Mechanics you want Obsidian to keep

[Jasta11]

PoE has lots of mechanics, some of them old and rooted in the IE days of yore while others are either influenced by more recent titles or just made up by Obsidian. My question is, if Pillars gets a sequel, which mechanic would you really want them to keep? Or that you would perhaps wish more games used?

 

Personally, I really like the Endurance/Health system. Several studios have tried to change the formula used in BG2 and others, where characters going down meant they died and it was a tedious (if you ask me) affair of lugging back them to a temple or casting a rez spell. Bioware for example tried with the Injury system in Dragon Age Origins, and then in Inquisition with non-regenerative health limited by potions, but I never felt this quite worked even if I liked the potion limit in the latter overall.

 

The Endurance system is far more elegant IMO. Taking damage is a bad thing in that it drains your health ressources, but it doesn't go to the extreme that half the party biting the dust in one fight means you either reload or deal with having to drag everyone to a church. it pusnishes you for letting your characters take too much damage, not for them taking damage in and of itself.

 

I also like the concept of Engagement. It's better than the usually unpredictable aggro and taunt system (and is less ''gamey'') and allows you to establish a frontline in combat which I find really cool. It could probably be refined in a few ways, but I don,t want Obsidian to drop it.

 

Thoughts?

[Mungri]

All the mechanics. Keep them all.

 

Rebalance wherever rebalance is due.

[Dongom]

Keep Almost everything, except:

 

 

 

-I wish first-aid talents scaled better, it would help  Soak/Leech tanks  . My poor Moon Retaliation Barb is always at max Endurance, yet his HP need frequent camping.

 

-Separate Stealth would be welcome too.

 

-Spell system could use become per-encounter a tad earlier for smoother gameplay.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Dongom

[redbird]

resting limited by camping supplies. adds a good deal of tension on longer runs into dungeons / the wilderness, though there would be more tension if the difficulty of the game was increased. i'd also like to see more banters between companions when resting / waking up.

[durbal]

Everything in this game is done very well except for economy of supplies.  There's never a point after the first 15 minutes of the game where you decide what your party will need to advance.  They will always have everything.  Every magic item.  Every rest stop.  Everything.  It makes the game ultimately trivial and makes replay value considerably lower.

[Matt516]

In general I think most of the mechanics turned out well. There are a few things that are a little "gamey" for my taste, but they work mechanically quite well and I haven't had any trouble suspending my disbelief thus far.

 

Endurance/HP system - This system will never be to everyone's liking, but I think it turned out rather well and it adds a very nice short-term vs long-term resource management mechanic. Keep it, it's good. Could make the Health talents a little less terrible to take (potentially give some in-combat effects) or just remove them entirely since there wasn't supposed to be Health healing in the first place.

 

Resting - Such a bitch to balance, resting in RPGs is. No perfect solution exists, but the PoE version is much better than the BG/IWD one mechanically. I could see a bit of tuning improving it somewhat - maybe increasing supplies by a factor of 1.5-2 and adding a small chance of ambush while sleeping - but in general, I think this works quite well. Again, suspension of disbelief is necessary but it's a sound system mechanically.

 

Magic - Variation between Vancian casting (Wizard) to hybrid (Priest/Druid) to alternative resource systems (Cipher/Chanter) is great. Keep 'em all - though they do need to be rebalanced a little bit. Don't have any specific suggestions, haven't played with the different casters enough to make a judgment call. Just keep tuning, nothing fundamentally broken here.

 

New attribute system - Again, there are things that I would've done differently but overall I'd call it a success in terms of adding more viable builds for the player. It's already much better than the 2e attributes, with maybe a few minor changes needed to rebalance them. Constitution needs to go to 4% or 5%, and Perception/Resolve could stand to be a bit more useful somehow. I didn't mind it when AoE and Duration were split into 2 attributes, and I still think I prefer that... but I won't be crying if that doesn't change. I also still don't like Interrupt being on stats (or the new "interrupt stat on weapons and abilities determines time instead of chance" system), but I wouldn't know what to put in its place. It's probably good that Accuracy is no longer on an attribute - we already have MIG and DEX affecting DPS, we don't need another attribute affecting it as well. All in all, I still have some gripes about the attribute system, but it is a good system.

 

Engagement - I think this works pretty well, with one caveat - doorways. This is partly an engagement system problem, partly an area design problem, and partly an encounter design problem - but the "block a doorway with the Fighter/Paladin and pew pew away" strategy is way too dominant. I wouldn't really know how to solve this in a lore-friendly and intuitive way without a good deal of thinking - but it does need to be fixed. Maybe change enemy AI so they deliberately avoid chokepoints - you may catch one or two, but then the rest in a group will move out of LoS of the doorway and wait - or find another way around to flank you. Actually... this would be great. I'm gonna make my own post about it. Ha-HA!

 

So TL ; DR - PoE is great, and I think most of the new-mechanic-gambles paid off. I still have a few bugbears, but PoE is a great game. No denying that. Time to go play some more.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Matt516

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

Everything in this game is done very well except for economy of supplies.  There's never a point after the first 15 minutes of the game where you decide what your party will need to advance.  They will always have everything.  Every magic item.  Every rest stop.  Everything.  It makes the game ultimately trivial and makes replay value considerably lower.

 

Really? I've seen other people and reviews claim this, but honestly I find I'm always short of money and enchanting ingredients, and that's in the third act. Sure, I'll have 20-30K for a while, but then I find a new shop and buy their magic rings and fancy guns and some extra diamonds for stat boosts and I'm broke again.

 

Resting supplies are trivial, sure, except for the hard limit on how many you can carry. But where other resources are concerned I think this game strikes a much better balance than, say, Baldur's Gate 2. (Where money becomes meaningless halfway through chapter 2.)

 

Question for people who feel they have too much money: do you buy the stuff that the stores have for sale? Do you enchant a lot? Or do you just stick with what you find unless a store has something really good?

[Emptiness]

Yes, I want them to keep Mechanics.  I would prefer is searching was based off of perception, or if it was at least shared with perception (ie you can spot whatever if either your perception or your mechanics is high enough).

[durbal]

 

Everything in this game is done very well except for economy of supplies.  There's never a point after the first 15 minutes of the game where you decide what your party will need to advance.  They will always have everything.  Every magic item.  Every rest stop.  Everything.  It makes the game ultimately trivial and makes replay value considerably lower.

 

Really? I've seen other people and reviews claim this, but honestly I find I'm always short of money and enchanting ingredients, and that's in the third act. Sure, I'll have 20-30K for a while, but then I find a new shop and buy their magic rings and fancy guns and some extra diamonds for stat boosts and I'm broke again.

 

Resting supplies are trivial, sure, except for the hard limit on how many you can carry. But where other resources are concerned I think this game strikes a much better balance than, say, Baldur's Gate 2. (Where money becomes meaningless halfway through chapter 2.)

 

Question for people who feel they have too much money: do you buy the stuff that the stores have for sale? Do you enchant a lot? Or do you just stick with what you find unless a store has something really good?

 

So you buy everything, even things you don't really need.  I think that's precisely my point.

Edited April 7, 2015 by durbal

[Ohioastro]

I can't afford but a fraction of the magic items in the stores. If anything, I think money is unusually well balanced in this game, as is crafting. My only complaint on the latter is the scarcity of high end resources (e.g. better than fine)

[redbird]

a few simple additions to the game would do a lot to improve the economy.

 

the first would be an overhaul of the stronghold. if the stronghold actually felt like a living, breathing location that we cared about and wanted to improve beyond the bare bones of a bed, a vendor, and some free crafting materials, then we'd have actual reasons to sink thousands of copper into it.

 

the second would be a more robust crafting system. why can't we buy / find new recipes? why can't we sink money into research and expeditions to bring back legendary materials? why can't we hire mages and animancers to chill at our sweet fortress and wrack their brains to unlock new enchantments (i.e. new and expensive hirelings beyond simple meatshields)?

 

both these suggestions are well within the scope of the upcoming expansion(s) so hopefully we'll see a rebalancing of the economy in the near-ish future.

[dirigible]

What I like

The reputation system, where your choices influence your reputation. For isntance, you can have a reputation for honesty, or cruelty, or rationality, and these open up new dialogue choices.

 

How I wish they'd improve it

Make your party members react to your reputation, similar to how party members would react to you in Baldur's Gate. Being too much of a pacifistic deceiver? Durance doesn't like that. Maybe Durance leaves the party because he doesn't like your attitude. Or maybe party members have a 'morale' modifier which is based on how well they like you. Look at Expedition Conquistador for an example of a game that pulled this off really well.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

 

So you buy everything, even things you don't really need.  I think that's precisely my point.

 

 

Obviously, I only buy things I can use. Do I -need- to enchant all my party members' armour to have +2 to stats? No, I'll survive without it, but it definitely helps boost my team. So I buy those diamonds. Do I -need- to give everybody 2 rings, boots, cloaks, etc? Again, I can make do without those extra spells for Aloth or that extra resistance against corrosion damage, but I certainly like having that stuff.

 

Admittedly, the guns were mostly a necessary purchase because arbalests got nerfed, so on a second playthrough I could save money there.

 

Still, my point is that there is plenty of useful stuff for sale in the stores of PoE. If you don't enchant and save all your coin up just in case there's something super-awesome to buy later, then you'll end up with a lot of useless coin. If you just upgrade your stuff when something better appears in stores, you'll get decent power-gains from spending your money. There isn't a lot of super-awesome stuff to buy, but plenty of adequately-awesome things. I find that PoE does a lot better at this than many other games, the Baldur's Gates included, where there just wouldn't be anything remotely useful for sale after a certain point.

[sim-h]

Keep everything but ADD : separate stealth, guns backfiring (to make handguns unreliable rather than compulsory), ability to smash open locked containers (possibly damaging/destroying  contents), weapon breakability/wear and tear, encumbrance, walk mode, more companions.

 

Job done.

Edited April 7, 2015 by sim-h

[Starwars]

I like most of the stuff introduced and I think it'd be easier to list some that I wish were changed.

 

-The stash. I thought this would be fine with me but I really dislike the idea of having an unlimited inventory to put everything into. It makes looting completely brainless since you can just suck up everything in your stash and sell it off later. Would like some form of limit on inventory.

 

-Separate stealth would be very nice.

 

-The skill system doesn't feel great to me. Would love for that to be changed somehow.

[luzarius]

I like everything in POE except the lack of voice acting.  Kolsc was a pretty big character in the game and he had no voice acting.  Lord Raedric also needed more voice acting.  I hope to see a system in Pillars of Eternity 2 that allows we the players to easily add voice acting for NPC's with no voiced content.

 

Other than that, I'm a huge fan of this game now.

[Caerdon]

• Endurance/Health

Resting

Engagement

Multiple defenses that are targeted by different attacks/spells and affected by different status effects (there's great potential for some nice spell chaining)

Stash

The way attributes, skills, backgrounds etc. open dialogue options without guaranteeing any sort of success

[sim-h]

I like everything in POE except the lack of voice acting.  Kolsc was a pretty big character in the game and he had no voice acting.  Lord Raedric also needed more voice acting.  I hope to see a system in Pillars of Eternity 2 that allows we the players to easily add voice acting for NPC's with no voiced content.

 

Other than that, I'm a huge fan of this game now.

 

I would like more distinctive voice acting. It's quite bland at the moment. More European accents would be nice. Don't they watch Game of Thrones??

 

(Disclaimer: I'm European)

Edited April 7, 2015 by sim-h

[evensong]

 

 

So you buy everything, even things you don't really need.  I think that's precisely my point.

 

 

Obviously, I only buy things I can use. Do I -need- to enchant all my party members' armour to have +2 to stats? No, I'll survive without it, but it definitely helps boost my team. So I buy those diamonds. Do I -need- to give everybody 2 rings, boots, cloaks, etc? Again, I can make do without those extra spells for Aloth or that extra resistance against corrosion damage, but I certainly like having that stuff.

 

If you have to prioritise how to spend your money, but can get by both while choosing to spend it generously or choosing to be stingier and be able to more easily afford keep upgrades etc., that seems pretty well balanced to me?

Edited April 7, 2015 by evensong