EI Mod and my opinions

[ruzen]

If there was some random threats could accrue when camping/resting in dangerous places ( such as any other place except inns ) It could balance It self out perfectly. Because Its not a real challange to have only 2 or 6 camping suppies. A challange should be the decision It self. Not the limitation! Also since everyone who can just bore themself by going the town again; rest, resuppy the camping supply then return the dungeon again and again. The real challange is to do this nonesence. But you could just add a cooldown to resting in taverns -like 20-30 minutes- and make the desition part about camp more usefull. So camping would be like 2-3 hours and resting is 8 hours.

[Luckmann]

Sending in your tank only to initiate a dialogue that should clearly involve your PC and other party members is cheese tactics, no matter how you view it.

 

But I agree that the game should prevent said cheesing from happening more effectively. As I said: nerfing tanks and tank & spank tactics should be a main balancing priority of Obsidian.

 

...why would that be cheesing? I think it's a pretty reasonable thing to do and expect. The fact that the game can't deal with it is part of the issue. I don't think they can balance it without making some pretty big changes in the system, or tanks will just be replaced by DPS since they can't perform their function(s) and it's better to just kill things as fas as possible.

[tinderbox]

 

Sending in your tank only to initiate a dialogue that should clearly involve your PC and other party members is cheese tactics, no matter how you view it.

 

But I agree that the game should prevent said cheesing from happening more effectively. As I said: nerfing tanks and tank & spank tactics should be a main balancing priority of Obsidian.

 

...why would that be cheesing? I think it's a pretty reasonable thing to do and expect. The fact that the game can't deal with it is part of the issue. I don't think they can balance it without making some pretty big changes in the system, or tanks will just be replaced by DPS since they can't perform their function(s) and it's better to just kill things as fas as possible.

 

 

I think it's cheesey and fake. What you do in your own game is your own bizness tho; no skin off my back. What *would* be a problem is if that particular tactic were the only way to beat, say, Raedric. It's not tho. So it's all good.

[Sensuki]

Well, you can initiate dialogue with whoever you like in the Infinity Engine games too.

What if your PC is the tank? There's no problem there.

It's not intended, but I don't think it's cheesing.

As a Rogue PC, you could also go invisible.

 

-----

 

In BG1 there's a similar conundrum with Shoal, who gives a male party member the kiss of death. If you're a male PC and kiss her, you die, game over - so you have to send a companion like Minsc instead.

 

If they really wanted they could physically move the party into the position they wanted like sometimes happens in the IE games during cutscenes and stuff like that. I wouldn't really care if they did or didn't.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Sensuki

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 

Do you guys regularly use these exploits?

 

No wonder you find it so easy. Or, perhaps, no wonder I find it so hard sometimes. (Janus and all that)

 

It just never would have occured to me use that sort of tactic.

 

 

So you put your ranged characters in melee? No wonder you find it so hard. It just never occurred to me to use that sort of tactic.

 

When you send your melee character (such as my fighter in the case of the Lady Valtas example) a few steps up to the enemy, the enemy dogpiles on your melee character in a LOT of cases that I'm finding in this game. My ranged characters are waving their hands in the air shouting 'over here' and the enemy ignores them. Even when the enemy is circling the tank, waiting for another enemy to die so they can slot in, they ignore my ranged characters a few steps away.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Hiro Protagonist II

[tinderbox]

Well, you can initiate dialogue with whoever you like in the Infinity Engine games too.

 

What if your PC is the tank? There's no problem there.

 

It's not intended, but I don't think it's cheesing.

 

As a Rogue PC, you could also go invisible.

 

Yeah as I pointed out, you can make anyone party leader in the IE games. So the role play situation is slightly different from PoE where the PC always remains in charge no matter where they sit in the party order.

 

PC as tank would be the exception, ofc.

 

But really, to defeat this I'd just script the bad guy saying something like "Hey, I want to talk to ALL of you. Yes even you ms wizard." and then auto-pull-in the entire party. Presto, fixed. I mean, if your evil villain is half-smart he or she is surely not going to let 5/6ths of your party lurk 50ft away where they might safely drop nukes n such all over the bad goes when it all goes to hell.

 

Or you rearrange the layout so half the bad guys wander up to be in your range mob's face while the dialogue is going on. Then it's suddenly a lot more complicated for your half-naked spellcaster, etc.

[Sensuki]

Not really, it's exactly the same as the Infinity Engine games except that the PC's attributes are used in the dialogue instead of the speaker. I asked for them to change it so that only the PC could initiate dialogue during the beta, but they didn't. 

 

But really, to defeat this I'd just script the bad guy saying something like "Hey, I want to talk to ALL of you. Yes even you ms wizard." and then auto-pull-in the entire party. Presto, fixed. I mean, if your evil villain is half-smart he or she is surely not going to let 5/6ths of your party lurk 50ft away where they might safely drop nukes n such all over the bad goes when it all goes to hell.

 

Well, that's what I said - as that's what happens in the Blood Legacy quest. However, it doesn't really make much difference IMO. The fight wouldn't be any more fun if you were forced to go in the middle, you'd just take more damage. That's the only difference. It's not like you really have to react to that.

 

Actually TBH, I'm pretty sure you could win it really easily if every character either had Lore 1 or Lore 2 and used a Fan of Flames scroll that you crafted.

 

There's a lot of ways to easily win, but not really anything that forces you to adjust to what the enemy does in combat unfortunately.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Sensuki

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 

All these battles have a certain mechanic that makes them interesting; the Raedric's battle is imho the best of them,

Sorry, but this is not the best fight in the game. I sent Eder in to initiate dialogue, all enemies attacked him and then I creamed them all with AoE damage, ranged damage and my Rogue coming in late with dual spears. Foe only AoE makes it a breeze to just sit your tank in the middle of all of the enemies in the room and then carefully aim stuff like Fan of Flames over and over again. Those guys also get minced if you use Eder with a Jolting Touch scroll.

 

I also beat it on the first try. It wasn't even hard and didn't require me to adjust to anything they did at all. I won simply by using the same strategy I use to beat everything else.

 

If spellcasters could actually protect themselves properly like they can in the IE games, then it might be a different story.

 

 

So... you basicly metagame'd this encounter hard by sending in your tank alone to trigger the dialogue. Come on, really? The fight is fun and challenging when doing it the way it was intended.

 

 

lol wut?

 

How was the encounter intended? And how do you metagame it? I roleplayed the encounter with sending my tank in first and triggering the battle. This is how our pnp group would play with a defender running in taking the hits and everyone else mopping up. 

[tinderbox]

 

 

All these battles have a certain mechanic that makes them interesting; the Raedric's battle is imho the best of them,

Sorry, but this is not the best fight in the game. I sent Eder in to initiate dialogue, all enemies attacked him and then I creamed them all with AoE damage, ranged damage and my Rogue coming in late with dual spears. Foe only AoE makes it a breeze to just sit your tank in the middle of all of the enemies in the room and then carefully aim stuff like Fan of Flames over and over again. Those guys also get minced if you use Eder with a Jolting Touch scroll.

 

I also beat it on the first try. It wasn't even hard and didn't require me to adjust to anything they did at all. I won simply by using the same strategy I use to beat everything else.

 

If spellcasters could actually protect themselves properly like they can in the IE games, then it might be a different story.

 

 

So... you basicly metagame'd this encounter hard by sending in your tank alone to trigger the dialogue. Come on, really? The fight is fun and challenging when doing it the way it was intended.

 

 

lol wut?

 

How was the encounter intended? And how do you metagame it? I roleplayed the encounter with sending my tank in first and triggering the battle. This is how our pnp group would play with a defender running in taking the hits and everyone else mopping up. 

 

 

See, I was looking for a peacefuil solution while recognising the necessity that I might have to take out the existing lord "for the greater good". In the end I felt that having to fight in that instance was somewhat of a failure for my character. I think some of these encounter problems boil down to roleplaying styles, too. Not saying yours is wrong, but that the encounter doesn't seem to have been mapped for someone whose character has decided firmly, for whatever reason, that Raedric needs to be eliminated and that, well, why the hell are we even talking?

[Awathorn]

The more I play PoE, the more I agree with Sensuki. 

 

It's lacking in almost every aspect as standalone, or when compare to IE, or even later RPG from the same "family".

 

RTWP game made by guys who obviously want to make a turn-based game. IE lookalike that hates everything IE. DnD ripoff that doesn't want to be DnD.

 

Original world is not so original, writing is not that good (and this was supposed to be the Obsidian strongpoint), combat seems fun at first until you realize you're doing the same thing over and over again, with different classes, over different playthroughs while wave after wave of meaningless copy-pasted enemies come your way. 

 

It's just so... meh. Interesting characters, epic battles, epic quests, epic loot... nowhere to be found. Replayability? Nope.

[Quantics]

[...]

 

With 18,583 unique downloads (and I'm not yet one of them) as of this post though, I think Obsidian should take note at how many people want what's in the IE mod, and at least implement the options that it has that are not gameplay changing in an upcoming official patch (other than the one that alters the backer stuff that is). Revisiting what is gameplay changing and in the mod should perhaps be done as well.

 

Hopefully we'll see some of the things the IE mod takes care of as well as the XP issue (as in it takes too little XP to level) addressed in 1.05.

 

 

 

So, it's just PCGamer but it's nice to see the IE mod getting some recognition. Maybe if enough sites do a story on it, Obsidian may consider implementing some of the features. It's not like the code isn't readily available?

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/pillars-of-eternity-mod-brings-ui-options-other-goodies/?ns_campaign=article-feed&ns_mchannel=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

 

 

Damn, that's a lot of downloads ! 

 

How come only a handful of people posted on the mod thread to thank Bester for his work though?

 

I believe the main reason he stopped working on his mod is that he didn't enjoy PoE that much... but it sure would have been nice for him to get a bit more support/thank you's. I mean, the modding thread was really slow on this forum.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Quantics

[Hassat Hunter]

If you struggled doing that in the Infinity Engine games it's because you didn't try and understand the AI targeting.

 

In other words: Didn't knew how to 'play/exploit' the AI.

Let's not make it more than what it is, your IE Targeting isn't some great massive function BioWare added in, it is you exploiting how basically the AI was of the IE-games, and then taking that as what's to be sought for.

 

*shrug*

[Sensuki]

It's the same as anything man, if you don't learn from your experience then how do you get better?

It's not an exploit. Just as is remembering what spells enemies are going to cast is not an exploit. 

Edited April 13, 2015 by Sensuki

[PrimeJunta]

I do think it is something of an exploit. You're bypassing a great deal of the complexity by manipulating a single facet of the systems. It just happens to be challenging enough to execute that you find it enjoyable.

 

What it is not is a core feature of the IE games, and you're doing both them and P:E a disservice by treating it as such. You do not need to understand or manipulate AI targeting (or use any other degenerate strategy) to have a blast playing the IE games.  

[tinderbox]

Not really, it's exactly the same as the Infinity Engine games except that the PC's attributes are used in the dialogue instead of the speaker. I asked for them to change it so that only the PC could initiate dialogue during the beta, but they didn't. 

 

But really, to defeat this I'd just script the bad guy saying something like "Hey, I want to talk to ALL of you. Yes even you ms wizard." and then auto-pull-in the entire party. Presto, fixed. I mean, if your evil villain is half-smart he or she is surely not going to let 5/6ths of your party lurk 50ft away where they might safely drop nukes n such all over the bad goes when it all goes to hell.

 

Well, that's what I said - as that's what happens in the Blood Legacy quest. However, it doesn't really make much difference IMO. The fight wouldn't be any more fun if you were forced to go in the middle, you'd just take more damage. That's the only difference. It's not like you really have to react to that.

 

Actually TBH, I'm pretty sure you could win it really easily if every character either had Lore 1 or Lore 2 and used a Fan of Flames scroll that you crafted.

 

There's a lot of ways to easily win, but not really anything that forces you to adjust to what the enemy does in combat unfortunately.

 

I'm sure that you could.

 

I got wiped out three times completing that particular battle and I think when I did finally win, I had only three characters left standing out of a party of six. None of whom was Eder, interestingly enough. I found controlling the terms of that encounter quite difficult. I think that that's what made it one of the most interesting encounters for me so far as I felt I really had to wrest control of the battlefield from the AI.

 

*shrugs*

 

YMMV and all that.

[Luckmann]

 

 

Sending in your tank only to initiate a dialogue that should clearly involve your PC and other party members is cheese tactics, no matter how you view it.

 

But I agree that the game should prevent said cheesing from happening more effectively. As I said: nerfing tanks and tank & spank tactics should be a main balancing priority of Obsidian.

 

...why would that be cheesing? I think it's a pretty reasonable thing to do and expect. The fact that the game can't deal with it is part of the issue. I don't think they can balance it without making some pretty big changes in the system, or tanks will just be replaced by DPS since they can't perform their function(s) and it's better to just kill things as fas as possible.

 

 

I think it's cheesey and fake. What you do in your own game is your own bizness tho; no skin off my back. What *would* be a problem is if that particular tactic were the only way to beat, say, Raedric. It's not tho. So it's all good.

 

 

You still didn't answer the question.

[Darkcloud1987]

 

All these battles have a certain mechanic that makes them interesting; the Raedric's battle is imho the best of them,

Sorry, but this is not the best fight in the game. I sent Eder in to initiate dialogue, all enemies attacked him and then I creamed them all with AoE damage, ranged damage and my Rogue coming in late with dual spears. Foe only AoE makes it a breeze to just sit your tank in the middle of all of the enemies in the room and then carefully aim stuff like Fan of Flames over and over again. Those guys also get minced if you use Eder with a Jolting Touch scroll.

 

I also beat it on the first try. It wasn't even hard and didn't require me to adjust to anything they did at all. I won simply by using the same strategy I use to beat everything else.

 

If spellcasters could actually protect themselves properly like they can in the IE games, then it might be a different story.

 

 

So... you basicly metagame'd this encounter hard by sending in your tank alone to trigger the dialogue that you couldn't know would turn out to be a battle. Come on, really? The fight is fun and challenging when doing it the way it was intended. Ever wondered why the NPCs are placed in a half-circle? That's because the dialogue triggers at a distance in which you are surrounded by those guys.

 

You couldn't know that the dialogue with the guy you came to assassinate would end in a battle? 

[tinderbox]

 

 

Do you guys regularly use these exploits?

 

No wonder you find it so easy. Or, perhaps, no wonder I find it so hard sometimes. (Janus and all that)

 

It just never would have occured to me use that sort of tactic.

 

 

So you put your ranged characters in melee? No wonder you find it so hard. It just never occurred to me to use that sort of tactic.

 

When you send your melee character (such as my fighter in the case of the Lady Valtas example) a few steps up to the enemy, the enemy dogpiles on your melee character in a LOT of cases that I'm finding in this game. My ranged characters are waving their hands in the air shouting 'over here' and the enemy ignores them. Even when the enemy is circling the tank, waiting for another enemy to die so they can slot in, they ignore my ranged characters a few steps away.

 

 

Yeah, I do that fairly often actually. Flank, circle and come in from the back and switch to melee to get the flanking bonus. I don't think I have a pure ranged character tbh. More of a bunch of multi-purposers. The only one I don't send into melee much at all is Aloth though jolting touch is always a bit of a temptation. Played BG and BG2 much the same way too.

 

Maybe I'm just a dumb n00b.

[AlphaMagnum]

Since no one in that room notices your party initially, what I did was have my whole party hang back and place traps just past the enemies' vision radius while sneaking. My main character subsequently went in to start the dialogue alone and then led the enemies on a short but merry chase toward my death trap.

 

There isn't really any reason for the enemy not to follow my lone monk since they have no reason to suspect that there was anyone else involved. The trap placement allowed my main character to survive and was done in a manner consistent with my own approach to role-playing. Was actually awesome to see.

[tinderbox]

 

 

You still didn't answer the question.

 

 

So, I'm about to head into a really dangerous situation against an enemy of unknown abilities. I have no idea of the reception that I'm going to get. It might be positive, it might be negative. Who the hell knows? But one thing I do know -- he has a bunch of mates with him. Lots and lots of the buggers.

 

But, hey, I have some mates along to give me back-up and I know they'll have my back if it comes to crossing swords.

 

What about them? They could come along and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me if worst comes to worst, right? That would make sense, right?

 

Hell no, I'll leave them behind and march up all by myself to confront this evil dictator! Sure that bad guy has a dozen offsiders but I'll be fine up there all on my lonesome. Right?

 

Sold! I'll buy 100 of those strategies at 100cp a-piece.

 

That's why I think it's cheesey. I don't feel it's a realistic reaction.

 

Again, if that's what others want to do, that's fine. But for RP reasons (and the RP element is fairly important to me), I don't think it floats at all.

[Darkcloud1987]

 

 

 

You still didn't answer the question.

 

 

So, I'm about to head into a really dangerous situation against an enemy of unknown abilities. I have no idea of the reception that I'm going to get. It might be positive, it might be negative. Who the hell knows? But one thing I do know -- he has a bunch of mates with him. Lots and lots of the buggers.

 

But, hey, I have some mates along to give me back-up and I know they'll have my back if it comes to crossing swords.

 

What about them? They could come along and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me if worst comes to worst, right? That would make sense, right?

 

Hell no, I'll leave them behind and march up all by myself to confront this evil dictator! Sure that bad guy has a dozen offsiders but I'll be fine up there all on my lonesome. Right?

 

Sold! I'll buy 100 of those strategies at 100cp a-piece.

 

That's why I think it's cheesey. I don't feel it's a realistic reaction.

 

Again, if that's what others want to do, that's fine. But for RP reasons (and the RP element is fairly important to me), I don't think it floats at all.

 

So you think the  "There are a lot of dangerous guys so I will put myself and and all my companions even the squishy ones right in the middle of those guys. " would be the smart choice. The intelligent thing to do would be to not go up there at all and talk to raedric without going up there but you can't do that. 

The next best thing would be to only send up the ones that can survive in a direct melee battle with those guys and keep the rest of my party hidden somewhere where they can ambush those enemies. 

[Tartantyco]

The exploits that I use aren't exploits because I don't use exploits.

 

k.

[Sensuki]

I do think it is something of an exploit. You're bypassing a great deal of the complexity by manipulating a single facet of the systems. It just happens to be challenging enough to execute that you find it enjoyable.

 

What it is not is a core feature of the IE games, and you're doing both them and P:E a disservice by treating it as such. You do not need to understand or manipulate AI targeting (or use any other degenerate strategy) to have a blast playing the IE games.

How is it an exploit? I can see what the enemy AI is doing just by looking at it and I remember what they do for next time. That's how you win things/improve at things.

 

I didn't outgun people in Call of Duty because I had better aim than other people more often than not, I won because I had better game sense, I could predict what people were going to do, pre-aim the corners/edges that I thought they were going to poke from and slip through gaps in the defenses and shoot people in the back and stuff like that. If I had to straight up fight people, I could outshoot people, but there were people who had more straight up aim/reflexes than I did.

 

Am I supposed to deliberately play badly or something? I don't think so.

 

And once again, this is not the thing that I am complaining about for Pillars of Eternity either, because it's possible to do in ANY game of this type.

 

And I agree, you do not have to play like me to enjoy the IE games or Pillars of Eternity, however I get a lot of mileage from my party the way that I play. But, this gameplay will be present in all games of this type. I think it's a shame the developers don't use it to their advantage or accommodate for it. I'd be designing encounters around it if I had the chance.

 

YMMV and all that.

Indeed. Personally I found Ogre Druids more annoying, because usually no matter what they would get off AoE spells that would hurt multiple party members, and that spell that makes them explode when they die.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Sensuki

[tinderbox]

So you think the  "There are a lot of dangerous guys so I will put myself and and all my companions even the squishy ones right in the middle of those guys. " would be the smart choice. The intelligent thing to do would be to not go up there at all and talk to raedric without going up there but you can't do that. 

The next best thing would be to only send up the ones that can survive in a direct melee battle with those guys and keep the rest of my party hidden somewhere where they can ambush those enemies. 

 

 

Hey I'm a coward. I want safety in numbers.

[Zwiebelchen]

There isn't really any reason for the enemy not to follow my lone monk since they have no reason to suspect that there was anyone else involved. The trap placement allowed my main character to survive and was done in a manner consistent with my own approach to role-playing. Was actually awesome to see.

... so you mean ... despite enough common sense that a monk probably didn't infiltrate a heavily guarded castle alone...?

 

 

 

Sending in your tank only to initiate a dialogue that should clearly involve your PC and other party members is cheese tactics, no matter how you view it.

 

But I agree that the game should prevent said cheesing from happening more effectively. As I said: nerfing tanks and tank & spank tactics should be a main balancing priority of Obsidian.

 

...why would that be cheesing? I think it's a pretty reasonable thing to do and expect. The fact that the game can't deal with it is part of the issue. I don't think they can balance it without making some pretty big changes in the system, or tanks will just be replaced by DPS since they can't perform their function(s) and it's better to just kill things as fas as possible.

 

 

Just think of it in a more realistic scenario: would you send in a lone person (that is probably a friend of yours) to talk to a group of heavily armored soldiers while your other folks stand way out of sight, ready to strike, willingly accepting the potential death of a party member?

Just because it makes sense from a gameplay perspective doesn't mean it's reasonable or expected behaviour.

 

And I'm not advocating for tanks to become pointless, I'm just saying that for a more tactical experience, the gap between tanks and non-tanks in terms of survivability should be reduced. Make DPSers less squishy and tanks less tanky and tank & spank will immediately become way less popular.

 

The ultimate fault in the encounter design of PoE is not really the AI not prioritizing DPSers, it's that dogpiling enemies with a single character and surviving the onslaught is possible. In fact, I'm always for predictable AI behaviour, because it encourages tanking as part of a "problem solving" task. An AI that suddenly switches targets is unpredictable and mostly frustrating, especially if the trigger is pretty much random. It's also not even required to make encounters interesting if the gap between tanks and non-tanks would be way smaller.

 

If, say, a tank can tank and survive 3 enemies tops, but a mail/plate equipped cleric will also be able to take 1-2 enemies and survive, then we will almost instantly go towards more IE-esque situations (note: the balanced IE, as in Icewind Dale*), where the entire group is pretty much in the middle of the action.

 

*Btw, in BG2, I mostly used enemy-dogpiling on my Kangaxx-ring equipped unkillable PC maintank aswell ... and it worked just as good as it does in PoE [if not better due to prebuffing resistances and immunities]. I still wonder why anyone thinks BG2 was any different here...

Edited April 13, 2015 by Zwiebelchen