Uninstalled after Hardcore

[Cakebread666]

I got a solid 18 hours out of this game which is about 5 more than I got out of Bioshock Infinite (which was $60) so I'm satisfied. 

 

I made 2 or 3 characters to figure out how to play the game, then went with an elven ranger. When I died, at least half of my party was level 5, about 14-15 hours into the game. I was being pretty careful to sweep town centers for quests and thought I was handling what I was coming across pretty well, with one out of area exception I managed to run from (tons of drakes coming from the craters). 

 

After a short questline and a battle where I brought some research papers to the compass, I returned to town to find a bunch of clockwork golems of one kind or another had taken over the area. I thought I might be able to walk away from it, but doing so seemed too stupid and disingenuous to the spirit of the game, so I went in to the building and tried to clear it.

 

My party had nothing that I could throw at them. Once I had a party member drop, I was stuck, because of course you know, no man gets left behind. I tried a number of different techniques to split up the enemy, but at the end, I was too low on spells and health and one isolated creature wiped my four remaining characters.

 

So here are my problems with the game for hardcore:

 

Can't retreat from areas during combat.

 

Too many enemies have non-sense run speeds.

 

Can't abandon a party member even when rescue is hopeless.

 

Enemies can't be coaxed around the map AND NPCs won't move to help you. The combination is these silly, isolated battles within earshot of one another.

 

All together, the play feels like I'm in a straight jacket.

 

This game has about zero replay value because everything spawns the exact same way. That's all fine. I was having a ball. I just don't understand why you would bother with a hardcore setting at all when the game is clearly no set up for it without reading spoilers and running from urgent plot points.

 

Like I said, I had a good time with the game. The 15 hours I played continuously with my character were good. I'm just not going to run at this thing again until I look up some mods or something to fix it.

 

Have fun.

[AndreaColombo]

The soul-animated plates in Crucible Keep are pretty tough, especially at higher difficulties (I remember their being very challenging on Hard.)

 

However, they are pretty feasible.

 

What was your party composition? Did you rest to replenish your spells and abilities before going in (you need to as there are many of them and they're all fairly tough)?

[Nakia]

Level 5 in Act II and you have been doing available quests?  Please verify this.

[Torm51]

That's a quest that you have to be careful not to grab too early or know what you are doing. I did it at level 5 in PoTD iron man run but barely. I know wait until 8 or 9 to do it. It does seem out of place as everything else in the area is easy. But I like that they threw a curveball on difficulty.

[View619]

I got a solid 18 hours out of this game which is about 5 more than I got out of Bioshock Infinite (which was $60) so I'm satisfied. 

 

I made 2 or 3 characters to figure out how to play the game, then went with an elven ranger. When I died, at least half of my party was level 5, about 14-15 hours into the game. I was being pretty careful to sweep town centers for quests and thought I was handling what I was coming across pretty well, with one out of area exception I managed to run from (tons of drakes coming from the craters). 

 

After a short questline and a battle where I brought some research papers to the compass, I returned to town to find a bunch of clockwork golems of one kind or another had taken over the area. I thought I might be able to walk away from it, but doing so seemed too stupid and disingenuous to the spirit of the game, so I went in to the building and tried to clear it.

 

My party had nothing that I could throw at them. Once I had a party member drop, I was stuck, because of course you know, no man gets left behind. I tried a number of different techniques to split up the enemy, but at the end, I was too low on spells and health and one isolated creature wiped my four remaining characters.

 

So here are my problems with the game for hardcore:

 

Can't retreat from areas during combat.

 

Too many enemies have non-sense run speeds.

 

Can't abandon a party member even when rescue is hopeless.

 

Enemies can't be coaxed around the map AND NPCs won't move to help you. The combination is these silly, isolated battles within earshot of one another.

 

All together, the play feels like I'm in a straight jacket.

 

This game has about zero replay value because everything spawns the exact same way. That's all fine. I was having a ball. I just don't understand why you would bother with a hardcore setting at all when the game is clearly no set up for it without reading spoilers and running from urgent plot points.

 

Like I said, I had a good time with the game. The 15 hours I played continuously with my character were good. I'm just not going to run at this thing again until I look up some mods or something to fix it.

 

Have fun.

 

Instead of complaining about Iron Man (I assume) when you haven't even beaten the game, how about turning it off so you can reload? If you want reloads, play without the option. This post just comes off as a standard rant and rage quit.

[Cakebread666]

The soul-animated plates in Crucible Keep are pretty tough, especially at higher difficulties (I remember their being very challenging on Hard.)

 

However, they are pretty feasible.

 

What was your party composition? Did you rest to replenish your spells and abilities before going in (you need to as there are many of them and they're all fairly tough)?

 

No, the party wasn't rested. They walked to the fight straight from the compass. 

 

When you get back, the game is like, "oh no, people are dying, we have to get in their and help." It wouldn't feel like much of an RPG if I went and had a pint at the bar before the adventure.

 

All that wouldn't be so bad if the game didn't hide monster statistics and disallow retreat from the map during a fight and disallow retreat when half a dozen monsters are standing on the body of a down but not out comrade. Even all that wouldn't be so bad if on top of it all the game didn't throw curve balls at you.

 

That's my grip - that the game isn't set up for hardcore. Take a game that is for example, Path of Exile. When you are leveling your character up in that game and provided you are pursuing a standard and obvious design, you can FEEL your way through the game. If you are losing too much life, you can advance health. If you need damage, then damage. If the monsters start becoming too hard, you can check your gear, go back to a previous area, party up, and so on and on. It was designed with the hardcore experience in mind.

 

Other than beating the game in regular mode and memorizing everything because it doesn't even change, what can you do in Pillars? The game goes out of its way to be dense.

[Cakebread666]

 

I got a solid 18 hours out of this game which is about 5 more than I got out of Bioshock Infinite (which was $60) so I'm satisfied. 

 

I made 2 or 3 characters to figure out how to play the game, then went with an elven ranger. When I died, at least half of my party was level 5, about 14-15 hours into the game. I was being pretty careful to sweep town centers for quests and thought I was handling what I was coming across pretty well, with one out of area exception I managed to run from (tons of drakes coming from the craters). 

 

After a short questline and a battle where I brought some research papers to the compass, I returned to town to find a bunch of clockwork golems of one kind or another had taken over the area. I thought I might be able to walk away from it, but doing so seemed too stupid and disingenuous to the spirit of the game, so I went in to the building and tried to clear it.

 

My party had nothing that I could throw at them. Once I had a party member drop, I was stuck, because of course you know, no man gets left behind. I tried a number of different techniques to split up the enemy, but at the end, I was too low on spells and health and one isolated creature wiped my four remaining characters.

 

So here are my problems with the game for hardcore:

 

Can't retreat from areas during combat.

 

Too many enemies have non-sense run speeds.

 

Can't abandon a party member even when rescue is hopeless.

 

Enemies can't be coaxed around the map AND NPCs won't move to help you. The combination is these silly, isolated battles within earshot of one another.

 

All together, the play feels like I'm in a straight jacket.

 

This game has about zero replay value because everything spawns the exact same way. That's all fine. I was having a ball. I just don't understand why you would bother with a hardcore setting at all when the game is clearly no set up for it without reading spoilers and running from urgent plot points.

 

Like I said, I had a good time with the game. The 15 hours I played continuously with my character were good. I'm just not going to run at this thing again until I look up some mods or something to fix it.

 

Have fun.

 

Instead of complaining about Iron Man (I assume) when you haven't even beaten the game, how about turning it off so you can reload? If you want reloads, play without the option. This post just comes off as a standard rant and rage quit.

 

 

I don't want to reload. I also don't want to play the game once in normal and then again in Iron Man with all the mystery gone. It claimed it was an iron man game, but it wasn't designed with it in mind, at all.

[Cakebread666]

That's a quest that you have to be careful not to grab too early or know what you are doing. I did it at level 5 in PoTD iron man run but barely. I know wait until 8 or 9 to do it. It does seem out of place as everything else in the area is easy. But I like that they threw a curveball on difficulty.

 

Difficulty curve balls are fine if the game isn't an iron man game, or if the game has a way for you to escape. Not being able to escape fights or leave maps with downed party members makes curve balls too nutty.

[Nakia]

PoE is not leveled to the player character and that was done on purpose because we players requested that.  For instance it is not oblivion or Skyrim which unless modded are leveled to the player.  I think this confuses people who are new to the game.  You can have encounters and quests that are fairly easy and then suddenly be hit by one that is above the player's level.  The forge knights are one of those more difficult encounters.  I have done it at level 7 playing on normal and IIRC on level 6 in an early game.

 

I don't think the OP is ranting or raging but just doesn't understand how the game works.  NPCs in the game do ignore what is happening around them unless scripted to respond.  

 

PoE is a niche game targeted to those who played the IE games and IMO they did a good job but people unfamiliar with those games will have problems unless they do their research.

 

Edit: I didn't see the OP's posts before my post.  No the game is not set to be primarily a Iron Man game.  That is an option but not the main point of the game.  Now I think the OP is ranting.

Edited July 10, 2015 by Nakia

[magritte]

PoE is not leveled to the player character and that was done on purpose because we players requested that.  For instance it is not oblivion or Skyrim which unless modded are leveled to the player.  I think this confuses people who are new to the game.  You can have encounters and quests that are fairly easy and then suddenly be hit by one that is above the player's level.  The forge knights are one of those more difficult encounters.  I have done it at level 7 playing on normal and IIRC on level 6 in an early game.

While this is true, I do think that a player should be able to flee combat in any game which is not leveled to the player.  Since there's no way of gauging whether a combat is too difficult* without actually playing it, there's really no choice but to reload. It's particularly disappointing because the health and endurance mechanic does such a nice job of reducing the need to reload.  I don't see the reasoning behind the game design choice.  It's not inherited from the Infinity Engine games, nor really very common in RPG's in general, and it's certainly not there for realism. And the OP is correct.  It makes the Iron Man approach pretty much impossible on a first playthrough.  While it might be true that few players would choose to flee very often if you couldn't take unconscious characters with you, the game allows you to pick up replacement characters pretty easily.  And I have played fights where I ascertained that I was going to lose before the first character was knocked out.  I have certainly done this in other games.   You could argue that Ironman is supposed to be a challenge for players who've already mastered the game, I suppose.

 

*before somebody says you can use scouting, it won't work.  These difficult combats invariably involve foes you haven't faced yet, so the bestiary won't give you any sense of how hard they're likely to be.

[Nakia]

First I have to say that IMO anyone who considers Path of Exile as the ideal game to emulate has no business playing Pillars of Eternity.  The only thin they in common are the initials PoE.  That's my rant for the day.

 

Yes I would argue that an ironman game is for someone who understands and has mastered the game.  That doesn't mean they need to have finished the game.

 

I agree that  the game is not friendly to the ironman game play and imagine only a developer could explain why this is so.   

 

Here is a quote from the PoE Wiki on Trial of Iron:

 

The mode is similar to Temple of Elemental Evil's Ironman Mode. It is likely a wink to classic CRPGs of the 80s, intended to restricting any reloads to counteract regrettable decisions, thus increase game difficulty, making it harder for players to abuse save/load to get the results they like also known as Save Scumming.

Here is a link to the topic where Trial of Iron is mentioned during the Kickstarter.  I have no idea whether this will help or hurt but this is what I have found.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60707-update-9-the-power-of-modes-and-godlike-races-our-23m-stretch-goal/

[Luckmann]

 

The soul-animated plates in Crucible Keep are pretty tough, especially at higher difficulties (I remember their being very challenging on Hard.)

 

However, they are pretty feasible.

 

What was your party composition? Did you rest to replenish your spells and abilities before going in (you need to as there are many of them and they're all fairly tough)?

 

No, the party wasn't rested. They walked to the fight straight from the compass. 

 

When you get back, the game is like, "oh no, people are dying, we have to get in their and help." It wouldn't feel like much of an RPG if I went and had a pint at the bar before the adventure.

 

All that wouldn't be so bad if the game didn't hide monster statistics and disallow retreat from the map during a fight and disallow retreat when half a dozen monsters are standing on the body of a down but not out comrade. Even all that wouldn't be so bad if on top of it all the game didn't throw curve balls at you.

 

That's my grip - that the game isn't set up for hardcore. Take a game that is for example, Path of Exile. When you are leveling your character up in that game and provided you are pursuing a standard and obvious design, you can FEEL your way through the game. If you are losing too much life, you can advance health. If you need damage, then damage. If the monsters start becoming too hard, you can check your gear, go back to a previous area, party up, and so on and on. It was designed with the hardcore experience in mind.

 

Other than beating the game in regular mode and memorizing everything because it doesn't even change, what can you do in Pillars? The game goes out of its way to be dense.

 

 

It's not so much a "have a pint" thing as a "Oh, no, we're not rested and we're gon' get killed if we don't rest up and think this through carefully before committing".

 

Granted, I think that the dialogue in the game should allow you to really act that out way, way, way more often, but that's pretty much it.

 

In Hardcore, you really need to stop and think before you do anything at all, considering your options. It wouldn't be hardcore, otherwise. That said, I specifically do not run hardcore myself because I don't trust games to not arbitrarily and suddenly screw me over due to bugs or crashes or just plain weird mechanics suddenly acting in a completely unintuitive manner. So, yeah.

[Cakebread666]

No doubt.

 

I had to butcher my party rogue at one point and replace him because he got glitched into a wall and I couldn't find a way to get him out or leave the area, or even kick him out of the party. If it were my main character that probably would have been the end there.

 

 

 

The soul-animated plates in Crucible Keep are pretty tough, especially at higher difficulties (I remember their being very challenging on Hard.)

 

However, they are pretty feasible.

 

What was your party composition? Did you rest to replenish your spells and abilities before going in (you need to as there are many of them and they're all fairly tough)?

 

No, the party wasn't rested. They walked to the fight straight from the compass. 

 

When you get back, the game is like, "oh no, people are dying, we have to get in their and help." It wouldn't feel like much of an RPG if I went and had a pint at the bar before the adventure.

 

All that wouldn't be so bad if the game didn't hide monster statistics and disallow retreat from the map during a fight and disallow retreat when half a dozen monsters are standing on the body of a down but not out comrade. Even all that wouldn't be so bad if on top of it all the game didn't throw curve balls at you.

That's my grip - that the game isn't set up for hardcore. Take a game that is for example, Path of Exile. When you are leveling your character up in that game and provided you are pursuing a standard and obvious design, you can FEEL your way through the game. If you are losing too much life, you can advance health. If you need damage, then damage. If the monsters start becoming too hard, you can check your gear, go back to a previous area, party up, and so on and on. It was designed with the hardcore experience in mind.

 

Other than beating the game in regular mode and memorizing everything because it doesn't even change, what can you do in Pillars? The game goes out of its way to be dense.

 

 

It's not so much a "have a pint" thing as a "Oh, no, we're not rested and we're gon' get killed if we don't rest up and think this through carefully before committing".

 

Granted, I think that the dialogue in the game should allow you to really act that out way, way, way more often, but that's pretty much it.

In Hardcore, you really need to stop and think before you do anything at all, considering your options. It wouldn't be hardcore, otherwise. That said, I specifically do not run hardcore myself because I don't trust games to not arbitrarily and suddenly screw me over due to bugs or crashes or just plain weird mechanics suddenly acting in a completely unintuitive manner. So, yeah.

 

 

[macadam]

Doesn't iron man mode originate from the Diablo games? I thought this involved seeing how far you'd get with whatever restrictions imposed upon your character (no regen/vendors) before dying. Being able to compensate such handicaps through grinding etc seems to contradict this concept of hardcore, to me.

 

As an aside, the engagement system makes combat appear much more static than it actually is, seeing how many ways there are to break engagement.

Also, regarding the link Nakia provided, Pillars' hardcore mode or whatever you may call it does exactly what it's supposed to do.

[Althernai]

I don't want to reload. I also don't want to play the game once in normal and then again in Iron Man with all the mystery gone. It claimed it was an iron man game, but it wasn't designed with it in mind, at all.

It didn't claim it was an iron man game, it claimed that it had an optional iron man mode (which it does). It's not really possible to design a game where every encounter would be challenging and yet doable both with and without this mode. The golems you ran into are one of the harder encounters in the game, especially if you are low-level and not rested. I had the same problem: the golem at the door was a warning, but it felt cheap to go and rest even though I was low on spells and some characters were fatigued. Even so, they can be beaten, but you have to know how (they wiped me out a few times before I figured it out).

 

You are right in that it is not designed to be played in iron man mode the first time. It can probably be done (though I haven't heard of anyone claiming to do it), but it would require one to be extremely paranoid. The idea behind having this mode was so that people replaying the game could make use of it.