Skor
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Posts posted by Skor
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Nobody in their right mind has every though 2nd Ed AD&D was "intuitive". "Intuitive" was never really their goal. It was stats, charts, and numbers heavy because it was trying to be ultra-realistic, in that virtually everything was directly measurable. It was never quite as bad as GURPS, but it was pretty bad.
I agree 100%, and I also make no pretense to being in my right mind. Still, Strength = how strong your character is makes a lot more sense to me than Might = how strong your character is and all forms of damage and healing and also "soul power" I guess?.
And you know, GURPS uses the d%, just like Pillars of Eternity.
And don't forget how all barbarians are mensa brainiacs. LOL. Most characters focus on str and int.
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Just got done making two rangers and had them attack a couple of trolls. Marked prey didn't do anything. It says it gives +20 damage for both ranger and companion, but nothing is being added.
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I think the biggest difference between D&D (besides 4th Edition, anyway) and the mechanical system in PoE is that the former, however clunky, is designed to provide a bundle of numbers and rules on what to do with them which simulate your character and the things they do. It answers questions like "Are you stronger than Joe Orc?" or "Do you know enough about Knowledge(whatever) to answer some question?" The stats and whatnot are (theoretically) designed to be intuitive. If you pretend THAC0 is intuitive, anyway.
Pillars of Eternity's rules and mechanics are just an arbitrary game, more like Clue or Monopoly (albeit way more complicated). Why does Might determine both your physical strength and the power of your spells and the effectiveness of your healing? Who knows. Maybe it's the same reason that the distance you move per turn in the mansion in Clue is random. Why is it that two guys swinging away at each other can only attack every couple of seconds when, depending on their relative speeds, one character fleeing from another can potentially be subjected to near-infinite attacks in the course of a few frames? Why is it that being strong-willed and charismatic (Resolve) helps you dodge bullets but being physically fast and coordinated (Dexterity) doesn't? Why is it that casting Slicken on an ooze makes it trip and fall prone?
PoE is weird and jarring to me, maybe because I was expecting something more along the lines of any of the other RPGs the folks at Obsidian have ever made. In PoE one half of the game is roleplaying and one half is story and never the twain shall meet. Now, much like in Planescape: Torment, your stats inform the options you have available to you in roleplaying scenes. Unlike PS:T, none of your stats are actually designed to model a person, they are arbitrary video game notions that have no basis in reality. So I'm roleplaying a wood elven Cipher right now (or I was until the Horn of Moderation bug borked my game, leaving me the free time to write this post), a scientist who studied and dissected souls until their strange obsession forced them to flee their homeland and travel to the Dyrwood, where they got mixed up in plot. My character uses a bow because that's what they grew up with and they slice their enemies' minds apart because hey, might as well put all that study to good use, right? ...
You laid out in detail my biggest issue with this game. It just fails basic rpg design and common sense. It is very un-intuitive. But yeah, I still love the game. And like you, if it were not for the double click to equip bye bye racial/class passive abilities, I'd be in game playing instead of typing this.
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Yup, game is on hold for me now. This is a game breaking bug imo if you have already triggered it. Going to wait until they fix this.
Off to play some hearthstone. Please hurry with the hotfix (as in don't wait till next week's patch before fixing this).
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Sawyer says that you can easily ruing a character in D&D by not specing it properly. Well how is this any different? I can't make a basic class worth a damn with this stupid system you guys devised, just gimmick builds.
How does this game not force you into play styles? You basically always have to sneak into battle. You pretty much have to crawl around sneaking everywhere, which is a PITA.
Your non-tanks are beyond squishy. Monks have to get hit in order to use their skills/powers? That's ****ing stupid beyond belief! Almost every fight my rogue/monk/wizard get dropped. The tanks can't hold aggro. It's just bad design all around. Yet again, this shows the major problem with paid betas when its the fanboys telling the devs what they want to hear instead of giving them the criticism they need to hear.
And trying to manage a party of 6 in real-time combat is patently absurd - even at slow speed. All it does is result in spamming the space bar pauses. DOS is infinitely better with its turn-based combat.
The spell system and spells themselves are terrible. Fights happen so fast that de/buffs are basically pointless because the fight is over by the time the spell is cast. It also makes most food/potions/scrolls useless in that regard as well. The spell times should be instant - seeing as you get so few spells to actually cast anyway and mana doesn't play a factor. And durations on all that stuff should be upped by a factor of 10 at least. I should be able to have those buffs going for an entire map. Otherwise, it's just camping after every encounter - and that's way too expensive at low levels.
There are so many things I *hate* about the system you designed. Why did you try and reinvent the wheel? Yes, D&D is far from perfect but it's a damn sight better than this rubbish. And that's the real shame of it just completely takes the fun out of the game and destroys all the hard work that was put into the beautiful artwork and excellent writing. I've loved most all of Obsidian's work - and Black Isle before that - down through the years, but this is really just awful, awful stuff.
I hope you guys can do a follow-up for Fallout 4 a la FNV. I'll at least look forward to that - so long as it doesn't use this crappy system.
I would like to start off by saying I love the game. Been waiting 15 years for another BG2 like game. I love so many aspects and improvements in the UI and the way you manage your party. However, the OP has made solid points, if not in a rather abrasive fashion. I love, LOVE the slow speed (especially the auto slow when combat starts) and the double speed for traveling. Pure awesome.
1) The attributes, which are the foundation of any RPG, are completely borked. They should have just stuck with traditional definitions. Seriously, in this game any mage worth his salt is going to look like arnold swartzenhager. Might for both spell and physical power is retarded. Split that stuff up and put it where it belongs. Its very confusing and is not intuitive to even rpg veterans who have been playing pnp rpg games for 30+ years, like myself. This in and of its self for me was the single biggest aspect of the game to accept.
2) Some classes are near pointless, yes I'm looking at you chanter and ranger. I so wanted to love the idea behind the chanter but not being able to use half his class abilities in most combats makes the class feel like wasted character slot. May of the racials and class abilities are based off of incurring negative factors. This is a horrible mechanic. Like he said, basing the monk off of getting hit is lame. Many racials are the same way. In any RPG that has abilities like this, I always tend to go with something else. I'm not building a character around him getting his ass kicked. And there is too much of that in this game.
3) The spells are difficult to use at best. You basically have to ambush your enemies, via sneak, in order to have any chance at catching them with aoe type spells. Otherwise, they are in your grill before you can get most things off. I feel there needs to be more spells that target a single target, that way you can select the target and its ok when he moves. Your spell is still going to hit him. Unfortunately, many spells that should be like this are tiny aoe spells instead, which make it near impossible to utilize before your enemy rushes in to engage you. I also wish you could cast a lot of those 'gotta be in combat' spells before it officially recognizes that your in combat. I too would like to see long term buffs that you can cast out of combat that last for a much longer period, like 10 mins while on a map or something.
I'm as close as you get to a fanboi without losing perspective on good rpg game mechanics. I want nothing more than to see this game succeed beyond belief, so we may have many more in the future. Don't just be yesmen, but help with supportive criticism that will lead to better design.
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Crap, I double clicked armor on all my guys a significant way back. <sigh> Now I gotta see whats not actually there. If my PC is affected then I guess I'm shelving the game until they fix it. I'd say this is a red alert bug that they need to get on ASAP.
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@Skol - I misread Voss's post. I thought he was saying that replacing the Chanter with a Wizard/Druid made the class pointless. That is my mistake. I should have read his post more carefully. In my defense I was up all the night before playing, and only got 3 hours sleep.
I was thinking: level 2 Phrases take 6 seconds to cast and linger for 2 I believe. They could make it 4 second cast and a 4 second linger. Although that means the linger will completely overlap the next phrase. They could also let level 2 phrases build 1.5 Chants, and adjust level 3 phrases/chants accordingly. It doesn't make sense that Invocations cost more to cast at higher level, and phrases build Chants slower. One or the other is fine, but both is a bit much. A class should become more efficient as is levels, not less.
I guess they want to let you play in a different ways. You can use level 1 phrases and use invocations more, or you can use level 2 or 3 phrases and use invocations less. It is a bit unintuitive though.
I definitely think they should give them something to accelerate their access to their invocations. Even ciphers start with at least some points so they can fire something off before having to build more with attacks. Perhaps a talent that you can use once per encounter that can give you 3 chant points or a talent that accelerates your acruel rate would go a long way.
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I don't think anyone here is complaining that the chanter isn't a facemelter as you put it. The complaint is, that for many people, the chanter rarely gets to use half of his class abilities because the ramp up time is astronomical. Thats the issue. I'm not even complaining about their tier one chants being weak. I'm ok with that.
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What difficulty are you on? It is an issue for easy and normal, but on hard I use invocations fair bit. I do think they need to be tweaked though. it takes far too long for some of the effects to be worthwhile. with some tuning I think having the chant requirement of each level reduced by one could help.
I'm on hard difficulty.
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Took me a few tries but I managed to solo it with my druid at level 2 with his spells. Opened up with the sunscorch one, then retreated down the corridoor a bit and then tossed down two of those rending claw spells as they engaged me. Finally shape changed to finish off the big bear.
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So I've tried several builds of chanters and they all take 18 seconds to acquire 3 chant tokens so they can cast their invocation. 18 SECONDS! Most battles don't last 18 seconds. Whats the point? Why even have invocations a part of their class? I love the idea behind the chanter and their buffs, but that whole reward level of their class seems to go unused. In order to use the higher level inocations its going to require 24-30 seconds. You can't be serious.
Anyone who has played a high level chanter able to give me some hope on why even bother?
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I'm curious, I started with a 20 int and it shows my chants have a duration of 6 sec total, instead of 4. I can't tell from the graphic on the music sheet if the extra duration is being split between both the active chanting and the linger or just the linger. If its splitting it and making the active chant an extra second longer, then its actually creating a detriment because it is taking me 33% longer to build 3 counters to fire of an invocation. Anyone esle figuring this out?
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Intelligence does not seem to increase the linger of my chants. Did they change it in the 1 Day patch or is it a bug?
I'm trying to figure out the same thing. I'm starting with 20 int, but my two starting chants only show a 6 second effect. If Int doesn't work on chants duration, I think its important to know that up front as it severely changes my build.
Can anyone shed some insight?
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I'm going to make a full custom party. After looking over the pre made companions, I'm not impressed. I don't think any of them is a class/race combo I'd personally make myself, especially with their attribute points spread the way they are.
Very dark maps
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
I have to concur. The maps are way too dark to be of much use.