FalloutBoy

Two heal bars should mean less resting, not more. Every battle you are starting with a full endurance bar. You only need to regain health when your it gets low due to attrition from lots of battles, or one really difficult one. This system is a nice middle ground between easy-mode regenerating health bars and games where you had to run back to the inn constantly.

Yes, you use a disable or interrupt (or an escape spell, clone potion, etc). There are ways to leave a battle, no need for easy mode to hold our hands. False. Once aggroed, it's you or the bear. No escape. No indication to the player that you need to level up a bit before fighting it, yet there is a quest telling you to go in the cave. Game tells me to do something then punishes me for doing it.

Oh it's this thread again.

Thank you very much for saying this. I remember those days very well. Not going to lie, it was hard to hear, but I'm happy I've redeemed myself (at least to some of you). I worked my tail off to make sure it's as good as it can be given the timeframe and volume of work. But yeah, taking criticism is part of the job. No one likes to hear it, but you gotta grow thick skin in this industry. And at the end of the day we want you guys to enjoy yourselves, because this game is for you! No criticism here. Music is usually one of the first volume sliders that goes to 0 when I play games. I'm still at 100 for this game. In fact I turned down the other ones to make the music more prominent.

I honestly don't think we would even be talking about this if not for that stupid bear cave. You are an hour into the game, with no party members, and they put in an encounter that one-shots you with no way of predicting this or responding to it other than to reload your game. It's a stupid dirty trick that some designer probably thought was clever or funny or something.

Exactly, that's why there are Fighters, Priests, Rogues, Wizards, Druids, Rangers, etc.. If you want original mechanics, play something like Divinity: Original Sin (or don't because I hate that game, but hey, everyone else seems to love it). Pillars of Eternity is by design Obsidian's take on D&D, not something 100% cut from whole cloth. The system is radically different from D&D. The setting is radically different from D&D. The only thing that's PoE shares with D&D is vancian magic, some class names, and the fact that everyone has 6 main stats. "D&D" is not a setting. Technically Planescape, Eberron, and Greyhawk are all "D&D" settings, if you choose to play games of D&D set in those worlds. Mechanically, the biggest difference between D&D and Pillars is the fact that Pillars uses a d% instead of a d20 to randomize outcomes. Numenera, which uses the d20, is more different from D&D than Pillars is. It's not a bad thing. It is what they were aiming for when they pitched the Kickstarter. Keep in mind that this game only exists because people were willing to back up their nostalgia for Baldur's Gate with serious cash. Everyone would be angry if they shipped, say, a first-person action-RPG a la Skyrim, or even an isometric-ish turn-based RPG with drastically different mechanics a la Divinity: Original Sin. It doesn't really matter which game was or wasn't trying to copy which other game. The OP says he doesn't like how the stats work and suggested an alternative that looks cut-and-pasted from some other RPG. I think the idea of having one stat controlling damage for all classes is kind of clever and I like the effect it has on character creation. I also kind of like the fact that everyone basically has 4 different values of armor class (DR). We don't need every RPG system to work the same. They can coexist. Ultimately they are just knobs that we turn to customize our character. The game can still be good regardless of which knob does what.

Having played the game for about 20 hours I can say that I don't want any of those things except maybe map notes. In fact most of them I feel would actually make the game worse. Micromanaging ammo is not fun. Having to choose between being invisible and walking into a trap vs. avoiding traps and walking into a pack of mobs was not even remotely fun. Having to do a stealth sweep with my thief in every new area before I could start moving the party felt very tedious.

I'm not saying I agree or disagree with your suggestion, but I appreciate that Obsidian is trying something original, rather than copying D&D or some other existing system. With that said, I disagree that every class will be a Might/Int build. That may be true for every DPS class, but some characters will need points in the defensive stats as well. Furthermore, if you want to min/max you are always going to be able to regardless of which stat does what. EDIT: In fact, it's not even true for every DPS class. Single-target DPS don't gain much from Int.

It's hard to take someone's critique seriously when they complain about things like a lack of a walk toggle.

I will avoid spoilers by keeping the names and locations vague. My party consists of a fighter, 2 chanters, a barbarian, a priest and a mage. All level 4 except one chanter is a level 3 hireling. I encounter a situation where I have to fight a boss, surrounded by a large group of his cronies. There was 2 mages, a priest, an archer, a paladin, 2 "champions", and someone called a "bodyguard". None of them aggro either. You have to walk up into the circle of death and talk to them before they attack. The only advantage you have is that the area is kind of narrow and confined. First attempt I keep the party back and send my barbarian main up to talk. As soon as conversation ends, my barb basically gets hit by a train and dies instantly. I tried fighting through it to get a sense of what exactly I was facing, and I did better than expected. I killed everything but the boss before wiping. Not bad for no plan and fighting a man down. Second attempt. This time I sent the fighter tank up to talk instead. He dies. This time I actually did much worse. The boss lived along with 2 or 3 of his buddies. Third attempt. This time I formed a wall with the fighter in the middle and 2 beefy chanters beside him, effectively shielding the rest of the party. The barb and priest were just behind them with long-range melee weapons. The priest was behind them, but still in range to cast short range AOEs like Arcane Missiles. Phananx formation! I move the party up close to the enemies but not into the middle of them. This time when the fight starts I have each chanter grab the closest enemy. The fighter runs back into formation. He lives! Someone throws a Tanglefoot spell from a scroll and the mage casts the level 1 ice storm persistant AOE spell. This combo severely cripples or kills all the ranged enemies. Fighter uses knockdowns on the boss. Mage can knockdown also with Grimoire Slam. Barbarian uses Frenzy and Yell. By the time the chanters get charged up to 3, the fight is well in hand. I had one summon a phantom and the other summoned 3 skellys. If I had had corpse explosion, it would have been amazing. Priest spammed AOE buffs/heals and the level 1 AOE knockdown. Mage spammed anything that does damage. Easy victory. The only casualty was the frenzied barb, which is not uncommon for him. Obviously tactics are going to play a role in combat, but I was amazed at how much of a difference it made. The combat system in this game has a lot of nuance and it rewards you for playing smart. For people getting frustrated with it, I hope you will hang in there and try some different things because it can make a big difference.

This is one thing I can really agree with. There are 2 things that make PotD not a viable play option for a first-time playthrough. One is that once combat begins, there is no escape. If you aggro the wrong thing, your game is over. The other is that there is no way to determine which red circle is capable of one-shotting you. I am absolutely loving this game, but I do wish there was a con system. Without it, you probably shouldn't try PotD until you after you are thoroughly familiar with the game.

I wiped in Caed Nua also. So I'm doing some side stuff first and I'll try again at level 4.

Haha good one.

I think this game could be huge. The reviews are stellar so far. It may not be Skyrim huge, but it could be significantly more successful than any past projects from Obsidian. It could very well do for Obsidian what Baldur's Gate did for Bioware. It is conceivable that this project could spawn many expansions, sequels, and spinoffs. So I'm just going to say right now that if you guys sell the studio to EA or some other conglomeration of executive a-holes, who know a lot about metrics and demographics, but nothing at all about actually making games, I'm going to be very very very sad.

84 obviously. Isn't that the top score?

I've been playing video games since Donkey Kong, computer games since Wizardry I, role-playing games since the red box basic D&D set. Since the Kickstarter I've mostly avoided the forums because I didn't really want to know what was going on other than to occasionally check out what people were talking about. But now I've watched some videos and I'm getting really excited. I hardly ever buy games on release day anymore because I've been burned too many times. I Kickstarted this because I have never had a bad experience with one of Obsidian's games. The game, what little I've seen, looks very deep and interesting. I am really amazed at how deep the game looks in fact. I think I will create 2 characters to start with, a chanter and some kind of caster. I've got my Steam key. I'm preloaded. Make this happen!

Thanks for the videos! Maybe I won't have to spend 2 hours in character creation when I first start the game like I usually do with new RPGs.