Jasta11
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Posts posted by Jasta11
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Spoilers but... yes, they are.
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well, if you dont like chokepoints , dont use it...
Again, and for the millionth time - "don't use it" is not an appropriate response to the existence of an overpowered/dominant strategy. If chess had a rule where I could trade my pawns for queens on the first turn, I could surely decide to "not use it" to make the game more fun... but the game would still be poorly designed.
Well, the difference is that chess is multiplayer.
But I agree, it's too easy to use chokepoints. Yet I don't see an easy fix, short of making the AI always back off from doorway chokepoints (which would also be easily abusable) or giving them ways to just bypass tanks such as teleportation, which is fairly cheesy. Perhaps giving enemies more knockback spells?
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I always disliked over the top, let's-kill-something-because-EVULZ types. It's not interesting at all, and I'm happy that recent RPGs have moved away from that.
Durance is a pretty despicable man, leading purges in the name of a god he barely even believes in anymore and generally being an **** to everyone. He's a great character, but as a person he's rotten.
Grieving Mother uses highly questionable methods to attain her goals. Let's leave it at that.
Aloth is not an innocent fairy either, and one of his endings is, well, problematic to say the least.
Éder and Sagani are the only ones that are mostly good people, and not in a clihé bleeding heart way but just by not being jerks. The rest are mostly neutral with Kana changing a lot during his personal quest.
I don't have a problem with more ruthless party members. But leave Chaotic Evil psychopaths to D&D where they belong.
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I just hope they don't go nuts with the epic levels.
The combat gets easy enough at level 12 as it is. If they make the PCs even more powerful (with amazing talents/spells/items), the only way the enemies will be able to keep up is with cheesy stuff, or they just don't keep up and everything is faceroll like in Throne of Bhaal.
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Only if I can have Two-Handed Warhammers.
Agree.
Also don't understand Estocs and Pikes.
Bye
Phant
Whats not to understand?
It would be nice to have the classic 2h sledges and double-headed axes, just because. Outside of polearm variants though I dunno how practical either are/were irl which is probably why we have poleaxes instead.
Maybe in the expansion?
I can dual wield sabers that cuts right through plate. To say nothing of all the magic being thrown around. I'm pretty sure the exact practicality of battle axes isn't really important, and 2-handed hammers were used.
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The base classes seem fine to me.
I would rather get more subtypes. More gods for priest, Paladin orders, something to distinguish fighters (mercenary companies they hail from? orders such as the Dozens?), rogues (organizations they trained under, like Dunyrd Row or Doemenels), Monks (master they trained under, school where they went), so on and so forth.
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Petrifying traps are pretty cheesy to me. 4x damage modifier? Ain't nobody got the HP for that.
Still, congratulations on downing the beast.
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I pray you never read Moby ****, OP.
EDIT: Oh come on now, that's censored? Well it's the book with a white whale and a captain with anger issues.
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the only problem with Twin Elms i had was from RP perspective. I know where the big bad has gone, and whats he trying to do, i know how to get to him and stop him, but instead i go around solving (rp wise) minor quests (and i even went and did endless paths at that point)
In character, as soon as you ar able to get to the twin elms , you should rush after the bad guy ignoring the rest
That was my main beef as well. At this point it makes no sense to go around doing menial quests, while you know where Thaos is, how to get to him, while also knowing time is running out and yur Awakening will come soon.
In futre playthroughs I'll leave Twin Elms for the late game. Which is a bit of a shame but there's really no justifying it otherwise in-universe.
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No one cares if you rest spam or no. But rest after every encounter AND complaining that IE games were too easy/had unbalanced spells is idiotic.
And that's different from complaining that PoE is too easy if you stealth all the time and/or always use the best spells (for instance) how exactly? You're still using a system within the game to cheese its difficulty to a degree. To selectively label one abuse and another smart gameplay is a bit strange to me. Same with, say, abusing the stupid AI vs statistically genius Illithids by tank swapping. I fail to see how that way is any more ''proper'' than using summons.
Fact is, both PoE and IE are heavily abusable. In different ways, certainly, but still. Whenever one is more abusable than the other seems like an academic discussion at best.
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It seems to me the problems with engagement would be solved, or at least mitigated, by having the AI play around it more. Making it able to decide if taking a disengagement attack is worth the risk. So squishier enemies wouldn't disengage, but big stuff like Ogres would because they know they can take the hits. I have no idea how to program AI so I don't know if this is even possible, but currently the biggest problem is that AI enemies refuse to disengage the vast majority of the time and stay glued to Éder.
Enemies using abilities more in general (not spells but knockdowns, AoE damage, dashes, and so forth) might also help making some encounters feel less samey. I find humanoid enemies in general way too easy, this could solve that to a degree.
And while I'm not fond of too many immunities (which encourage metagaming more than anything else, and I loath metagaming), having more of them would force the player to vary tactics up a bit. So Blights being immune to their respective elements. Ogres having very high Fortitude. Animats with very high Will. Dragons with fairly high elemental resistances, that sort of thing.
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and tough fights do force you to react or come up with strategies.
Nope. Tank & Spank pwns all.
I've had bosses steamroll me when I tried simple tank and spank, on Hard. Only after a few retires and coming up with better positioning, preparation and strategy could I manage to beat them. Several early encounters also forced me to blow my entire spell load in panic after being overwhelmed. Maybe I'm a simpleton or whatever, but in my experience, no, tank and spank definitely doesn't beat all. I didn't min-mx either.
That's still more strategy than I ever employed in most fights of BG2, where I mostly right-clicked on the biggest menace and maybe cast one or two spells for comfort. The only time I ever had to change my routine was with 3-4 hard bosses (where I simply went all out with the spells and pre-buff), Illithids (stand in the back and summon stuff /yawn) and mages (try to remember which spells defeats the protections they instantly conjure on themselves, then right-click on them).
Overall I had far more fun playing PoE. That's my experience, and I personally wouldn't want Obsidian to try to emulate BG2 as close as possible. They have their own thing, it works overall, it still needs refinements of course but it's far from unsalvageable.
Also @ Sensuki: I'm sorry, but I find that defense weak. You're ''not supposed'' to rest spam but you can do it, without consequence, in 90% of the areas where there are any fights worth resting. By that logic, you're ''not supposed'' to stealth + attack each fight in PoE. Which is something they should fix with individual stealth, if you ask me. But let's not pretend that IE games were any less exploitable than PoE. Quite the contrary in my experience.
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Éder, Hiravias and Durance provide much of the humor. Without them, the game can get a bit dry and dull admitedly.
I think it's kinda down to the lack of colorful non-companion NPCs. Most of them are nondescript and don't provide much levity.
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Its unrealistic that 8 hours of rest heals all your wounds. How come no ones complaining about that?
You should have to visit an in game hospital and spend 3-6 months in recovery every time you want your health refilled.
This ties into a point I want to make;
If rest is unlimited, why bother with the mechanic at all? It's just a button you press after every fight to get everything back up. Random encounters? Only encourage you to rest compulsively if you don't want to be caught at 1/3 health with no spells.
I just don't see the point of resting at all, if it is not limited in some way. I mean, cripes, it's not about realism surely.
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I find the "no engagement" part of the mod very strange.
I understand why Sensuki dislikes it, although I disagree. But, engagement is a really central part of how combat is designed in PoE.
Remove engagement and it seems to me you're just sort of left with a scrum.
Remove Engagement and nothing changes. The AI still acts like it's there. Engagement is not a very large part of how combat is designed in PoE, all it does is inhibit movement and forces everyone to cluster up and stay there, and saves the developers from having to make an AI that would move around and make decisions that would improve their position on the battlefield, for the same reason the player won't do it; it'll murder you with instant free invisible attacks if you even try to move *towards* the opponent that is engaging you.
The biggest problem with Engagement has always been for it to excuse it's own existence. I play with it on simply because the game is made for it, and there are Abilities and Spells and Talents that deal specifically with it, and I don't want to break pre-existing interacting functionalities, but it doesn't really add anything by itself.
I can't think of any RPG that ever had half-decent AI myself. Certainly not the IE games where enemies almost always just mobbed the first thing they saw. Difficulty in
RPGssingle-player game has never, ever come from the AI anyway in my experience, unless it's a very tightly scripted boss battle. It's always hard by making the enemy bigger and badder than the player so they have a challenge to overcome.Not really disagreeing with you, just pointing that out. Albeit I do think engagement is preferable to everyone running around willy-nilly like in Baldur's Gate, I love establishing a frontline.
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Might give it another go somewhere down the line, but yeah, I'd rather just leave it and accept that the game was not made for people like me, but more for people who may have liked the Infinity Engine games, but disliked the combat.
That is fortunate for me, since it's exactly how I feel. No matter how tactical or deep D&D was supposed to be, combat in Baldur's Gate was a mixed bag, and an outright chore in BG2 as soon as a mage or something that was arbitrarily immune to +X weapons or less showed up.
I much prefer PoE's combat, even if it has its flaws. A focus on positioning is right up my alley, and tough fights do force you to react or come up with strategies. Obsidian should probably have added more spell-using enemies and varied up some encounters, but compared to the mess that was BG2 I'd much rather play that.
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Angry Joe has an absurdly huge following and can have a big influence on sales of smaller and/or indie titles. I doubt it's a coincidence Pillars is now number 5 in Steam sales when it wasn't even on the list yesterday. For that reason alone I like him for making that review more than for a game that already had tons of buzz around it (Bloodborne).
But, the video posted in the OP is from February. And PoE has been number 1 on Steam sales since it was released. I'm not sure how you figure Angry Joe is responsible for PoE becoming number 5 in the last day.
He posted a review today.
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Angry Joe has an absurdly huge following and can have a big influence on sales of smaller and/or indie titles. I doubt it's a coincidence Pillars is now number 5 in Steam sales when it wasn't even on the list yesterday. For that reason alone I like him for making that review more than for a game that already had tons of buzz around it (Bloodborne).
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It is very good, atmopsheric and fitting. My only disappointment is that there was no special music for boss encounters. I still remember the amazing boss themes for Baldur's Gate 2 and Throne of Bhaal. The combat themes in PoE were very good, but some special music for those encounters would be great in the future.
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I was Rational, Stoice and Deceptive (mostly) and Skaen showed up. Probably because of the latter. I don't think your dispositions change anything.
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I'm not a very good player, I don't min-max, and playing on Hard the only time I've ever needed to backtrack was in the Endless Paths, which are not designed to be done in one go anyway.
I think resting is a poor mechanic overall, a relic of D&D that doesn't bring much to the table and makes little sense in dungeons. But if it needs to stay, then make it matter. Resting after every other fight in Baldur's Gate was incredibly dumb. PoE actually forces you to play around the mechanic, so it's not just a question of mashing R each time the dust settles.
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it sucks that your descisions in DA:I requires your DA:O and DA2 Combined savegame to proceed
No. There's no savegame import in Inquisition, you use the Dragon Age Keep, it's a web-based app, you don't need any save from either game to craft a world state.
DA2 was decent in concept; instead of embarking on an epic journey, stay in one ciy and its surroundings and see it change over time. Instead of a save the world story like in the vast majority of RPGs, it was replaced by a more personal and local one.
Of course, in execution it failed big time. Combat was not very good, wave-based encounters should die in a fire, the companions were melodramatic nutcases even by Bioware standards (Durance looks sane compared to Anders and Merill), Kirkwall was ugly and didn't change at all, the plot went from one stupid, fanatical NPC ****ing **** up to the other, your choices don't make any difference by design, it severely lacked polish, and even as someone who doesn't care to scream ''Dumbed down!!'' usually, the game was too simple. At least it had Varric, Aveline and the Arishok as cool NPCs, that's basically the only good thing that came out of that game. The Legacy DLC was nice too.
As for Angry Joe's review, he's pretty much on point. Personally I would still give the game a 9 (or maybe 8.5) but whatever one can say of his review style, his criticism is valid.
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The only one I think is a low blow is Raedric. You had no possible way to know he would ressurect due to sheer hatred of your person, and the only way to find this quest is to talk to one generic NPC among a dozen in Twin Elms's in. He should have went and talked to you.
The Heritage Hill one, I sorta saw it coming honestly. The machine already sucked souls once, what's stopping it from doing so again if you let it intact? And sure enough, the Key thanks you for your carelessness.
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If I never hear about that limerick or assorted GG vs anti-GG controversies, it would be too soon.
Create a thread in off-topic and let them rip each other to pieces.
Casual vs Hardcore. Correlation between experience and difficulty.
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
The thing we need to remember is that the designers might find it a wasted effort to fine-tune the game to the point that it becomes really hard even for really good players. As of this writing, 4.5% of players have even completed the game. 1.2% have killed the hardest boss. 0.2% of completed it on Path of the Damned. 0.1% have soloed it (and it might be even lower, but 0.1% is the minimum displayed).
Sure, we are less than a month from release, but with these numbers I can easily see why Obsidian doesn't really bother to ensure the hardest of hardcore players crack their teeth on the game. Even titles renowned for their difficulty like the Souls series have a subset of really skilled players who destroy the games with minimal deaths. And short of adding an enormously cheap difficulty level designed specifically for those who abuse everything, min-max up the whazoo and still want to fight to an inch of their life every battle, there's not much designers can do about that I feel.
And anyway, there's always the Solo Triple Crown achievement for people who still think the game is too easy. Beyond that.... I don't know, solo the game with a Ranger pet? Try the 6 bear party challenge PC Gamer had going shortly after release, perhaps.
One thing I do agree with is the the difficulty curve of the game needs some work. Act 1 seems just right, even if a bit cheap at moments, but Acts 2 and 3 are far easier, and the main story quests are by and large a walk in the park. But for a first effort from Obsidian with a homebrewed ruleset, it could still be far worse.