[Update 3.02 is now live!]

Why am I downloading 7.5 GB? What on earth is in this patch?   Did I somehow lose half my gamefiles between yesterday evening and today? Well, no matter, I'm glad it's finally out.

[Devs: A plea for a walk toggle]

They already spent time, effort and money on creating a dozen different types of hats and clothes serving no practical purpose whatsoever other than roleplaying and illustrating different cultures of Eora. They added little descriptions to random items in the world just to build atmosphere. I don't see why a walk toggle would suddenly be a waste of time when other cosmetic things weren't.

[[PotD] Difficulty - What to Choice for a First Run]

Also, to the original post, I would recommend 'expert mode'

I wouldn't. Some of its elements add difficulty only through inconvenience, which isn't a real challenge in my opinion. What I do recommend is going through the options and adjusting them manually according to your preferences.

[Only 1 spell to reduce enemy DR?]

Off the top of my head:

cipher's Body Attunement

chanter's 1st level invocation (and another one later?)

Penetrating Shot/Vulnerable Attack

weapons and skills with innate DR bypass

skills dealing raw damage

[Best time to start White March]

Story-wise, there should be a break between the ending of WM1 and start of WM2. With that in mind, my preferred order is doing WM1 either right away if you want the new companions or between Act 2 and 3 to scale it up and avoid very easy quests when you come back (Act 2 doesn't scale). Then some or all of Act 3, then WM2.

 

But the difficulty is still all over the place in this game, so I'm not sure how well it works out. Depends on how much optional content you do, I guess.

[Pillars is overwritten and too esoteric (also purple prose)]

 

 

I had a great time with the story and the writing. My favorite aspects were the central plot, Thaos was a very memorable antagonist, and the writing of the companions. I would actually remove about 50% of the trash fights and focus more on the battles that tied in to the story. Combat was definitely not the highlight for me here, but it never was in IE games either.

Oh, here we go again. Enough with calling battles and lesser combatants "trash"!!!

"Trash fights" and "trash mobs" are established terms people have used for years, you're not going to change it overnight. We don't actually think they're trash as in worthless; it just means they're regular run-of-the-mill enemies as opposed to unique bosses requiring deeper tactical thought. That's all. Having a decent number of these battles is actually beneficial for a typical RPG.

 

If I wanted to read a story, I'd buy a book (and often do). I'm not here to read a story. I'm here for the BATTLES!!!! And more is better!!! The story is just the means of tying those battles together, not the reason for playing the game itself.

That's all well and good. As for me, I'm here mostly for the story and battles are a fun passtime moving the story forward. If I wanted a game about battles, I'd play Dark Souls, Battlefield or Fire Emblem.

 

PoE can't be everything for everyone. Maybe some of us just aren't the target audience. It happens. Better to discover it now than 3 games into the series, as it happened to me in the past.

[Pillars is overwritten and too esoteric (also purple prose)]

combat (you know the thing why we call RPGs usually RPGs and not Adventure game)

What.

[Monk + Apprentice's Sneak]

I don't think you fully understand how sneak attack works. It isn't an attack from stealth, you can actually use it with 0 points in stealth. Sneak attacks happen:

a) in first two seconds of combat, which is great for a full party ranged opener;

b) when the target is afflicted by certain conditions: Blinded, Flanked, Hobbled, Paralyzed, Petrified, Prone, Stuck, Stunned or Weakened.

 

The key to successfully utilizing sneak attacks is setting up these conditions. Casters have a wide arsenal of status-inflicting spells.

[Pillars is overwritten and too esoteric (also purple prose)]

 

 

It's a rather jarring gameplay experience when you have for instance such (over) detailed descriptions of facial features accompanied with only the tiny puppet theather top down view.

 

The writting in general is too purple or simply filler (backer npc)

 

Storywise the soul aspect is kind of interesting but there is too much mumbo jumbo essence, memory out of body esoteric experience and so forth.

 

All in all i still enjoy the game but hope for a more straight forward, down to earth world in Pillars 2.

(Im that guy who prefers Icewind Dale's combat over Torment's story)

Well, now that we've gotten out of the way the fact that you apparently have no ability to judge video game writing... the complaint sounds rather anemic

Well, he didn't say IWD had better writing, just that he prefers combat over story - and I agree that in a combat-focused game PoE writing would actually be out of place. There's really nothing wrong with that... Except I think most of PoE backers wanted it to be more balanced, not go all the way the IWD path.

[Pillars is overwritten and too esoteric (also purple prose)]

The thing is tough it's a game, a visual medium so "show, dont tell" applies. And for an isometric perspective it applies even more so.

Also im not against complex dialog (dont equal complex with meaingful, well written) or want to thumb down anything.

 

Some of those descriptions of how "the leftside forehead vein crinkles when she smirks" (that's from me) etc. for instance would even be too much (i.e. not good writting) in a novel, way i see it.

In general, I agree with the "show, don't tell" rule (even in literature, strangely). But what we call "video games" is primarily an interactive medium. It utilizes and blends video, sound, text etc. to various degrees. We don't have the proper categorization yet for interactive fiction beyond visual novels, for all of the sliding scale between narrative and gameplay focus. To diminish it just to a visual medium would be misguided.

 

Even so, as an isometric game PoE is actually less suited for "show, don't tell". Character models aren't very detailed and we can't comfortably zoom in and rotate the camera as we please. We don't have cinematic cutscenes. It's very difficult to show the details of people's appearance and behavior in these circumstances. We can be told about them, however. I appreciate that Obsidian did.

 

I like the writing style of PoE and hope it's retained in the sequel. Sure, it needs some work: early game lore dumps need to go, a few moments are jarringly poetic (Zahua's "scars faded like memories", wtf?) and all backer content needs to either be removed or closely monitored for lore-friendliness. Gravestones were garbage and backer NPC names were often embarassingly bad. But overall, I think it's good we have this kind of games as a counterweight to many AAA RPGs with paper-thin story, designed for teenagers with attention deficit. Long, thoughtful texts to chew into are a rare pleasure in video games.

[How to get to White March?]

After you complete Never Far From The Queen, your Steward will get a letter from the major of Stalwart. Has that happened yet?

[Post Game randomness]

Rote and meaningless postgame quests would be a terrible waste of development time in a single player game.

[Post Game randomness]

There will be no more expansions. Content-wise, the game is finished.

[Is it a good time to come back to PoE?]

I'm not looking for advice and this isn't the right thread for it anyway. I know I'm playing with an unoptimized party, it was my choice. It'd be much easier with a priest (and rest spamming, but that's cheesy). But if this game was actually such a faceroll as everyone says, I shouldn't have any problems at all, should I? Yet I can't get through it just by autoattacking and throwing fireballs. Many filler battles, sure, but not all of them.

[Is it a good time to come back to PoE?]

Meanwhile, I'm here playing on Hard, getting my ass handed to me in White March and watching others finish the game with a level 1 character. I suspect the skill level of forum users isn't at all representative of the general playerbase.

[Wow, got stomped in Crägholds!?]

You can't say you weren't warned. The bear in Valewood taught me that when NPCs say it's going to be a tough fight, I'd damn better listen to them. It's meant to be a high level area, around level 14.

[New White March II steam achievements - LMAO]

 

 

 

 

 

This is the first time ever I see an Achievement and go "I wish I had achievements".

I thought White March hasn't yet been fully released for the disk version of PoE?

GOG, yo.

GOG has achievements. Well, optional: if you use Galaxy.

 

 

 

It doesn't have the new achievement.

Ah. That explains it. I never opened the full list, just noticed that I unlocked some. But that's odd, why didn't they add the new ones? Are they going to do it later? The base game initially didn't have achievements either.

[New White March II steam achievements - LMAO]

 

 

This is the first time ever I see an Achievement and go "I wish I had achievements".

I thought White March hasn't yet been fully released for the disk version of PoE?

GOG, yo.

GOG has achievements. Well, optional: if you use Galaxy.

 

as if steam had achievements -.- so i have TCS achievement, won the game and a bit more... but... i havent completed act 3 yet?!- havent cleared 4 bounties yet, havent enchanted 5 times, havent killed adra+sky dragon... jeah right... sure? My achievements bug all the time, with luck they work one day and i get some... but most of the time they dont... so "i wish i had achievements" too...

Do you play offline sometimes? That would do it.

[New White March II steam achievements - LMAO]

This is the first time ever I see an Achievement and go "I wish I had achievements".

I thought White March hasn't yet been fully released for the disk version of PoE?

[Deflection and Resolve...]

How about swiching Deflection and Fortitude? Resolve, i.e. internal drive and perseverance, is very useful in overcoming disease and other conditions weakening the whole body. In regards to direct physical blows, I think Resolve would help you not as much parry it as carry on despite sustained injuries.

[Digital Downloading Age - Parts of the World not Connected]

You have barely functioning internet and no street lights and you call that place a posh area? 

[Main Story, an atheist cliche?]

nor do I see personal dispositions of C. S. Lewis distorting his fantasy tales

You might possibly be blind.

[Benevolent choices...i beg to differ]

How exactly were Raedric's methods efficient? How did they improve the situation?

[Main Story, an atheist cliche?]

Nobody has faith in things that definitely exist, like gravity or evolution.

Considering the nature of this thread, you're stepping on thin ice.

[Nedmar's f*****g bull****]

Would it have killed you to save the game before doing that, just in case? Seems like common sense to me.

 

Anyway, I generally don't have any sympathy for people who choose to use Trial of Iron and then complain about stuff like this. That's what you get for trying to be "hardcorez!!!11!" tbh

The whole point of Trial of Iron is that you can't make multiple saves "just in case." If you die, that's it, game over.