demeisen

​ Yeah... I'd agree that Defiance Bay could have been tightened up a little. You can get through it, but it always felt to me like a part of the game that's stretched a bit thin, and probably the weakest act. I did like playing many parts of it... it's just that there's a lot of running back and forth to be done. ​ ​ Priests do get those abilities, though. They get a range of healing spells (the "restore endurance" line), as well as anti-undead spells, and they can pick them at cast-time, as opposed to needing to memorize them in advance. I depended on Durance's healing extensively, and his buffs were indispensable. (Oh... just occurred to me that you might be talking about health instead of endurance. That's only regained by resting AFAIK, and for good gameplay reasons. They were trying to avoid the "totally recharge after each fight" mechanic that has been dumbing down CRPGs for decades now. Around that, I wish they'd gone even further than they did). ​ ​I'd have to disagree about magic, too. My PC was a wizard, and he felt quite powerful to me. I'm not sure the class-to-class comparison thing makes so much sense in this kind of game, but his AoE and CC abilities were formidable. I believe he out-damaged anyone else in my party, although some of that might just be because he was my main character. Still, I'd only rank ciphers as possibly exceeding the wizard's ability to singlehandedly alter the entire course of a battle. ​ ​

​ ​Why should it be a much larger team than PoE1 though? PoE1 (even before WM) was easily a 100+ hour game with 3 major chapters, several different cultures, many voice acted NPCs, and a whole bunch of different places to see. I honestly wouldn't want the game to be much bigger than it was. ​ Aside from length, there's also schedule to consider. I wouldn't want the PoE2 team to be worked to the bone for the whole development process: they should get to have lives outside work. On the other side of that coin: they get to start with the PoE1 engine and a bunch of existing spell effects, art assets, unit tests, and so forth when making PoE2. PoE1 had to invent everything, including the basics of combat mechanics and movement. Only Ob really knows the details, but from the outside, it feels like a similar sized game could be made with a similar sized team without oppressive schedules. ​ I dunno... when budgets and teams get too big, games tend to lose their soul, partly because they have to pander to the ADD crowd and appeal to the LCD so they can sell a bazillion copies to recoup dev costs. PoE1 feels to me like about the upper limit before you start getting those bland AAA-studio efforts. Give me a single PoE, Grimrock2, or even Terraria any day over a hundred mindless "RPGs" like Oblivion or Skyrim. PoE1 had a soul. I think not trying to bite off more than you can chew helps with that. ​ ​

Good comments, Tigranes. I totally agree about the problems you raise around 10-20% finishing, whiners about not being 8000 hours long with every single object shiny-new compared to the last one, etc. ​ ​In my mind though, it's a way to build a business model that doesn't actually depend on those folks. I'll make some numbers up from naught but my own imagination to demonstrate . I think the original PoE was dozens of developers (not hundreds) for a couple years (inc all the engine work, etc). Let's say that ten developers could pull off an expansion game in 6 months, if they don't have to please the 8000-hour crowd and the gotta-have-new-pine-tree-models crowd. ​ ​Just really rough numbers, let's say a developer costs $200K/yr total (salary + office space + medical + whatever). Ten folks over 6 months is a 1 million dollar budget, break even. Call it $1.25 mil with a healthy profit %. Let's say they clear 60% of the revenue after game-store cut, engine licensing, etc. That requires 83K sales @ $25. ​ ​That's what, maybe 12-14% of the total PoE customers? So, relatively speaking, not huge, due to forgoing the expensive parts of developing a big-bang. The "gotta be 8000 hours" folks can buy big-bang releases every 3-4 years and be happy. The relatively smaller, hardcore-RPG crowd who'd be happy with more content on the same engine might still be enough to sustain it. ​ ​Could it get 80+K customers? No idea. Doesn't seem inconceivable though. ​ ​

Fair enough. Oddly, I typically don't either, but then, it usually implies something like the phone-style "freemium" thing, which are annoying. Edit: or MMPORGs, where you pay for continued access to the game, which I don't like either. Curious about your objections if it's more oriented towards "delivery of future standalone games". It feels to me more like buying a bundle of games, rather than the traditional meaning of "subscription gaming". Perhaps I could have picked a less loaded word, too .

What do you all think of this idea? ​ ​We had PoE1, and then WM1&2. I don't know how well WM did commercially, but seems like it got less press than the base game did. My gut feel is that it didn't sell as well. Now there's a PoE2 in the works, possibly sometime in 2018, as a "bigger bang" release. Presumably it'll garner PoE1-level press when it launches. OTOH, that kind of thing means 3-4 years between installments, with the risk that if PoE(n) doesn't sell well, there won't be a PoE(n+1). That in turn might mean another decade before another high-calibre game in this niche genre appears. ​ OTOH, smaller, more frequent chunks have a commercial viability problem: how do they do well enough to pay for their own development? The genre isn't big to start with, even under ideal circumstances. ​ ​If memory serves, WM1&2 were each developed in 6 or 8 months. That included considerable new art, new spells and graphical effects, new music, new companion NPCs, new voice acting, and probably other stuff I forgot. Consider a series of standalone (L1+) mini-games based on the PoE engine as it stands today, without any new spells, companions, and so on. Modest levels of new art so places feel new, but considerable art asset re-use. The focus would be on telling a new and interesting story, but more in the 20-hour class than the 100+ hour class. I'm thinking something that feels like NWN-modules did, but made by professionals. I remember some excellent fan-made NWN modules that were great fun to play even with no new art whatsoever. ​ ​Normally that would appear to be a difficult commercial proposition. After the first one, the press would ignore you, sales would fall off, and it would collapse after 1 or 2. But imagine a subscription model for such smaller, inexpensive-to-produce yet professionally made content. Maybe one every 6 months made with a modest team. Seems possible, if they forgo UI changes and new spells and whatnot. If enough people wanted ongoing PoE content and subscribed, that provides a more stable revenue stream than standalone WM-style sales would. They'd be more accessible than WM was due to being standalone, and anyone could start playing with any given one. ​ ​Of course, one danger lies with phone-it-in pulp. "Yeah, yeah, here's another one with Generic RPG Story #894." But with good writers on board, that wouldn't have to be a problem for a long time. I feel there are a large number of poignant stories to be told in the world of Eora, and the game clearly has a talented team behind it. If done well, it'd feel like seeing different events and different people, but nonetheless forming a part of the fabric of its world. ​ Can't speak for anybody else, but I'd be all about that kinda thing. Call it $25-every-6-or-8-months subscription, min 1 year, discounts if you buy 2+ years at once, so there's an incentive to subscribe for a long time. If you are subscribed on day N, you get the next one that comes out on day N+182. None of this precludes bigger-bang PoE2 style releases. Just means Ob would have a revenue stream to make more content with the same engine. ​

True... and a demand that's sunk many a sequel, IMHO. Either they end up stretched too thin, or they blow up into development hell. Personally I hope for PoE2 they shoot for something similar in scope to PoE1. New story, new part of the world to explore, tweaking and improving as they go... but bigger? Meh.

​Exactly! Also, you get to try a decent number of classes in a single playthrough, and you get interesting synergies between the classes where their abilities augment each other. E.g making a line of tanks to keep creatures off your softer chars, but you've run out of tanks, so you use a cypher or druid to "adopt" another one or two in the right place at the right time to keep the battle from falling apart. The more everything is squished into just a few team members, the less interesting and positional it all gets. ​ ​Thankfully, I haven't heard so much as a rumor about reducing the party size for PoE2, but in case anybody at Ob is entertaining the slightest inkling of a thought about that during the design process... please allow me to buy you a long series of beers until you get so drunk you have forgotten all about the idea when you get back to work the next day . ​

Seconded. And thirded. And fourthed. I actually like turn based combat CRPGs a lot, but it wouldn't be PoE any more that way. Also, a smaller party would remove a lot of the tactical interest that's available now. You'd have to go less specialized and more general with character builds, and there wouldn't be as many positional tactics possible. On the other hand, a larger party would become unwieldy, especially in hard fights where you need to micro them all. I feel they made the right call with party size for PoE1. Hope it stays for PoE2.

This helps quite a bit in my experience. For my PoTD run with a PC wizard, I intentionally beefed up his defense all around, both in terms of stats, items, and spells. It really helped. Of course you still have to be careful, but I liked the challenge of having to use reasonable tactics, rather than one tactic all the time.

He has been making games based on the same engine since before the infinity engine existed and it has not aged anything resembling well. I bought most of his games and have played through two. Yeah... you don't really play Spiderweb's games for the visuals . The first one I tried was pretty good for story, dialog, and writing, and OK for combat. Graphics straight out of the early 90's.

You could try using your bare hands. ​ ​(Some older gamers or younger ones who've played older games will catch the reference...) ​

I have found a simple solution. Play on Path of the Damned, and there are plenty enough enemies for everybody to end up with a bunch up in their face. No need to be stingy with them, plenty to go around. ​ ​(OK, ok, I jest, but it does make CC pretty important, which seems like a good thing. Tank aggro tactics get boring fast). ​ ​

Yeah! I like those too. It's one of those things I doubt an AAA studio that throws 250 people and 80 million dollars at a game would do. The story cards somehow add a really nice feel to the game - feels like the ending of a good chapter of a book, but where you get to make choices that matter for the characters. Also, like the rest of PoE, their art style is just really nice. (That's not to say they should be overused, but they're a brilliant idea that worked great in PoE1).

If you're brand new to the genre (and sometimes even if you're not), it can help to play through one or two of the early areas to get a feel for the game. Then toss that away, and start over fresh, with a better idea of how party based RPGs play. You can even experiment with a few of the classes that way, to see what you like. One tip: talk to the important NPCs, and go through any conversation options they offer you (which will depend on your char's reputation, how you have treated others before, etc). They'll often have things for you to do, or may offer to join your party. Shoot for an eventual party size of 4-6 depending on your preferences. As for "really good", if you like this genre (which you're about to find out ), then IMHO, PoE is one of the best. It has some flaws, but generally it's great. If you end up not liking the genre, well, nothing suits everyone's tastes, so it won't seem very good then. Difficulty is subjective. "Normal" is probably good to start with for a brand new player, and I think you'll quickly get the hang of the system and want to bump it up. You can bump the level up during a playthrough to "Hard", but you can't (unless this has changed recently) bump it up to the highest level, called PoTD, so you have to start on that one if you want it. Probably not for your first run, but honestly it's not that bad, just takes a little more understanding of the combat system. Have fun, post with questions, people will help. Engage your imagination! This style of game is all about getting into the world the game is providing for you to explore. The more you can do that, and let yourself go there in your mind, the more enjoyment there is to be had.

​ ​Oddly specific... If you're on Linux, drop this into your Pillars of Eternity directory and it'll do that for you. I'm sure there's a Windows equivalent, but I don't have it at the tip of my tongue. #!/bin/bash pgrep -f 'PillarsOfEternity' || ./start.sh

Dread of the dark. ​Where situationally appropriate, areas should be dark. Long lost caverns full of undead creatures for example. An abandoned dungeon that my party is the first to explore in 500 years should not already be illuminated. A torch or light spell should be needed, with visibility limited to some radius around the light source, to create a sense of foreboding and dread of what may be lurking in the shadows just beyond where my light reaches. ​ ​Not everywhere, not all the time, but where it would naturally fit. If your torch or spell goes out in mid-fight, your characters should be at a huge disadvantage when fighting creatures that don't have or need eyes until you can re-establish a light source. ​ ​(Some older CRPGs from the 80's would not only require you to use a light to see anything whatsoever in dungeons, but sometimes would actively sabotage your light source in some places, which could get... tense). ​

I recently popped back onto the forums after a longish absence, and found some threads about PoE2. This is just bloody fantastic news. Borderline absurd really. ​ Provided the same deal holds: I can buy it on GOG with no DRM, then I will happily back a KS for 2 or 3 times the amount that I backed PoE1, which was more of an unknown quantity then. I feel that while PoE1 was not a perfect game, Obsidian delivered solidly and exceeded what I hoped for as a fan of the genre. The market for complex, character driven, dialog-heavy, tactical RTwP, 3rd person classic RPGs is quite niche, and after the early 2000's I thought we'd never see another one. Everyone wants "action RPGs" without much to read. I'm really happy we're getting new games in this style. There are some other nicely done modern re-takes on this genre from other companies too, but PoE is the cream of the crop, IMHO. ​ ​I also really have to throw my hat in with Glenjones130486's comment earlier in the thread: I'm REALLY happy with PoE1's art direction. The art and graphics folks nailed it. It's prettier than most games having massively larger budgets and art departments. While obviously I want to explore new areas that feel like different parts of the world, I wouldn't at all mind strategic re-use of art assets to save development costs. As a player I don't feel the need for new barrels, butterflies, wagon wheels, and pieces of cheese, let alone any major style overhaul. It's about the prettiest game I can remember. Just carry on, and it's all good . ​ ​Anyway, thanks Obsidian peoples. Sometimes internet forums get a little... infuriated by minutia. Hopefully it's nice to hear there are a lot of us appreciate what you're doing. ​

Personally I feel that RPG combat / resting / ability / etc mechanics are a bit rock/paper/scissors in the sense that for any conceivable system, there are well reasoned and valid arguments to be made against it. There's no right answer, but maybe some that are less wrong than others, or at least wrong in different ways. ​ ​I find myself not caring so much about the details, which I trust Obsidian to do well, as the preservation of an aspect of RPGs I feel has teetered on the brink of extinction. I don't want my unit of consideration to be a fight or even a small group of fights such as between frequent camps. I want it to be larger in scope. This happened sometimes in WM: you knew you weren't going to rest or leave the area until you finished it. This forces you to play more strategically rather than ability spam+rest+repeat. It encourages (but doesn't require) stealth scouting to see what all you're up against so you can maximize your chances. It encourages minding environmental cues ("big pile of bones outside this cave? hmm...."). It makes you carefully consider how to beat any given group with the minimum resource expenditure, so you increase your odds of surviving the remainder of the area. Areas that happened in POE1 were ones I most enjoyed, especially when it was a serious challenge to get through. So much that I forced myself to play that way even when the game didn't require it. Even going back to mid 1980's classic RPGs like BT1, it was much more satisfying than single-fight oriented games. Some of my favorite memories of BT1 were diving further into a dungeon than I knew I should go, and barely making it back to an inn with 1 of my original 6 characters left alive, and that one beat all to hell. But making it. Or sometimes, not . I don't want my hand held. I don't want the game to do the thinking for me and give me frequent chances to rest and heal and get spells and abilities back. I want adventuring in an area to ​feel like a serious undertaking, rather than a series of individual encounters met near full strength. I want to be forced into creativity with the rag-tag set of oddball abilities remaining, so I can scrape by and survive that last fight that looks hopeless on the surface. ​ ​Yes, that all has problems too. See first paragraph. But the problems it has are the ones I mind less than I mind the alternatives. ​

​ I actually finished WM1&2 months ago, but wanted to post this before I have completely forgotten what I wanted to say. Summary: I feel WM improved some of the weaker parts of the original PoE, while maintaining an extremely high standard for the artwork and music. The main drawback, IMHO, is that it's awkward to actually play WM if you have finished PoE. My playthrough: WM1 from a new game, with level scaling difficulty = Path of the Damned ​PC = wizard, with story NPCs I started the WM content as soon as I could, which may have been around L7 I think? First, the good stuff: Combat: I am happy to report that I enjoyed the WM combat much more than I did the PoE combat. I loved PoE a lot, but felt combat was its weakest aspect - not because of the system or mechanics, which are fine, but because it was too easy outside of a few boss fights. In contrast, the first area I played in WM1 at L7 (I think it was) on PotD was really a whole lot of fun. It made the combat system shine: I had to really scrape and use every resource at my disposal to survive the level. It was some of the funnest combat I've had in the PoE system, and that fun was mostly maintained throughout both parts of the expansion. Top marks here. It's what I knew PoE could be! I felt that I had to actually think about what I was doing, rather than go through fights on autopilot. Positional tactics started to matter more, as did attacking your enemy's weaknesses. Good stuff. Nice improvement. Artwork: welp, it's settled then. I am officially in love with the artwork in WM and PoE. I suppose art is in the eye of the beholder, but this is one of the most beautiful games I've ever encountered, and WM has continued that. The new areas are wonderful to explore, and several of the new creatures put a smile on my face when I first saw them (one in particular, which I won't spoil). The little details make the world come alive: ripples of foam off rocks in streams, bloody trails leading to injured animals, butterflies around shafts of sunlight in forests, streams of wheat coming off grindstones in mills. I always play fully zoomed in, just to enjoy the environments. I have this mental image of teams of artists chained up in a dark basement under Obsidian's studios, subsisting on only insects and what moisture they can lick from the damp walls... Music: I feel the best of the new music tracks are a step up from the original game's music. Won't give spoilers, but a few of the tracks are really nice, and they do a good job of fitting the mood of the different areas. ​Writing and story: I had some comments here, but I apologize, it's months since I finished playing and I forgot what I wanted to say ​ Now, things I think could be improved: One thing I found a little annoying, and which may have hurt the commercial viability of the expansion, was the way it tied into the game. After installing it I wasn't even sure what I was supposed to do to play it. I ended up starting new characters and playing through until I could start WM1, but you have to be a dedicated PoE fan for this . Or, I guess you could find an old save if you have one, but you might not, and anyway it's hard to pick up an old save after not playing the game for the best part of a year. Also: After finishing WM and really enjoying the expansion's combat difficulty, I was dumped back into the rest of PoE, and from there combat was a let-down. Even on PoTD with level scaling, I felt really, really overpowered, and fights stopped being fun because I didn't have to try. I never even had to dip into spells beyond the per-encounter ones, and I'm playing a wiz PC. Something didn't quite mesh very well here. (I realize it's very hard to make this work out for games with so much optional content). My overall score for the expansion: 9/10. I enjoyed it a lot, and it was a pleasure to explore more of this world. Thanks a lot to everyone to worked on this. Must. Have. More. PoE....

​ Interesting post Stoner. ​I'm quoting the above sentences in particular because I think they (almost inadvertently, it feels) capture an important theme. Any game with combat is, at some level, math. Some genres expose those machinations more than others. CRPGs with their roots in pen and paper D&D tend towards this exposure, but machinery aside, I think imagination is a critical factor in whether a game is immersive. Your second sentence above frames imagination in opposition to the immersion the first sentence desires, but to me they are almost synonymous. I have found immersion in first player games, third player iso-view games like PoE or BG, or even purely text based games. One of my fondest computer gaming memories is finishing Colossal Cave back in the late 70's on a PDP-11, in the pre-internet-hint days. It was purely text; there were no graphics at all. The entire experience was played out in the player's imagination, but I was no less immersed in it, any more than a book is less immersive than a movie. In fact, almost the reverse. Sometimes I have the hardest time with immersion in first person view games, because they trigger an "uncanny valley" effect and almost attempt an end-run around my imagination. It's rare to find one that augments its polygons with enough language. ​ PoE occupies a hybrid niche for me, but it's a combination that works. It's got richly beautiful level design and artwork, augmented by textual descriptions to help your imagination fill in background and detail that's not easily conveyed using pixels alone. ​

I don’t think so The day Steam is the only way to buy videogames for PC, you will most likely stop buying games but you will still be able to play all the DRM-free games you bought prior to the apocalypse… Hey, that’s one of the main advantages of DRM-free games: you can install/play them for as long as you want, without worrying for the financial health of the store you bought them from. Ah, good point.... your "... stop buying new games" version is more accurate than what I wrote. All the ones I've bought on GOG will still work into the future, although it would be unfortunate to have to stop buying new ones. ​ Sadly, it doesn't even seem so far-fetched. I've already passed over a number of games I would have liked to buy, because Steam was the only way to do so.

​ Same here, which would make me sad, because I do so love PoE. Tyranny would otherwise be an automatic buy for me, but the Steam client is never getting anywhere near my system. I realize the distribution decisions are ultimately out of the hands of Obsidian, but I'll wager they have some weight to throw around, so I'd like to see them lean on the publisher to support a GOG release. ​ ​I've been buying personal computer games since the 1970's when they were distributed on cassette tape because floppy disk drives were too expensive for most people to own. [Clears throat, adjusts pocket protector... ] The day Steam is the only remaining distribution channel for the games I want to buy is the day I stop playing computer games for good. I sincerely hope I don't live to see that come to pass. ​

​​ I hold with those who want a similar level range, say 1-16 or so. I think the PoE1 system with perhaps a handful of new abilities, spells, and monsters along the lines of what WM provided, but set in a different part of Eora with a brand new story and new characters would be wonderful. Basically, give me more where PoE1 came from, and I'm a happy camper. I love WM1 and 2, but it feels like it didn't reach the same level of market exposure and press buzz that PoE itself did (so, I would hazard a guess of lower sales). I suspect that connecting into the middle of the already extant PoE game made it less accessible, but a proper sequel wouldn't have that difficulty. What I most want is for this sub-genre of game to be financially sustainable, so we can have a bunch of them even though party based iso-view CRPGs are a tiny niche in the whole gaming space. PoE1 addressed a pent up demand, so there was a burst of nostalgia fueled interest, but can that sustain multiple, high quality sequels? ​ ​I'm optimistic that it is possible, if Obsidian plays their hand carefully. The sequels have to feel like they aren't just phoning it in, blockbuster-part-17 style. They have to be accessible to people who've never played PoE1, while still capturing the hearts of those who did. They have to feel fresh, while still feeling like part of the same universe. They have to give us many beautiful new places to explore, while not being so expensive to make that they fail to recapture development costs. ​ ​My guess is that a series could be financially viable, in part because there's a lot from PoE1 that can be re-used to save development costs. How far they will try to take the franchise, I guess only time will tell. ​ ​

I liked the game a lot back then, and like it even more now. Numerous improvements and enhancements to the core game, as well as the White March expansions have made it a pleasure to re-visit a year on. White March has continued the very high artistic standard of the original game. ​ So yes, thanks to everyone who's worked on PoE. I was starting to lose heart after a decade of games calling themselves "RPGs" using first-person-shooter style combat mechanics, lacking party-based game play, with simplistic writing and dialog, dumbed down combat systems, and consolified UIs. I often ended up thinking, "That's it then, the genre is dead and the corpse has stopped twitching." Yet in the past few years there have been some great RPGs from small to mid sized studios, and PoE is the crown jewel in that renaissance, in my view. So thanks not just for making the game, but for restoring my faith that projects like this can still succeed in an industry that was having its soul ripped out through a spreadsheet. ​

Though... there are rumors floating about that Tyranny may only be available via Steam. If anyone from Obsidian is reading and Obs has any choice in the matter, I'd like to register a heartfelt plea for you to push the publisher for a GOG release as well. A lot of us will never permit Steam anywhere near our systems, so we won't be buying the game if that's the only way to do so. Regardless of the relative merits of each outlet, there are important reasons to avoid a single entity gaining de facto control over PC game distribution. Competition is good for both consumers and game studios. Although, in an amusingly ironic sense, perhaps the game's titular theme would indeed be well served by a Steam-only release .