillars of Metagaming]

Well I just didn't think anyone was stupid enough to run into a cave to do optional content while playing with one character, in a game designed to be played with 6 party members not one.

 

Apparently this is not so

[Why get Lore on a spellcaster?]

Scrolls are basically a way to turn money into spellcasts.  And Pillars of Eternity gives you a LOT of money.  

[Best godlike for Cipher?]

I mean I'd think that a death godlike ranged cipher would be the best cipher build, dump con and just don't get hit, then the +1 intellect will be baller.  Moon godlike is good but like Cipher is squishy.  "Just don't get hit" is the name of the game.  

[Companions - who wrote what?]

Surprised to see it was Avellone hitting it out of the park with BOTH of his, they were the truly stand out companions.  But then again the concept behind both characters was pretty fantastic to start with, probably a case of best man (read: studio owner) on the job.

 

 

TBH, Hiravias is probably the character that stood out as way better than you'd have thought he would be on paper.  Good concept, did a great job with the dialogue, and the v/a work was phenomenal as well.  

[Pillars of Metagaming]

wait are the killer bears that everyone is whining about, the ones in the cave above Gilded Vale

 

Are you kidding me

 

 

Those bears are a piece of cake on hard

[Ehm... What's with Obsidian's hatred for rogue NPCs?]

Because Rogues are boring characters.

 

 

The fact the left out classes are Monk/Barbarian/Rogue isn't an accident.  They're the classes most moored in fantasy stereotypes and hardest to make interesting whilst still being remotely familiar.  Or in the case of Rogue, completely overdone across multiple games, such that it's pretty fair Obsidian decided to exclude a Rogue companion because anything they would have written that seemed vaguely roguey would have already been done before.

 

40+ times.  

 

But yea they're likely to be in the expansion pack

[Druid or Cipher (or which NPC is worse, Grieving Mother or Hiravias)]

They're probably some of the better companions.  Which says a lot about companions.  Ultimately their classes are just pretty great so their attributes don't matter so much.

 

if you can get Grieving Mother b4 level 6 the draining/biting whip combo is pretty good for a melee cipher, but at lvl 6 she takes increased focus iirc which is the pits.  

 

If you are playing a Wizard yourself, you probably want to take Mother, important to give you casting that isn't per rest if your MC has a big per rest limit on his ability to dish out whoop ass.  

[Wizard seem underperform compared to Cipher?]

The DPS/utility gap between Wizard and Cipher when Wizard is going hard and emptying the spellbook is non-existant.  Wizards aren't significantly underpowered by any stretch of the imagination, in fact arguably between the 3 aggressive caster classes, Wizard/Cipher/Druid, Cipher is probably the weakest by a stretch in the bounties and boss fights.  

 

 

Like yes on hard difficulty, Wizard feels significantly crimped because of a lack of camping supplies compared to Cipher.  

But there's one major thing you are missing.

 

It's hard.  

 

Not easy, not normal.  Hard.

 

You're supposed to be feeling the pain and getting overwhelmed a little on hard.  And yes as people have pointed out, what you're supposed to be doing is using slicken and fan of flames.  When the access to spells is drying up, the point isn't to complain on the internet forum that the game isn't easy, the point is too start using fan of flames positioning and slicken to get that much more mileage out of your Wizard. 

 

And yea Aloth sucks.  Aloth REALLY sucks.  Time to start thinking about using a well built adventurer from the inn instead of a companion on the higher difficulties.  If you're going to use a 12 might companion and not play like a master, be prepared to get punished for it.  

[Defiance Bay post-Act 2]

Didn't want to put such a mega spoiler in the title se be warned, but

I finished the game and in the ending montage, it was giving me shtick because Defiance Bay and Gilded Vale were in anarchy and didn't have a Duke.

 

 

Did I miss content on my playthrough?  Is there a quest to appoint a new Duke/Lord in Defiance Bay/Defiance Bay after the Duke gets Thaos'd and Raedec returns from the grave and kills Kolsc?

 

After seeing those ending tiles I feel like I missed a bunch of quests before finishing the game, wanna check if I did.  After killing Raedec I basically only went back to Gilded Vale/Raedec's hold when he revived from the grave

 

[Do Ciphers have many AoE spells?]

Basically it's amazing for both duration and radius.  Duration more so, but I'd say out of the 5 most used Cipher talents I used, only one of them was single target.  The rest really took advantage of the intellect radius, or well they would have if intellect wasn't bugged.

 

Intellect is absolutely the most important stat for ciphers, it must be max'd.   

[10 hours played, only level 4.]

The max level is 12, so leveling is going to get slow later on.

 

Levelling actually probably hits two really steep slopes, you hit a faster patch when you start doing Defiance Bay content, and when you hit lvl 8-10 and can do bounties/finish Endless paths, you rapidly hit lvl 12 in my experience.  Bounties esp, if you're playing well you can race through the bounties and hit the cap post-act 2.  

[Attribute balance thread]

The fact is this is a thread of people trying to alter a 6 attribute system.  At its core though, that's the issue itself.   

 

 

Fact is, the game should have been made with a 5 or 4 attribute system.  That's it.  

 

That's the fundamental issue with Pillars of Eternity, there's just too many attributes to represent 3 fundamental concepts, doing the highest DPS, havign the highest duration/AoE radius', and having the highest defence.  

[Are there any games like PoE, Baldur's Gate, etc, but in a science fiction setting?]

Torment, Tides of Numenara

[Prism's on lvl 7 of Endless Paths]

Lighting the 4 elemental arrays, is that anything other than cosmetic?  

 

Doesn't seem like it does that much tbh

[Stealth mechanics, maybe better per individual?]

The question is, is a feature like this feasable for a patch, or the (imminent) expansion? I really hope there isn't too much backtracking when it comes to coding for this, as I find the rogue experience really lacking because of it. 

 

Sounds like a job for Sensuki/Bester's mod tbh.  But yea I think this is a really real criticism.  

 

Granted, if a mob had a guy come out of stealth behind ME mid combat, I'd lose my ****.  Put that down for the expansion.  

[Who is the best companion to train as a lock picker?]

 

J/s, giving Aloth lore has had exactly ZERO out of combat benefits for the party and I'm a good 30 hours in.  Mechanics, Stealth, Athletics are the major ones you should be getting your companions to focus on, save the main character for lore so he can use it for in dialogue bonus.

I agree, but he's the obvious choice for a a scroll-user if your main character does not have lore. Mine does not, for example. On the other hand, I have mechanics which I'm quite happy with so far.

 

 

Yea I guess.  Scrolls generally suck though idk, the thing about IE games was that scrolls let you throw out really high level spells as a get out of jail free card, this is sorta not the case in PoE because of all the level restrictions, but maybe I'm just not appreciating them enough on first playthrough.  

 

Granted he's pretty awful at all the other options.  Usually I just give all my party members stealth first, athletics second.  

 

Yea tbh it might just be me not appreciating subsystems on the first playthrough.   

 

Back on topic, maybe consider Hiravias?  If you beeline down the critical path, dodge combat you could probably get to Stonewall Gorge at like lvl 4 or 5, which will give you the option to make intelligent skill choices before the AI dumps all his points into survival.  

[Who is the best companion to train as a lock picker?]

J/s, giving Aloth lore has had exactly ZERO out of combat benefits for the party and I'm a good 30 hours in.  Mechanics, Stealth, Athletics are the major ones you should be getting your companions to focus on, save the main character for lore so he can use it for in dialogue bonus.

 

That said what you say is true, companions skill choices are not great and it's hard to get a mechanics set up going.  Ultimately I think the fact that mechanics is so important means you have to give it to the main character, and have the MC put every single skill point in mechanics, since the other characters are going to have it less than optimal, meaning you'll be missing traps and potentially loot.  

[Plague of Insects doesnt end]

Yea same

[*SPOILER* Do Ciphers get synergy from SPOILER (see inside) or are they rendered obsolete?]

It might just be me but it seems like the only writer who wrote in cipher specific dialogue is avellone with the grieving miners stuff.

 

And no, the watcher's stuff doesn't really help cipher a lot. Cipher is good anyway tho

[Ranged Cipher Guns or Warbow?]

Yea if you want to play optimally, the only choice is blunderbuss it's not close

 

Quick switch, penetrating shot, both of those are essential talents for blunder, although just to be sure are you islander Aumaua?