333 OSX First Impressions

[wjbaird]

I don't have any windows systems, and my new systems are both linux, but I have a couple of older Mac OS X systems, so I was pretty happy when the Mac Beta came out, and played around with it a bit on the weekend.   For the record, the two systems are a 2009 27" iMac and a 2011 15" Macbook Pro  - both were the top-end systems when they came out.

 

I also haven't explored too much yet - I only had maybe 5 hours total to play, and wanted to experiment with a few different classes, so I've played with a Barbarian, a Cipher and a Paladin so far, but I don't think any of them got past level 6.

 

First off - I don't know if it is as bad on windows, but it is *super* unstable on mac - I lost count of how many times the game hung and I had to force-quit and restart - it was usually during a load when changing locations, but at least once it hung while starting a character level-up.     It got to be really painful.

 

Unfortunately it was never under repeatable circumstances, and usually if I reloaded and got back to the same place it wouldn't hang again, or would hang somewhere else - so it is hard to report as a bug.  I haven't done any mac specific development before, but if anyone is aware of tools I can run ti collect useful info while the game is hung, I'm all ears.   

 

The other complaint I had was the difficulty of combat!   Holy cow it was hard.  I was playing on the default easy level because I was more interested in seeing how things worked than in getting slaughtered all the time --- and I *STILL* got slaughtered all the time!   Even the group of 3 beetles by the statue in the crossing managed to wipe me out on multiple occasions.   I've played baldur's gate 1 and 2, and even on normal difficulty I rarely ran into these kinds of problems, so I don't *think* it's me.   Frankly, on easy level, I'd expect you should be able to also just let the AI go for the most part, but I found that if I let things run for even a few seconds I'd find one or more characters unconscious...

 

I also found that the combat system was pretty confusing - it was hard to tell what was going on, and the combat log was very difficult to follow.   when I did wipe it was pretty hard to figure out what I did wrong and learn from it.

 

Character level ups were also a bit confusing - the terribly long list of talents to choose from, without much guidance about what might actually make sense.  

 

I don't want to be all negative though - the game is really beautiful! I like the way the quests have been put together so far.   The way attributes and skills impact conversations seems to be working pretty well.    

 

Aside from the hangs and the reloads from wiping, I had a lot of fun with it so far!!  

 

Now just get the linux version out so I can play on my newer computers!!!

 

[Hiro Protagonist II]

It's gotten worse on Windows imo. Too many heap sections is an error that never came up for me and it's now occurring randomly during area transitions in the last 24hrs. Seems to be a common problem with Unity. Maybe that's what's happening on OSX? No idea. I'm going to uninstall and re-install to see if the problem persists.

 

Combat was a lot more difficult when it was first released two months ago. There's a steep learning curve and you'll have to pause pretty much every second to issue commands to all your party members. It's not like the IE games where you can send your melee characters in, with one click to attack enemies and then focus on your ranged spellcasters. This is where you have to micromanage every character to make them effective. Also, every party member has a different recovery time. So when they finish what they did (eg. cast a spell, fighter does a knockdown, rogue uses a power, etc), you have to pause and issue a new command with a new ability or power. Your melee characters should be using their abilities. Letting them attack by themselves using their own A.I. and no powers/abilities will not cut it.

 

It's one of the major differences between this and the IE games. Fighters and Paladins could hold their own in the IE games and you could concentrate on other things. They were simple but effective and fun. In PoE, you don't have that luxury. Also, every hit by you or the enemy hits all the time, even if it's a graze. Grazes do damage too. It's rare the enemy misses. So you will be losing Endurance and Health all the time. Oh and no healing potions for Health either. So you'll need to go rest and get that health up. As a beginner, I recommend you resting to get that health back up before taking on new enemies. So you need to rest spam. Otherwise you will die after a couple of encounters.

 

I've always said this will be a big shock to people when they first play it. Screenshots don't convey gameplay. It might look like an IE game from all those updates and magazine write ups, but it definitely isn't when it comes to combat.

 

You also have people on this forum who've been playing this for a couple of months and worked out what works and what doesn't. What spells and weapons are effective and what aren't. Optimal builds and know that wearing armour for your ranged casters make your casters cast their spells slower than normal due to the amour penalties. So you have 'nude strategies' where ranged casters aren't wearing any armour, casting their spells faster and makes combat easier. It takes a lot of practice to overcome the combat.

 

So even if someone tells you how to create the most optimal party, it won't mean a lick of difference because the combat is quite hard at first. A bit like someone giving you a hotted up car and not knowing how to drive effectively. You'll end up crashing and burning.

 

The combat log? I don't even look at it anymore. It's in the wrong place and as long as I see the enemy's health going down or getting destroyed by spells, that's all I want to see. After a lot of practice, you'll find what works and what doesn't. Or join some of us with our min-max glass cannon builds and parties that dominate the game.

[Bester]

Whimpering threads like this make me really afraid of a possibility that they might make the game super easy again. And then it's like playing IWD:EE's story mode.

[Seari]

Was another thread really needed, cmon...

[Hiro Protagonist II]

This is an OSX thread? Problems with the Mac beta and first impressions. I'd be interested to know the problems Mac users are facing. Seems like similar problems with Windows and area transitions.

[Sensuki]

The combat log? I don't even look at it anymore. It's in the wrong place and as long as I see the enemy's health going down or getting destroyed by spells, that's all I want to see. After a lot of practice, you'll find what works and what doesn't. Or join some of us with our min-max glass cannon builds and parties that dominate the game.

Yep. As I've been saying from the beginning the combat log is completely useless in PE.

 

I like difficulty, so for me this new difficulty on Hard is pretty good, with some better balance it should be alright.

Edited October 28, 2014 by Sensuki

[Quantics]

I also play the mac build. 

 

However I haven't played as much as I would have wanted to. My laptop (2.3 GHz i7, 16GB RAM, 1GB Radeon HD 6750M) turns into an unstable nuclear reactor after a few minutes into the game. 

 

Which tbh was kind of disappointing, especially since I had been playing games such as Guild Wars 2 or Diablo 3 without any problems.

 

I was waiting to see if other mac users were experiencing performance problems and maybe wait for the next patch.

 

 

 

or maybe I should rather invest in a cheap gaming PC (something like this).

 

 

 

EDIT: wjbaird, I think I may have exactly the same computer as you (2011 15" MB pro 'hi-end'). Are you really not experiencing performance issues other than the occasional freeze?

Edited October 28, 2014 by Quantics

[aeonsim]

I was playing with the OSX build over the weekend (first chance to play PoE, as only had a Mac) and then as of yesterday the Windows build (new PC).

 

The Mac is a 2012 Mac book Pro (i7 2.4Ghz, 8GB Ram, Radeon 6770M 1GB graphics, OSX 10.10), in short after trying on both the OSX build needs a lot of work.

 

With the OSX build I could only ever fight on one of the out door maps before the game started to crash on large area loads. So if I ran around the village with out fighting I could move to the Crossing and start to fight my way through there however if I entered the cave and tried to return back to the main crossing map there was a 4/5 chance of a crash while trying to move out of the cave. Or if managed to get lucky the resulting Autosave and my next save were both corrupted. If I just fought on the Crossing and tried to return to the Village the same thing crash on load of the village. Same if I fought Medreth I'd no longer be able to leave the Village with out a crash.

 

Secondly save games are being corrupted about 30% of the time, and the longer you play the more likely it is for your saves to get corrupted.

 

The game would also randomly crash to desktop at various points, and at one stage the game was pausing for 1min every 3-4mins (mouse and music working fine) then everything would start moving again (this may have been an interaction with the AV software).

 

I also got a crazy RGB tone map error a couple of times where part or all of the game view was replaced with the colour range.

 

Performance for OSX was reasonable everything ran smoothly on the machine with out lag, it was just as buggy as hell.

 

 

So on Monday a new PC arrived (i5 3.5Ghz, 16GB, Radeon R9 285 2GB, Win 8.1) and I've tried playing on that instead of the Mac, the difference is significant I've been able to fight through multiple encounters, fighting no longer locks me into a map and I've been able to move back and forth between the Village and the crossing with out issues. I don't think I've seen a crash yet but not sure after playing on OSX for a couple of days I'd hardly notice a crash every few hours. In short I managed to progress more in 3 hours than in 10 hours over the weekend.

 

 

 

So over all the stability of the OSX build is significantly behind that of the Windows build, some of the previous issues around saving and the loading of saves from windows seem to have returned in the OSX build (or similar bugs). The save and load system seems to be the main source of problems which seems to suggest that there are problems with Unity in this regards especially considering the reported problems with the Linux build and save and load, with OSX being based on a UNIX architecture it's likely it sharing some of the underlying code controlling save and load with Linux and as a result as numerous issues.

[wjbaird]

 

EDIT: wjbaird, I think I may have exactly the same computer as you (2011 15" MB pro 'hi-end'). Are you really not experiencing performance issues other than the occasional freeze?

 

 

I forgot to mention - I did see the refresh rate as being pretty low when I ran at the native resolution - I had to go down to 1 notch lower to get usable performance.  I didn't try tweaking any of the graphics options yet...

[wjbaird]

I was playing with the OSX build over the weekend (first chance to play PoE, as only had a Mac) and then as of yesterday the Windows build (new PC).

 

The Mac is a 2012 Mac book Pro (i7 2.4Ghz, 8GB Ram, Radeon 6770M 1GB graphics, OSX 10.10), in short after trying on both the OSX build needs a lot of work.

[...]

Secondly save games are being corrupted about 30% of the time, and the longer you play the more likely it is for your saves to get corrupted.

 

 

I wonder if it is worse on 10.10 --- I'm still on 10.9.3 and I never saw any save games being corrupted.   I also never saw a crash to the desktop.   I didn't notice the correlation between completing fights and it then hanging, but it's possible - I'll pay more attention to that next time I play.

[wjbaird]

Whimpering threads like this make me really afraid of a possibility that they might make the game super easy again. And then it's like playing IWD:EE's story mode.

 

I don't object to a game that is difficult when it is set to 'Normal', or 'Hard'...   Call me crazy, but when you set the game to 'Easy', I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the game to be, you know - easy...

 

My wife would never play the game as it stands --- she'd get her party wiped a dozen or so times and she'd give up and go on to some other game...   

 

I think there's a fairly large class of gamer out there who will not play the game if it stays this difficult even on the 'Easy' setting...

[wjbaird]

Combat was a lot more difficult when it was first released two months ago. There's a steep learning curve and you'll have to pause pretty much every second to issue commands to all your party members. It's not like the IE games where you can send your melee characters in, with one click to attack enemies and then focus on your ranged spellcasters. This is where you have to micromanage every character to make them effective. Also, every party member has a different recovery time. So when they finish what they did (eg. cast a spell, fighter does a knockdown, rogue uses a power, etc), you have to pause and issue a new command with a new ability or power. Your melee characters should be using their abilities. Letting them attack by themselves using their own A.I. and no powers/abilities will not cut it.

 

It's one of the major differences between this and the IE games. Fighters and Paladins could hold their own in the IE games and you could concentrate on other things. They were simple but effective and fun. In PoE, you don't have that luxury. Also, every hit by you or the enemy hits all the time, even if it's a graze. Grazes do damage too. It's rare the enemy misses. So you will be losing Endurance and Health all the time. Oh and no healing potions for Health either. So you'll need to go rest and get that health up. As a beginner, I recommend you resting to get that health back up before taking on new enemies. So you need to rest spam. Otherwise you will die after a couple of encounters.

 

 

Thanks for the insight...   Frankly, from what I see so far, I prefer the IE-style approach...   I'm not big into micromanaging things, maybe that is why I'm wiping so often...   

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Secondly save games are being corrupted about 30% of the time, and the longer you play the more likely it is for your saves to get corrupted.

 

I think it's happening with Windows too. I have some long save games and they seem to get corrupted now. When you play for a short time, it's okay. If you try and complete all the maps it gets progressively worse to the point where your latest save will likely get corrupted.

[nipsen]

..turning the resolution down and hooking on v-sync at least makes it run smoother (when it runs). ..there were some weird resource problems on the earlier builds as well, that only happened if v-sync was turned off. Never figured it out, but it could have something to do with background threads not finishing when they should. Things like the AI script being forced to use nodes for the path-finding that weren't updated (but might be assumed to exist at the end of every frame). If that is a problem, a slower computer or a laptop in battery-mode and so on, would probably see crashes more often.

 

 

Whimpering threads like this make me really afraid of a possibility that they might make the game super easy again. And then it's like playing IWD:EE's story mode.

 

I don't object to a game that is difficult when it is set to 'Normal', or 'Hard'...   Call me crazy, but when you set the game to 'Easy', I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the game to be, you know - easy...

 

My wife would never play the game as it stands --- she'd get her party wiped a dozen or so times and she'd give up and go on to some other game...   

 

I think there's a fairly large class of gamer out there who will not play the game if it stays this difficult even on the 'Easy' setting...

 

..so they basically did what I predicted after all..? That they removed the "puzzle-like" difficulty, where every enemy had weaknesses and strengths you needed to figure out (and if you found that weakness, it would always turn the fight around). Then turned them into IE style wars of stamina attrition. And then to compensate so the fights wouldn't be too easy for the might maxed characters the super-testers tend to have, they've upped the stamina again. To the point where the battles now really are too difficult, even on easy, to beat without a max-min'ed party. ..success!

[Cubiq]

I have a feeling combat log is very clumped up because the damage is so consistant. Nearly every swing shows damage and it fills up pretty quickly. They painted themselves in to a corner with this one.

[Sensuki]

I'ts not just damage it updates you about everything, and the log also produces a damage line for non-damaging stuff like "Priest Affected Beetle for 0.0 Points of Damage

Beetle is dazed"

 

etc

Edited October 30, 2014 by Sensuki

[aeonsim]

 

Whimpering threads like this make me really afraid of a possibility that they might make the game super easy again. And then it's like playing IWD:EE's story mode.

 

I don't object to a game that is difficult when it is set to 'Normal', or 'Hard'...   Call me crazy, but when you set the game to 'Easy', I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the game to be, you know - easy...

 

My wife would never play the game as it stands --- she'd get her party wiped a dozen or so times and she'd give up and go on to some other game...   

 

I think there's a fairly large class of gamer out there who will not play the game if it stays this difficult even on the 'Easy' setting...

 

..so they basically did what I predicted after all..? That they removed the "puzzle-like" difficulty, where every enemy had weaknesses and strengths you needed to figure out (and if you found that weakness, it would always turn the fight around). Then turned them into IE style wars of stamina attrition. And then to compensate so the fights wouldn't be too easy for the might maxed characters the super-testers tend to have, they've upped the stamina again. To the point where the battles now really are too difficult, even on easy, to beat without a max-min'ed party. ..success!

 

I think the puzzle like elements are still there to some degree, as each enemy type has different resistances to damage types using the wrong weapon against them can make a fight a lot harder. If you use slashing weapons vs Beatles for example expect a long and difficult fight, while if you change the crushing weapons you can tear through them. For human enemies some of them have exceedingly high defence that makes them very hard to damage, however hit them with a knockdown, or paralyse them (insanely powerful) and there defences will decrease drastically making them easy to eliminate. Also making sure to target the correct enemies first seems important, leave ones with dangerous abilities alive and you'll pay for it.

Edited October 30, 2014 by aeonsim

[Karkarov]

I have a feeling combat log is very clumped up because the damage is so consistant. Nearly every swing shows damage and it fills up pretty quickly. They painted themselves in to a corner with this one.

They just need to mod it so that if no damage or effect is done on an attack the line just simplifies out to say "XYZ attacked some dude but did no damage" and leave it at that.

[wjbaird]

 

I don't object to a game that is difficult when it is set to 'Normal', or 'Hard'...   Call me crazy, but when you set the game to 'Easy', I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the game to be, you know - easy...

 

 

Interestingly, I just tried starting a new game, and first moved the difficulty slider to normal and then back to easy, and *now* the game actually seems easy - I can just let the AI go for it, and don't even come close to wiping.

 

I now suspect that the 'default' difficulty is actually normal or even hard, even though it starts out showing 'easy'...

 

If I can confirm I'll post on the bug forum..