Search the Community

I got a solid 18 hours out of this game which is about 5 more than I got out of Bioshock Infinite (which was $60) so I'm satisfied. I made 2 or 3 characters to figure out how to play the game, then went with an elven ranger. When I died, at least half of my party was level 5, about 14-15 hours into the game. I was being pretty careful to sweep town centers for quests and thought I was handling what I was coming across pretty well, with one out of area exception I managed to run from (tons of drakes coming from the craters). After a short questline and a battle where I brought some research papers to the compass, I returned to town to find a bunch of clockwork golems of one kind or another had taken over the area. I thought I might be able to walk away from it, but doing so seemed too stupid and disingenuous to the spirit of the game, so I went in to the building and tried to clear it. My party had nothing that I could throw at them. Once I had a party member drop, I was stuck, because of course you know, no man gets left behind. I tried a number of different techniques to split up the enemy, but at the end, I was too low on spells and health and one isolated creature wiped my four remaining characters. So here are my problems with the game for hardcore: Can't retreat from areas during combat. Too many enemies have non-sense run speeds. Can't abandon a party member even when rescue is hopeless. Enemies can't be coaxed around the map AND NPCs won't move to help you. The combination is these silly, isolated battles within earshot of one another. All together, the play feels like I'm in a straight jacket. This game has about zero replay value because everything spawns the exact same way. That's all fine. I was having a ball. I just don't understand why you would bother with a hardcore setting at all when the game is clearly no set up for it without reading spoilers and running from urgent plot points. Like I said, I had a good time with the game. The 15 hours I played continuously with my character were good. I'm just not going to run at this thing again until I look up some mods or something to fix it. Have fun.

This problem is not unique to Pillars of Eternity. However, it is still interesting from design perspective and overall enjoyment of the game. Casual players usually stick to the main quest, don't feel compelled to check every corner of the game, look behind every rock. They don't do every single side quest and therefore they have lower level and worse equipment. It's funny because they would prefer the game to be easier but their play style make it harder. Hardcore gamers on the other hand don't want to miss anything. They will walk into every house, look for every hidden stash and usually complete every single side quest before moving the story forward. This result in them having much better equipment and more experience than the former players. For the people looking for a challenge the game becomes less challenging. System of additional quests and rewards seems broken as it does exactly the opposite. People who should get more challenge get more smooth experience while people looking for an easy game get it on hard mode... It would be boring to remove side quests, having quests without rewards would also be rather bad. How to fix this?

If they asked me, I'd say an open RPG for Battle Angel Alita. She already has amnesia, there would be tons of possible quest arcs/factions, it has the deepest story (surprisingly) I've ever read, and James Cameron could use a larger base of BAA fans before he finally gets around to making the movie. Cameron of course is focused on the action aspects of the manga, so he probably won't feel threatened by any other interpretations of the story.

http://www.formspring.me/GZiets/q/414930203056307948 George also talks a little bit about Woedica (click his name, to get to his Formspring account and you can see for yourself). However, found this and thought "That would be really cool". The God thing that is, and praying for survival. [Tribute to God] stuff. [Camp]-stuff as well as [Temple]-stuff? Thoughts?

* 1st Should Economy cost more on higher difficulty? In Baldur's Gate (once upon a time) I played one game with "Tactical Settings". It made Bandit Raids more rough and more difficult, but more important for this thread, it made the Iron Crisis real. Items broke more often (due to the Iron Crisis), and due to the Iron Shortage all of the "iron" items cost a ton more (and breaking way easier). I think a Short Sword cost around 100~ gold or something similar, whilst on an original vanilla game it goes for something like 10-15 gold. * 2nd Adventurer's Hall also included? This question is regarding the Adventurer's Hall specifically because I am curious to know what people think about companions costing gold from the Adventurer's Hall. If this is the case "Companions for Hire" that is, would they cost even more on... let's say Hardcore? Could you perhaps even be able to "Shut off" the Adventurer's Hall on Hardcore? (In essence: Not being able to hire companions for Hardcore difficulty). * 3rd Adventurer's Hall "Off" on Hardcore? This question is related to the Adventurer's Hall & Hardcore difficulty, or as an option regardless of difficulty. Excluding yourself from the possibility to hire "extras", making the game more difficult naturally and automatically (handicapping yourself, basically). I personally think that if you can turn it "Off" it'd be way more difficult. However, you could just not use it if you don't want to use it, but locking yourself out from it entirely also removes any thoughts of "Backup plans". Without the Adventurers Hall occupying the sub-conscious of the back of your head, it being "Closed" would and should cause even more carefulness in progression of the story. * 4th Why should Economy be affected by higher difficulty? In my opinion, it adds immersion and realism. At least it did for me with BG with Tactics Mods. Finally, this is a lot on "Hardcore", how could it work on easier modes? Is the Adventurers Hall "Free to Hire" on Casual mode?

Some difficulty thoughts, specifically on "Pausing". Could it be time-limited with a cooldown? "You've got 30 seconds to make your decisions" in "Pause-Mode" on Hardcore, or maybe as an "Option"? Personally I think it could be fun, a slider that you can decide for yourself how long of a pause you want. Perhaps you can turn "Pause" off entirely and go "Real Time" entirely. Don't get me wrong, I love the "Pause" function. Just discussing various ways to make a "Sh-- that's difficult!" difficulty Thoughts?

We learned in Update #9 that the team is working on an "Expert" mode, which will be similar in some ways to Fallout: New Vegas hardcore mode. What kind of features do you hope to see in Expert Mode? EDIT: Also, do you feel any of these features should apply to your followers as well, or just the player character?