Eurhetemec

I think you're missing the point. The issue is that actually, they are being forced to use sneaking, because they want to find secrets. It's that simple - you can argue that forcing sneaking is fine (and I would agree), but it's illogical to claim no-one is forcing them to, because they are. There's no way to find the vast majority of hidden things without it. Personally I don't have a problem with it, esp. because there's the speed-up mode, but I do think it would have been nice if you could spot some stuff without sneaking, if your abilities were high enough, because I often find I have to backtrack through an area because I realize I wasn't sneaking, and I'm fairly sure there was some hidden stuff (usually correct).

You know, I've played countless CRPGs since I started in 1988, from the old Ultimas, through the birth of first-person 3D RPGs, the Fallout/IE era, to the modern rebirth of CRPGs (in all forms), and I have to say, I cannot think of any genuinely interesting situations created by encumbrance in games like Pillars of Eternity, so I call bull-poop on this, I'm afraid, Ferrante. Really, the whole encumbrance issue pretty much vanishes in many CRPGs when you get a "bag of holding"-type item. Just like it does in real D&D - the game in real D&D then becomes "what utterly ridiculous things can we stuff into the Bag of Holding or Portable Hole?" - I know that with the group I DM they once managed to get a mangonel and a couple of ballistas (partially disassembled) into a Portable Hole. So the very existence of items like that in D&D pretty much destroys your "interesting choices" claim when referring to past CRPGs, which you are. Before you get to the point in the game where you can mindlessly shove stuff into a Bag of Holding or the like, though, there is a window where you do have to make a choice, but it is in no way whatsoever an "interesting" choice, it's simple shopkeeper math. You carry whatever is worth most by weight, and chuck away what isn't. If it's a game where you can freely go back to "cleared" areas and dropped items or items in containers don't de-pop, then it's even less of a choice, because you simply carry away what is convenient, then head back for the rest. The only time an actual choice that is any way difficult occurs is when the planets align and this ultra-rare scenario plays out: 1) You forgot to clean out your bags, and so they are full of valuable stuff. 2) You are in an area that you cannot go back to for some reason. 3) Lots of interesting-but-heavy stuff is dropping. 4) You do not have a Bag of Holding or similar. But really, that is super-rare, and is will never, ever happen to a player who regularly empties his bags (which is a fairly tedious housekeeping activity, I note). As an aside, I have seen some slightly more interesting scenarios in first-person single-character games, like Morrowind, where you can be engaged in a break-in and have to decide what to steal - but even then, nine times out of ten, you're stealing for cash money, so you simply go with the best weight-to-value items (isometric party-based games rarely offer this kind of gameplay - last time I saw it was in Ultima 6 or 7, I think).

You "shouldn't" be allowed to save-scum, either, but you can, and most people do, and likely wouldn't play if they couldn't at all and had to rely on fixed save locations and times. The solution to respecs is simple - make them like Iron Man/Trial By Iron, i.e. an out-of-game option set at the time of starting the game. Defaults to "No respecs", and you could have two other settings "Respec on level" - i.e. get to redo your entire character when you level or "Respec at will". That way you will never be bothered or tempted by them, but people who want them, will have them. It's an actual win/win. (In-game respec quests are a dumb half-arsed solution, imho)

Man what? Pillars of Eternity has relatively straightforward and highly consistent mechanics. You could claim Might and Int (only) were mildy counter-intuitive, for people who are somewhat narrow-minded, but dense and byzantine? Compared to what? Certainly not AD&D 2E or D&D 3E. Particularly not with all the obscure and bizarre FR-specific or otherwise rather arcane spells and mechanics dug up by BG2. You seriously need to tell us what your point of comparison is here. Edit - Also, you apparently don't know what a grognard is. A grognard by no means automatically likes complex mechanics, nor is a grognard a fanboy or whatever. A grognard moans and groans (hence his name - it's from the Napoleonic wars) about everything new and harks back to the "good old days". So here a grognard would insist that everything was better in BG1/2, for example. Which seems to be the opposite of what's going on. If you're going to use these sort of insults, please learn to use them correctly.

Playing on Hard - having a lot of fun, I think I judged it right. I'd consider Normal and a lot less pausing if there was proper AI scripting for companions, but as I'm going to have to micromanage them anyway, might as well go with Hard.

Define "complex". Pillars of Eternity's actual mechanics are, themselves, more complex and detailed than those in 2E AD&D, with more possible outcomes in most cases, and more granular modifiers (which come from more sources, in many cases). Magic items are typically more complex in effect, for example. However, they are, like most modern design, consistent and rational. So despite being complex, they're relatively easy to understand. Whereas AD&D 2E had, in many cases, very simple and limited actual rules (hit/miss, save/don't save), but the values were wildly arbitrary (on ability scores, saves, spells, etc.), and were not (and I say this as someone who DM'd AD&D 2E for it's entire existence) well-considered or well-balanced. Some spells or abilities worked in ways entirely inconsistent with the rest, often in a deeply unbalanced way (making them wildly more/less powerful than others). It made for "interesting times", and was sometimes very fun (esp. if you were focusing on a wizard as your "main" character), but it wasn't the "good" kind of complexity, imho, or at least was mostly not the good kind (there was some of that).

No. In the IE games, the tradeoff was that if you pre-buff, you have fewer spells to use for combat. In PoE, this tradeoff is still there, but now there's an additional opportunity cost tradeoff: combat is really fast so by the time you've managed to cast a few buffs, it's basically over anyway. This makes most buffs which only affect the caster utterly worthless while the party-wide buffs are a mixed bag. I understand their reasoning behind getting rid of the pre-buffs, but the system they used as a replacement is at least as problematic and possibly even more so. Given the nature and number of spells in IE games, together with the easy availability of rest, this was a false trade-off in virtually all cases. It was far more problematic.

i'm not sure why anyone would call someone grieving mother. "Hello Grieving Mother, how have you been?" "Tell Grieving Mother to come here." "Grieving Mother is my best friend." Surely this isn't what the character is called the entire game? It sounds more like a placeholder name for a game still in development. So, you've never come across a fantasy game character whose name is a title or codename, rather than a real name? The examples you give are no sillier than using any name/surname combo in the same situations. You'd obviously shorten her name (probably to "mother") if you knew her.

I found the only way to avoid this seems to be to hold Aloth back, keeping him behind the party, and not have him do anything until everyone else has made contact with the enemy. Otherwise, yes, it's enemy-train destination: Aloth.

Have you considered that you may be taking it too literally? That it's not actually the character doing it in all cases, but perhaps them contacting a skilled smith or whatever?

Your criticism of people for arguing over taste makes no sense unless you are going to do both. Make your mind up.

Thought the same thing!

You don't understand how game development works, I'm afraid. Features like encumbrance take time and effort to build, and test, and require the game to be designed around them. You can't "just make both" without sacrificing other stuff.

Says you. Ok, I hear you. Explain to me, if you will, recalling that I am a veteran of basically every CRPG post-1988, and some before, and an extremely experienced DM/GM/Storyteller for pen and paper RPGs, how encumbrance, specifically encumbrance, is awesome. I will await your detailed response. If you're not saying it's awesome, just you like the inventory management chore/mini-game, fine, but if you like that particular mini-game, please be aware that there are vastly better ways to implement it than the encumbrance style (where all items have a "weight" - which may or may not actually also be a factor of their bulk - and you have to stay under that limit). I believe that just means you can't access the stash from "anywhere" - you have to be in certain places or safe spots or something (I'm not sure what the actual req. are). But since if your chr inventory is full, new picked up items appear to be auto-placed into the Stash, it's not as helpful as one might think if one is trying to limit carrying capacity to only a select few items. It makes very good sense as a design decision, because if you didn't do that, all you're doing it making people go back through areas to pick up items they had to leave, which, unless the area respawns/repops, is merely an exercise in tedium (even though I know it makes some people feel good in an instinctive kind of way!). The important thing it does prevent is manufacturing and hoarding tons of one-use items, then cycling them back into inventory as you use existing ones up.

Indeed - Pillars of Eternity is a great example of "text done right", and in many cases, whilst the dialogue is a little overwrought, the descriptive stuff is absolutely great, and pitched at a very good tone. Specifically, it helps you to imagine and understand a scene, but doesn't tell you what you think/feel too much. That's something that wasn't true of a lot of writing in older CRPGs, where they used description, there the writing very often told you that some jerk of a character was "impressive" or "masterful" or whatever, which, frankly, is outside the scope of what descriptive text should be saying. How my character feels about someone is my business - and Eternity seems to understand this (so far, at least, but it's been pretty consistent). Also it's been interesting enough, so far, that I haven't felt the urge to just click through stuff, except, sadly, with a certain dwarf lady fairly early on, where the whole convo was so obvious and overplayed (despite being plot-vital) that I had resist the urge to clickclickclick pretty hard! (I succeed!) The only complaint I have about the voice-acting, myself, is that it's really odd to have some parts of a sentence voiced, and not others, and to have equally-important-seeming dialogue branches in a conversation seemingly be randomly voiced or not. I mean, I think I can see why it is - all the un-voiced stuff in otherwise-voiced convos seems to be optional stuff that might have been added later to provide better explanations/background for things, or options specific to certain stats etc. - so presumably it was added in after the voice acting was done. I can't really explain why the beginnings of some sentences seem to be cut off, though.

The problem he's explaining is pretty specific, and doesn't have to do with anything you're suggesting, so that actually is condescending and unhelpful, sadly. I mean, I think he's messing up, but not in any of those ways. The big problem I had when I started playing Eternity was engagement/disengagement - specifically, I forgot that it existed. So I kept doing things like trying to reposition guys who were engaged, and BLAM, they're getting slapped around (or even insta-downed) and I'm wondering why the hell it's happening. This despite having DM'd tons of 3E and 4E D&D! Once I realized that, though, everything became a lot more sane. Also remember SLOW MODE for combat! It doesn't have to be a pause-fest! You can just have it go slow. Indeed - I went into the cave, saw the bear before it saw me (I love scouting mode, btw, and that it isn't class-specific), and though "This is a CRPG, in those, and indeed in most computer games, bears are total and utter terrifying bastards, so I will return later!".

Made a $20 pledge, got one of the best CRPGs I've played? Yeah, I'd say I'm pretty damn happy with that. :D I mean, maybe it'll all go to hell later (and man the on-off voice-acting is weird), but right now, we're looking at top 10 CRPGs ever material for me, and I've been playing CRPGs since 1988, so, that's a lot of CRPGs. It's not worth thinking about "What if i'd paid more", because when you're paying for more than "just the game", you're always basically paying to further support the development of the game, not to actually get things, and you have to acknowledge that. Given you helped create something which is already regarded as a classic, you should probably be pretty pleased with yourself. I'm too poor to engage in that, sadly, but I am very happy I backed Eternity.

The whole point of Pillars of Eternity is that Obsidian looked at what was totally awesome about Infinity Engine-style CRPGs, and what was kind of rubbish/time-waste-y, and they stuck firmly with what was awesome and amplified and enhanced it, whilst revising or replacing the stuff that wasn't very good. Having now played it, I can say they were ASTONISHINGLY successful at this. Encumbrance was not awesome. It wasn't fun, it didn't engage the brain in a testing way, it was a just tedious deal that wasted the odd ten or thirty minutes now and then, or caused the odd bit of frustration. I'm all for preparation/planning, but that should be in terms of resource use and what characters to take somewhere, not "Have I emptied everyone's bags?". So, no, they should not bring back encumbrance. They have a great system with Eternity, and they should stick with it. Especially as implementing a full-on encumbrance system that is actually complex enough to be worth having is a non-trivial task, which would involve both game designers and programmers (and indeed might require certain areas to be redesigned!). Let's be clear - I've played a bazillion games with elaborate inventory management of different kinds, and encumbrance is just not suitable for this particular kind of game. This isn't some sort of survival horror deal, or simulation-type first-person/third-person CRPG, where it might make sense.

I have to admit, I was surprised how MUCH cheaper it was - as an "early bird" I got it for about £14, now the same SKU is £34.99, so that alone is enough to make me feel VERY good about backing (even at 50% off as the inevitable Steam sale in 6 months or a year might be, I'd still be ahead!).

There's no way to do anything in this world without having to make compromises. There is absolutely nothing about Eternity or any other game in existence, that is not, on some level, a compromise. So this "Well, it's a compromise and thus bad!" approach to this makes literally no sense. It gets rolled out like clockwork, but it never has made sense as a free-standing, context-less criticism. The real question is, how do you lose, how much do you gain, when you implement MP? If we look at the Infinity Engine games, they had multiplayer and lost approximately nothing. I mean, does anyone think BG1/2 were "compromised" in a negative sense by their multiplayer? If so, please explain how, in detail. With a game like this, multiplayer is not a gigantic technical obstacle, and we also need to remain sane and remember that the team who development multiplayer, would not be the content team. I've bolded that so no-one gets confused and starts making wild claims about how implementing multiplayer would prevent X areas or Y bosses being implemented in an expansion, or starts claiming that MP would "impinge upon" content in general. It would not. The team developing multiplayer would largely be programmers, not content developers or artists. Now, the nature of Eternity means that MP would have to be kind of limited - you'd need one player to be the "main", and the other player wouldn't be able to interact the same way as them with the NPCs and so on. They'd largely be controlling, say, half the party in combat and dungeon-type situations. Anything more than that would have needed development from the ground up, like D:OS. So I think we have a situation where we have a relatively low cost to acquiring MP, but also a relatively low (at least at first glance) benefit from acquiring MP. So one could go either way on it.

Indeed, talk about "No true Scotsman...", I think we can safely say that Katarack's definition of "What is an RPG" is pretty much specific to Katarack and no-one else. It's certainly not broadly accepted, because RPG is a very wide and all-embracing term in computer games, rather than a very narrow and specific one. Every CRPG I can think of that's actually good at anything sacrifices one area that he highlights in order to succeed in another. What I think is particularly funny, looking at things historically, is this insistence that the ME games are merely "shooters with RPG elements", when pretty much every RPG on the market is some genre of game "with RPG elements" (including the IE series - RTS with RPG elements, Fallout - Turn-based tactical game with RPG elements, then later "shooter with RPG elements", and so on and so forth). Back on topic, if we want non-backers to buy this, and importantly, to go on and buy the expansion and/or sequels, the main things needed are: 1) For the game to be good fun for people who aren't hardcore Infinity Engine-series fans. Some of them will be people who played the original IE games, and have fond memories of them, but were never "serious" players. Others will never have played them, and just like RPGs in general, whether it's Skyrim or ME or whatever that was their actual entry point. 2) Publicity. Twitch streaming will help, a lot, but word-of-mouth is going to be the killer. If the game is good enough, and accessible enough (which isn't necessarily super-accessible, but accessible enough), then we can happily go around recommending it to every even slight RPG fan we know, which is a hell of a lot more people than backed it or even seem to have heard of it. I mean, most of my closer friends at least like RPGs - many have played or still play P&P RPGs, for example. Most of them seem to have heard of the new Torment game, but almost none of them seem to be aware of Pillars of Eternity, outright confusing it with Torment, and not knowing anything about it. If the game I get on the 26th is good enough and accessible enough that they'll like it, that's going to change, real soon! If it isn't, though, I will wait until it is - it might be that I have to wait until the party member AI goes in before recommending it to some people, for example. Better that they wait and have a good experience, than get it on release and be pissed off.

They kind of relate. Selling to non-backers means having a broader appeal (which means including features like companion AI, currently absent), but the sort of people who loathe ME3 tend to sneer at that.

A cRPG elitist here... Mass effects' story was great (Star control 3 FTW) ,the universe and species were interesting ,the character interactions were interesting This is true. I enjoyed the HELL out of ME. ME2, I enjoyed much less. ME3 I hated. A lot. It's not because I'm some kind of elitist; it's because the game became much more linear and limited, and at the same time the "cinematic" quality became much more pronounced. It became less and less of a game and more and more of an interactive movie, and this was intentional, and I didn't like it. That's not true. I've logged hundreds of hours on all three games (ME2 is the best, for my money, ME3 by far the worst if we ignore multiplayer), and ME1 is not "more of a game" than ME2. That's just completely unjustifiable. The idea that even ME3 is an "interactive movie" is beyond a joke, frankly. It's far more of a game, with far more important choices than many well-regarded CRPGs.

I'd really like to know that too. I'm fine with resource-burning abilities requiring activation, but if we have to micro absolutely everything, well I guess I'll definitely be playing on Hard because at least it'll be less tedious that way!

IME with the BB, this is not the case with P:E. Sure, some talents are better than others, and some combinations of talents are better than other combinations (e.g. not stacking Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization on a fighter is sub-optimal), but I've (intentionally and not) made such "dumb" choices when playing with the BB, and while they do make a noticeable difference, it's not so big that my sub-optimal character feels "crippled" in any way. Compared to, say, an IWD fighter specializing in quarterstaves (no good fighter-usable quarterstaves in the game), or a DnD3 fighter with low STR and a stupid selection of feats. I.e., in this case I am fairly convinced that this is a theoretical rather than practical issue. I don't know how closely the P:E designers feel they've reached their "no trap choices" goal, but that has been a goal from the start and from where I'm at it shows. In an MMO I can totally understand that. In a single-player game, not so much. Experienced players that give up at the first sign of frustration don't exist, because they never get experienced that way. They will just start a new game. Probably several. They enjoy playing with different builds after all. I could live with that, no problem. That said, many people ITT have been arguing for a single respec tied to the story, not a feature comparable to Trial of Iron. That's not something you typically disable in an option. I've had that at the back of my mind when discussing it. Going through this linearly: 1) "They've avoided trap choices". I think you will understand my skepticism here. I can't even count the games (computer and tabletop) where the designers claim they've "avoided trap choices" and the like, yet, when you actually play them, they've got plenty of them. And yes always the fans of the game will say "Oh that's theoretical rubbish!" until two months post-release when they're writing an angry post about how unbalanced Ability X is! If they've achieved it, awesome, and the whole issue will become merely "how well did we explain abilities" instead, but like, I'll believe it when I've seen it. 2) "Experienced players don't quit at the first sign of frustration". I agree. What I'm describing isn't "the first sign of frustration", it's a character going from powerful and able to sub-par. I've seen this happen in single-player games due to patches, many times, and I am an experienced+ player, and whilst I do not go like RAAAAGEQUIT!! or whatever, what I know happens is that I play less and less because it's so disappointing, until I trail off and stop. And I think less of the game, permanently. I might try it again in a year or two or whatever, but that kind of power-drop is a game-breaker for me, and hurts DLC/expansion/sequel sales. What's made it vastly less common is that respecs have become more common, and they usually negate the issue (unless the entire class stops working, which is rare). MMOs pretty always have respecs so... "Enjoy playing different builds..." is irrelevant to the problem. When you're playing a character you like, and they go from effective to kinda-rubbish, that's not "playing a different build", that's having your PC ruined. Also, you're totally mistaken to suggest that ALL experienced CRPGs like playing different builds. You really couldn't be more wrong - most of the keen CRPG buyers I know buy a game, play the HELL out of it, including every sidequest and DLC they can find, with one character, then either don't play it again for years, or half-heartedly try some other characters, but never get very far. Whereas I tend to play dozens of builds not very far until I find one I love. But I'm atypical, as I said. I'm beyond just "experienced" and into "hobbyist" or the like - many posters here are too. 3) Well yeah, I don't like the "one quest" approach, as it's the worst of both worlds - in that you know you can respec, but only once ever, so don't mess it up! Better to go with an Iron Man-style approach where you can either do it when necessary, or not do it at all and live with stuff.