140 hours across 7 playthroughs, Im done. The game has bested me. White March ruined the experience.

[bluepotions]

I can't stand this ****ing game anymore. It's nobody's fault in particular, but I finally found the free time six weekends ago to start going through white march content.

 

Six weekends later, I'm done. I made it to the abbey of the fallen moon, and I don't understand why you made all of these fights so ****ing ****ty. In general, The White March is literally what I would call "GM to player antagonism". Nothing was fun about any of the fights in the game, the encounters filled with ludicrous AI that makes no sense(enemies literally comitting suicide to attack my back line multiple times) and constantly, no fun allowed, ****ty fights. The high abbot is a monster and it's not really in the way that I found fun. I'm so bored of having my tactical positions get completely shuffled around and my party killed in seconds. I am so done with this ludicrous idea of what is supposed to constitute a fair encounter. The alpine dragon was the single biggest "**** you" I have ever seen in a video game, ever, when the shades spawned I just reloaded and never went back.

 

Who the **** do you think you are, Obsidian? Do you think this is fun? It's ****ing boring. I won't be buying Tyranny or backing any further Pillars video game projects unless you can get your ****ing idiot game designers under control. Make the games fun for everybody. 

 

The white march was literally and factually one of the worst purchases I have ever made, and you're either going to ignore my complaints or mock me. You don't give a **** about your customer's enjoyment. 

So good job. You antagonized me. You made me mad. You broke me upon the wheel. If you care at all about demographics, less than 5% of your fanbase has finished the base game, and its lower for the white march. 

 

Maybe if the White March was actually a fun adventure and not literally just a developer making garbage encounters literally and factually designed to annoy, and not innovate, you'd see more sales and have your customers actually play them. 

[Fenixp]

Make the games fun for everybody.

They did. Press escape, Difficulty tab -> switch to "Story mode" difficulty. If you enable AI for your companions, they should now be able to win most encounters even without much of your help. I for one enjoyed the challenge and so I finished White March on Hard. I'm sure there's more than enough people around who'll claim that hard difficulty was primitive and so they finished White March on Path of the Damned.

 

 

If you care at all about demographics, less than 5% of your fanbase has finished the base game, and its lower for the white march.

Gauging by achievements, eh? They're not that precise, but if we take a good look at them:

44% of players finished Act I, therefore it was only 44% of players who really got into playing the game. That's nothing unusual by the way, even in AAA blockbusters like Bioshock Infinite, only 60% of player-base got as far as like 3 hours in and ending of Act I in Pillars is what, 10 hours? 15? Now, 9.5% of players have finished base game of Pillars of Eternity. That doesn't sound like much, until you realize that this is nearly 1/4 (more like 1/5?) of people who really started playing the game in the first place. That's not at all rare, most people just don't finish videogames.

 

As for White March, 1.1% of all owners of Pillars of Eternity finished WM pt. 2. How many people do actually own WH pt. 2, tho? Sadly, Steam Spy is not able to gauge owners of DLC, so again, we'll have to guess based on achievements alone. There aren't many achievements for White March, but there's at least one thing that majority of players who actually got into it will do - and that's recruiting Zahua and Devil. How many owners of Pillars of Eternity did that? Well, 2.8%. So it would seem close to a half of Pillars of Eternity players who own White March and actually started playing it finished White March. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Edited June 16, 2016 by Fenixp

[TheisEjsing]

So you play 140 hours, 7 freaking playthroughs and decide that the game is bad, cuz you can't beat some of the encounters. Holy ****, you bring a whole new level of butthurt. 

 

The white march was literally and factually one of the worst purchases I have ever made, and you're either going to ignore my complaints or mock me. You don't give a **** about your customer's enjoyment. 

 

Well, that's not even close to being true. I, however, am more than happy to oblige. You're a sad person and hopefully your complaints, silly and unwarranted as they are, will be ignored. 

 

Edited June 16, 2016 by TheisEjsing

[Kingsman]

Yeah not many games these days are good enough for me to be able to sit down for 140 hours.

[Ink Blot]

I think he meant that he enjoyed his 140 hours until he hit White March, and that ruined the whole experience as it was not fun. At least, that's how I read it.

[ManifestedISO]

Four stars, can't quit, won't quit.

 

By stars I mean OP sweary pants. Haven't read him since last year, not about to start now, I'm just here to pad my post count in his 18th garbage thread.

Edited June 16, 2016 by ManifestedISO

[ManifestedISO]

I don't know, I enjoyed White March, Devil of Caroc specifically.

[Heijoushin]

Take a chill pill OP. 

If you played for 140 hours across 7 playthroughs, you definitely got your money's worth, regardless of how you felt at the end. 

 

Maybe it wasn't the WM's fault. Maybe after 140 hours, you'd just had enough?

I really like PoE, but honestly, after 4 playthroughs, I got tired of it. 

[VTroska]

Despite a bit childish post OP made, he is quite correct about too much combat in WM. I too became quite frustraited with all the combat and some moments where you think talking to people will help you avoid combat but then NPCs attack you just because. There is fine line in making combat, but in WM just as you get yourself immerced in some story quest or mission, it gets shattered by never ending enemies...

 

I hope to see that less in Tyranny as I do enjoy playing games on Ironman and hardest difficulty but WM became a bit too much like MMO grind.

Edited June 16, 2016 by VTroska

[MaxQuest]

Well, someone had to be found on the left side of Gaussian distribution.

[Guest Jamila]

I would say inclusion of monks or generally skirmishers who try to bypass or dismantle the front line to get to casters to human groups made fighting these both more difficult and fun. And it was not horribly overused, though they could have achieved the same by different means, e.g. have enemies attack from multiple directions or include more/more dangerous shooters to force player to break his formation and charge (at times they did; specifically some Galvino's constructs would sooner kill me from distance than vice versa).
Besides, there were Shades/Shadows early in the base game doing the same thing and were, in fact, better at it. Some high level version would be genuinely scary.

Edited June 16, 2016 by Jamila

[Fenixp]

Despite a bit childish post OP made, he is quite correct about too much combat in WM. I too became quite frustraited with all the combat and some moments where you think talking to people will help you avoid combat but then NPCs attack you just because. There is fine line in making combat, but in WM just as you get yourself immerced in some story quest or mission, it gets shattered by never ending enemies...

Funnily enough, both fights OP has mentioned were avoidable.

[darqleo]

White March 1 & 2 reminded me of Icewind Dale crossed with the Baldur's Gate II expansion. Sure there were frustrating fights, for me particularly the army around Crägholdt and the boss battle at The Abbey. But you just walk away from the game for awhile, try new battle tactics, and you usually beat them soon enough. You don't cry for mommy and daddy. Kids lack discipline these days.

[Faldorn]

I can't stand this ****ing game anymore. It's nobody's fault in particular, but I finally found the free time six weekends ago to start going through white march content.

 

Six weekends later, I'm done. I made it to the abbey of the fallen moon, and I don't understand why you made all of these fights so ****ing ****ty. In general, The White March is literally what I would call "GM to player antagonism". Nothing was fun about any of the fights in the game, the encounters filled with ludicrous AI that makes no sense(enemies literally comitting suicide to attack my back line multiple times) and constantly, no fun allowed, ****ty fights. The high abbot is a monster and it's not really in the way that I found fun. I'm so bored of having my tactical positions get completely shuffled around and my party killed in seconds. I am so done with this ludicrous idea of what is supposed to constitute a fair encounter. The alpine dragon was the single biggest "**** you" I have ever seen in a video game, ever, when the shades spawned I just reloaded and never went back.

 

Who the **** do you think you are, Obsidian? Do you think this is fun? It's ****ing boring. I won't be buying Tyranny or backing any further Pillars video game projects unless you can get your ****ing idiot game designers under control. Make the games fun for everybody. 

 

The white march was literally and factually one of the worst purchases I have ever made, and you're either going to ignore my complaints or mock me. You don't give a **** about your customer's enjoyment. 

 

So good job. You antagonized me. You made me mad. You broke me upon the wheel. If you care at all about demographics, less than 5% of your fanbase has finished the base game, and its lower for the white march. 

 

Maybe if the White March was actually a fun adventure and not literally just a developer making garbage encounters literally and factually designed to annoy, and not innovate, you'd see more sales and have your customers actually play them. 

I really don't get what it is exactly that you dislike so much about said fights: Do you find them too hard, because your backline gets crushed? That sounds a lot like a lack of CC on your part. Besides, you can punish enemies with disengagement attacks if they try to run past your tank(s). Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying your bad at the game. Just wondering. I never had any problems with my backline being eradicated in seconds (Shades... Haven't actually gotten to the Abbey of the Fallen Moon yet)

Or do you find them too easy (enemies "comitting suicide")...?

I guess you just can't program the AI to suit everyone's tastes... If no enemy ever attacked the backline, people complain. You complain that your backline gets attacked...

What excatly is it that you find so horrifying about those encounters?

Edited June 16, 2016 by Faldorn

[anameforobsidian]

Eh, I'm not going to pile on the OP.  I have three suggestions though:

 

1.  Lower the difficulty.  There's no point in grinding through a fight you don't like.  Changing it down from PotD to hard makes a world of difference alone.

 

2.  CC is your friend.  Hit the some of the other monks with mind control / confusion.  If you have a cipher, let monk tank monk, that'll solve a lot of the back line problems.  Use fast ones like slicken to give yourself some breathing room to start the cascading defense failure that ends in petrification.  If you don't have a mage, go for druid storms.

 

3.  If you didn't take a break between WM and WM2, you're supposed to.  You're supposed to come back with a few more levels under your belt.  The game did a relatively poor job showing this (It outright says so in one dialogue that you can skip through).

 

4.  Have you changed your armor or weapons out in a while?  Whitemarch gives you a ton of new equipment, most of it helps one build or another.   Speaking of changing out armor, try some on the back line.  A living character has more dps in the long run than a dead one.

 

5.  Change your party up.  You might have adopted a party built for a tank and spank strategy.  In the base game, almost everything could be beaten through tank and spank.  WM2 is a reaction to that.  Leave through a different exit, and change it into a more durable build.

 

I will say I agree with one criticism.  Adds on dragon fights feel extremely gratuitous, except for the bog.  I've done them all on PotD with plot characters, so it's not an issue of difficulty.  It feels anticlimatic when you wipe even though you have a good handle on the Ardra dragon, because you forgot about his ****ty xaurip minions.

[iostream]

While the moon temple monks were the most annoying fights in the whole game, because the damn monks kept jumping into my backline, it simply forced new and valid tactics from me as a player. I had to adapt and use defensive mind web (cipher), put secondary shield swaps on all backline characters, make sure they had defensive "oh ****" abilities from items or talents, and make my backline use them when they got jumped by tide monks while the tanks ran back to help kill the interlopers.

 

All in all, I played the whole game on hard and found the harder fights in the temple where party positioning didn't protect my backline as much a refreshing change of pace.

[thelee]

The moon temple monks were some of the best fights in the game, IMO, because the AI did exactly what a good human player would do.

 

AI stupidly suiciding to crush your backline? Not exactly. That's exactly what I do with highly mobile characters: destroy the enemy mage/priest/etc support characters before they have a chance to get out of control. Not only that, but the monks abuse force of anguish and are geared up with rooting pain to really punish you if you're not prepared and are just casually tossing spells/attacks around.

 

In fact, I'm wrapping up another play through (I'm personally up to 530 hours now), and I unintentionally discovered the peaceful way to do the abbey (I literally just went guns blazing all times before). It was nice, but anticlimactic since I was really gearing up for some challenging fights.

 

OP: what difficulty were you playing on? I can't imagine the monks are that bad on normal or less. And if you're higher, well, what do you expect? I've been playing Path of the Damned since the game came out and the white march contains some of the few places where I *really* feel like I'm playing on path of the damned.

[Karkarov]

Four stars, can't quit, won't quit.

 

By stars I mean OP sweary pants. Haven't read him since last year, not about to start now, I'm just here to pad my post count in his 18th garbage thread.

Well played good sir!!!

 

Personally I haven't gotten to white march part 2 yet simply because I am really busy these days and don't really want to take any of my existing teams there.

[InsaneCommander]

I'm playing on hard and I thought it was a bug. But it became much easier with the right combination of traps, scrolls (paralysis, confusion, defence) and figurines.

This is the non-spoiler board so...

The Abbot fight was different. There is a choke point there so, even with one or two enemies jumping across, most of them didn't even got close. I hit them hard and they died on the other room. I don't remember if they are vulnerable to web, but crushing wave is very effective.

 

The Alpine Dragon was easy. Maneha stole his treasure and jumped away. I think he still got to her, but the others didn't have much trouble. By the time the shades killed the figurines my party was buffed and the Dragon was already seriously injured. He is vulnerable to stun, petrify or paralysis, I don't remember exactly now.

Don't give up like that. There is a huge difference in difficult depending on what you do at the beginning of the battle. I don't have a wizard or priest, but the scrolls make miracles. Some battles I lose and when I try again being careful it looks like I'm playing on normal.

[Sad Panda]

How do you even cram seven playthroughs into 140 hours? I know I like to take my time, reading through every description and all, but my current playthrough alone is already 180 hours, and I'm not even finished, and my fastest where I ignored most of the content quests due to my character being an evil prick who couldn't be bothered with other people's problems was still in the neighbourhood of 40 hours.

 

And to echo the general sentiment on the thread, just lower the difficulty if combat is too hard for you, jeez. That's why the option to set the difficulty is there. The higher difficulties are meant to be insanely challenging and require tactics that border on cheating.

 

EDIT: Oh, and one more thing to add to the statistics: Going by the Steam achievements, only 8,5% of the people who have the game are KS backers, or what could be considered the real fanbase of the game. The rest may be fans, or they may just be random gamers who bought the game on a whim. So against that the 9,5% (not 5%) who have completed the game isn't particularly surprising. The long, text-heavy game would've been an acquired taste even in the 90s, never mind now.

 

EDIT 2: Corrected one of the figures.

Edited June 17, 2016 by Sad Panda

[Gromnir]

a typical 4 unit class at a university on the quarter system (10 weeks) is gonna involve 40 total hours o' class time, and depending on whether you went to Stanford or Ohio State, your total hours o' study between classroom & outside study is intended to be resulting in 120 hours o' total work, assuming we ain't talking 'bout a lab class.  120 hours for the entire quarter. 140 o' game time means you spent more effort learning poe than does the average Stanford student when they complete a typical 4-unit course. sadly, am not thinking that your poe achievement is gonna carry the same cache as completing a Stanford class.

 

the fights in white march were more difficult than those in poe. good. the people most likely to have purchased white march expansions is those 9.5% who actual finished pillars of eternity.  am thinking that if a person couldn't work up the interest to finish poe in five months, they would be far less likely to buy white march expansions than would a person who devoted the dozens of hours it took to complete poe.  just sayin'. if you ain't realized it yet, these games is teaching programs. sure, no useful skills is being learned while playing poe, but you is, like it or not, being trained to overcome poe combats.  after 140 hours, a developer is gonna assume that you has learned how to play poe with some level o' expertise.

 

our personal experience for poe were that during our initial playthrough o' poe, the last third o' the game were disappointingly easy.  part o' the reason the difficulty curve took such a precipitous drop at the end o' poe were the capacity to over-level w/o much effort, but another factor were simple that Gromnir were much experienced with the game. successive replays o' poe required utilizing solo and/or ironman options to maintain the difficulty we were recalling from back in the beta days when fighting beetles or cultists. predictable.  as we added hours of experience, we were learning better ways to deal with poe combats. as such, am thinking that the developers had justification in believing that players such as the genesis poster would be very much skilled at poe combat before they did purchase and play white march. as such, were perfect understandable that the developers would increase difficulty as between poe and white march, no? we did find a few o' the white march battles to be highly challenging.  such a result were much refreshing. sure, we were intial frustrated during a few battles-- poe's sahuagin knock-offs creamed our corn more than once, and while we laughed at little shop of horror's audrey ii, the radiant spore battle took us more than two tries to overcome.

 

white march were more difficult.  good.  yeah, poe combats were, from the very start, designed to appeal to players at the more hardcore end o' the crpg spectrum.  while such a choice worked for some o' us, we wonder if it were the best choice for obsidian.  bg2, for instance, had a handful o' difficult battles, but most such battles could be overcome by having the correct equipment or layering the appropriate buffs/debuffs.  the tactical sophistication o' bg were, in our opinion, far less demanding than poe. poe and bg2 tactical demands, while much different, were likely similar.  'course the average bg2 player probably already had dozens o' hours o' infinity engine combats experience. am understanding why many were daunted by the relentless and unforgiving nature o' poe combats.  maybe obsidian erred on tactical demands o' poe.  that being said, white march purchasers were gonna be poe fans-- guys with 140 hours experience and at least some positive level o' appreciation for poe style combat.  am suspecting that if white march had been any less challenging, there woulda' been widespread complaints 'bout the ease o' the expansion.  

 

a black isle developer once shared that the two most frequent complaints of every crpg they ever released were as follows:

 

the game was too easy

 

and

 

the game was too difficult

 

the fallouts, ps:t, bg, iwd, bg2, etc. 

 

is a no-win situation for developers.  and while many boardies, including Gromnir, finds bluepotions rant to be ridiculous, the truth is that his/her opinion is, historically, an inevitability.  no matter what obsidian did with white march, many folks were gonna complain that game were too hard... and many others were complain that it were too easy. obsidian had to make white march more difficult for reasons we note above, but there were always gonna be more than a few such as bluepotions.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps feel free to mock Gromnir for posting a serious reply to a rant post.  we deserve your scorn.

[Fenixp]

EDIT: Oh, and one more thing to add to the statistics: Going by the Steam achievements, only 8,5% of the people who have the game are KS backers, or what could be considered the real fanbase of the game. The rest may be fans, or they may just be random gamers who bought the game on a whim. So against that the 9,5% (not 5%) who have completed the game isn't particularly surprising. The long, text-heavy game would've been an acquired taste even in the 90s, never mind now.

Wouldn't put too much stock into the amount of backers vs. amount of people finishing the game. I didn't back Pillars of Eternity, in fact I have suspected it to be bad to average like I perceived original BG1 and 2 to be - then I finished it two times and I'm on my third playtrough. On the other hand, a good amount of people that I personally know who backed the game either ended up rightdown disliking it or not finding time to finish it yet. I don't think that more than 10% out of those 8.5% of backers actually finished the game and even if it is, the number won't be significantly higher. Then again - I am just speculating without having more than anecdotal evidence.

[Loren Tyr]

There's something odd about those Achievements stats anyway, actually. Because although the "Won the game" achievement is indeed at 9.5%, the Super Murdered is at 16.8%, and according to the description you get this when you "complete the game killing 1200 or more creatures and NPCs". Or is the description just wrong, and you just get it whenever you hit the 1200 mark? I never paid much attention to the achievements, so I don't recall whether I got that one myself.

[Fenixp]

....you just get it whenever you hit the 1200 mark?...

When googling "Pillars of Eternity Super Murderer Achievement", this was the first thing that popped up, so... Apparently yes, it used to be or still is bugged and you get it as soon as you kill 1200 creatures.

[thelee]

successive replays o' poe required utilizing solo and/or ironman options to maintain the difficulty we were recalling from back in the beta days when fighting beetles or cultists.

 

Oh man, that takes me back. Booting up the first beta, wandering out of the town, and then getting massacred by the first beetle fight. Even after they fixed the glitch the cultists were still a nice challenge. I was actually surprised at how much easier the game was when it actually came out (I hadn't followed the beta progression much).

 

 

a black isle developer once shared that the two most frequent complaints of every crpg they ever released were as follows:

 

the game was too easy

 

and

 

the game was too difficult

 

that's hilarious. I guess I should ease up on my "too easy" complaints about PoE.