The 'Sidian Tyranny thread

[Raithe]

My build went with a diplomat who has dual weapons with a minor in lightning.

 

I have to admit, I'm not having too many issues with the Companion AI. They seem to use their abilities fairly well, and adding a couple of spells to everyone is also useful. Having a couple of extra heal or buff spells that they use on their own recognizance without micromanaging it is nice. Of course, saying that, the pathfinding AI truly sucks donkeys balls. They constantly get hung up or walk in circles around an opponent before carrying out the attack you told them to, so some really bizarre decisions there.

Edited November 12, 2016 by Raithe

[Fenixp]

I'm quite proud I don't spend time reading anything emo/goth kids write, apparently you do and you consider yourself an expert on the matter. So to be clear I used licencia poetica to make a colorful analogy rather than stating a fact, we are educated people and should be able to use and recognise nuances in our conversations.

When I was learning writing as a teenager, I did so as a part of creative writing community - so yes, I did get to see a fair amount of various writing styles, including very emo stuff. Which happens to be a viable style you were comparing PoE to, by the way, I just pointed out the comparison doesn't work. If you said it reads like chimps were pressing random buttons.. Yeah, that would be an obvious exaggeration.

 

You want to tell me you see that this pictures below are clear? Not for me, and I'm not colorblind and have both eyes, the enemies often are standing on top of one another or your partymembers, that's bad

Nope, and it's true that some spell effects were exaggerated. But situation getting utterly chaotic was much more of a rarity than a rule, especially now that the game got patched heavily to improve on clarity (still not perfect, but much better). Regardless, I'll take interesting albeit a bit more chaotic combat system over dull cooldown spam - not to mention system with far better UI. Seriously, the UI is a tragedy in Tyranny, and it's not a tragedy only occasionally. I do hope some patching goes into fixing that.

 

What layers? In PoE it's stuck up the defense and accuracy as high as you can to win, that's it. I didn't saw any layers in Poe.

Friendly fire, soft counters, hard counters, flanking, mechanically much more varied classes...

 

And Drinking potions in Tyranny takes time as any action, so you are blatantly lying I just don't know why.

Whoa there cowboy, it does? All right then, I suppose I have just misinterpreted that mechanic then. My mistake.

 

Positioning does matter especially when you want to catch as many enemies with aoe effects, so I don't know what you have in mind. If it dosn't matter try to perform a combo attack with Verse or Barrick when you are out of reach, or position your mage in fornt of a warrior...what a joke.

All right, let me elaborate: Positioning matters as much as attributes matter in Pillars of Eternity by your standards :-P There are situations in which it does, but by reducing party size to 4 (less options for area denial), removing friendly fire (mage can be pretty much anywhere for some of the more powerful spells) and lack of flanking (I don't need to hide my rogue anyway. Well I really can't as that means dropping my initial party size by 25%) I also kinda enjoyed the crowd control focus of combat in PoE against mobs of monsters, but focus on less, more powerful opponents can't really be called a disadvantage, it's just... Different.

 

Are we talking about the same game here?! The game when you can respec your PC, your companions and create new ones from scratch at any level in every shop, temple, tavern etc.? Because you can do that in PoE.

Respecing is not a natural part of character progression, it's an option that you may or may not use - and I'd actually welcome its presence in Tyranny too, even tho I'd never use it since I like semblance of weight in my character progression decisions. I'd also like to point out that the option got added later on when people were complaining that it's not present.

 

And if they don't matter "as much" and only in "specialised builds" then the claim is...justified.

OK, you don't like attribute per level, fine. I don't like attributes that doesn't matter "as much".

Oh no, they don't matter as much in usual builds, they're fairly essential in specialized builds. So when you don't have a first clue about what it is you're doing, you won't be actively punished by the game (altho you can make it more difficult on yourself), but when you do, you can achieve pretty great effect by minmaxing. I'd call that a pretty good design all in all.

[Labadal]

I thought i was unique with my dual wielding, lightning slinging warmage.

[algroth]

 

I have played both again earlier this year, and did not find this the case at all. Would you help me out with some examples?

 

BG2 voice-acting was pretty darned good throughout: I'm not sure how somebody could argue against that, with the ridiculous amount of work that was put into it. Maybe a few miscellaneous characters could've been better, but on whole, quality generally ranged from serviceable to good and sometimes even great. It's a little absurd to think of just how many little soundsets for all the different types of monsters and character types they bothered to make. If I had to pick out a weakness, actually, it would actually be that some of the main playable characters...think Cernd and maybe Viconia...fell into the "merely serviceable" end of the spectrum...but because if you have them stick around for so long, it can easily get to feel like they fall below that after hearing them too much.

 

Planescape: Torment I am less sure about, mainly because it's my impression that there wasn't nearly as much voice-acting in PST as there was in BG2, and so it's harder for me to remember and gauge it.

 

 

Personally, I really liked the performance for Viconia, but otherwise I do agree (and also agree that Jon Irenicus is the best part because, as mentioned, not everyone is David Warner). Personally I did not find any of the performances there off-putting the way I did all the goofy creature growling through Neverwinter Nights 2, or some of the more forced performances of Pillars of Eternity. As for Planescape: Torment, the worst I can think of right now is Deionarra, and even with her I'm not sure it's the performance that's at fault and rather the extremely melodramatic writing instead. *Maybe* you can accuse The Transcendent One's voicing of hamming it up a bit, and Vhailor and Dak'kon's of being merely serviceable. This aside, Ravel? Fantastic. Trias? Pretty damn good. Fhjull Forked-Tongued? Very humorous and immediately likable. The Nameless One? Excellent. Morte, Annah, Nordom, Grace, Ignus? All effing great. No rose-tinted glasses here, the cast for this game absolutely nailed it.

Edited November 12, 2016 by algroth

[Raithe]

Arg. I know there's a fine line between holding your hand in games and leaving you with no clue what you're doing.. But I have to admit I'm hitting that point of thinking I'm missing something blindingly obvious.

 

Currently in the Burning Library trying to find four parchments. I've found three, just need the fourth to proceed..  But I've gone through this map half a dozen times and can't figure out where that fourth git of an item is to be found.

[Starwars]

I missed one there also. Wish I could give you clear directions but there was one on the level with a couple of stairs up towards a sculpture/statue (statue has a hidden cache in it btw). If you go up to the statue, there was like a small area to the northwest of it that I missed. Seemed easy to overlook.

 

That was the one I missed at any rate.

Edited November 12, 2016 by Starwars

[mindswayer]

 

Combat is enjoyable. There isn't a crappy "soft" counters that maybe will work, but actually don't. You actually see what every character is doing and who he fights with. And I had no problem with AI, the tank tanks, dps dpses, support supports and healer heal . At the beginning you don't have much skills but thats every rpg ever so no problem. In some time you have your skills from level up, reputation ones, items ones, companions combo skills (with PC and each other!) so you have all the versality you want.

You're right, you can always see what everybody is doing, but you could also see that in Pillars of Eternity. Well as long as you sport a pair of eyes that is - altho being colorblind could cause an issue I suppose.

 

You want to tell me you see that this pictures below are clear? Not for me, and I'm not colorblind and have both eyes, the enemies often are standing on top of one another or your partymembers, that's bad:

 

 

 

What an absolute load of bollocks.

You're gonna tell me you can see what the **** is going on here?

 

I'm not even gonna bother replying to you about the gameplay aspect. You obviously haven't spent too long on PoE to know what the hell you're talking about.

Either that or you're just straight up delusional.

[Raithe]

I missed one there also. Wish I could give you clear directions but there was one on the level with a couple of stairs up towards a sculpture/statue (statue has a hidden cache in it btw). If you go up to the statue, there was like a small area to the northwest of it that I missed. Seemed easy to overlook.

 

That was the one I missed at any rate.

 

Yup. That was the one. Tucked away and for some reason I hadn't noticed that area on the map. By the time you've bounced up and down the scattered floors there you start losing track of just where you picked up the ones you do find..

[Tale]

Just noticed no trading cards. I was looking forward to sprucing up my profile with a Tyranny background. Hopefully they'll introduce them later.

[Fenixp]

I have no problem with the UI outside this one problem, the left part cannot be hidden like the right part and it covers left side of the map. That should be patched. Otherwise I find it better than PoE.

Uh, you do? I'm not sure entirely sure how does that happen, but okay, to each their own I suppose.

 

Anyway, just tested the potions and, as it turns out, they really don't consume an action and don't trigger recovery. There's even a tooltip in one of the loading screens stating so - which is why I checked in the first place. The way consumables work is that they get consumed instantly upon clicking them, current action doesn't get interrupted and right after consuming them, character is continuing with its current action. I'm elaborating so that there's no misunderstanding. Nobody ever is surprised about the fact that doing this triggers cooldown on consumables.

 

Just noticed no trading cards. I was looking forward to sprucing up my profile with a Tyranny background. Hopefully they'll introduce them later.

This is grounds for a refund. Actually, screw refund, we need to issue a class-action lawsuit against Paradox and Obsidian for allowing this to happen. Edited November 12, 2016 by Fenixp

[Tale]

Rabble rabble rabble.

[the_dog_days]

I'm about 12 hours in.

Got to kick an injured soldier off of a tower with a note in her glove telling everyone down I was now the tower's new owner. 10/10 No regrets.

 

[HoonDing]

Was gonna make a joke about BG2 being the last good western party based arrpeegee... and then I realised it was actually true.

[ShadySands]

Wow!

 

I can believe I just

 

redacted

 

Now I'm off to deal with the other

 

redacted

 

 

I'm loving this game and already have plans for what I want to do different in other playthroughs

 

PS I still think offensive magic is much too weak. My sword and board and dual wielding companions are dealing damage I can't compete with. As a support character magic isn't bad at all if you're content being a healer and buffer/debuffer

[Hurlshort]

Was gonna make a joke about BG2 being the last good western party based arrpeegee... and then I realised it was actually true.

I hope you find happiness someday.

[ShadySands]

I wish I could take more companions with me to see what they have to say and gain more loyalty with them but in combat I do actually like the smaller party since it makes it more manageable

[Keyrock]

Being ruthless never felt so good. 

[Raithe]

For the most part I'm enjoying the by-play of factions and all. But there are some really annoying moments when you run into locations for the first time, with groups that you haven't killed anyone of before.. and you have to get through but your option is "kill them and turn them against you"  or "leave and not actually progress any on the quest".  There have been a couple of moments where I've had that, and the initial conversation almost suggests there should be some route to bypass or open up other options, so I've left it and gone off and spent a few hours trying to work on other things. Only to end up having to go back and kill everybody anyway because I've found nada fresh options.

 

Wondering how much of that is locked in from the get go by your Conquest choices alone.

[ShadySands]

Taking a slightly different path through the game this time around to try to see what is gated by what since the wikis and guides aren't that fleshed out yet

[Tale]

Did you beat it already? How long?

[ShadySands]

Yes, though no idea how long it took since it's been running constantly since it was release (except for the one time it crashed) but if I had to guess then maybe 20 something hours. I did all the side quests I could find but I also played in fast mode so it didn't take so long to cross the mostly smallish maps, even with all the back and forth that's required

[Keyrock]

Is the time factor a real thing in the game or just an illusion?  For example, if you travel back and forth on the map between locations and waste your time before the edict is set to kill everyone, will the edict actually kill you and end the game or will the time magically expand?

Edited November 13, 2016 by Keyrock

[Urthor]

Edict will actually kill you, don't **** up the early part once you've started the clock.

 

 

Reddit says that you can rules lawyer the edict though, apparently if you rest past the day of swords on the calendar you have an entire year to do it.  

[ShadySands]

Is the time factor a real thing in the game or just an illusion?  For example, if you travel back and forth on the map between locations and waste your time before the edict is set to kill everyone, will the edict actually kill you and end the game or will the time magically expand?

Supposedly it will kill you but since time only passes when you travel I never came close to it expiring

[Tale]

I actually had to run back and forth between the furthest spots about a dozen times to get it to kill me. It's very generous.