First impressions thread!

[khermann]

I'll start with my version of the 'bad news', first. Very very early impression. It's generic, pretty, and a long way from done. Less complete than I would have expected for this phase (backer beta). Pathfinding still being such an issue is a concern, you would think this group would have prioritized this aspect and nailed it long ago - I mean, this is fundamental to the engine and gameplay. You don't get that right and nothing else is really going to matter, like a stone in your shoe that you'd just rather forget but it's always there. So, that's unexpected and a little worrisome. Beautiful content and scripted set piece encounters can only go so far. 

 

But oh, it is very, very pretty. The environment visual acuity is clearly where a majority of the man-hours have been spent and I think that isn't a surprise for anyone who has been diligently reading their project update emails. Interaction and character setup is good, if a little generic on build deviation - it's too early for me to judge this fairly, though.

 

I'll stop there to play some more before writing again. So far, fun, good.

[ElvenNeko]

 

 Then i saw my "party". And that will be... just bunch of stupid bots that blindly followed me. Really, why people making pary rpg, if whole party is a nameless garbadge without story and personality? They do not even want to speak with me, not talking about joining the conversations.

 

Do you realise that this is a beta and that they removed all story content including the real companions? Same goes for the combat, There is still lots of bugs and missing features. I'm sure it will improve in the coming months.

 

 

Maybe you right. Well, at least i hope that you do. Because, first - i saw many betas, and they usually have part of the game, but not anything that will not be in game eventually. For example, beta of divinity contained 2 companions, and they was there in release too. But i do saw many party rpg with nameless-mob-team, one of them was even addon to the neverwinter 2, and i certainly do not want to see this kind of approach again.

 

As for the battle system - well if it is not alpha, and really beta - i doubt that anyone will change it because of few people complain in forums. And that is the most sad thing, because it's the only thing that could actually not let me play this game because of my reflexes (that is why i mostly playing rpg, and avoiding action games). But they could at least add some "infinite slowmotion" option or something like that. Maybe speed slowing button.

[Kastlefeer]

Gorgeous village and wilderness, fabulous dungeon, music is nice ... weapons and armor look nice, cipher - barbarian - rogue - druid all seem really neat :D New combat system takes some time to orient too, seems to take a bit from 4e? heh ... I really liked interacting with NPC's, well constructed dialogue.

[Tartantyco]

Maybe you right.

 

 

No, he's not "maybe" right. He is right. If you're going to involve yourself in a beta, at least pay attention to the actual development.

[Kastlefeer]

Oh i forgot to mention I love the guns! The arquebus etc, ... nothing like a teeth rattling, nerve shattering BOOM! .. !! to start a fight :D

[sparklecat]

 

 

 Then i saw my "party". And that will be... just bunch of stupid bots that blindly followed me. Really, why people making pary rpg, if whole party is a nameless garbadge without story and personality? They do not even want to speak with me, not talking about joining the conversations.

 

Do you realise that this is a beta and that they removed all story content including the real companions? Same goes for the combat, There is still lots of bugs and missing features. I'm sure it will improve in the coming months.

 

 

Maybe you right. Well, at least i hope that you do. Because, first - i saw many betas, and they usually have part of the game, but not anything that will not be in game eventually. For example, beta of divinity contained 2 companions, and they was there in release too. But i do saw many party rpg with nameless-mob-team, one of them was even addon to the neverwinter 2, and i certainly do not want to see this kind of approach again.

 

As for the battle system - well if it is not alpha, and really beta - i doubt that anyone will change it because of few people complain in forums. And that is the most sad thing, because it's the only thing that could actually not let me play this game because of my reflexes (that is why i mostly playing rpg, and avoiding action games). But they could at least add some "infinite slowmotion" option or something like that. Maybe speed slowing button.

 

Check out the options menu - there's a key to slow down time.

[Ashen Rohk]

Okay, so my first impressions!

 

Cons first:

 

Pathfinding is woeful, especially in combat from both allies and enemies alike. They get stuck on walls and each other a lot.

No indicator about whether or not you can pick a lock or use a key on a door. And not drop anything into the quick slots. I can't get any further into the main temple room under Dyford due to this.

Camping supplies go into your inventory and don't stack on the supply counter.

Some of the letters of text in the menus can be randomly massive for no reason. CraFting.

Some of the party members will stop responding to commands (seems to be BB Fighter especially) or will display other classes' combat abilities.

Would like some further customisation options in character creation, as well as maybe some more expansion on how the skill points and stats affect your abilities.

My journal lost all of my quests on when I loaded in to a save. And the ogre's head was missing from my inventory. On that note, there was a purple highlighted thing in his cave I couldn't interact with - not sure if bug or not.

When not using an ability, I'd like to see party members default to an auto-attack. e.g. ranged wand attack for spellcasters.

 

 

The Pros!

 

Gorgeous. Colourful, interactive and flat out beautiful.

Music is brilliant.

Classes are unique and interesting. Monk is still phenomenally overpowered.

Sleek, good looking and easily navigable user interface

I actually loved the combat. Considering I Ctrl-Y'd my way through my first playthrough of BG2, pausing and thinking through with a massive variety of skills at my hands is awesome. Spamming Armour of Faith before every fight makes me feel awesome. See cons for slight reservation. I felt like a king when I finally took down the crystal eaters and spider queen.

For a handful of sidequests seeing the amount of detail going into the lore is brilliant. The conversations are engaging and not a 'hit continue' prompt. Quests actually seem worth doing, double crossing Nyfre and then murdering Medreth for the loot is hilarious.

 

I'm really liking it. Once the bugs are ironed out this could be my favourite OE game yet!

[Ashen Rohk]

Also, Flames of Devotion is super OP 

 

[RedSocialKnight]

My very first impression: the game is lovely. The promo videos haven't come close to doing justice to how good the environments look.

 

As far as the gameplay goes -- well, it's more different from D&D than I was expecting, and I'm still getting a handle on it.

[Ben007]

As some others have commented, it does not appear to be as developed at this point as I expected it to be.

 

I like the character creation, there are plenty of choices for race, class, etc.

 

Needs more/better choices for hair, especially better hair.

 

Given the limits of the beta there seems to be a good variety of npc's to interact with, creatures and enemies to slay, etc.

 

I have to say I like the idea of getting back to having to actively "search" for hidden items rather than having the hotkey point a neon arrow at them.

 

Ultimately though the massive amount bugs, which even a beta shouldn't have at this point, have made this unplayable for me at this point.

 

Can't finish quests, can't lockpick, can't use the grapple, can't stop getting one-shotted because my weapons and armor have disappeared ... again.

 

A beta test should be about testing the gameplay and mechanics, not getting slapped in the face by massive game-breaking, bugs that QA should have easily spotted and fixed during alpha.

 

For a good idea of what a beta release should be, check out Grim Dawn by Crate.

 

Pillars of Eternity was, and still is, the game I anticipate most.

 

However, if this beta is any indication, I'll be waiting for the final release longer than I thought.

[Racker]

Nice looking.  As I've stated elsewhere, the lack of contrast between the characters and the backgrounds are a big problem for me; I'm colorblind and honestly can't see anything when my party is fighting in the grass.  That, combined with the bad pathing and weird timing of actions makes the combat quite unfun for me.  Hopefully that can all be straightened out because I like world and the character system so far.

 

Long load times are also an issue, and quite a bit of bugginess and general instability.  But it feels nice to have some IE-type fun back after such a long wait. 

[Nomadmerc]

First impressions with a brush on character creation, graphics, and combat.

 

Character creation:

 

   I start the game up having already cropped a characters portrait and imported it into the correct folder so I could play a more preferred portrait. I look at the stats and am confused at first with how bland might,dex, con, etc, are and see clear diversity of build problems. This was a big let down as I really enjoyed the old BG series stat systems that promoted more possible build choices. Looking past this I found the general options for character creation there if not very meaningfully 'there.' 

 

Graphics:

 

   The game world was nicely done and with more polish I am sure it will only improve. The aesthetics of the initial town and several other places I traveled to were well done. The spell effects were mostly fine though the actual spell animations seem not functional. Moving on to the combat next.

 

Combat:  

 

   I had set my difficulty to hard with the strong desire to just try that path of the damned setting yet I stayed with the hard setting.  Entering game my first engagement as a 'blackguard' aka Bleak walker was against the mobs in the second floor of the inn. My party defeated the encounter with both several pauses and micro adjustments mostly to fix the chaos of party members standing still doing nothing. I did not notice all the engaging things in combat that the IE games did right (i.e., task a character to attack and see a response from said character, task a character to heal and see a response, spells having a cast phase that is unique, select a single character instead of the entire party). These functions were nonexistent leaving me puzzled. 

 

The first experience with combat now had me wondering what else was 'missing.'  I had my party leave the town behind having talked to one villager about missing pigs and a urge to go test my party against this so called 'ogre.' What ended up happening though was a long two hours of exploring the world--killing beetles, lions, etc--things that were aggressive and in my explore path as I typically do not follow the go do this quest and return to npc narrative.

 

Upon spending a tremendous amount of resources to survive the various mobs dashing themselves upon my party (a party that was mostly clunky in combat at best and at worst not responsively rewarding) I noticed that I had gained zero experience. I chalked it up at first to a bug then upon reading the forums saw it was not a bug merely a design choice. The two hours now felt less a pocketful of interesting rocks and feathers found with stories to tell to a friend and more a bizarre series of clunky fights and random sights seen. This was more the case after I spent the next half dozen minutes completing a quest and now getting experience. Ten minutes of quest chain vs two hours of do my own thing.

 

A Loud Check Mark yes for exploration, killing things that attack my party, and general character advancement for not following npc quests as a non spiritual successor of the Baldur Gate series.

Edited August 25, 2014 by Nomadmerc

[Mannock]

The first part of my feedback will be highlights of areas and features that stood out in a particular way, both positive and negative along with suggestions how to “fix” those things I find problematic (“don’t criticise if you don’t have a suggestion how to solve the problem”) . The second part is a direct response to the high priority feedback you listed in update #84. I round it off with a summary at the end (and if my spelling sucks, remember, I’m from Swäden).

Part 1 - The shadows of Eslöv

 

Combat

-Difficulty

The main reason I play and like CRPGs is the story, therefor combat isn’t my main focus. In the IE era I always played on easy because games were more difficult back then. In more recent CRPGs I tend to play on normal difficulty setting since games have become a bit more easy these days. PoE is a very difficult game however. I have played the beta on easy and it was still quite difficult and demanded a lot of micromanagement. I don’t want to take anything away from the players who want a challenge but those people won’t be playing on the easy setting anyway and I think easy should be tweaked to the easier side of things. I’m not saying you should make easy a setting which demands nothing of the player at all but I think it should be set slightly easier than it is now.

Interestingly though, when I gained my first level up for the entire party in the beta, battles became significantly easier. So there are balancing issues with the game, which I think you are aware of already.

-Actions in combat

I found it hard to track which actions my characters were up to in combat. I don’t know if there is a cue function but I would like it to be more visually clear what my characters action is right now, and (if there is a cue system) visually clear what actions are cued up.

-Micromanagement

In my taste, there’s a bit too much micromanagement. Every class seem to have several abilities to use making me forced to baby sit most characters (everyone but the fighter), instead of just the usual spellcasters, which is reinforced due to the high difficulty of the game. This can perhaps be rectified if making the easy difficulty setting a bit more easy.

-Pierce/Crush/Slash damage

If I understand the battle log correctly, weapons are a lot of times ineffective (doing no or extremely little damage) if it doesn’t have the right kind of damage type fighting a certain creature. I don’t mind this system in general, however I think the negative effects shouldn’t be so severe as they currently seem to be. I don’t like to be carrying three different weapon sets for every character, switching them back and forth depending on what type of foe I face. The reason for this, is I often find a certain (often magical) weapon I like and stick with it for a long period of time. For example, in BG2 I really liked the Blade of Roses in one of my first playthroughs. Since you find it early and it’s quite a good weapon in the beginning, I  had the weapon equipped for a long period of the game and grew very attached to it during the course of the game. It would have been hugely disappointing if I had to switch it out during (roughly) two thirds of the combat situations since it would have been doing the wrong type of damage.

-Spellcasting

An area that needs improving is the visual feedback of the range of the spell being cast. For example I see a creature at a distance I’m about to attack. I want to let my wizard sling a fireball to start off the fight. My wizard is standing at the back of the party and I am under the assumption he is in range. However, when I click on the creature to activate the spell, my wizard runs forward, to get in range, resulting in him ending up at the front or even ahead of the rest of the group and often at the same time pulling the creature towards him even before having slung his fireball.

A way to fix this could be (when I have selected my spell) to have a line drawn from the wizard to the mouse pointer (the place where I want my fireball to end up). As long as my wizard is in range the line is green (meaning the wizard doesn’t have to move to cast his spell). If the target is too far away, the line turns red, though not the entire line. Only the length lacking to be able to cast the spell (without moving closer) should be colored red. Perhaps this is something that is too difficult to implement, but it is something that would greatly help me setting up my initial attack.

-Formations

I tried to switch formations but wasn’t able to as there only seemed to be the default formation available. I assume there will be more formations to chose from in the final game and also the ability to switch characters around in a formation (so my PC doesn’t necissarily have to be at the front of the group all the time).

 

Graphics

-Overall graphics

I think the game looks really great overall. I find you have hit the right spot in getting that “IE feel” to the game. I’ve seen some people wanting swaying grass and whatnot, but personally I find it good enough as it is.

-Character model in character creation

I think the model of the character in the character creation is too large. It looks odd and chunky. It’s especially odd since in game you don’t see that size of the character again (well, except for the level up screen). I think you should resize the character model to the size you have of the character when bringing up the inventory screen. It would be more fitting and wouldn’t make the chunkyness stand out so much.

-Visual representation of picking talents, spells, etc

I don’t like how you portray the talents and spells during level up. Small icons in a grid  space makes it feel like picking trinkets in the inventory. I’d rather see them placed in a list and make the icons bigger. Picking talents and spells is something special and unique and should visually be presented that way too, in my opinion.

-Picking shapeshift for druid

When picking what animal I want to shapeshift into during character creation, I’d like to get a preview of that the character will look like if shifted. Same goes for the ranger’s animal companions.

-Visual effect of picking a lock

I ran into a locked door in a dungeon. I thought I’d try to pick the lock with my rogue. It was however unclear how I’d go about it. I thought perhaps she would try to pick the locked door automatically but the icon when hovering the mouse pointer over the door was the same icon any other character had when trying to open the locked door. Maybe I have to press a certain button to pick a lock but I couldn’t find any. At any rate, the visual presentation ought to be more clear when I’m trying to pick a lock.

-Recieving rewards

When recieving rewards (XP, copper coins, items) from NPCs it was unclear to me what I acutally got. I think some things showed up in the combat log window but not everything? For example in the dialogue window it indicated that I received money but it never showed how much (I could be missinterpreting the dialogue though). If I do get stuff (including XP) I think it’s important that it’s clearly presented in the combat log window bundled together at the end of a conversation and highlighted in a specific color (so it’s easy to find if I need to scroll through the combat log).

-Portraits

Generally I find them very nice though it sometimes feels odd seeing there are several different art styles. But it’s a minor concern really.  I do wish there were more of them but  I suppose they cost a lot of resources to create.

Dialogue/story

It’s of course hard to say much about story since there are just a few side quests in the beta but the writing I’ve seen so far have been good and I thought the quest with the nobleman’s missing daughter was really nicely done, having to find clues about what happened since not everything was clear in the very beginning.

What I really want to praise is your use of reputations and attribute/skill checks to conversation lines. It really adds another dimension to the game and increases the roleplay aspect of the game to another level. And the fact that all “unlocked” conversation options aren’t necessarily “good” lines to pick in a conversation makes it even better. As a player who focuses on story and writing in CRPGs, this has been the highlight of the beta. I encourage you to explore this feature even further.

I also like the descriptive texts in conversations and the scripted interactions. It’s superb and creates a more diverse roleplaying experience.

Inventory

-Bottomless stash

I’m not sure if it is a bug but I seem to be able to access the stash at any point I want, through the inventory. To me this makes the characters personal inventory slots basically meaningless. In BG2, crawling a dungeon, I had to constantly make strategic choices of what loot to keep and what to discard. What items would be useful to my characters? What items would net me a lot of gold when selling them? The decisions made had consequences and it was an interesting part of the game. With a stash accessible at all times, interesting strategic choices go out the window.

I do support a bottomless stash at the stronghold though but it should only be accessible when my character is present at the stronghold.

Part 2 - The wizard of Osby

Classes

I have tried all the classes and I’m very happy that there’s a broad selection of classes to chose from. I think it will take some time to truly know if the classes feel destinct enough but my initial feeling is that; yes they do.

As mentioned in part 1, overall I feel the classes in this game are more high maintanance than the classes in the IE games. Sure, I can set the fighter on defensive mode and let him be, but that’s about the only class I felt I didn’t have to babysit.

A class that stood out was the cipher class. The soul whip is a really cool function and makes that particular class (along with the monk, who kind of works in a similar fashion) feel very fresh.

The chanter was also interesting but I had a hard time understanding how the chant process worked. I figured out how to “load” the different chants and then they seemed to be rolling during combat. What I didn’t understand was if the rolling effect of the chants played any part in the effectiveness. For example I had “fire weapon” loaded, does that mean the fire is only effective when the fire chant is visible in the little window as it rolls by or is it always in effect? If it is always in effect, I don’t understand why the different chants are rolling in the little window during combat.

The ranger had great diversity among it’s animal companions which I find great.

Overall I think you have hit the right spot with the classes. No class feels uninteresting or too uninvolved.

Races

All races feel distinct in my opinion. The only thing that bothers me is that the amaua looks a little bit cartoonish compared to the other races (though that is mostly when zoomed in during character creation and level up, when I’m in game running around it looks fine).

The visuals look great as long as it is not zoomed in too much as it is during character creation and level up. I stated this in part 1 and I think you should zoom out the characters a bit during character creation and level up.

Regarding the racial bonuses, I think they are cool but they don’t effect my decision on race/sub-race/culture as I pick what I think is fitting in for my character RP-wise.

 

Attributes

I’m not a power gamer and seldom make any power builds so I’m not really the person to ask about stats and their usefulness. But I’ve seen a lot of discussion about it on the forum so I think you have plenty of feedback in this area already anyway.

 

Equipment

First of all I’d like to point out that there is a great diversity in weapons and it is just great. The tendency of other RPGs is to include less and less different types of weapon which I find a bit sad.

The beta being as short as it is I can’t say I’ve found certain items to be more useful or useless than others. It’s just too early to say really.

 

Crafting and enchantment

I didn’t find enough ingredients to actually craft/enchant anything but looking at the system it seemed easy enough to understand.

Though personally I’m not really in favor of this type of crafting/enchanting system in a RPG like this. I rather prefer the “Cromwell/Cespenar”-type of crafting/enchanting for two reason:

1. Unless there’s an NPC joining the party who is an experienced crafter/chanter (which there very seldom isn’t), it feels odd to be able to craft wondorous items at basically a whim (when did my character train/study to do this? It’s fantasy, I know, but still.).

2. “Cromwell”-created weapons are more cool to aquire since they are dev created. Their appearance is often unique looking, have a back story and sometimes tied to a quest. I will never forget aquiring and letting Cromwell assemble the bow of Gessen. The weapons I enchanted in for example NWN2? I don’t remeber any of them.

Conversations and Quests

I pretty much covered this in part 1, so scroll up if you didn’t read it.

Combat

Combat was also covered pretty extensively in part 1. However, I will add that I didn’t have any trouble understanding the stamina/health system and I think it works great. Though I should add that I’ve heard Josh explain it several times in videos so it is perhaps not so odd I didn’t have any trouble understanding it.

User interface

I covered character creation in part 1. Regarding the HUD it is good enough. As I’ve mentioned above, some details are hard to catch, status effects and such. It’s all part of the visual feedback that could use some tweaking. Other than that everything is pretty clear to me how to use it and what happens. Though I’ve been playing CRPGs for quite some time so I have some sort of basic understanding how everything (usually) works.

I want to praise the encyclopedia. It’s both a nice and useful addition to this type of game.

Summary - Or how I stopped worrying and learned to love Swäden

Overall you are getting things right and based on what I’ve seen in the beta, this will be a great game. I’ve mentioned some things that I think needs improvement or adjustment and I’ve tried to give suggestions how I think things could be better. A lot of them are minor things though that won’t stop me from playing the game and I completely realise my opinion is only one of several thousands you need to take into consideration. However, I’d like to point out the two most important parts that I think needs improving:

1.   Pierce/Crush/Slash damage - This part really annoyed me during my time with the game. I do believe this part needs serious attention and adjustment. See part 1 for detailed description of my opinion.

 

2. Bottomless stash - It detracts a strategic dilemma which was an important part of the dungeon crawling in the IE games (or the BG-series atleast). See part 1 for detailed description of my opinion.

And finally, good night and good luck!

PS. If anyone read all of this without falling asleep; bravo!

[Gulliver]

 

2. Bottomless stash - It detracts a strategic dilemma which was an important part of the dungeon crawling in the IE games (or the BG-series atleast). See part 1 for detailed description of my opinion.

Well, that being said, inventory management wasn't exactly the most enjoyable aspect of the IE games. If there are a lot of items to loot, it can in fact become very tedious very fast. I think I spent about 80% of my time in Elder Scrolls games optimizing the gold to weight ratio of the items in my inventory.

[MasterPrudent]

-Formations

I tried to switch formations but wasn’t able to as there only seemed to be the default formation available. I assume there will be more formations to chose from in the final game and also the ability to switch characters around in a formation (so my PC doesn’t necissarily have to be at the front of the group all the time).

 

 

If you open up the formation menu, either by clicking on the picture with the formation dots on the middle UI or hitting "F", you'll see that you can switch between three formations. You can also adjust each formation in this menu by clicking and dragging the characters' portraits.

[MasterPrudent]

 

 

-Visual effect of picking a lock

I ran into a locked door in a dungeon. I thought I’d try to pick the lock with my rogue. It was however unclear how I’d go about it. I thought perhaps she would try to pick the locked door automatically but the icon when hovering the mouse pointer over the door was the same icon any other character had when trying to open the locked door. Maybe I have to press a certain button to pick a lock but I couldn’t find any. At any rate, the visual presentation ought to be more clear when I’m trying to pick a lock.

I think your specific complaint here comes from a misunderstanding of the system. Any character with points in mechanics can pick locks - as such every character gets the same icon. Lock picking happens automatically as you first assumed. I do, however, totally agree that lock picking could be clearer. I'd like some feedback as to whether the lock can be picked or if a key is required. I'd also like feedback when a lockpick attempt fails.

 

 

-Bottomless stash

I’m not sure if it is a bug but I seem to be able to access the stash at any point I want, through the inventory.

This should only be accessible in towns or upon rest. If you can access it anywhere else it's a bug and you should report it.

Edited August 25, 2014 by MasterPrudent

[Mannock]

 

-Formations

I tried to switch formations but wasn’t able to as there only seemed to be the default formation available. I assume there will be more formations to chose from in the final game and also the ability to switch characters around in a formation (so my PC doesn’t necissarily have to be at the front of the group all the time).

 

 

If you open up the formation menu, either by clicking on the picture with the formation dots on the middle UI or hitting "F", you'll see that you can switch between three formations. You can also adjust each formation in this menu by clicking and dragging the characters' portraits.

 

 

Yeah, I saw there was three different boxes, but all three formations were the same. Nothing happened when I clicked the other boxes either. Either it's bugged or I'm doing something wrong. Will probably work fine when the game is fully released though.

[Gfted1]

I cant tell the difference between what's not working and what Im being a big dum dum over. For example: 1) I cant figure out how to pick locks. I have 4 (?) picks on my Thief and I select the NPC to pick a lock but the locks just open without using a lock pick. Then the locks that are too high for me (cultist dungeon) don't give the option to use a pick. 2) Same dungeon, couldn't figure out how to use the rope and grapple even though I had two in my inventory. 3) Stealth. How the hell do you stealth? Are you considered "stealthed" when you are "scouting"? 

[sparklecat]

 3) Stealth. How the hell do you stealth? Are you considered "stealthed" when you are "scouting"? 

Yes.  More specifically, you're stealthed when you're scouting and the detection range circle around the character doesn't include enemies.

[Shadenuat]

Stealth seems too powerful atm. It's like combination of all utility spells from divinity and illusions from IE.

It gives you superior positioning in any combat.

 

I also wonder if there are enemies who can also do stealth. But beta didn't feature enemies like that.

Edited August 25, 2014 by Shadenuat

[Gfted1]

 

 3) Stealth. How the hell do you stealth? Are you considered "stealthed" when you are "scouting"? 

Yes.  More specifically, you're stealthed when you're scouting and the detection range circle around the character doesn't include enemies.

 

 

Ah, thanks for the answer. So how do I go about Backstabbing (or whatever the PoE equivalent is)? Move the entire party behind the mook?

[Shadenuat]

It's easier to put some sort of debuff on enemy that counts for backstabbing, if we're talking rogues. Simple fighter's Knockdown would work.

[Ink Blot]

. 2) Same dungeon, couldn't figure out how to use the rope and grapple even though I had two in my inventory.

This is a bug. I couldn't get the option with my first two characters no matter what I tried. On my third character though, it worked.

 

Not sure yet about lockpicks.

[PrimeJunta]

In P:E backstabbing is based on status effects. I haven't gone through all or even most of them, but the basic example is Hobbled. I.e. rogues always backstab if an enemy is hobbled. I think other statuses that trigger backstab include Prone and Flanked, possibly depending on level and the perks you've taken.

 

I.e., to backstab, (1) inflict a suitable status effect, and (2) stab. Rogues can inflict some of these themselves of course, but you can also get another character to do it. The level 1 burning-hands-only-with-cold spell inflicts Hobbled as a side-effect, for example.

[Ink Blot]

In P:E backstabbing is based on status effects. I haven't gone through all or even most of them, but the basic example is Hobbled. I.e. rogues always backstab if an enemy is hobbled. I think other statuses that trigger backstab include Prone and Flanked, possibly depending on level and the perks you've taken.

Yeah, one of the Rogue class abilities (I believe it's Crippling Strike) has a list of things that allow CS to trigger. I assume the same conditions allow backstabs.