Angry Joe LOVED Pillars Of Eternity

[Pighardia]

 

 

Good review.

And DA2 is at least still better than Inquisition.

 

Inquisition couldn't possibly be that bad.

 

 

 

DAI is a weird cluster**** of bad design choices.

Couldn't put it better myself. Better than 2 though, but then it couldn't be worse.

[Hurlshort]

DA2 is filled with bad decisions that are forced on you.  In DA:I you can avoid the bad decisions by sticking to the main storyline.  Seems like a pretty big difference.

[Lmaoboat]

I didn't even really like the first Dragon Age. Hated most of the characters, felt the setting took itself too seriously for being standard fantasy, but with more ****, and I didn't like how contrived a lot of the "hard" choices were. 

[CynicalP]

 

Well, it depends. And we shouldn't forget that there are other factors as well. It's not a simple causal effect.

 

For example, the release of GTA V could harm the sales of Pillars on a huge level since a whole lot of gamers who were maybe interested in Pillars (but not part of the core audience that already owns the game) could now be occupied with playing GTA V for quite some time. Others could still play other games that were released recently (e.g. like Cities Skylines) and therefore plan to buy the game later. 

 

So what's the effect of a single famous youtuber? You can't say. It's definitely not bad - if s/he like the game of course.

 

 

 IMO you are not fully correct about GTA there are few factors playing here as well.

 

There are probably millions of buyers who are entering and will enter steam for a a few weeks around the release and they might buy more games ,especially from the top selling list. I would have bet that every game as big as that will bump other games sales as well even if buyers will only keep the games to play later on.

 

Many individuals just buy stuff to satisfy an immediate urge ,a while ago I saw a statistic that showed that most buyers on steam don't finish the games they bought and sometimes wait for a long while before they start playing the games at all. It might be more relevant for sales ,but in this case I wouldn't be surprised if some of GTA buyers will buy POE as well.

 

Otherwise it's a free publicity ,even if it only influence future sales...

 

mmm listen ,i don't take him  too seriously.

 

on one point in his videos he also says that he getting paid from publishers.

 

he often says the truth in his reviews but not always.

sooo.

He is only paid for some of his "lets play" videos ,and by youtube policy he has to put a notice on the videos' description. His reviews are always true to his opinion ,but he really just loves RPGs  so you will never see him give a bad score to one.

 

You must have missed his Risen series reviews.  Quite clear AngryJoe disliked those RPGS.. 

[DocDoomII]

You must have missed his Risen series reviews.  Quite clear AngryJoe disliked those RPGS..

I've seen them. So funny 

[Darkpriest]

 

 

Well, it depends. And we shouldn't forget that there are other factors as well. It's not a simple causal effect.

 

For example, the release of GTA V could harm the sales of Pillars on a huge level since a whole lot of gamers who were maybe interested in Pillars (but not part of the core audience that already owns the game) could now be occupied with playing GTA V for quite some time. Others could still play other games that were released recently (e.g. like Cities Skylines) and therefore plan to buy the game later. 

 

So what's the effect of a single famous youtuber? You can't say. It's definitely not bad - if s/he like the game of course.

 

 

 IMO you are not fully correct about GTA there are few factors playing here as well.

 

There are probably millions of buyers who are entering and will enter steam for a a few weeks around the release and they might buy more games ,especially from the top selling list. I would have bet that every game as big as that will bump other games sales as well even if buyers will only keep the games to play later on.

 

Many individuals just buy stuff to satisfy an immediate urge ,a while ago I saw a statistic that showed that most buyers on steam don't finish the games they bought and sometimes wait for a long while before they start playing the games at all. It might be more relevant for sales ,but in this case I wouldn't be surprised if some of GTA buyers will buy POE as well.

 

Otherwise it's a free publicity ,even if it only influence future sales...

 

mmm listen ,i don't take him  too seriously.

 

on one point in his videos he also says that he getting paid from publishers.

 

he often says the truth in his reviews but not always.

sooo.

He is only paid for some of his "lets play" videos ,and by youtube policy he has to put a notice on the videos' description. His reviews are always true to his opinion ,but he really just loves RPGs  so you will never see him give a bad score to one.

 

You must have missed his Risen series reviews.  Quite clear AngryJoe disliked those RPGS.. 

 

 

well they were ****, soooo.... what's the point here?

[Idleray]

 

You might like DA2 if you didn't like DA:O.  They created DA2 by turning DA:O's world from a tactical team based CRPG into a third person Action RPG.  General consensus is if you like DA:O, you probably hated DA2 and vice versa.

 

 

Sorry, having recently finished both DA:O and DA2 on nightmare in preparation for DAI(which I dropped out of disgust in the first hour from console control scheme), I disagree.

 

I liked both. I liked the story and characters in DAO, and the combat and tactics in DA2.

 

Let's not kid ourselves here, DAO's combat was a complete cheese fest once you knew what you were doing. There was nothing tactical about it. My PC rogue literally auto-attacked his way through the whole game coz none of his other abilities WORKED in terms of having better dps than plain auto-attacking.

 

DA2 actually has consistently challenging combat. Just because they implemented non-sucky looking, faster-paced animations does not mean it's less tactical than DAO(the opposite is true). Sure DA2 sucked from rehashed areas and average meh story/companions, but its combat was one of its high points and one where it improved over DAO.

[DocDoomII]

DA2 and tactics in the same sentence? 

[Stun]

DA2 actually has consistently challenging combat.

Translation: DA2 had the most rigid mechanical Level Scaling of any video game ever created. In fact, its level scaling was asymmetrical. Your armor and attack rating actually decreased as you leveled up, while the enemy's increased.

 

Combat in DA2 plays like an arcade game from the 80s. Literally. Like Pac-man. Cleared a level? Great, here's another level, exactly like the first level, except the ghosts are faster. Cleared that level? Wow, you're good. here's another....just like the first two, but the enemies are faster.... etc. etc. etc. Wonderful design for an RPG, right?

 

 

Edit: Interesting historical off-topic side note. Does anyone here remember the Jennifer Hepler Controversy? For those who don't here's the short version. Just after DA2 was released, Jennifer Hepler was interviewed by some magazine or another. And in that interview she was asked about Combat in RPGs. And her response was: "Well, if I had my way, RPGs would have a 'skip combat button', so that people who were just playing for the story could have an 'uninterrupted experience'.

 

She was viciously attacked from all directions for saying that. Whole gaming communities labeled her the anti-Christ and ruthlessly spammed her with threats on twitter, and BSN, and Youtube and facebook. I, on the other hand, defended her with everything I had. Because her timing was PERFECT. I had just finished DA2....a game who's combat is so god f*cking awful that there wasn't a single *second* that went by where I didn't find myself BEGGING for a skip combat button. The game needed one. Desperately.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Stun

[Idleray]

DA2 and tactics in the same sentence? 

 

Yep. Between the cross-class combos, heaps of ways for the enemies to reach your back line(reinforcments popping out everywhere which was a plus to me) and lack of constant healing, DA2 was a blast to play through on nightmare and I actually had more of an inclination to do that again than play through DAO again with its usual "mages own everything" gameplay.

 

 

 

Translation: DA2 had the most rigid mechanical Level Scaling of any video game ever created.

 

 

In fact, its level scaling was asymmetrical. Your armor and attack rating actually decreased as you leveled up, while the enemy's increased.

 

Combat in DA2 plays like an arcade game from the 80s. Literally. Like Pac-man. Cleared a level? Great, here's another level, exactly like the first level, except the ghosts are faster. Cleared that level? Wow, you're good. here's another....just like the first two, but the enemies are faster.... etc. etc. etc. Wonderful non-organic design for an RPG, right?

 

 

I didn't pay too much attention to that. Suffice to say that whatever keeps it challenging and fun is okay with me.

 

The arcadey aspect... I can see what you mean with it. The whole game had a very "designed" feel, but it was competently designed in terms of combat. As people complaining about it being repetitive because of level designs and other shortcuts the developers took, I can get behind that too. DA2 was by no means a great game. It was serviceable, which meant that compared to its predecessor it was a crushing disappointment. However, whenver I see complaints about DA2 being less "tactical" than DAO I have to laugh and think that whoever says it is a casual.

[Rosveen]

(reinforcments popping out everywhere which was a plus to me) 

I was halfway through a serious reponse to your first post, but... I just can't. I can't wrap my head around the fact that someone actually liked airborne darkspawn.

[Idleray]

 

(reinforcments popping out everywhere which was a plus to me) 

I was halfway through a serious reponse to your first post, but... I just can't. I can't wrap my head around the fact that someone actually liked airborne darkspawn.

 

 

It was basically either that or throw them all at the player at once in which case they'd promptly be bombed by AOE. This way you can't just AOE everything all at once. I never quite understood the animus against it.

[PrimeJunta]

I quite enjoyed picking flowers in DA:I for a while. Pretty flowers!

 

Then I forgot what all the fuss was about and abandoned it. Haven't felt like going back to it.

[Psychevore]

Sadly, it is. It really IS that bad.

 

DAI is a weird cluster**** of bad design choices.

Gamers are absolutely hilarious.

 

Just take a stroll around these very forums. You'd think Pillars was, again, a giant cluster*BLEEP* of bad design choices.

 

Gamers should learn that there's things they like, and things they don't like. But especially in the RPG scene, we've got a whole bunch of *bleeps* running around thinking they are better human beings for liking certain things in games.

 

Again, just as the Bioware forums were an excellent example of this, these forums are just as much.

 

If I were a developper, I'd ignore the hell out of all you guys. You can't be pleased.

 

Oh and for the record: I love Pillars. I also love DA:I. I finished it 6 times, and I really, really doubt I'll finish Pillars that many times.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Psychevore

[Flayedawg]

I'm having a lot of fun with PoE. I'm sorry if others aren't, but they're not my problem.

 

With that in mind, it's time to play

[Stun]

 

I was halfway through a serious reponse to your first post, but... I just can't. I can't wrap my head around the fact that someone actually liked airborne darkspawn.

 

It was basically either that or throw them all at the player at once

 

This isn't even remotely true. There's a bajillion alternatives to the craptastic wave warfare design AND the mindless "dump everything at the player at once" design. But they all require competent designers to actually 1) Give a Sh*t and 2) Be creative with the enemy types and their placement; and 3) Program the enemy AI to be a little more....adult-like. This is all Out of the Question for Bioware, however, as they'd see encounter creativity as a waste of time, And a waste of money, And a waste of effort, considering the fanbase. Edited April 13, 2015 by Stun

[Archaven]

I'm having a lot of fun with PoE. I'm sorry if others aren't, but they're not my problem.

 

With that in mind, it's time to play

 

I'm having alot of fun with PoE too!. 

[Ohioastro]

 

 

You might like DA2 if you didn't like DA:O.  They created DA2 by turning DA:O's world from a tactical team based CRPG into a third person Action RPG.  General consensus is if you like DA:O, you probably hated DA2 and vice versa.

 

 

Sorry, having recently finished both DA:O and DA2 on nightmare in preparation for DAI(which I dropped out of disgust in the first hour from console control scheme), I disagree.

 

I liked both. I liked the story and characters in DAO, and the combat and tactics in DA2.

 

Let's not kid ourselves here, DAO's combat was a complete cheese fest once you knew what you were doing. There was nothing tactical about it. My PC rogue literally auto-attacked his way through the whole game coz none of his other abilities WORKED in terms of having better dps than plain auto-attacking.

 

DA2 actually has consistently challenging combat. Just because they implemented non-sucky looking, faster-paced animations does not mean it's less tactical than DAO(the opposite is true). Sure DA2 sucked from rehashed areas and average meh story/companions, but its combat was one of its high points and one where it improved over DAO.

 

 

What?  "Consistently challenging combat?"  Are we talking about the same game? The one where, by design, you could win all normal difficulty encounters without ever using a single ability of any companion (unlike your characterization of DA:O)?  The one where hard difficulty involved the same AI but with inflated HP?  Teleporting enemies from the sky?

It sounds to me like you're an action gamer, but attacking a clever tactical game as one where you can autoattack and playing up the "awesome button" DA2 is tough to swallow.  DA2 was *hated* by users, with a wretched metacritic score.  DA:O was loved by users.  It's not just my opinion - and Bioware has basically apologized for what they did with DA2.

 

Here are the average user reviews from metacritic:

 

PoE: 8.6

DA:O 8.6

DA2: 4.4

DA:I 5.8

 

I actually find a strong correlation between my views and averages like these, even though I know that people game the system with 1s and 10s.  This also shows that it's entirely possible for users to rate games highly (they don't attack everything).

Edited April 13, 2015 by Ohioastro

[Psychevore]

DA:O's combat was a joke. Honestly, I cannot believe people value that part of the game so highly.

 

I dunno about DA2, never played it, but it cannot possibly be worse than DA:O. Once you got a hang of the mechanics, it was a snoozefest.

 

And you can beat the entire game, with the exception of a few battles, by just using 5 spells. On nightmare.

[FlintlockJazz]

 

I'm having a lot of fun with PoE. I'm sorry if others aren't, but they're not my problem.

 

With that in mind, it's time to play

 

I'm having alot of fun with PoE too!. 

 

Me too!  Wait, there are people who are not?  Lets grab our pitchforks and torches and sort them out...

[Stun]

I dunno about DA2, never played it, but it cannot possibly be worse than DA:O.

It's 10 times worse. Because It's more limited. Mages have less spells., Fighters and rogues have less customization options. They removed friendly fire(!). They removed the tactical view camera. They removed stealth. They removed finishing blows. They reduced the bestiary. They removed tactical positioning. They removed the ability to miss (literally. You can no longer miss.), they removed spell combos.

 

Then they sped everything up and gave us the "awesome button" so that we wouldn't miss the removal of what little tactical combat the first game had.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Stun

[Ohioastro]

Again, I point to the metacritic reviews:  People rated PoE and DA:O very highly, they rated DA2 very poorly, and they rated DA:I as mediocre.  And that's for a reason.  DA2 is an action button-pushing game, not a RPG.

 

The fact that veterans can trivialize every single game in the genre once they crack the system is not an argument that a game is bad.  If I have to spend 100 hours and multiple replays to figure out how to beat a game system it's a good one, even if I am no longer challenged once I do.

[Psychevore]

It's 10 times worse. Because It's more limited. Mages have less spells., Fighters and rogues have less customization options. They removed friendly fire(!). They removed the tactical view camera. They removed stealth. They removed finishing blows. They reduced the bestiary. They removed tactical positioning. They removed the ability to miss (literally. You can no longer miss.)

Yeah, whatever.

 

You only need like 5 spells in DA:O, all the others are just filler content in that regard.

 

Glyph of Repulsion + Glyph of Paralysis

Spell Might + Tempest + Blizzard.

 

The only difficulty is in getting high enough level to get all those spells.

 

And don't give me that nonsense 'well then just don't do that'. If I refuse to take a left turn in Pacman the game becomes impossibly difficult too. Or if I wear blindfolds, everything is difficult. Purposely gimping myself should not be the way to enjoy the game or have a difficult experience.

 

Again, I point to the metacritic reviews:  People rated PoE and DA:O very highly, they rated DA2 very poorly, and they rated DA:I as mediocre.  And that's for a reason.  DA2 is an action button-pushing game, not a RPG.

 

The fact that veterans can trivialize every single game in the genre once they crack the system is not an argument that a game is bad.  If I have to spend 100 hours and multiple replays to figure out how to beat a game system it's a good one, even if I am no longer challenged once I do.

I only see that the first parts of a series get the highest ratings. After that, gamers get all these delusions in their head about how the next game should be, and then they get disappointed it isn't so.

 

And 100 hours to find out how the mechanics in DA:O work? Are you kidding me? After you get Morrigan, it becomes painfully obvious that, as usual in Bioware games, mages are beasts.

[Idleray]

 

 

 

You might like DA2 if you didn't like DA:O.  They created DA2 by turning DA:O's world from a tactical team based CRPG into a third person Action RPG.  General consensus is if you like DA:O, you probably hated DA2 and vice versa.

 

 

Sorry, having recently finished both DA:O and DA2 on nightmare in preparation for DAI(which I dropped out of disgust in the first hour from console control scheme), I disagree.

 

I liked both. I liked the story and characters in DAO, and the combat and tactics in DA2.

 

Let's not kid ourselves here, DAO's combat was a complete cheese fest once you knew what you were doing. There was nothing tactical about it. My PC rogue literally auto-attacked his way through the whole game coz none of his other abilities WORKED in terms of having better dps than plain auto-attacking.

 

DA2 actually has consistently challenging combat. Just because they implemented non-sucky looking, faster-paced animations does not mean it's less tactical than DAO(the opposite is true). Sure DA2 sucked from rehashed areas and average meh story/companions, but its combat was one of its high points and one where it improved over DAO.

 

 

What?  "Consistently challenging combat?"  Are we talking about the same game? The one where, by design, you could win all normal difficulty encounters without ever using a single ability of any companion (unlike your characterization of DA:O)?  The one where hard difficulty involved the same AI but with inflated HP?  Teleporting enemies from the sky?

It sounds to me like you're an action gamer, but attacking a clever tactical game as one where you can autoattack and playing up the "awesome button" DA2 is tough to swallow.  DA2 was *hated* by users, with a wretched metacritic score.  DA:O was loved by users.  It's not just my opinion - and Bioware has basically apologized for what they did with DA2.

 

Here are the average user reviews from metacritic:

 

PoE: 8.6

DA:O 8.6

DA2: 4.4

DA:I 5.8

 

I actually find a strong correlation between my views and averages like these, even though I know that people game the system with 1s and 10s.  This also shows that it's entirely possible for users to rate games highly (they don't attack everything).

 

 

We're talking about the same game perhaps but not the same difficulty.

 

You characterised me as "an action gamer" as if it's some kind of pejorative.

 

First there's nothing wrong with being an "action gamer".

 

Second I'm as hard core as a strategy gamer (specialising in turn-based ones like Civ) as they come. This is why I played the DA games on Nightmare, and why I threw away DAI because that was obviously not designed with core gamers in mind.

 

I auto-attacked with my Rogue in DAO because that was the best thing to do from theorycrafting Rogue dps. DAO has fun combat certainly but at the end of the day wasn't balanced. Some abilities were just plain overpowered and most of those came from mages. If you had Morrigan and Wynne you could spam CC and AOE spells on enemies from half a screen away, which was pretty damn cheap. You can't do that with DA2 because many of the encounters didn't give you space to retreat into, or they dropped enemies on top of you forcing you to act on your wits.

 

Review scores never tell the full story, and METACRITIC USER SCORES ARE WORSE THAN WORTHLESS.

 

Please do not bring those scores up as if they had any semblance of credibility. Metacritic users are 

unprofessional, love hopping on bandwagons, love hating on big companies just for the sake of it, love giving binary 0s or 10s just to "balance" the score and are easily susceptible to "mobilization" attempts from certain boards.

 

POE was lucky to have escaped purely because it was an indie effort with a feel-good story behind its creation (misty-eyed RPG veterans behind such classics as Fallout/Baldurs Gate/IWD kickstarting new nostalgic RPG! Get on this if you're hip!). 

 

Other games by bigger companies will get 0s just because they're published by EA which according to hip gamers is Evil Incarnate. I will never forget the insanely stupid reception that ME3 got(I was disappointed in the ending too, but not enough of a dumbass to BURN MY COPY of it).

 

Basically Metacritic user scores are an avenue for your political views as a gamer, if such a thing makes sense (big company bad, small indie company good, COD-generation bad, My-generation good etc.) They are at the end of the day not beholden to professional standards (IGN, Gamespot), and even those are wrong sometimes in my opinion - I bought The Stanley Parable because of rave reviews and because I enjoyed games like Dear Esther and Gone Home, but what I got was a stinking piece of smarmy ass BS that was more interested in being "meta" than actually interesting.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Idleray

[Stun]

Yeah, whatever.

 

You only need like 5 spells in DA:O, all the others are just filler content in that regard.

You don't need any spells in DA:O, (I had the most fun with my all-rogue party playthough) but that's not the point. At all.

 

Even simple, unbalanced combat can be fun, if the system in place is deep enough to allow you to play (or role play) how you want in combat. DA2....does....not....let....fighters....Dual wield. Or use Bows. What kind of insipid, moronic design is that? If it wasn't for the fact that the game has about 10,000 examples of precisely this same type of Retard-motivated limitations from the ground up, (combat and otherwise), I'd have given it a 0/10 and condemned it for that ALONE.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Stun