Fenixp

... And ruin PoE2 for those of us who really enjoyed the gameplay mechanics in the original over IE games :-P Seriously tho, constructive criticism never goes amiss. It's then up to Obsidian whether this criticism fits with their vision of the game or not. The biggest mistake a lot of developers who actively develop their games even after release/in early access have made is that they have abandoned too much of the original vision for their game over what they perceive to be a popular opinion (which tends to just be a loud minority). Obsidian, thankfully, seems to have their own heads and won't abandon their ideas - instead, they try to identify actual underlying issues a lot of posters don't understand/aren't willing to understand and attempt to fix those. Sensuki is trying to make a point out of engagement mechanics being irredeemably detrimental to any RTwP game. While I see issues with the game, I strongly disagree and am very glad Obsidian is sticking to their guns and hope they will do so in the second installment as well instead of just aping what Infinity Engine games did - we already have 5 Infinity Engine games and a 6th one in development, it's not like we need more of those. I do hope the second game will either perfect the mechanics present in this one or come up with its own, entirely new approaches. I also hope that they'll derive useful information from received criticism, but don't take it verbatim (I'm sorry Sensuki and 4ward, but guys at Obsidian are veterans of game design, regardless of genres they worked at previously. Unless you have the same experience as they do, I will accept and think about your criticism, but I'll ultimately trust them on making the right call.) Oh come on now, nobody's consistent unless he's a robot, and an argument doesn't get defeated purely by pointing out its inconsistencies unless they defeat the argument themselves (in this case, they don't, all we proved there is that combat in Infinity Engine games is also broken, which nobody really argued against.)

They actually don't, all companions have at least a couple of possible endings at worst, five different endings at best.

Yah, then again, I have already finished the game twice, which just doesn't happen for 99% of games. I'm actually really excited about replaying Pillars, I'm just restraining myself from doing so right now so that I can get the full experience with all the changes after second expansion and some more patches are out, I highly doubt I'll replay it for the fourth time. Anyway, I don't mind waiting. My backlog is currently longer than most of my wife's shopping lists.

"Real-time" is "another category" now? Hm. Okay. Still, fine, I'll give you that, we all have different expectations of different genres. I do believe it's quite reasonable to expect a game which self-identifies as primarily real-time with pause system to be centered around the concept of pausing as opposed to a game which self-identifies as purely real-time. Eh... Thank you I guess? I'm not a native, learned English from technical literature and have difficulties expressing myself in a simple fashion, I'm sorry. It doesn't. I, personally, pause after every significant action. (Note the key word significant, I don't actually pause after every action) You can hotkey every single activateable and pause a lot less, knock yourself out. The combat is just quite fast and I'm not - judging from Mathuzzz's response, neither is he. I also never issued orders without pausing the game in IE games, or any RTwP games for that matter. Pausing to issue orders every single time is objectively more effective way to play these games, it's as simple as that. I uh... I also played a lot of both turn-based and RTwP games. I hope my e-peen is sufficiently big now to say that no, even if it was mandatory to pause after every action, gameplay is significantly different from turn-based. Even I can make an extremely simple explanation: Turn-based (even simultaneous turns): You commit to your actions, can't immediately react (and if you can, reactions are limited) Real-time: You can react to every single action enemy does instantly. Explaining the underlying difference doesn't really take that much now that I think about it. I'm not a big fan of how IE games handled combat in general, so... Yeah.

What you just said makes very little sense. First of all, there is a difference between a real-time game which happens to have a pause function, which is what you seem to be referring to as your preferred playstyle, and a real time WITH PAUSE game. Any game which calls itself RTwP should make pausing a mandatory part of its gameplay, to greater or lesser extent. Pillars chose the path of giving it more importance. It's not an incorrect decision, and it most certainly does not defeat the point of RTwP - on the contrary, it makes real time with pausing that much more meaningful. At any rate, I'm glad I have provided you with information you can use to make an informed purchase decision. The argument that they should have made the game turn-based is of course incredibly silly - but writing up on how does RTwP gameplay differ from turn based gameplay is not really something I'm willing to do right now.

I's mostly a matter of getting used to it, Mathuzzz. Don't expect to do anything in real-time - real-time is the bit in which you're watching your orders pan out, pause mode is where you give all the orders. Set your auto-pauses correctly - my game auto-pauses any time one of my dudes finishes a spell, finishes an ability and kills an enemy. Then I pause whenever their endurance or health gets too low. Anything worth noticing happens, game pauses, I don't even play on slow mode anymore - which is another thing you can do, by the way.

Sensuki, do you realize what you're saying here is that playing Pillars of Eternity in a certain way really trivializes its combat, and a bunch of posts later say that you need to avoid playing Infinity Engine games in a certain way to not trivialize combat? In Baldur's Gate: The Original Saga, 90% of combat I just click in the genral direction of a trash mob and wait until my dudes end the combat. I literally don't do anything, most of the time I don't even need to prioritize targets. I just sit here, watching screen while painstakingly slow combat occurs. The other 7% I use a buff before the combat, remaining 3% I use a buff and a spell or two. The hugely reactive real-time battles largely consist of "Minsc is dying, I should probably heal him."

Have you actually played the original Baldur's Gate? Because it sure sounds like you haven't, or at least that it was very, very long time ago. Just about the only part of that post which holds true are rare magical items. Icewind Dale was at least more difficult and more linear, but that's about it.

I'm continuing this line of argument over in your topic if you don't mind. Thing is, places presented in Pillars of Eternity are pretty believable. I suspect that is precisely the issue, real world is kind of mundane and filled with stretches of nothing. However, when compared to the original Baldur's Gate from which Pillars of Eternity draws most of its inspiration for exploration aspects, there's a lot more to be found per map. In BG, there were maps which literally contained nothing save for some enemies (usually one or two types) and perhaps one line of dialogue - maps in Pillars are a lot more interesting than that. It all works with the overall theme of being a down to earth world, you won't make fantastical discoveries like forests consisting of trees larger than buildings in Pillars, but I'm fine with it, I think it works better with how Pillars of Eternity wants to construct its world. BG wasn't necessarily cheerful, but it was extremely silly and naive. It broke the fourth wall on numerous occasions, made fun of RPG and pen and paper tropes constantly. This applies a lot more to the original than to BG2.

I'm sorry for misquoting you, and I know exactly what you mean - I always considered "dark and gritty" and "grimdark" synonymous, so I didn't even think about it. Anyway, I would never argue that Pillars of Eternity isn't a dark setting - it absolutely is. But there are degrees to it. Let me elaborate a bit - look at world of The Witcher, Dragon Age or Game of Thrones. To an extent, they're gritty for the sake of being gritty. Just about everybody hates you in both Dragon Age and Witcher, presentation of these games is extremely gory and bloody, they make sure to constantly remind you how is everyone miserable and everything horrible. Most people gave up hope and are just trying to scrape by, aside from essential NPCs. Violence, racism, hate is the primary topic of these games. Pillars of Eternity, on the other hand, depicts a world which feels a lot more down to earth. The grittiness doesn't seem to exist for the sake of grittiness - it actually feels like a previously stable society reacts to crisis. People are mostly nice and hopeful in spite of being afraid and tense. You can see quite clearly how does this change trough the various regions of the game as Vorad already pointed out, from oppressed Gilded Vale which is very much concerned with birth rates trough metropolitan Defiance Bay being largely unconcerned about legacy and dealing with 'big city' issues to Twin Elms, untouched by legacy, driven by tradition. Quests, dialogue and themes change according to these basic premises and reaction of people reflect these realities. Their behavior makes sense, it's never negative for the sake of negativity, it's negative for the circumstances, and negativity largely drops when you explore Twin Elms. I'm not calling any of this 'realistic' - it's a videogame written by a team of writers, of course it isn't. But it feels like a better approximation of reality than vast majority of other dark and gritty settings, which is the very reason as to why you get so many 'just right' answers. As for people thanking you for what you did for them, they actually kind of do and your reputation dynamically changes based on your actions - I suspect not much changes graphically because of budget constraints. Kind of like in original Baldur's Gate.

A comparison between MMOs and singleplayer RPGs like Pillars is pretty difficult to draw, especially when I don't really know what is it exactly that you enjoy about games - 1) Which singleplayer RPGs do you enjoy? 2) Which ones did you play and how did you like them? 3) Did you play Infinity Engine games, like Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale? 4) You don't enjoy when the main focus of a game is lore, but how about story? 5) What kind of stories do you like? 6) What do you enjoy about progression in RPGs? Try to answer these questions to the best of your ability and we'll be able to provide you with a lot more accurate information. Since I'm a fanboy I'll absolutely say "Oh sure, you'll love it, there's progression and lore but also story!", but it's not an answer which would be worth much.

They might be just messing around.

The main issue is that the 'life sim' bits of the original Dragon Age were by far the most popular ones - the game was praised for its characters and their relations, but the storyline was massively meh. All DA2 did was to shift its focus towards what redeemed storyline of DA: O.

This is a screenshot from White March, for the sake of snowy balance: Actually, that's not what you asked at all. You asked whether the game is too grimdark, and it's not. On the other hand, it is a bit too serious. These are two distinct questions - you can have a very grimdark setting with a lot of humor, see Fallout. Absolutely, Netherlands is an entirely friendly and nice place. Shades of grey mean that we're dealing with issues which do not have boundaries of morality clearly set - Pillars tackles a varied array of social issues, some more grim, some less, some not at all. I understand why it would be undesirable in your escapist fantasy for you personally, but it's definitely not an objective point against the game itself. Which is exactly what Pillars of Eternity is.

All right, I don't think I need to specify more of my thoughts on the subject, I mean we have already talked about this a lot. What I came here to say is that the way the poll is set up is horrible and you should probably drop it. a) You want your answers from a specific kind of player, which in itself makes the poll sort of useless - if only the actual group you are interested in would answer, it would be useful, yes, but the definition of "Good player who understands mechanics and doesn't make mistakes" will vary based on ability of individual people to reflect on their skill. You'll absolutely get a bunch of "Oh sure, I'm great, I never made mistakes, I killed that big dragon with only losing half my party!" b) Making an "I agree with assessment" question is only useful if you provide a long set of questions. c) If you do insist on creating a single "Thoughts on a hypothesis" question, you absolutely need to play the Devil's Advocate and provide arguments of the opposing site - it might even end up gaining you more votes. d) The question is far too vague. Even if a person agrees with every single one of your arguments, he might not agree with the combat being a rote exercise. I'm playing Baldur's Gate right now and I would absolutely say that the combat is a rote exercise - 99% of the time I'm not even doing anything, just tell my dudes what to attack, watch them and occasionally pop a heal (or/and a buff, but that doesn't actually mix up the playstyle at all, yet I actually enjoy most of it) e) Generally speaking, by putting a term with negative connotation like "rote exercise", you'll force emotional response as opposed to objective or honest response. You'd need to make the poll more granular and drop the 'skill' requirement, like: Do you enjoy combat in Pillars? Do you find the combat monotonous? Do you find the combat too easy? What kind of skill level do you perceive yourself to be? What difficulty are you playing on?

It's not like story of Origins was particularly good either, I consider a "Provide for your family" to be a fair bit more interesting theme in a videogame than "We're under attack by evil, unite elite forces and push evil back!" Dragon Age: Awakening was probably the best in story compartment, but it ended a bit too abruptly.

The game flows nicely and the story is rather good if you're into those kinds of stories, not to mention that choice and consequence writing is really good in that game as well. Combat is terrible and dungeons might as well not be there, but it's definitely a good Telltale adventure game! *ehm*

So uh... Aweigh... What you're saying is they should have put one of each enemy type on each floor to keep your attention? The floors are supposed to be constructed around a theme and a story. At any rate, you can do a lot with 21 troll enemies. Obsidian didn't sadly, because encounter design was rather poor in most of Pillars (White March helped), still - that alone is not an argument against anything. What made Endless Paths special in my eyes is how the dungeon evolved and changed as you progressed. There was a lot of story told purely trough environment. Could use more puzzles tho. I might be doing precisely that thing largely for that very reason. I just got Dynaheir (long time from the tower's level requirements)

I believe the setting was just right. Forgotten Realms never felt very believable to me, it seems like a setting from fairy tale - good and evil is strictly defined (especially in the first game), player gets to go on a heroic journey to explore epic dungeons, find unbelievable locales and uncover antient, powerful artifacts. Dyrwood feels a lot more down to earth and believable, but it's not nearly Game of Thrones level of grimdark. See, the way I see it, it wasn't grimdark for the sake of it, like Dragon Age tends to be - people act like people who happen to have a lot of lore to dump for the most part, for better or worse, and moral decisions are given a lot more meaning given the context. Additionally, you as a player get to explore locations which feel more mundane and believable than stuff we kept finding in Forgotten Realms - which is actually a big plus as far as I'm concerned, when something stands out, it actually stands out as opposed to being lost among all the other crazy and epic locations. All in all, I don't think Pillars was going for grimdark feeling - there's not enough murder, racism and betrayal in its storyline for that. It's more of a down to earth story with people pushed to their limits by extraordinary circumstances.

In the style of the main game as in an open world with a ton of stuff to do, as opposed to the other DLC which was, IIRC, quite different in how they played / in their tone. Sure, Honest Hearts also had a different tone, but it was not such a far cry.

Oh sure, I jumped too, I just thought that it seems like a terrible idea and made a save before doing so.

There's some life wisdom in all of this: Don't jump down unknown pits. It makes sense in my head at least.

No argument there, the point of my entire previous post was that they're useless, which is a shame, because I love how they operate. Those weapons would need some serious rebalancing to work.

If I wanted realism I would avoid Wasteland 2 like a plague :-P At any rate, I don't love them for range, the way shotguns work in Wasteland 2 is that the game draws a cone from your character to the limit of your weapon's range and you get a chance to hit at everything within this cone (including allies) - positioning becomes very important and I generally found a situation in which I could set up a shot which would murder a bunch of characters at once incredibly satisfying. It's not realistic at all and it doesn't even make much sense if you do think of shotguns as of some sort of directed shrapnel grenades, but it's a fun mechanic.

Oh yeah, my last conversation about W2 went along the lines of: "So, I've got a utility character with points in shotguns." "Oh yes, I've also made a utility character who's completely useless in combat." It's a shame tho, I really love how shotgun mechanics actually function in W2.