Struggling to finish

[Hiro Protagonist II]

@Hiro:

You can always just trigger the traps, if disarming is not an option. Many chars should be able to soak it up, and there's a good chance the trap will miss.

I think the Vines are mostly a way to evade the big fight with the 'shrooms.

 

I tried that and characters died. As I said, I was under-levelled so I couldn't soak up the damage.

[Awathorn]

Any real interest I had in PoE kind of died in the Act 2. Sure I finished it, and I started again, but I never manage to put myself all the way through the game once again. Quality of... well, everything plummets as you progress. Beginning is really the best part of the whole game. No wonder they've kept the story hidden through the development.

 

And while it is not THAT bad, or even bad at all, it's not good. Like some weird bastard of IWD2, NWN2 and TOEE with all the fun removed. 

 

It all comes to this:

 

- mediocre setting and story (with so many holes and cheap ways to advance the plot),

- world is dead and everything feels detached from PC and story, with no truly interesting companions or other characters,

- repetitive combat that removed all the awesome IE stuff and added just a few good things,

- small maps without enough content,

- lazy enemy and encounter design,

 

 

So, PoE, failed in almost all the aspects that matter. And passed with flying colors in the visual department. Sounds so familiar. 

 

I was very optimistic when I first heard about PoE, somewhat optimistic when it was out and on my first playthrough, but flaws just keep coming to the surface. Excluding limited nostalgia factor, there is nothing here that is better than other modern mainstream RPGs. In fact, Witcher or even DAO felt more original and just... fun. 

 

Obsidian now has some money and working engine+world. I hope the next effort will be much, much better. 

[Hiro Protagonist II]

You get knocked out when your endurance reaches Zero. The problem is that If your endurance never reaches zero, you never get knocked out. But since you take damage to both endurance and health at about a 4:1 Ratio (or 5:1, depending on your class) this results in massive health loss for those who artificially maintain their endurance pools during a fight.

 

In other words, Healing can kill you. What an absurd system.

 

Yep, I often let my characters get knocked out all the time. Someone is going to get knocked out? Meh, no matter. I can finish this fight off with the rest of my party. And the characters who are knocked out are safe with not losing any more health and won't die. And after the battle is over, they're on full endurance again.

 

 

Like I say, they've thrown out the fun-baby with the degenerative game-play bathwater.

 

And introduced new degenerative gameplay that the IE games didn't have.

Edited April 18, 2015 by Hiro Protagonist II

[El Zoido]

 

@Hiro:

You can always just trigger the traps, if disarming is not an option. Many chars should be able to soak it up, and there's a good chance the trap will miss.

I think the Vines are mostly a way to evade the big fight with the 'shrooms.

 

I tried that and characters died. As I said, I was under-levelled so I couldn't soak up the damage.

 

 

Hm, then you can either retry until the trap misses (use a char with high defenses) or load the auto-save from when you entered the level.

[Monte Carlo]

 

You get knocked out when your endurance reaches Zero. The problem is that If your endurance never reaches zero, you never get knocked out. But since you take damage to both endurance and health at about a 4:1 Ratio (or 5:1, depending on your class) this results in massive health loss for those who artificially maintain their endurance pools during a fight.

 

In other words, Healing can kill you. What an absurd system.

 

Yep, I often let my characters get knocked out all the time. Someone is going to get knocked out? Meh, no matter. I can finish this fight off with the rest of my party. And the characters who are knocked out are safe with not losing any more health and won't die. And after the battle is over, they're on full endurance again.

 

 

Like I say, they've thrown out the fun-baby with the degenerative game-play bathwater.

 

And introduced new degenerative gameplay that the IE games didn't have.

 

 

Precisely. My irony-meter exploded.

[Archaven]

I kind of agree.. i'm struggling to finish it now. Game is too easy. Hard is actually Easy. Dang.

[Prime-Mover]

 

I hereby promote you to Expert Veteran.  Go ahead and set the game to Path of the Damned and turn on Trial of Iron, then report your progress here.

I wish people would stop spouting this ridiculous straw man.

 

Game difficulty (or lack of it) Is. Not. The. Problem.

 

That's not a ****ing straw man mutherf*ckah

[Luckmann]

 

 

I hereby promote you to Expert Veteran.  Go ahead and set the game to Path of the Damned and turn on Trial of Iron, then report your progress here.

I wish people would stop spouting this ridiculous straw man.

 

Game difficulty (or lack of it) Is. Not. The. Problem.

 

 

That's not a ****ing straw man mutherf*ckah

 

 

Yes it is. I don't think it was intended as one, and it's just general retardation at play, but it is a strawman. It implies that the position from which the critique is formed is one of difficulty, and that the argument amounts to "I'm very good, the game is too easy, change it". Which is really, really ****ing far from the truth.

 

I have zero interest in Path of the Damned, because Path of the Damned is based on inflated numbers, which isn't what the entire issue is about at all. If it was just about flat difficulty, you could solve it by just upping all numbers across the board. It's very easy to create nigh-unkillable opponents and unsolvable encounters.

 

The game is "too easy" because of systemic issues, not because Stun has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the game mechanics or because I've got 25 000 posts on the boards, and we've always argued around how game mechanics interacts and what can be done to improve it, not just cry about how easy it is for us 1337 harcr0e playuhs to dominate casuals for the purpose of our e-peen.

 

 

You get knocked out when your endurance reaches Zero. The problem is that If your endurance never reaches zero, you never get knocked out. But since you take damage to both endurance and health at about a 4:1 Ratio (or 5:1, depending on your class) this results in massive health loss for those who artificially maintain their endurance pools during a fight.

 

In other words, Healing can kill you. What an absurd system.

Yep, I often let my characters get knocked out all the time. Someone is going to get knocked out? Meh, no matter. I can finish this fight off with the rest of my party. And the characters who are knocked out are safe with not losing any more health and won't die. And after the battle is over, they're on full endurance again.

 

Like I say, they've thrown out the fun-baby with the degenerative game-play bathwater.

And introduced new degenerative gameplay that the IE games didn't have.

 

In 20 years we will get a new game, a spiritual sequel to the Pillars Series, with a brave lead designer with an irrational hatred for doorways and ranged combatants. Instead of a war on movement, there will be a war on health bars and healing. Such degeneracy. Much exploit. Must remove.

 

After reaching the conclusion that losing the game is boring and only results in reloads, death is removed as a game mechanic. The tedium of picking up items is removed, and you are now instead given all the items in the game upon launching the game.

Edited April 18, 2015 by Luckmann

[Stun]

 

And introduced new degenerative gameplay that the IE games didn't have.

 

Precisely. My irony-meter exploded.

 

Or as someone so brilliantly put it on another forum, The operation was a success, but the patient still died.

[Prime-Mover]

 

 

 

I hereby promote you to Expert Veteran.  Go ahead and set the game to Path of the Damned and turn on Trial of Iron, then report your progress here.

I wish people would stop spouting this ridiculous straw man.

 

Game difficulty (or lack of it) Is. Not. The. Problem.

 

 

That's not a ****ing straw man mutherf*ckah

 

 

Yes it is. I don't think it was intended as one, and it's just general retardation at play, but it is a strawman. It implies that the position from which the critique is formed is one of difficulty, and that the argument amounts to "I'm very good, the game is too easy, change it". Which is really, really ****ing far from the truth.

 

I have zero interest in Path of the Damned, because Path of the Damned is based on inflated numbers, which isn't what the entire issue is about at all. If it was just about flat difficulty, you could solve it by just upping all numbers across the board. It's very easy to create nigh-unkillable opponents and unsolvable encounters.

 

The game is "too easy" because of systemic issues, not because Stun has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the game mechanics or because I've got 25 000 posts on the boards, and we've always argued around how game mechanics interacts and what can be done to improve it, not just cry about how easy it is for us 1337 harcr0e playuhs to dominate casuals for the purpose of our e-peen.

My point was of course entirely pedantic, but misunderstanding the other persons position does not in itself equal a straw man. There has to be an argument either implicit or explicit for this to be the case.

[Namutree]

People play games like this for the combat?

Yes. Hence why IWD1/IWD2 are a thing.

[Namutree]

^And....I didn't want to bring this up because for some inexplicable reason, people here seem to love the endurance/health mechanic, but.... the system in place actually PUNISHES you for staying alive. Healing spells heal just your endurance. This means that assigning your priest to the role constantly healing everyone during a fight typically results in everyone's endurance staying close to 100%, while their health bar goes red..

 

Rule of thumb: when letting your party members get Ko'ed as quickly as possible becomes the Ideal thing to do to keep yourself from having to rest after every other fight, then it's time to go back to the drawing board. Because your system sucks monkey balls.

There really should be a penalty for getting knocked out.

[Luckmann]

 

 

 

 

I hereby promote you to Expert Veteran.  Go ahead and set the game to Path of the Damned and turn on Trial of Iron, then report your progress here.

I wish people would stop spouting this ridiculous straw man.

 

Game difficulty (or lack of it) Is. Not. The. Problem.

 

 

That's not a ****ing straw man mutherf*ckah

 

 

Yes it is. I don't think it was intended as one, and it's just general retardation at play, but it is a strawman. It implies that the position from which the critique is formed is one of difficulty, and that the argument amounts to "I'm very good, the game is too easy, change it". Which is really, really ****ing far from the truth.

 

I have zero interest in Path of the Damned, because Path of the Damned is based on inflated numbers, which isn't what the entire issue is about at all. If it was just about flat difficulty, you could solve it by just upping all numbers across the board. It's very easy to create nigh-unkillable opponents and unsolvable encounters.

 

The game is "too easy" because of systemic issues, not because Stun has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the game mechanics or because I've got 25 000 posts on the boards, and we've always argued around how game mechanics interacts and what can be done to improve it, not just cry about how easy it is for us 1337 harcr0e playuhs to dominate casuals for the purpose of our e-peen.

 

My point was of course entirely pedantic, but misunderstanding the other persons position does not in itself equal a straw man. There has to be an argument either implicit or explicit for this to be the case.

 

 

Fair enough. It's like with trolling, it's hard to tell whether someone is stupid or just retarded.

 

 

^And....I didn't want to bring this up because for some inexplicable reason, people here seem to love the endurance/health mechanic, but.... the system in place actually PUNISHES you for staying alive. Healing spells heal just your endurance. This means that assigning your priest to the role constantly healing everyone during a fight typically results in everyone's endurance staying close to 100%, while their health bar goes red..

 

Rule of thumb: when letting your party members get Ko'ed as quickly as possible becomes the Ideal thing to do to keep yourself from having to rest after every other fight, then it's time to go back to the drawing board. Because your system sucks monkey balls.

There really should be a penalty for getting knocked out.

 

I never understood why you only get penalized if you get knocked out with 0 Health. That should activate straight away when you reach 0 Endurance the first time, and then you just keep getting it if you keep sucking, and then you absolutely, unequivocally and irrevocably die when you reach 0 Health.

 

Fine, have the double-HP system, fine, alright, non-negotiable, whatever. But getting to 0 Endurance is trivial. It doesn't mean anything. With a system of Wounds at 0 Endurance and absolute death at 0 Health, the lower parts of health would be the absolute "Rest. Now." red light, the point at which you absolutely have to stop, beaten, bloody and bruised, and thus tie into the limited resting system.

 

Right now there's not even a penalty for being knocked out at all, which is just.. stupid.

Edited April 18, 2015 by Luckmann

[Namutree]

 

I never understood why you only get penalized if you get knocked out with 0 Health. That should activate straight away when you reach 0 Endurance the first time, and then you just keep getting it if you keep sucking, and then you absolutely, unequivocally and irrevocably die when you reach 0 Health.

 

Fine, have the double-HP system, fine, alright, non-negotiable, whatever. But getting to 0 Endurance is trivial. It doesn't mean anything. With a system of Wounds at 0 Endurance and absolute death at 0 Health, the lower parts of health would be the absolute "Rest. Now." red light, the point at which you absolutely have to stop, beaten, bloody and bruised, and thus tie into the limited resting system.

 

Right now there's not even a penalty for being knocked out at all, which is just.. stupid.

 

The combat would be more exciting if there was a penalty to getting knocked out.

 

Healing becomes more viable. 

 

Situations where a character is nearly out of endurance becomes tense, a kind of, "OMG! Please don't die Eder! I don't wanna rest yet! I know, healing, gotta heal Eder before it's too late!" *manages to heal Eder* "Heck yes!" Right now it's more like, "Meh, Eder looks like he'll go down. Oh well, I'll still win the fight." <---- Not exactly a recipe for excitement.

 

Traps become scarier too.

[Frenzy-kun]

I will try to be a bit more constructive than the average.

 

In my sense the problem doesn't come of the engagement, the lack of prebuffs or whatever. I believe any game design can be good if developed properly. In fact, act 1 is very good as you say, which means the problem doesn't come from the combat itself.

 

One of the rules of game design is that when players learn the most eficient way to succed in the game, the downhill of boredom begins. Saying so, I think the problem relies there.

 

Basically there are two points to explain this. First, is that most of the player comes from the Baldur's gate saga, which made the combat for this people much easier to predict. It doesn't mean it's simple because there is still many people who never played IE and they struggle to understand what's happening. The second is the one I would like to talk about: the lack of content.

 

This game is a 40 hour game, which means, it requires enough variety of situations to do not get bored. And this game lacks of it. The proof? Check the wizard spells. When you see one of the spells you can really expect an improved version in the next level. This translates into higher level skills being like the lower level skills but improved. Since the game progresses according to your character level, it means that basically is just an up-to-date of a previously existing skill. So this skill plays the same.

 

It also happens with the different controlling skills. Basically all the status effects works pretty symilar. They drain health or incapacitate. So at certain point I was just spamming status randomly. Then you go back to baldur's gate And then you see that yes, there are some upgraded versions, but the quantity of new spells is so overwhelming and the number of upgrades is so little that probably you already switched tactics when the upgrade came, forcing you to readapt.

 

My solution would be to first, create abilities that are unique and combine. Not an easy task, but BG is full of those. But lastly but not least, make conceptual battles. Force the player to deal with a situation they didn't deal before by making some themes on every combat. Most of the combats are a bunch of enemies mixed together with more or less resistance. But I really miss battle themes where you really have to deal with unique situations in unique ways. What about some spiders that can paralize whatever gets closer and can attack and poison on distance? Try to engage it and you lose your character for several seconds. Get too close and even your ranged attacks won't work. And then, after the player learns how to deal with this, have the spiders protected against ranged attacks. Even more, bounce back spells.

 

The companions that becomes agressive because of those huge mushrooms doesn't attack you. That would bring new situations as well. And what about an improved version where the parasited companion ends up exploding if you don't manage to deal with the one controlling him? What about some engage braking abilities. I can imagine for instance that maybe those lions could have a roar that forces any engaged enemy to drop to the floor and disengage. Then they would not be just an upgraded wolf. If you engage them, then your fighter could be screwed.

 

You don't have to go for those complicated patterns. Just using several thematic battles it would be already very good. A fireball theme, for instance. Have 3 wizard enemies pointing fireballs around. Having fire resistant companions that synchs their pushing attacks to the fireball launching. As the wizards start casting the fireball, the warriors pushes your fighters to where the fireball is going to be launched. Hell, that would be crazy to win. THe player for sure needs new strategies. Even if it's about using fire resistance potions, it's already something. The next battle with the fireball mages and the fighters could have some paralysis attack that would make your team an easy target.

 

I remember in the first baldur's gate, the boss battle in episode 4 where you had to fight a wizard that teleports and launches bouncing lightnings in the small alleys. Hell, I didn't know how to deal with that at first. It's not about having a bunch of well localiced enemies, it's about generating sinergies between enemies to create new situations that must be handled in a different way. And I don't know up to what point was done because I could not care less about what skills the enemies were using, but if tried, not achieved.

Edited April 18, 2015 by Frenzy-kun

[Manart]

The 1.04 patch supposedly added some new AI tweaks. Did anybody get a chance to test that out?

[redneckdevil]

 

 

I never understood why you only get penalized if you get knocked out with 0 Health. That should activate straight away when you reach 0 Endurance the first time, and then you just keep getting it if you keep sucking, and then you absolutely, unequivocally and irrevocably die when you reach 0 Health.

 

Fine, have the double-HP system, fine, alright, non-negotiable, whatever. But getting to 0 Endurance is trivial. It doesn't mean anything. With a system of Wounds at 0 Endurance and absolute death at 0 Health, the lower parts of health would be the absolute "Rest. Now." red light, the point at which you absolutely have to stop, beaten, bloody and bruised, and thus tie into the limited resting system.

 

Right now there's not even a penalty for being knocked out at all, which is just.. stupid.

 

The combat would be more exciting if there was a penalty to getting knocked out.

 

Healing becomes more viable.

 

Situations where a character is nearly out of endurance becomes tense, a kind of, "OMG! Please don't die Eder! I don't wanna rest yet! I know, healing, gotta heal Eder before it's too late!" *manages to heal Eder* "Heck yes!" Right now it's more like, "Meh, Eder looks like he'll go down. Oh well, I'll still win the fight." <---- Not exactly a recipe for excitement.

 

Traps become scarier too.

I'd be all for having the he ingame maiming conditions for so many times knocked out or maybe even based on what attacked knocked u out.

[Karkarov]

There is nothing wrong with engagement, it is not the problem.  The problem is that the party just becomes OP around level 8 or so and it only gets easier from there.  They just need to introduce some immunities for enemies and add in some more encounters where you might see the enemy petrify you, or try to lure you into a room filled with traps etc.

[constantine]

At first I was a pretty staunch defender of this game and it's changes to the IE style, but the closer I get to the end, the harder it becomes for me to even want to boot this game up and complete it.

 

There have been many people suggesting that the combat quickly becomes formulaic and follows a flowchart of - Sneak -> Position -> Tank and Spank and win

 

This is pretty much the case. Once you get a full party and get into the mid game, this is what every combat encounter becomes. Sensuki said it best in another topic that there is no dynamic shift or any strategy involved, it's just a set of motions that you go through almost every fight, you don't have to adapt to combat at all, because once your Tank is engaged with the mob of dumb enemies up front, you simply lay down all the AoE CC you have and you move onto the next exact same group battle. It's the same thing, over and over again.

 

I started to get a little concerned with this combat system in Act 2, and I never ran into a situation where combat became different or engaging. You level up and get new spells and abilities but early game spells remain really good for most of the game, and there are a lot of priest, Wizard and Druid spells that are never really worth casting in battle. The fact that you can't pre-buff in this game also reduces strategy and combat dynamic IMO.

 

So I keep trucking along because of the story, but even that is nowhere near the level I was expecting to get when I pre-ordered the game. I have a couple well written characters and fairly simple fantasy story going, with a pretty boring Antagonist. It just doesn't grab me and keep me moving like Baldurs Gate or BG2 did, and it's nowhere near as impressive as Planescape: Torment.

 

I don't expect PoE to be at the same level of those games but it just doesn't seem like they put enough heart into the story. I don't know how else to describe it.

 

I like certain things about this game, I really do, but when I tally up all the things I dislike, such as the combat, the attribute system and some parts of the story, overall I just find myself struggling to finish and I don't think this will be a game I start up again after completing it like I did with Baldurs Gate 2, and Planescape.

 

Bring on the flames!

The story flourishes later on if you can bring yourself to carry on.

 

As for combat, I really don't understand many of such comments I've been reading for some time now. There is quite a different approach if you're battling a mixed mob of brutes-spellcasters and when just melee opponents.

 

But the worst as I see it, is how people compare the 'boring' PoE combat to that of BG1-2. If one of those games had same combat tactics over and over, tha would definitely be BG(1 and 2). If you had casters, you had to play rock-paper-scissors to break their defenses, or have a berserker rush them, or have the Paladin kit's strong dispel turn them to puppies.

 

Also, you people should admit that for the most battles you used the same favourite spells, not to mention how simple the melee classes were.

[constantine]

^And....I didn't want to bring this up because for some inexplicable reason, people here seem to love the endurance/health mechanic, but.... the system in place actually PUNISHES you for staying alive. Healing spells heal just your endurance. This means that assigning your priest to the role constantly healing everyone during a fight typically results in everyone's endurance staying close to 100%, while their health bar goes red..

 

Rule of thumb: when letting your party members get Ko'ed as quickly as possible becomes the Ideal thing to do to keep yourself from having to rest after every other fight, then it's time to go back to the drawing board. Because your system sucks monkey balls.

This is hyperbole. Let your party member get knocked down and the favour of the battle turns to your enemies. You may afford to lose one member, if the battle is on the track you set, but can you afford to lose more ?

 

I suspect we talk about tough encounters and not trash battles.

 

But enough about PoE's 'bad design choices'. Engagement is brilliant and makes you think twice and do certain actions if you want to disengage to reach a dangerous enemy in the back lines before is too late. Endurance-health is great.

 

The thing is that some of you people who also had access to the BB, never accepted the state of combat as it was and tried to convince others that it should be more like the old IE games, which was much simpler and prone to exploits.

 

We heard your opinion over and over. Get over it, especially since the game is undoubtably the success that it is.

[jowe]

... and you move onto the next exact same group battle. It's the same thing, over and over again. ...

 

 

Thats basically the whole game.

 

But for me it's also the artwork. It's well made, but sterile. The environment lacks soul, an artists personal touch. The city feels clean and empty, the people in it are out of place line deliverers. The whole thing doesn't fit together.

 

The world setting doesn't help either, it feels artificial - the guns destroy all mysticism of magic. The architecture and the people living in it are a thousand years apart. It's not a well thought out world, and if it was, it's not an interesting one.

 

In my opinion, it's the designers fault, on all accounts. Not the limited amount of time, not the lack of money and manpower. They shouldn't have pulled out this gameworld out of their sleeves and instead license a preexisting one.

[Khalid the bear]

The 1.04 patch supposedly added some new AI tweaks. Did anybody get a chance to test that out?

 i noticed ranged enemies targeting my backline squishies, mostly cypher.  dunno if they target by hp, dr or defenses

[Monte Carlo]

The thing is that some of you people who also had access to the BB, never accepted the state of combat as it was and tried to convince others that it should be more like the old IE games, which was much simpler and prone to exploits.

 

We heard your opinion over and over. Get over it, especially since the game is undoubtably the success that it is.

 

 

I'm glad you enjoy PoE. Nonetheless, you need to get over your fanboy sensibilities as lots of people have perfectly reasonable issues with it.

[Stun]

We heard your opinion over and over. Get over it, especially since the game is undoubtably the success that it is.

The game is a success, therefore no criticism allowed.

 

 

 

The thing is that some of you people who also had access to the BB, never accepted the state of combat as it was and tried to convince others that it should be more like the old IE games, which was much simpler and prone to exploits.

I beg your pardon? If the IE games are "much simpler" than PoE, then the developers have failed to achieve their own stated goals. Edited April 19, 2015 by Stun

[Justinian]

I have noticed in 1.04 my ranged guys at the back get attacked more. Haven't worked out why but encounters seem to be harder.

 

Can anyone else confirm?