Stoner

I second that, there are laughable amount of modern cRPGs that took at least some attention, and those are SO niche... RTS now are completely in the same boat. Few niche games here and there like Grey Goo, Ashes and etc... They'll never win over mass public unless devs strip it from each and every possible complicity down to the level of MOBAs, MMORPGs or CS-like shooters =/ Btw StarCraft 2, with a few complaints, is modern masterpiece IMO, campaign sucks, no argument, but as competetive online (as it suppose to be) it rocks real hard. Hopefully Bliz won't bury it in another MMO and we'll see SC3... one day. Actally, aside of the story aspect of the epilogue, i'd say the SP campaign is rock solid as well with a variety of play styles and missions over three titles. There was way too much budget put in cut-scenes and visual diversity, but campaign was damn too short, felt like you're flying through it. Also I didn't notice any variety. In most missions best possible unit composition and advancement was so painfully obvious... Insane amount of defensive missions in Protoss campaign along with infinite spawning troops were very odd decisions, considering Protoss brutally suck at defence and it's entirely not racial focus, like with Terrans, when those missions are fun... uh, anyway gotta stop derailing topic.

There are probably duplicate topics, but I have rather specific questions here... After vanilla game ending, I had some solid views about what gods are and how they are represented. WM2 levelled it to the ground, now I have simply no idea what those creatures are and really confused... From dialogue with Ondra we find out that Abydon was killed by... moon to the face (original, no argument). And the entire temple is basically his giant skeleton. Considerng we're talking to him in Teir Evron and Ondra gave some hints of him being, uhm... rebuilt? And he doesn't know what happened to him and doesn't even know about the Eyeless... From this dialogue I also got hints of Ondra and Abydon being "connected", artificial engwithian constructs fall in love... like, really? On the other note, if they are constructs, how could one leave organic skeleton behind? Were they creatures of flesh and blood? If yes, how could such massive beings survive on rather tiny planet? Was there an era of giants or something? Considetng tales of Saint's War, Waidwen, a human farmer was possessed by Eothas (edit: put it the wrong way), and he retained his size, right? Is there any notes about extent of "divine" powers? Because on high scale it doesn't make any sense anymore... There might be some lore stuff about it I might miss, so enlighting me on this would be appreciated. Again, returning to dialogue with Ondra, it's unbelievable how such advanced creatures can be so simplistic, developing attachments, meddling in small human affairs, fixated on silliest things so hard without strong backup philosophy, coming down to childish "I want to!" as main driving motivation, and making up sloppy attempts to murder kith (like our Watcher)... And Ondra DID know that he is the ONLY chance for them to stop Woedica, right? Does it make sense? All those speeches about "we don't intervene in kith civilization" is making less and less sense... Building Eyeless, and than taking them over to destroy half of the world, Saint's War again. This all feels real bad, like big powerfull lying overlords. If that's what writers are telling us, I suspect PoE2 will be fullscale war of kith against the gods in face of externination one side or another, because right now it feels like those "gods" are scheming to destroy kith. P.S. Is there a possibility of our PC death in crystal chamber? I didn't seem to do anything specific in text-quest and he survived like it was prescripted...

I second that, there are laughable amount of modern cRPGs that took at least some attention, and those are SO niche... RTS now are completely in the same boat. Few niche games here and there like Grey Goo, Ashes and etc... They'll never win over mass public unless devs strip it from each and every possible complicity down to the level of MOBAs, MMORPGs or CS-like shooters =/ Btw StarCraft 2, with a few complaints, is modern masterpiece IMO, campaign sucks, no argument, but as competetive online (as it suppose to be) it rocks real hard. Hopefully Bliz won't bury it in another MMO and we'll see SC3... one day.

Good and plenty of suggestion on Cipher, thanks. I think I see the picture now of what he would look like... Though I still will appreciate input on Druid. I have used Hiravias for rather short time, as melee Shapeshifer which didn't work so well, so I benched him and I'm mostly unfamiliar with Druid powerfull builds, spell combos and other useful gimmicks... Pointers to decent builds would be pretty welcome as well.

I'm so going to hate gaming when this is the case. When this gonna be the case (considering I will be able to afford it and most games will support that), I'm afraid I will stop leaving my house/basement or whatever and probly die in first session =) I don't clearly understand... have you spent 122 hours in single playthrough?

New char as well. No matter how good this idea was, no more Watchers for PoE2 please...

1. Can I build PC Cipher as frontline tanky fighter preferably with decent damage output, in heavy armor and dual wielding melee? Currently I'm thinking on Godlike or Aumaua races. What race, skills and weapons/armor would be best in that case if it's even possible? 2. Since Durance became unbearably annoying and I don't use hired adventurers, I'm looking for replacement. Is it possible to build Druid (Hiravias) as decent healer/buffer, at least remotely on par with Durance? Maybe some other companion class variants? Any builds, suggestion and tips would be really appreciated.

Congrats, this is what CRPGS where all about back in the day. If your fantasy is so crippled you have problems immersing into the game because "text" and "isometric", maybe play some oh-so-immersive "RPGs" like Mass Effect or Dragon Age. I heard, they have romance, too. Also notice, immersion is the most overrated thing ever in gaming. And Skyrim is a bland piece of **** when it comes to gaming. I've never said cRPGs were something else or I crave for these types of games being immersive, on the contrary, I enjoy them the way they are. What I was asking is how others find immersion in cRPGs. And I don't really get the reference to Mass Effect or Dragon Age here, which are, well... interactive pop-corn blockbuster movies rather than games. Skyrim is bland, yes, in truth it's just a bare bones raw program code of a game, but beauty is that you can shape it almost in whatever way you desire, unlike many-many other "games". But let's not derail, since it's not Skyrim discussion topic, that was just an example to clarify my points. "VR" is just another type of game, why do you try to separate it from the rest? Why you think it's a less of a game than anything? Racing or Flight Sims are pretty much games too, and rather popular for the exact reason stated above. And you're probably nailed it, yes, that's how I see immersion mostly, at least it can be accuartely classified, but I still haven't yet found any other accurately classified description of this term in context of pen & parer or cRPG... Curious, I care about story and characters more than ever, but I'd do exactly the opposite... Role Playing is experiment, to observe reactions, how certain NPC would go about my answer or action, what will happen if Eder gets dropped in a pool and etc. In more 'lively" circumstancces it's harder to view things as experiment and morally more difficult to do things like this, virtual guilt there is... uhm, stronger?

I don't think that knowing an enemy's weaknesses and exploiting them is "cheese". It doesn't matter if the enemy is a lowly wolf or a mighty dragon. The best way to defeat an enemy is to totally immobilize them, whether it's stunning, paralyzing, or knocking them down. If it can't attack you and you can attack them because you hit them with a spell, etc., why is that "cheese"? IMO, it's not. Also, given that dragon breath attacks are usually so massively devastating, the player needs to have something devastating to use against the dragon in return. And in this case, it's immobilizing attacks. And if dragon attacks were less devastating, frankly, they wouldn't be nearly as big a challenge as they are currently. And then what would be the point in having dragons in the game. Of course, I suppose it depends on how one defines "cheese". I tend to think of "cheese" as exploiting the game mechanics in a way that abuses the physics. An example of this would be to put a character in a doorway and then cast a withdraw spell on him, thus blocking the chokepoint and preventing anyone from passing. That's not the intended use of a Withdraw spell, and hence it is "cheese" to me. OTOH, casting a paralyze spell on a dragon can hardly be "cheese" because you're using the spell in exactly the way that it's meant to be used. I'm not sure if ladder exploit is still working on Adra, but that was "cheese", knowing ahead weaknesses and simply following guides how to beat supposedly tough boss easily is cheese, when like you send single tanky hero ahead to initiate combat with dragon and hide rest of party behind with scrolls and spells that gonna utterly destroy this beast is "cheese" That's also pretty much "cheese". I think battles designed the wrong way, making you to use tactic "kill before it moves" turning battle into beating helpless body rather than positioning and strategic gameplay. There are no mechanics to avoid breath or other devastating AoE attacks. That would be much more challenging and interesting to have longer battles with Dragons who have status immunities and we could time our attacks and use envroment or specific skills to avoid massive attacks and etc. That would be a drag to design, but totally worth it IMO. Still, I'm mostly fine with what we have, but I don't wanna deny how better it could be.

Agree that Dragon battles (Arda and Alpine) are rather cheesy than actually hard, you don't really need tactics there, just some well, exploits? too kill it easily. That's the problem, but I don't see how devs could make those encounters challenging any other way. I'm glad they didn't go korean MMO way with bosses having few billions of HP so you have to pummel it couple of hours... And complaining about optional fights is also not cool, really...

Well, that's some very interesting posts in here. Looks like it's truly matter of perspective, ones beliefs and noone really can't say objectively - what immersion is. Looks like here are also people who don't get immersed at all and can't even grasp the concept itself, and that's fine, though I don't think threads like this would pick any interest of these types of perception... Anyway, I love reading but I never had immersed in book (or photos/paintings), and it doesn't mean I don't have imagination (otherwise I wouldn't read at all), but that's probably about my own definition of "immersion". Here's basically the same thing as with cRPGs, I very much enjoy good story, feel for characters, appreciate good art, but that's not immersion for me. Skyrim was bad example, but simpliest at the moment from the top of my head, now to elaborate: let's say we have some hardcore climate and survival mods, first person view (we can see our lower body and etc.) you're going through frozen tundra at night, wind blows violently, vision gets obscured by snow in your face, sounds are also contribute to that, you're in full fur armor but still freezing, your speed lowers, you know you can just die here if stay for too long, if anything jumps at you, you have very low chance to survive encounter, and then you see a dim light in distance, a warm light of tavern, it's like you naturally feel relief. Another moment as you go into pitch black cave with torch in your hand, carefully waking around cause any trap can kill you outright and vision very limited, dreadful noises, and suddenly something jumps at you with a shriek. You may flinch on pure reflex. And etc... On argument about numbers in any game, I agree, but in PoE those are mostly basics, and there are other types of games, where you don't really see or care for that, feels more intuitive, so you simply can ignore them. TES is good example here, because most weapons and armor are basically skins, and only difference is light/medium/heavy armor or two-handed/one-handed weapon, anything else are mostly cosmetics. In most cRPGs you really care about numbers on each piece of equipment. Nothing like this can happen in book or isomtric RPG, and that's immersion for me, that's why I don't clearly understand why ppl are asking for things like walk toggle or darker dungeons in PoE, like what difference it would really make? People who can be context immersed without visual part wouldn't care about that, right? And those who rely on visual part + sound, like me, see PoE mostly as schematic, so that's what I generally don't understand and needed clarifying for... That's very crude word play here by Paul... he purpously replaces "MMO-addiction" with "Immersion", those are two VERY different conceptions, and pretty dishonest way to advertise his MMORPG =/

There are enough threads where players actively discussing level of immersion in this game, few recently active ones to take in account are about walk toggle and darker dungeons. Now, I enjoy Pillars alot, I sincerely think it's the best classic-modern-fantasy RPG I've seen in YEARS, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot even grasp how one can get immersed in a game like this. First of all it's Isometric, than there are lots of text, so that means game relies heavily on ones imagination rather than showing acts as the player can experience them firsthand. It's more like reading interactive book or play some advanced animated beautiful table-top game. During gameplay (combat mostly), closest feeling I get is like watching clockwork up close while interacting with it. Numbers here and there, pile of different parameters, how you should adjust gears in place, so mechanism would keep working - positioning character models in the right places, giving them right tools to penetrate required type of protection, arm spells that work best for current setup and etc which includes levelling, equipment and many other things. Levelling, just like combat, is basically math, you should adjust numbers so you get best possible results giving you maximum effectiveness, plus levelling different classes should be considered the way to complement each other in best possible way. One who gets highest results out of this has strongest party. You normally don't do this as you feel like, or builds can fall apart and not be as effective. It may sound wild, but with certain mods I can get immersed in Skyrim, I don't think I need to eloborate how and why, but in Pillars, not a chance, it has completely different structure. I can enjoy story and gameplay with its schematic number wars with many other things, and that's great, because every cRPG was like that and should stay that way. Now, can anyone enlighten me about what am I missing and how my perspectives are flawed? I'd really appreciate someone explaining me how watching models move from point A to point B with floating numbers can get immersive in detail...

Not in PoE, there's really nothing to have beyond existing levelcap, and if there was, it would be just dumb scaling making you overpowered. If game had something like presige class system for example, than it would make sense, otherwise nope.

Why not just restart on Story Mode and get a hang of game first? OP seems seriously out of any experience with cRPGs, if he keeps up like that, he'll surely hit the brick wall, cause there are lots of tough encounters ahead... I suggest going on easiest difficulty, learn game, builds and stuff first, than replay game on higher difficulty with better knowledge and being prepared. There's just too much stuff to explain and no post can cover that.

Somebody whose favorite RPG is Fallout and thinks high fantasy tropes are boring? And yet is working on "boring high fantasy tropes" while doing very good job at it. Seriously, I don't understand how you can create something as good as PoE when you don't love it's core mechanics with all your heart...