ComplyOrDie
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Posts posted by ComplyOrDie
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I'm aware there are a few other threads around on similar subjects but wanted to give my impressions so far. I've been playing on Path of the Damned for my first playthrough with a Druid as a main character. I'd like to add I think the game is brilliant and has exceeded all my expectations, thank you Obsidian!
There are a few major aspects that are sticking out to make a great many of the encounters far too easy however, so wanted to share my thoughts so that they can hopefully be improved. As far as I'm concerned, there should be very few encounters you can one shot on a deliberately ridiculous difficulty level, so far there have been very few that have required more than one or two tries.
1) The overimportance of the tank. At level 6 Eder has 87 deflection (geared and defender on - I checked and he's not bugged or not majorly bugged) and all saves except will above 70. I haven't gone out of my way to stack deflection, my shield has it obviously, as does one ring. I have taken the talents for weapon and shield and defender as that's what he's there for. The vast majority of fights currently hinge on whether Eder is in the right position when the fight starts. If he is, unless there are more than say 6 enemies in a wide open space, they're going to be attacking Eder. If they're attacking Eder, they're not going to hit him.
This was particularly jarring when in the latest ruin, 5-6 swamp trolls literally didn't damage him for the 2-3 minutes it took to kill them all, and a scary looking army of Animats and Adra Animats also failed to do anything whatsoever to good old Eder.
The only fights I've had any difficulty with for a while owing to Eder's tanking capabilities were the spores, and the Pwgra/Druid combo which leads me on to my next point...
2) The enemy AI, and particularly the caster AI is, unsurprisingly (I appreciate it's hard to do), awful. Before anyone laments for the IE days, it was rubbish there too, so don't. As a personal plea, if any of the developers are inclined, I would look at the Sword Coast Stratagems mod for Baldur's Gate, this mod does AI very very well, although I appreciate there are marked differences between the games and the things the AI needs to consider.
The reason Pwgra/Druid is nasty is because the Pwgra apply their debuff to your party while the druids spam the enemy targeting lightning spell at will, they AoE without having to worry about friendly fire. As for enemy casters, I have not been rolling flamed, fireballed, lightning struck to my knowledge in 30+ hours. Presumably, the caster AI won't use it where they risk friendly fire, or, aka, nearly every single situation in the game. A player will always be better at using spells than the AI, but they need to be able to use them with at least some degree of effectiveness. If my ranged fighters are behind the tank, and the tank is surrounded, go sling a fireball at them, please!! The best fights in the older IE games (admittedly again with SCS on) were versus other adventuring parites which included well scripted casters. The assassins outside the Cloakwood mines and Cloudwulfe party in the Iron Throne building spring to mind.
3) Many of the enemies feel undertuned regardless of this. Animats have a lightning ability they use every now and again that does very little damage, even when there's six of them doing it. Adra beetles have a shock ability that isn't used enough to take down one of my casters, again rendering it completely pointless. Spider poisons don't seem to do very much.
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I understand it's not an easy proposition, the easiest argument would be to nerf deflection or up enemy accuracy, the problem with this would presumably be that if Eder started dying all the time everyone else would melt, as if you aren't a tank in melee you are a dead person. Frankly this would be a better situation to try and deal with than no situation at all. A nerf to deflection bonuses while making it easier for non tanks to acquire damage reduction might be a good place to start. I'm looking forward to trying without a fighter tank, maybe I'll make Eder an archer or a melee dps.
In terms of caster AI, it just needs some serious work, they need to be able to use friendly fire AoE abilities even if it's on my ranged party only rather than get stuck missing the tank as there's no trigger for them to move in range of the rest of my guys. They need to be able to determine to not just pound on your tank all day, and actually use some of the better CC spells.
A number of creatures need their non stat abilities to be more impactful and will hopefully be tuned up at least on PoTD. I think a few more abilities on creatures in general wouldn't go amiss.
I would welcome a quest experience nerf on PoTD, I reached lvl 5 and 6 pretty quickly which is where things got easy, before that it was nice and tense (bandits in Black Meadow were hard). When I want a challenge, I don't want completing side quests (an aspect of the game I also enjoy) to feel like it is messing that up. I want to feel forced to have a beer before I storm Raedric's hold rather than not doing so to handicap myself!
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There's plenty of bugs to address in the game and I know this won't be priority, but I hope some thought is given to it. I actually really like combat overall and how it's done. (Prebuffing sucked, camping supply system is interesting if you don't abuse it) but I don't expect to two shot Raedric, one shot all story events so far, one shot most encounters etc. I was walking through the most recent ruin thinking I really hope I die soon, and that's not what I want!
Anyway, thank you again for an overall wonderful game!
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Just checked and Eder at lvl 6 has 42 deflection unbuffed. That sounds about right to me. Shame as I was hoping a bug, he's literally invulnerable to half the bestiary at the mo, hope this is sorted.
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I do miss being waylaid by enemies and having to defend myself, must admit.I also agree that the combat is a whole lot better
What I miss from e.g. BG is larger, more open wilderness maps, and random encounters. especially since there are no kill XP, random encounters would be nice as they are not so expoitable, and a few goodies and special encounters could be thrown in there.
But I'm not too far into the game yet so maybe there is something to come.
Without any randomness in encounters etc I fear the replayability will not be the same as BG (which I am also currently replaying for the nth time).I should say I prefer BG to BG2 simply for the additional optional wilderness adventuring possibilities.
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Is this only stats? I'm about to do a post to review balancing in path of the damned (which I'm also finding on the whole very easy). One of the primary reasons for this is that very few enemies do enough damage to Eder. I think he has around 94 deflection when buffed (plate, ring, helm, enchants, lvl 6) so it doesn't matter how many enemies are hitting or attempting to hit him he just stays at full health. Everyone else dies fast but it's easy enough to get them all beating on Eder so doesn't matter anyway. Add to that the enemy caster ai won't friendly fire and there's not much to worry about in combat, except for pwgra and Druid combos which have to die fast.
I definitely didn't reload in gilded vale though.
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Can someone explain how prebuffing was fun? I am also an ie vet who still does scs runs of both BG games each year. Having to cast every reasonable duration prebuff before every combat of any consequence is tedious as hell. Off the top of my head. Prot from evil. Death ward (individually) Sequencers and contingencies (these were awesome though). Chaotic commands. Stoneskin. Iron skins. Then when you are about to go in maybe a prayer and some of the shorter duration stuff. It was tedious in the extreme, it's not tactical when it's mandatory. At least there's now an opportunity cost of casting a buff spell, whether it's balanced properly or not
I don't prebuff anymore in the games with the exception of the sensible ones, who wouldn't walk round with permanent stone skin or if it would be clear to the party a fight was coming.
Don't get me wrong I loved IE combat but prebuffing was not in any way whatsoever interesting.
I can understand the camp supply although I think it's an improvement. Resting for 8 days while you finish d arnise hold was immersion breaking for me. Now I force myself to get by on the supplies I have so you have to clear stuff in 24 hours game time.
Movement, it's not been implemented perfectly but agree if your Mage gets caught he shouldn't be able to just turn and walk away with no consequences. I'm firmly in the thought it might suck but actually enjoying it camp. Main issues for me is its a bit easy and the caster ai is terrible.
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Going to start doing PotD trial of iron alongside my main PoTD playthroughs. Guess that's cheating though for this thread! first death was the bear incidentally on my main run.
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A minor issue with this spell when playing against a significant number of enemies. The sound effect seems to stack and is extremely jarring when hitting 4/5. Have the sound loud but this one is just unpleasant.
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Doing PoTD and expert, not trial of iron! Died a few times so far but nothing too challenging, expect it to pick up!
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Are there any front line Druid builds or are they restricted to high int high might casting roles? Tempted by Druid but don't want to be pure caster, Is there an equivalent to the fighter Mage or fighter cleric? Bearing in mind I'll be doing at least hard.
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I've been off caffeine for 5 weeks. Going to enjoy Pillars with a nice cup of tea. Can't wait.
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Looking forward to the next installment! Question about difficulty. I've played the backer beta through on hard. Thought the combat was quite fun actually if only as it was while trying so many new things out. You explained PotD would have all enemies from all difficulties plus stats increase. On the Beta there don't seem to be more enemies ( do they have bonus stats?) so it's hard to tell if this would be immersion breaking. There are a couple of encounters, one with spiders (I'm assuming that's not too much of spoiler) where there are a good deal of enemies on hard,and while the encounter was actually pretty easy, I can see chucking a load more spiders around them would get pretty silly in terms of the room being totally full. I don't want to ruin the experience but from th e encounters I tried nothing really stood out as super hard and I very much want super hard, just not if it results in silliness. Have you or anyone tested PotD as considering for first and all playthroughs,
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Great to see its up there on twitch. Itmejp ex Starcraft caster with over 3k views. I'd watch but I don't want to spoil
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Thank you for the videos which I will be watching shortly. Hopefully they will answer the few queries that have popped up since I bought the backer Beta yesterday as an extra show of support and to help choose a character.
One I will ask away, I'm used to pausing per round as per the Baldur's Gate games. Things seem a little more chaotic with the timing here. It would be pretty jarring to use auto-pause but I'm open to trying it. Is the timing something you get used to (is there a fixed timing system or is it more free form ? seems hard to tell so far). If not, are there some recommended auto-pause settings?
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I thought this was probably the most appropriate place to ask the following:
Backed for 20$ - which was a decent amount of money to me then - and pre-purchased the expansion for another 20$. Managed to forget this was even being made until around 3-4 weeks ago. Now I'm stupidly hyped, have a day off work on Friday, and spend much of my free time reading these forums to get a feel for the game.
It now occurs to me I have the game and the expansion for less than the price of the game. I'm glad my money helped the game get made but I would definitely like to show more support now. I think the clincher was when I realised I spent more on Dragon Age Inquisition - which managed 10 hours of my time (ok it wasn't that bad but I'm not into that kind of game these days) - than on this.
Option 1: Can I upgrade my standard backer purchase to a champions/royal edition? I'm not sure they really appeal to me though, I'm not interested in a game guide etcetera just the game.
Option 2: Can I still purchase the Backer Beta? I'd quite like to do either Hard or Path of the Damned off the bat so learning the mechanics might help although I have no issues dying for two hours on the first fight while I work out what's going on. Problem is it might ruin the fun on Thursday night if I give in now, I suppose it's a reasonable Character Creation tester?
Option 3: Also buy a GoG copy for no apparent reason.
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If you are interested in mindless fun before PoE, worth mentioning Unreal Tournament 4 is in pre alpha and available for download at the moment. It is incredibly playable for a pre alpha and brings back plenty of memories from, funnily enough, the Infinity Engine era, even if UT is a slightly different genre
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I think the point was made earlier but people should talk about this wherever they can online too. Im a huge fan of the genre but had no idea about D:OS until a while after it had released. This on the other hand, purely randomly the kickstarter was linked on the Starcraft site I use (teamliquid), so I knew straight away, would have had no idea otherwise. Needless to say the thread there has been bumped
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I notice Path of the Damned mode was discouraged for a first play through. I consider myself highly sadistic when it comes to game difficulties but at the same time it has to be done right to be enjoyable. Example is IWD heart of fury. If you tried this with a L1 party it was ridiculous for the first few levels, but due to t he XP bonus you quickly levelled up and it evened itself out, rendering the whole thing pretty pointless other than the nightmare goblins and orcs.
Is Path of the Damned likely to have a similar effect? Or is it created for level one parties and just meant to be ridiculously difficult? If there is no monster xp I suppose the effect would be limited. Finally, will the fact that every enemy from easy medium and hard shows up be immersion breaking or are they all themed?
Thanks.
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I agree with most of what's been posted about bg2. It was very easy once you realised how the spell system worked. Mages were also by far the best class although I actually don't mind a bit of a lack of balance. It would be better implemented where the Mage did rely on other classes as support however, in bg2 it was a case of three mages is better than two.
For me though the problems with the bg2 system were the AI, which was too easy to abuse when it came down to itm and I'm not a fan of self imposed handicaps. The vast majority of this was solved by the mod sword coast stratagems, andthe best example is the bandit camp in bg1, if you go in all guns blazing the whole camp is alerted and does its best to overwhelm you. Similarly, the random assassin groups come and find you and don't give you time to prepare and fireball into the fog. All enemies also target sensibly and don't just bash on your tank 24/7. spell casters pre buff in the same way you do to simulate the fact they generally can tell you are coming, why wouldn't you walk round with stone skin on anyway?! The mod gets a decent about of recognition but it's a great demonstration of how to build difficult encounters for games like this imo.
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This thread compelled me to post. Such a great story congratulations on just finding out, hope there aren't too many like you though of the advertising hasn't worked!
I backed this on kickstarter but put to the back of my mind pretty much until I saw the release date and then watched the January and pax videos. Now ridiculously excited and have the 27th booked off! Havent been so excited since skyrim release and that was a let down for me in the end.
Combat reports do worry me a bit, i. Play bg with scs installed for my infinity engine fix and love the combat there. Hopefully shouldn't be too bad and hard and varied enough to keep it interesting. Roll on the 26th!
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BG1(Enhanced, BG2(Enhanced), or Pillars?
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
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Nothing wrong with the Enhanced versions and there's nothing wrong with supporting Beamdog. I would agree however that they are expensive for what they add. On the plus side, very easy to install and 0.1sec loading screens.
PoE is fantastic, yes there are some bugs but it's very playable already, plus you'd have the unusual perspective of trying this first if you went for it!