BrainMuncher

The base game is on sale at the moment on both gog and steam. https://www.gog.com/game/pillars_of_eternity_hero_edition https://www.gog.com/game/pillars_of_eternity_the_white_march_expansion_pass http://store.steampowered.com/app/291650/?utm_source=SteamDB&utm_medium=SteamDB&utm_campaign=SteamDB%20App%20Page The Royal edition and champion editions don't include the expansions, just extra goodies like soundtrack. You need to buy the expansion separately.

Well the number one thing everyone wanted improved from the infinity engine games was pathfinding, and Obsidian inexplicably failed at that. Two expansions later and it's still bad. So yeah, not-terrible pathfinding is still on the wishlist.

Seems Obsidian have had Pillars removed from steamspy. "Sorry, results for this game are hidden at request of the developer" Pretty weird move, instead of telling us the actual sales numbers to go the opposite direction. Why are you so afraid of sales numbers Obsidian?

Well, did he "drop out" of a major role? Or are you making an assumption there? Maybe it just wasn't his job to write the story? POE is/was a relatively low budget game. More agency takes more work, generates more bugs, and results in a shorter game. It also limits the strength of the narrative. Narrative and agency are at odds with each other, the more you have of one the less you can have of the other. Obsidian said from the start they wanted a strong narrative in the game. If there's a lack of agency, it's probably because of that, not because of some battle of egos. OP should apply for a job at some celebrity gossip news place. As long as you're doing it, you may as well get paid.

People are talking about appearances in a thread about mechanics & balance. If the same ability instead of being called knockdown was instead described as some sort of mystical ability that disoriented the victim so that they fell over, then the entire "man too small to knock down dragon" thing goes out the window. The appearances are totally irrelevant when discussing balance. As far as the mechanics are concerned it doesn't matter if the lore says it's a fire elemental immune to fire, a or a sentient cardboard box that's immune to packing tape. It's just a creature with an immunity. In general, immunities reduce the number of available tactics in a given situation. They reduce the number of abilities that are consistently useful and therefore worth taking/using. Specifically for PE which seems designed with synergies and full party co-operation in mind, the immunity not only denies the effectiveness of one ability, but also the effectiveness of any synergistic abilities used by other party members. So a tactic involving the use of two abilities in combination is twice as likely to be thwarted by an immunity, and the more elaborate your "combo" gets, the more likely it is to fail to some miscellaneous immunity. This lack of reliability further encourages sticking to basic damage dealing. I've always hated those sections in FPS games where they take away movement and put you behind a turret or something. Or force you to use a specific weapon for no apparent reason. DOOM never did this, if you wanted to kill the cyberdemon with the BFG, go right ahead. But if you wanted to save your BFG ammo for the horde of imps and kill the cyberdemon with a shotgun instead, you could do that too. The rules didn't change just because you encountered a boss. Contrast that to a game like Bastion, where you spend the entire game developing a certain style of fighting, and you are looking forward to the climax, the final test of your skill. But when you get to that final level, your are force-equipped with a giant log with overpowered damage, that cripples your mobility. So for the entire final level you walk slowly around hitting things with a big log. What a let down. Immunities do the same thing. Sorry, these trolls can only be killed with fire - here, have this a chest filled with molotov ****tails. It's not far removed from rail shooting. If a fire elemental is immune to fire why isn't he also immune to swords? Have you ever tried putting out a bonfire by slicing it with a knife? Why isn't he basically immune to everything that isn't an overwhelming gust of wind, a large body of water, or a total lack of oxygen? It's because you'd be forced into the troll rail shooter situation, where there is only one solution and that solution is provided to you right before you meet the fire elemental. Why should he be immune to fire anyway? Why not let fire damage him, but cause his next attack to do increased damage. Or it doesn't damage him, but instead makes him get bigger and slower so he's easier to deal with. Why make the dragon immune to knockdown when you could do something else? Maybe it becomes enraged and flails about on the ground, knocking everything near it down as well. Or whoever knocked it down gets crushed beneath it's weight when it falls over. Or just raise its fortitude, encouraging synergies with abilities which lower fortitude, instead of discouraging them. There are unlimited possibilities for adding flavour and variation to monsters that add depth to the game instead of taking it away.

I dislike immunities in general for this type of game, and specifically for PE because they go against the "no hard counters" philosophy of the original design of the game. Debating realism in a video game is silly to begin with, but even if realism is the reasoning, and everyone agrees that a fighter shouldn't be able to knock down a dragon because realism, immunities are not the way to fix it because they are equally unrealistic. It is entirely plausible that a dragon could fall prone for any number of reasons, though perhaps not because of being struck by a human fighter (unless they had some sort of magical assistance - say, being enlarged to be as big as the dragon). The more immunites are added to the game, the more it will revert towards a pure DPS shoot-em-up. This is because damage always works, nothing is immune to damage for obvious reasons. This was my experience in the infinity engine games - all of the miscellaneous effects and spells were too unreliable due to immunities, so you end up just casting every buff known to man and diabloing your way through the game. Immunities are a blight on game design. Once you start down the dark path of immunities, forever will it dominate your destiny.

Any way to watch this after the fact?

There's no reason why a flying saucer couldn't just turn up in Pillars of Eternity 2 and cause a ruckus. Turns out if you polish your full plate enough, it's pretty decent at reflecting lasers. It's those disintegrator beams you have to watch out for.

But 1 million in sales is not a wide audience, in the case of PoE it's a reasonable expectation. I know people are getting tired of having D:OS getting thrown in their face in this discussion but it *must*. D:OS is PoE's true Peer. It's a kickstarted game, it's a PC exclusive, it's an RPG, and its development costs was ~$4 million. It sold ~ 1 million copies. Therefore, PoE SHOULD do the same. If it doesn't, then there will be legitimate questions to ask. The main one being: WHY NOT? 1. Graphics 2. Multiplayer 3. Amount of reading. Lots of people don't like reading.

+5 accuracy = +1 to hit, +1 to caster spell DC, +1 ability DC

Nah bugs you don't have to worry about that. It won't happen. I guarantee it.

@sleazebag I'm not convinced. Will you get halfway through a quest and get a screen saying "to be continued...?" I've heard tales of the sword coast mentioned a few times which from (failing) memory was basically one big sidequest/dungeon, rather than a continuation like throne of bhaal. Seems like it would be a little jarring to go halfway through something like that and then just continue on with the main game. Are you going to load up an old save that has already completed the game just to do the second half of something like that when it comes out? I wouldn't complain about two smaller expansions. I just don't understand how "one big" expansion can work in two parts, unless it is a continuation, ToB style. It doesn't make any sense to me.

http://www.pcgamer.com/pillars-of-eternity-tabletop-rpg-and-card-game-in-the-works/ The above quote is not entirely unique, I've read basically the same thing said elsewhere before. So it's unlikely I'm misreading it. The weird thing here is that Obsidian are contradicting themselves. I'll paraphrase to make my point clear: "These days most folks make a number of small DLCs, but instead we are going to do a big meaty old school expansion." ...and then in the same breath: "but we're going to split it into two parts" Umm, what? It's absurd to talk about a big chunky expansion that is split into parts. It can't be both. Frankly I'm not complaining or worried as I have full confidence that I will be pleased with the expansion(s) (which I have already paid for). But you guys are putting out a confusing message. What's up?

It is a LONG time since I played arcanum, and I don't think I ever finished it. But based on your post I think you will like this game. I don't think thievery will play much of a role, but the multiple ways to deal with quests, NPC interactivity based on reputation, stats, etc. is all there.

All my christmases have come at once