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Eurhetemec

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Everything posted by Eurhetemec

  1. Some magazines report that Skyrim sales on all platforms have reached 20m. Even assuming PoE should reach 1m after a few years, which I feel is optimistic... something about that ratio is terribly depressing . It often seems that the worse the game, the better the sales. Skyrim is a very good game, and an amazing sandbox CRPG, so that doesn't make sense. It's not a good party-based isometic CRPG (obviously), but that's another story. It's genre/accessibility, not "high quality" that limits sales (quite the contrary - low quality limits sales sharply).
  2. The problem is that the game is very limited in class choice for possible offtanks. If you take Pallegina, basicly, you take a full-fledged tank class. In the IE games, anyone with a plate armor would be a viable offtank. You weren't restricted to class choices here. This is what I'm talking about and why I feel the current system requires a change: due to the talents being totally overpowered and the default deflection scores of certain classes, it is next to impossible to make for example a priest that is able to do some significant offtanking without gimping it entirely. Changing the AI won't really help. It doesn't take long to find new ways to exploit the AI even if it doesn't hard-target the first in sight. It just changes the ruleset. The easiest way to fix the tank & spank battles is simply to make the strategy less viable by making the tank more vulnerable (and making the party members that aren't tanks more durable so it's okay for them to offtank). Again, imho the best solution would be to change deflection and DR to equipment-based stats (with deflection being accessable by talents aswell, but at a smaller degrees to make the gap between real tanks and offtanks less rigid). An inverse stat spread of deflection and DR could serve wonders for the game balance, especially as it makes "light armored evasion tanks" viable. Only three classes in AD&D 2E could wear plate... not seeing that as a huge difference from only three classes being effective off-tanks here. Can you explain?
  3. Make your mind up. If vessels can be terrified by holy light, they have some sort of survival instinct, period. What you seem to be missing with this example is that, unlike Dungeons and Dragons, in Pillars of Exile, both of these things have souls. Souls which can be targeted by magic - Cipher, Chanter, Priest, Wizard, etc. - doesn't matter which, they have souls. Those souls can be hit with magic, and thus they should not be completely immune to fear etc. Some of your other examples are valid, some aren't, most are a bit simplistic. No, there's a difference between a threat of physical harm, and banishment. A barbaric yell would do nothing vs. a vessel or spirit, but shattering their simple minds by a blinding flash of holy light is different. Terrify is not always just Terrify, just like Prone isn't always just Prone - for example, flying opponents should not be subject to terrain effects like Slicken, but they should still be able to be attacked with Knockdown. But you also call it Pillars of Exile, so.. eh, not sure of how serious I should take you. But there's literally no difference between magic that affects a target's soul and magic that affects a target's soul. This isn't D&D. That cannot be emphasized enough. (Reading Path of Exile new expansion news lol sorry for typo!) There's a huge difference. Not only are far from all Abilities "from the soul" other than in it's most basic form (Rogues, Fighters, for example, mostly have nothing that can be described as supernatural feats of strength or soul-power), but even those that are from the soul, directed force of personality, focused soul-power, "ki", "focus", "wounds" or whatever, are virtually never implied to affect the soul. Just because you have the mental focus and presence of mind to direct electrical energy from your fists, do not mean that you are influencing the soul of whomever you are hitting in a meaningful way. There are words in the game world for people that can do this, and it's "Cipher" and "Animancer". And even so, many of the things a Cipher can do is not implied to be so much subtle or direct manipulation of an enemy's soul as much as it is directing his own soul, the souls of his allies, or to basically thrash the souls of his opponents in order to achieve real-like, out-of-body effects. And like I have said repeatedly, in some cases, it can be appropriate to argue "You affected his soul". These are however isolated cases, at best. You cannot reasonably argue that a Blinding Strike from a Rogue is implied to target the enemy soul. You cannot reasonably argue that a Fighter's Knockdown somehow knocks down the soul of the opponent. It's ridiculous. If you want to argue that a Cipher's Eyestrike should still cause eyeless opponents to be blinded, as it targets the general senses of the opponent, through affecting his soul? You have my ear. But as a matter of fact, in general, as a matter of principle? No. No way. What's the end result of all this, though? Pretty sure it's "Ciphers, Wizards, Chanters, Priests and Druids can do absolutely anything, Fighters, Rogues and Rangers get sharp limitations on all their abilities". There are two DIFFERENT arguments that people are compounding together here, too: 1) The enemies are flat because their defenses aren't diverse enough. and 2) Fighters/Rogues/Rangers should have to suck because they aren't magic (or however you want to spin it). Those are not the same argument, and sticking them together is unhelpful, so let's stop doing that. I actually agree with 1). I'm fine with oozes being immune to blind or whatever. I'm not fine with Fighters, say, having tons of restrictions on their knockdown, but Ciphers (or Priests or whoever) having none on their stuns/blinds etc., just because it vaguely offends someone. Your rationales for why the restrictions should exist pretty much sucked and pointed directly to "Magic can do it, force of arms can't". That's a bad position from a game design perspective. Only if the Fighter/Rogue/Ranger abilities were made VASTLY more effective would this "let's limit it!" stuff make sense.
  4. Make your mind up. If vessels can be terrified by holy light, they have some sort of survival instinct, period. What you seem to be missing with this example is that, unlike Dungeons and Dragons, in Pillars of Exile, both of these things have souls. Souls which can be targeted by magic - Cipher, Chanter, Priest, Wizard, etc. - doesn't matter which, they have souls. Those souls can be hit with magic, and thus they should not be completely immune to fear etc. Some of your other examples are valid, some aren't, most are a bit simplistic. No, there's a difference between a threat of physical harm, and banishment. A barbaric yell would do nothing vs. a vessel or spirit, but shattering their simple minds by a blinding flash of holy light is different. Terrify is not always just Terrify, just like Prone isn't always just Prone - for example, flying opponents should not be subject to terrain effects like Slicken, but they should still be able to be attacked with Knockdown. But you also call it Pillars of Exile, so.. eh, not sure of how serious I should take you. But there's literally no difference between magic that affects a target's soul and magic that affects a target's soul. This isn't D&D. That cannot be emphasized enough. (Reading Path of Exile new expansion news lol sorry for typo!)
  5. I never thought of the fact that IWD2 had so much lower saves than the other IE games, but that does explain why I got such a consistent, crazy mileage out of Finger of Death. I played a hilarious game with a death/shadow-based party once (Demarch of Mask, Necromancer, etc) where I just sorta walked around and went "pew-pew" with my index finger and killed everything instantly. I wonder if Sawyer's irrational hatred of Save-or-Lose/Hard Counters predates or comes from this, because damn encounters in IWD2 could be trivialized with Save-or-Whatever spells. But on the other hand, same thing could be said about Mask of the Betrayer, although to be fair, the time I ran through all the endgame enemies and spammed Wail of the Banshee, I had actually built for it (Spell Focus, etc). I was so surprised that they could even be killed with that, considering that they were some kind of shadows or something (I honestly don't remember what they were; you run around some shadow-realm of Crossroad Keep, if memory serves). All games derived from 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons, including the ones you've mentioned, and, obviously, actual P&P D&D (and 3.5E and to a slightly lesser extent Pathfinder), have this precise problem. This is because you are now rolling against a DC set by the CASTER of the spell, rather than against a fixed number on a table based on your class and the type of attack. In 2E, it was very hard to cause penalties to people's saves. In 3E, however, it was very very very easy (Spell Focus being one way, as you notice, boosted casting stat being the other) to push the save DC sky-high, to the point where even very tough enemies had at most a slim chance of surviving Save-or-Die or Save-or-Suck spells (the latter being spells that didn't kill you, but might as well have). Pillars doesn't have the same problem, because it doesn't have Save-or-Die spells and has very few Save-or-Suck spells, and they're much much shorter in duration than in 3E D&D. So no, it isn't the spiritual successor to IWD2 or the like. The one thing I would like to see is the suggestion that grazes with CC spells might need to be misses on the CC component.
  6. Make your mind up. If vessels can be terrified by holy light, they have some sort of survival instinct, period. What you seem to be missing with this example is that, unlike Dungeons and Dragons, in Pillars of Exile, both of these things have souls. Souls which can be targeted by magic - Cipher, Chanter, Priest, Wizard, etc. - doesn't matter which, they have souls. Those souls can be hit with magic, and thus they should not be completely immune to fear etc. Some of your other examples are valid, some aren't, most are a bit simplistic.
  7. Do you think that intentionally ignoring the obvious context of remarks has value in a discussion? Because let's be clear - it does not, it merely serves to lower the tone. Obviously he is referring to gameplay stuff. There is no question about it from the context of his remarks. So yes, the game does "play better" with the EI gameplay changes not used. Aesthetic bits and bobs, which you are referring to, don't make it "play better", nor do they make it "play worse". They merely allow you to make it slightly more to your liking.
  8. When you have difference of opinions, you're going to have opposition. There's been constructive suggestions and criticism over the last 2 years of development and since the beta went live. Everything and anything has been covered, discussed, debated, argued, mud thrown at each, etc. The one thing I have seen in agreement are cosmetic changes like people wandering around your stronghold or cities to make it more lively, selection circles for NPCs a different colour to your own party and other various cosmetic changes, but this doesn't change the core gameplay designs which people are disagreeing on. Hence why the community should finally man up and swallow some of our own personal agendas in favor of the greater good, which is a more enjoyable gameplay experience. I think we already nailed some of the major balancing problems that everyone here can agree on: - 1 tank-to-rule-them-all cheese tactics work too good and should be nerfed to make the game more interesting, either via the flanking bonus or by nerfing some OP enchants and talents - constitution needs a buff, popular suggested idea: putting a reduction to armor recovery penalty on constitution - deflection gap between tanks and non-tanks is too strong, creating a weird situation where every non-tank dies almost instantly, regardless of armor and offtanking is next to impossible 1.05 will come with balancing changes, as has already been announced. It's our chance to be heard and get fixes out to the devs. I don't think we can all agree on the first or last one there, actually. I mean, playing on Hard, I've got a tank (Eder) and two "off-tanks" (2h Pallegina and sword/board main character Chanter), and y'know what? Neither of them "die almost instantly" - at one point I ran from an encounter, accidentally left the Chanter, and he tanked literally six enemies for an astoundingly long time. He has precisely 1 defensive talent (weapon and shield), and far from maxed-out armour/shield. WIth the first, I've seen Eder get the snot kicked out of him a fair bit too - just only by mobs with slow, high-damage attacks - he's barely better than the off-tanks on those. The solutions I've seen proposed to these "problems" also tend to be awful, because they all seem focused entirely party-side, and usually would just move the problem so everyone gets one-shot all the time and magic CC becomes the new way "only way to tank" instead of a tank. If they are problems, the only way to fix them is going to be a mix of party and monster side, or by doing stuff that applies universally - having more minimum damage per attack penetrate DR might well help, as would enemies having more abilities which convert misses or grazes to hits. However I do agree 100% re: CON and decreasing Armour Recovery Penalty is a great solution, because currently Armour Recovery Penalty makes Armour choices verrrrrry dull (i.e. go big or go small, ignore medium). EDIT - The real "balance fix" Pillars needs is something to stop all enemies always charging face-first into chokepoint ambushes, but that's going to involve a bit of AI scripting.
  9. Don't get me started on the new XCOM. I was so disappointed. I still play the original XCOM: UFO Defense. Seriously? The graphics were so rudimentary and the aesthetic so regular, geometric, rigid and sterile that everything felt dead boring or simply goofy and lame. I agree with this. It's worth noting that in both cases, visual design was the big flaw with the graphics, with the new XCOM having this weirdly colourful and severely bland style (all of the colour of X-Com and then some, none of the style), and with NWN being just horribly visually designed to the point where it appeared to have no visual design and instead to have originated in some model library full of ultra-generic fantasy models or something (except, sadly, it didn't). (Of course the new XCOM had a lot of problems beyond graphics, but virtually all of them came down to being terminally bland on every possible level, from visuals to music to gameplay to plot, which is also a horrible problem with Firaxis' more recent games - Beyond Earth and Starships - Beyond Earth being utterly wrecked by it, because it's always compared to the totally un-bland SMAC and even Civ V is amazingly vivid and diverse by comparison, let alone stuff like Endless Legend. I dunno what's going on over there, but they need some new creative directors, and they need them yesterday.)
  10. I'm probably one of the biggest proponents for correct grammar and the importance of it on this forum, however it's a game in a fictional world. Who is to that isn't grammatically correct in that world? Who is to say that even if it is grammatically incorrect for that world, that the fictional author of the book didn't fudge it up. So what? Chalk it up to a grammatically inept monk, priest, historian, or whomever wrote the book, and move on. The contents of no in game book should break your immersion unless it's contents have real world references, references to something that doesn't belong in Eora (ie: book is schematics for the Death Star), or breaks the 4th wall in some manner. That's like arguing that it's okay for misspelt words and incorrect grammar to be in a book because in the narrator's world it is correct spelling and grammar. It is okay. Just one example: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Feersum-Endjinn-Iain-M-Banks/dp/1857232739
  11. What's particularly funny is anyone with that degree should know that real Middle English texts are hilariously all-over-the-place in their use of grammar, spelling, and so on, often inconsistent even within a document. Don't even get me started on Latin. Romanes did not spel or grammer or number very gud, even when carving into stone. VIIII indeed!
  12. The problem is that ranged attackers can dealt with by being at an angle to the doorway your tanks are fighting in. I don't think this is a much worse problem than any other isometric CRPG, note, but this is 2015, not 1999, so people are a lot more sensitive to this kind of thing, and frankly, more of us are more experienced and tactically cunning. Early on in Pillars on Hard, I found archers etc. to be a huge menace, because even though I was fighting in doorways and other choke points, my casters were directly behind my melee and were easy to target for enemy archers etc. - as soon as I realized I could just put them at a 45 or more degree angle to the choke-point (pulling the enemy to the choke point if necessary), they became way less of a problem, because they had to either shoot the hard targets, or run right up into the "kill zone" outside the choke point to shoot my casters etc. I don't see any easy solution to this, apart from perhaps better AI, enemies who won't be pulled in, possibly more enemies who summon stuff, teleport stuff in, and so on. Chain-lightning-type stuff might work too.
  13. The question is how you solve a systemic issue like that. If you just increase the Accuracy of the enemies, you are only really putting even more emphasis on +Deflection as the go-to way to tank, and the game already suffers from overspecialization in that regard. You either stack Deflection or you go home. Increasing enemy Accuracy would just mean that the importance of Deflection is even higher. I think this might actually be quite hard to solve, at the end of the day, due to the underlying simplicity of the system. Accuracy is a scale that affects everything from Miss to Crit, and the only thing that affects it is Deflection, working in the opposite direction. I don't have a solution, and I'm not criticizing you or anything, I'm just musing on the challenges. A possible solution might be to add "Converts XX% Grazes to Hits" (or even Misses or something), where XX% was a large enough percentage (20? 40? 60? More?) that it meant that all that stacking Deflection did against some monsters was ensure that you didn't get Crit, not that you didn't get Hit. That's using mechanics in the game already, too, so wouldn't be that hard to implement. I think it's a decent solution because it means that Deflection doesn't get any more valuable without making it totally worthless, or making characters with low-mid Deflection into absolute death-magnets.
  14. There are surprisingly few CRPGs where this isn't the case. I mean, name a major CRPG, pretty much definitely this is the case. People, the very same people who complain about it, just complain about how they don't feel like they're actually gaining power, how the game is "unrewarding", if it's not the case. I thought this would be a big issue, but I'm actually finding it's much less of a balance issue than you're implying. It's one of those "looks bad on paper" things, but in practice, the way you have to cast spells in harder encounters, compared to the amount of opportunity to rest means that you don't really gain that much from it. Druids, in particular, would actually be distinctly underpowered without it, I'd suggest. You also state that no other class has such a steep gain in power - well, you're overestimating how steep the gain is (low-level spells aren't as good as you seem to think they are, when they take time to cast - time that you could be casting higher-level spells) - but also, even if you believe that, Chanter Rank 3 chants are absolutely at least as much of a power-gain. (And slightly beside the point, but the power gain is still far, far less than the power-gain of getting L5+ spells in AD&D 2E - even the jump from L1-2 spells to L3 was at least as big of gain).
  15. Feels kind of odd that a moderator seems to be saying the only opinion allowed here is "Hard mode is too easy", but I'm guessing I'm reading it too literally! Anyway, assuming other opinions are allowed, I would say that Hard mode is not too easy, but I can totally see why people think that it is. I've played the whole game on Hard, and I've found it adequately challenging, about as challenging as other CRPGs on Hard-type settings. As someone who has been playing CRPGs since 1986 or so, it seems reasonable to start on Hard and I usually do. Anyway, the two issues that stuck out for me as possibly making people think Hard wasn't hard enough seem to be: 1) If you have a reasonably optimized party (good choices, good equipment), you don't really need to use consumables, they just make things a lot easier and extend your endurance considerably. 2) Making a reasonable optimized party does not require reading lots of guides and searching for arcane secrets, it requires understanding how the game works and reading what abilities do. For me, this is a good thing, but I know some people don't feel "challenged" unless they have to look stuff up out-of-game. The other issue is that there should probably be something between Hard and PotD, where monsters are "overcharged", but not in giant packs like PotD. Of course then people would be complaining that was too easy, because chain-CC'ing enemies could work. Unless part of it was reducing the effectiveness of CC or something.
  16. The problem is women are being oppressed, structurally. Equal rights and opportunities is great - almost everyone wants that, I agree (in the West). But equal rights and opportunities aren't the same thing as the law stating that you are equal. If they were, this problem would have been solved decades ago. Men are, effectively, the oppressors, but you have to not take it personally, if you actually want to understand, and not just to sit around feeling hurt and bitter. It's not like most men go around intentionally being sexists (plenty do, of course, but probably a minority in the West). However, even if all men didn't, there'd still be problem because of structure of society, the structure of our laws, and so on. Many aspects of our society, taken for granted, benefit men far more than women. Inheritance is one example. In theory, in most Western societies, men and women inherit equally, but in practice, they don't, not just because men earn more and importantly, earned more in the past, but also because of the way inheritance is taxed, the fact that people are allowed to disinherit women (and have systematically been doing so since time immemorial) merely for being women (indeed, you can do more or less whatever you like with your will), and so on. It's a very complex issue. People love to try to reduce it to equal rights. Equal rights and opportunities, in a REAL sense, is the ultimate goal of feminism as a movement, but that movement acknowledges and understands that the very structure of society and the law can prevent that, even when the law says people are equal. If you ignore that... As an aside, harrassment in STEM is a huge issue. My wife is a developer, and honestly, the **** she's had to deal with is hair-raising, and most of it's from people who think it's fine, think they aren't doing anything wrong, just don't get it...
  17. That's not how it works, Luckmann. Path of Exile long-predates Pillars, and is already called PoE in a larger gaming context. You say PoE outside of a website dedicated to it, they think you mean Path of Exile, not Pillars. Even of the subreddit for Pillars, it's caused confusion. You can't go back in time and retroactively change that (or can you!!!? If so we need to hear more!). Of course PoE for me always means Portal of Evil, from the long-shuttered portal site which used to link to awful websites (generally idiotic rather than disgusting), but times change. As Cantousent says, context is what matters, because the goal of good-faith communication is essentially understanding, not "winning" or whatever. So here, PoE is fine. Elsewhere? It's a judgment call, but I'm going with Pillars and no-one has been confused yet.
  18. That's funny, because I'm probably the one on the boards that would be the quickest to say the exact same thing. In this case, it really boils down to me enjoying durability and attrition mechanics, as well as extensive crafting systems. Your argument is just as applicable to the resting mechanic as it is to a durability mechanic, by the way; you either buy "boring consumables" to rest in the field, or you "treks back to town" to rest. At the end of the day, individual mechanics do not make a game, but the gestalt of the mechanics do. Sometimes even two good mechanics can make a third one, that would've been good on it's own, bad. For my sake, they could've introduced starvation mechanics too. Think or die. It's not made "for most people". It's made for what really is (or was) a pretty niche market, precisely because mass appeal is dependant on the lowest common denominators, appealing to the most base instincts possible. Also, this is basically argumentum ad populum. "Most people within the market", then. It makes no difference. The systems are unpopular (with this market, and that's a fact!), and you haven't explained what they add.
  19. I want to lose myself in a believable world. The real world is also fine, tho. Honest. I get that. But for you, you need more than others do. Do you understand that? The game isn't made for you, it's made for most people. It can't be any other way. Mods can help with this kind of thing for those who need them.
  20. Should've stuck to their guns on that. You need to explain why. Mindlessly "sticking to your guns" is not smart behaviour nor behaviour to be praised or emulated. And you've given no logical/rational reason as to why they should have. The fact is, some systems, even they aren't going to be sure about - so it's worth asking and hearing what people think. The devs have shown throughout the process that they do not mindlessly follow the community, nor mindlessly stick to their guns. That's a good thing. It shows that they are rational, which devs need to be outside of one-person passion projects. Good devs, like Obsidian, are smart, and listen, and when an idea isn't popular, but they know it'll work and end up popular, they go with anyway. Equally, even if an idea is popular, they may have to dump it because it just doesn't work in practice. Here we have an idea that wasn't popular and probably wouldn't have added to the game for most people, because it would simply have lead to: A) Treks back to town to fix stuff or B) Buying boring consumables to fix stuff in the field
  21. Perfect topic for a mod, I'd suggest. It's not a matter of "crying micromanagement" - this is already a game which involves absolute micromanagement in combat (due to no PC AI). What you're proposing is adding an extra layer of micromanagement, which would be fine in a more simplistic game, like, say Fallout 3, but doesn't really fit in well here. In the end, even most CRPG-fans only have so much tolerance for micro. What you need for "immersion" is clearly way beyond what most people need, and the only way to deal with needs so extreme is mods, which fortunately, should appear.
  22. Hehe..nice argument, except that I'm not the one demanding censorship here.. And, I'm just expressing, after them, my opinion, stating that I am a little disappointed, nothing more. If you think I shouldn't do this please go ahead, I don't want to censor you.. You are demanding censorship, because you're directly comparing people who disagree with you to murderous lynch mobs and the nazis, and thus putting them outside the range of acceptable conversation, characterizing them has indulging in hate-speech (which is censored). You also don't understand what intellectual integrity means. It means being able to back up your ideas, and sticking to them when they're rational, and dropping them when they're shown to be irrational. Anyone even using the phrase "feminazi" has already given up any claim to "intellectual integrity", because he's using crude, offensive, propaganda-speech, which compares fairly harmless people to a massive evil army (bordering on a death cult) which took over Europe by violent force and exterminated millions of people. There's no intellectual integrity there. It absolutely does not mean mindlessly sticking to your guns, or worse, someone else's guns, as you seem to think it does.
  23. Speak for yourself mate! Really good jazz soundtrack on an FRPG would be awesome.
  24. Care to elaborate as to why you disagree? from my point of view, while 3d graphics was nice from an immersion perspective, the graphics themselves were so completely lifeless and dull compared to those in PS:T, BG and similar games. While NWN2 had far better graphics, they felt far more mass produced than the area graphics from 2d games Whilst I agree with you, the problem was visual design, not the move from 2D to 3D. See Warcraft 3 for an example of how 2D to 3D doesn't need to decrease character/style if talented visual designers are involved. NWN though, uggggh has basically no visual design, no style, and actually looks older than it really is. It didn't have to be that way.
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