PB's Feedbacks (esp. with an eye to PoE 2)

[PsychoBlonde]

So, I'm having a blast.  Just a huge, screaming, amazing time.  I don't think I've ever had this much fun playing an RPG.  I love the endurance/health interaction so much, this system really is just stellar.  However, there are a few minor things I'd like to see in Pillars of Eternity 2:

 

1.  More skills.  6 just doesn't feel like enough, although the skills that do exist are quite well-implemented, I think.  Considering how lore-intensive this game is, I think the Lore skill at least could stand to be split up into a couple of different specialties.  Maybe add a Spellcraft and Religion skill while keeping Lore as a more general-knowledge thing.

 

2. Soul-o-vision is cool, but to me it feels like there ought to be more to this, like you should get some kind of development for expanding your horizons in this way.  I'd like it if you could "react" to the little story in a small way and, say, earn some Personality points in this manner.  Or something like that.  It's not clear to me whether these memories are of the current living person or of some past life of theirs.  Maybe you could put in an option to either suppress or heighten that aspect of their character/past so that it either affects them more or doesn't?  It just feels weird reading a little story and realizing, oh, this person is a serial killer, and then . . . nothing.  Or maybe you could have a special "personality" stat for how much of a Watcher you are, and this is how you "level" that aspect of your personality, and you run across various challenges and conversation options that require certain levels of Watcherness?  I think that would be a neat mechanic and very enjoyable.

 

3.  More usefulness for traps.  I think you should let rogues go more on the "trap expert" route by giving them abilities that make the traps they plant better and also allow them to plant multiple traps at one time.

 

4.  I'd dearly love to have some "wall" type spells that'd let you create your own choke points.

 

5.  I'd like to have buttons that let me tell the entire party to switch weapon sets at once.

 

6.  You need to find the person who is responsible for the switching from past to present tense in the middle of a sentence and beat them with a stick.  Also, too many adjectives in the descriptive passages.  The dialog is good for the most part but whoever wrote most of the descriptive passages really likes their thesaurus and is not shy about inflicting it upon us.

Edited March 28, 2015 by PsychoBlonde

[PsychoBlonde]

7.  Also, the game needs to warn you when you're about to pick up camping supplies and you're already full up.  I seem to have accidentally destroyed a number of camping supplies in this way.

[PsychoBlonde]

8.  I would really have liked it if there were opportunities to gain permanent stat bonuses during the game, either through role playing or simply as a part of leveling up.  It feels like your character "grows" more when your stats gradually improve in this way.  This was one of the things I liked a lot about Planescape: Torment.

 

9.  One of the stats should add to your Accuracy rating vs. Deflection (probably Perception) and one should add to your Accuracy vs. Fort/Ref/Will (probably Resolve).

 

10.  Food items that give minor-to-medium elemental resistances would be VERY much appreciated.

 

11.  Resting at Brighthallow should have given you ALL of your accumulated construction bonuses, not just "choice of one", particularly since you only got to USE those bonuses in the Paths, since they'd wear off before you could go anywhere else.

 

12.  There were a lot of named items but most of them were pretty generic.  IMO if it's going to have a unique name, it should have a unique bonus that you can't get anywhere else.  And all unique items should be of Exceptional or better quality, I think, so they're not rapidly out-classed by the unnamed junk.

 

13.  To much gear for the armor/weapon/neck/ring slots and not enough gloves/boots/belts.  I had characters with empty gloves/boots/belt slots at the end of the game simply because I couldn't find anything to put on them.

 

14.  Found myself annoyed that neck was both the cloak and the amulet slot, basically.  I like cosmetic cloaks.  Also, too many helms/hats were merely cosmetic instead of having any actual bonuses on them.

 

15.  I actually kind of felt that there were too many companions to suit the story, but this may be a result of the fact that one of my major enjoyments is seeing the companions react to things that I do and thus they're basically dead weight to me unless I can take them EVERYWHERE.  I realize that the number of companions was basically dictated by stretch goals, anyway.  I think I might actually have enjoyed it more if some of them were mutually exclusive, though, like they'd refuse to travel with each other or doing the quest to get one prevents you from doing the quest to get another.  More criticism from companions and a wider variety of ethical standpoints/challenges would also have been welcome.  I did VERY much like how all of them became involved in your personal conflict, though, and thus had a vital reason to see it through to the end with you even though their personal struggle might be resolved long before then.  Also, the reasons FOR all of them to JOIN your party were great, as they all *tied in* to the central conflict instead of being "I have a personal problem sidequest that doesn't relate to anything else in any way whatsoever".