Emerwyn

Divinity: Original Sin was already a major success last year, and will have a sequel. It was for many people (me included), the best game of 2014 by a long shot. Wasteland 2 did good too, despite how buggy it was, and how dull it felt near the end. Pillars of Eternity will only add up, as will Torment: Tales of Numenera. Fret not, the genre is back to stay.

A lot of details to be decided yet, like the name, or the god that she'll follow (if she cares at all about gods to start with) but it'll be a female human fighter. I like to start mundane in this kind of games. Plus I enjoy classes that can sustain themselves in combat through prolonged periods of time without depending too much on magic or daily reset mechanics. A sword never runs out of charges when it comes to cleaving through baddies.

I wouldn't say I'm exaclty waiting for PoE. I mean, I have pre-ordered it and I'll start playing it at some point soon after release, possibly the same day or the next day after release, but what matters is that it's coming at some point and we all get to enjoy it, because it's the kind of game that doesn't age easily and I'm not in a rush to get it into my hands to devour it. Overhype is a dangerous monster, and it's known to make great games into okayish ones just because not even the best game of gaming history could meet an overhyped person's dreamy expectations. In any case, right now I'm enjoying some Resident Evil Revelations 2, and when I'm done I might give a go to the latest The Darkest Dungeon build to see if they've added something nice ever since I finished all their available content a couple of months ago.

It's incredible how strongly I can disagree with someone. I mean, this sounds to me as if someone was ponting at a cat and saying "that's a cow". And I'd be "dude, what are you smoking? That's a cat". - "No, it's a cow". It's funny how different opinions can people have. All of them respectable, of course, so long they don't attempt to make it look as if their opinion is the superior one and anyone that doesn't think like them has some kind of mental deviation that doesn't allow them to see their truth. Either way, I'm fine with people thinking DA:I was crap for them, though my 200 hours of enjoyable gameplay tell me I felt differently. Of course it wasn't all great, as I mentioned elsewhere, I hated how console-y the game controls feel, plus there were a number of annoying bugs at launch (that to be completely fair got killed patch after patch), but the day I see the storytelling and voice-acting that Bioware games have elsewhere, I'll be glad to say that game is up to their level. From last year, only Divinity: Original Sin and Shadowrun: Dragonfall managed to grasp me the way DA:I did. Which by the way, Skyrim never managed with its bland and dull way to get you into the whole Dragonborn thing, and mess you up with hundreds of pointless and insignificant dungeons to clear out. To me, the soundtrack was better than the game itself. Anyway, here's hoping that PoE will deliver. I had hoped so from Wasteland 2 as well, and that one failed miserably. In Obsidian we trust.

I enjoyed very much DA:I story, the unparalleled voiceovers and the toughest fights were fun and challenging in the hardest difficulty mode. The rest wasn't brilliant, especially disliked how the whole game felt like a console adaptation when DA used to be a PC game first and foremost. But I could live with it because the rest vastly outweighted it. I play RPGs for the story, not for the quests or mechanics, especially those that you aren't even forced to do. That said, I expect many different things from PoE.

I expect immersive gameplay, and real challenges to tactical combat proficiency and to the player's cunning, at least in the highest difficulty settings. Unlike the OP, I do want a long game, as long as possible. They've said that over half the game is optional, so the option to skip content for those that don't want to take too long is already there.

I wouldn't know, really. I tried the beta a couple of months ago and haven't touched it since, to not spoil myself while I wait for the release. That said, I imagine that DT feats will be mandatory on melee classes such as rogues, monks, fighters and barbarians of the damage dealing kind, not so much on utility or tank-oriented ones.

I tried the beta briefly in Path of the Damned difficulty and the best I could manage was snipe them one by one until I met a group of 4 that couldn't be pulled separately and after dying 3 or 4 times I decided to give up. The problem wasn't so much the damage they do, which I could more or less manage with two tanks and good positiining for area buffs/debuffs/heals. The problem is everything I was throwing at them, including the max level available spells, was doing 1-3 point of damage tops. The critters were basically immortal, especially the one named "Adria Beetle" or something similar. It's possible that they are bugged, or that the default party you are given isn't ready for that kind of encounter gear-wise (you just get mediocre nonmagical items and no consumables at all), but probably what some people here say is true as well. I had no clue of how the DT's work, neither I knew much about the game systems, feats, weapons, spells, etc. That'll be all easily learned following the natural learning curve that you'll pick up by starting the game from the beginning. I do enjoy and appreciate that difficulty is high. I get easily bored of RPGs where you just auto-attack enemies to death and blitz through everything without really caring about strategies or micromanaging your heroes.

Probably reading every lore text in PoE is too much for a standard "completionist" playthrough, but if you ask me, the general benchmark behind a completionist playthrough in this Achievement age is getting 100% of the game's achievements. At least 100% of those that can be obtained in a single playthrough (some achievements might be mutually exclusive and need several playthroughs). Anyway, it's pointless to banter about how long it'll take, we'll see soon enough.

*Bites fist*... I'm at 110... and I'm maybe halfway through? Maybe? And I'm just casually playing it as I see fit, 8P. Which kind of illustrates the whole "different strokes" point, For what is worth, my completionist playthrough of Dragon Age 3 took me nearly 160 hours. Got all 1000 achievement points on it (which includes beating the game in Nightmare difficulty without ever lowering it, killing all 10 dragons, etc etc.) Also spent many hours in the stronghold just doing rounds across all relevant NPCs after every mission to make sure I wasn't missing any conversation, side quest or gossip, and also crafted myself the best possible weapons and armours. No need to say I found all moon shards, completed the collectables/side objectives of every map and so on. That's what I call a completionist playthrough, which is what the OP was asking for. I don't think when he said "completionist" he was meaning "completionist but without finishing X and Z achievements and without doing all side quests", else he/she would have noted it and then it wouldn't be completionist, that is, a 100% of the game's content completed.

I think he played the console Baldur's Gate. Ok I played BG1 and I have no idea what game you are describing but maybe we played different BG1s. The question is not a speed run, not blazing through maps. This is a completionist first time playthrough. I think he played the console BG, Dark Alliance or something like that it was called.

If we're going to be nitpicky, "playtime" is formed by two words. Play and time, meaning, the time you spend playing. My playtime for any game begins when I create a character and ends when I uninstall it intending to never play it again. It's impossible to put a number of hours on that, as each person is different, and enjoys the game differently. Some people may replay it ten times and someone might just stop playing after not liking the first quest. But here the OP is asking about a single, first timer (meaning, with no previous knowledge of the game beyond screenshots/media reviews) completionist play-through. Completionist isn't even a correct English word, but we all know what it means. Exploring every little corner, finishing every little achievement, discovering every secret, maxing out your party weapons and armours, and beating every challenging encounter/dungeon/cave in the game. In short, completing 100% of the game. So my guess keeps being 80-100 hours for a first-timer completionist play-through, especially in Hard/Path of the Damned difficulties.

In the other hand, I think you're mistaking PoE with a shooter or a beat'em up game where the sole purpose is to rush to the end and discard it into the "done" pile of dusty games. Anything different from reading every dialogue and carefully taking a decission, soaking yourself into every lore bits of the game (that includes books, monster manual descriptions and journal entries) or thoroughly exploring every corner of the world is denying yourself a very substantial portion of the game's content that was put there to be enjoyed. The essence of DnD was its narrative and storytelling, and PoE may not be DnD, but it tries to capture that same spirit. "Spiritual successor of BG saga" is what PoE has been labelled by fans and media, so go figure. My conclusion is, using the same phrasing, that it's not wrong to play PoE like a God of War game and mash buttons in the easiest difficulty your way through skipping 90% of the content. But let's not act like purposefully nitpicky over the fact that you can ignore all the game stands for to get through the main storyline in 20-30 hours. The title of this thread however is asking about a completionist playthrough. I always use Final Fantasy VII for this game length discussion, that pops more often than you'd think related to about every RPG and MMO out there. The consensus is that a completionist first playthrough of FFVII acquiring the Golden Chocobo and beating the three Armas is about 80 hours. Without golden chocobo and beating the Armas, it's about 40-50 hours. But there are some speedrunners that have finished FFVII in under 3 hours after learning every way to save time and stick to what's strictly essential to the main quest-line after dozens of repetitions. So for someone that is new to the game, and wants to do a completionist playthrough, how long will the game last, 80 hours, 40-50 hours, or 3 hours?

In a way, I'm very jealous of you, OP. Some of us have been waiting for this 2-3 years, ever since we heard it first announced and kickstarted, and the wait has been so very long. I think for me it would have been a really great feeling if one day I wake up and out of the blue I find out that something like Pillars of Eternity is coming out in just a couple of weeks! Either way, we all hope PoE will deliver. After all I've seen about the game, the only thing that could really ruin it is gamebreaking bugs. Speaking of which, just in the last year bugs almost destroyed my fun in otherwise very good games like BG2:EE, Wasteland 2 and Blackguards 2. Bugs are not a small issue, and here's hoping Obsidian will nail it.

I'll play it in Path of the Damned difficulty and go full completionist, meaning I'll exhaust every conversation, search for every crafting material and hunt down every optional boss/encounter off the beaten path - so I'm quite confident in getting 100+ hours out of my first playthrough. Those 100 hours wouldn't include all the reloading due to the party wiping (which I expect to happen relatively often) so realistically the time spent playing the game will be higher. I know other people will likely get through the main storyline and be done in 20 hours, just like I know someone who finished Dragon Age: Inquisition in 37 hours in normal mode while it took me around 110 in Nightmare. Well good for them. But I'm the one getting more out of my money.

So if a solo character gets 150% XP, it's really not that much. In most other games, the solo character would get 400-600% XP (that is, the full encounter XP without having to split it 4-6 ways). It should still give the solo character a significant boost to keep ahead of the curve and help her survival against the odds.

Also from what I've been reading around, you can extend your party's power beyond the level cap by finding rare gear and enchanting it to the max. Level 12 might be the hard cap for the party's skill progression, but it's definitely not the power cap and I expect a fresh level 12 to differ much in terms of power from a level 12 that went through every optional/tough area, dungeon and encounter.

I had a question related to this, so I'll slap it here as it's somewhat related. A previous poster in this thread quoted a list of sites/methods to acquire PoE, but I didn't see G2A listed. Is G2A a valid/safe/legit method for purchasing PoE?

Okay, that's pretty damned cool. See, I knew you guys would come up with something that was an actual achievement. So now I have an ultimate goal for PoE. Getting that achievement.

I only really care for achievements tied to doing difficult things such as "defeat X supertough optional boss" or "beat the game in Nightmare mode without lowering the difficulty at any point" etc. Exploration/completionist achievements aren't that bad either, but I wish they removed the "free" achievements you get just for playing the game. "Reach level 10", "Complete the 2nd Act" etc. It's like saying "hey, you're not doing anything spectacular, but here, you can feel good about it". My opinion of course.

Oh yes I do remember the stretch goal dungeon that reached I think 14 floors? I had almost forgotten, that's probably the kind of thing I'm after. That quote from Josh Sawyer sounds promising too.

This would be more a question for developers, but due to time constrains I've not been reading everything they've said and I have missed something others haven't and can actually shed some light on. I just saw the post about different stages in the life of a dragon in PoE from wurm to adult dragon, and had to ask if Pillars of Eternity will have high challenge-high reward optional areas/encounters. Normally very large, dangerous encounters/enemies that really have no major impact on the storyline but those who seek to test their party to the limits can try to tackle for the thrill of challenge and achievement. We used to see those a lot in the Final Fantasy games, and even Baldur's Gate saga toyed with the idea (who didn't love/hate Firkraag in BG2?). More recently, Dragon Age has also offered the opportunity to tackle optional high challenge-high reward encounters, though it's fair to say that most if not all of those encounters could be beaten within the main game's context (meaning that it didn't require extra investment beyond the main storyline as in some Final Fantasy games, where beating the toughest challenges was almost a game of its own and definitely much more difficult than beating the actual end boss of the game). So that's the idea, and the kind of thing I'm asking and very interested on. Can we expect to find some really -really- tough challenges off the beaten path in PoE? While answering keep in mind we're in the spoiler-free forums.

I won't depend on a third party program and don't want to have to worry about if that third party program feels like running well, loading up, bugging out or just pop sales offers in my face or track whatever I'm playing/doing whenever and with whoever I feel like both offline and online. So here's the easy choice: GOG.

Hmm... the premise is that in BG and IWD magic users stomped over other classes and I already disagree with that, I don't know yet how strong will be high level magic users in PoE, but I soloed BG and IWD with a Fighter. It's matter of finding a good build and use magical gear to cover for weaknesses.

GOG! DRM free all the way.