Backer Beta First Impressions

[veteran81]

I think you guys already know what's good so I won't comment on that much. Main points though:

• Great job on the new stealth mechanics. The UI is intuitive and easy to understand and it feels a lot more "real."
• Great job on the various QoL improvements.
• World map is nice.
• Dialogue reactivity is nice.

The bad, however:

• Health/Endurance ---> Health only is a loss. Since there's no strategic cost, I don't care about taking some damage, which makes the game feel less "tactical."
• Everything per encounter is a loss. I don't care about which spell I should use now and which save for later, which makes magic feel spammy.
• Progression feels a lot more linear/streamlined. Magic doesn't feel all that magical as it's mixed with the rest of the talents, and the loss of non-class talents feels restrictive.
• One of D&D's signature elements is a magic system that's kind of chaotic and has entirely its own rules and mechanics. Merging that into the level-up talent trees blands it down.

The upshot is that combat feels shallower. In Pillars 1, I had several layered objectives for a fight:

• Win it.
• Don't have anyone knocked out (because I don't want knockout injuries).
• Don't take damage on those characters that can't afford it.
• Don't expend spells or other per-rest abilities unnecessarily.

In P2, I just have

• Win it.
• Don't have anyone knocked out.
• Don't expend Empowers unnecessarily.

Overall:

• The mechanical changes are mostly bad. The game feels streamlined and simplified in a bad way. Less thought is needed to play it, I just need to focus on the current combat and nothing else, and there appears to be less freedom to build my characters like I want them, despite the mass of subclasses and multi-class combinations.
• The QoL improvements are mostly good and the UI -- especially character creation and level-up -- are way better.
• The stealth system rocks.

Finally, a comment on the language -- certainly too late to change now, but anyway for what it's worth: I interact daily with people from literally all over the world, and nobody talks like that. The Russians don't go "Da, today is very nice day, harasho nyet?" and the French don't go "Oui mon ami, indeed the weather today is la belle." It's cool that you've got a conlang but there's way too much of "That kamahima has tipu my raumanuma, if I ever catch him he's going to be kaunahini!" It's grating, and the hypertext kind of underlines the "Look at how clever we are" aspect of it.

solid post, I pretty much agree with it.

[Isometric Chicken]

First of all, I'm a big fan of games like this, and I'll gladly admit I'm a cliché and started with Baldur's Gate back in those days. Have played cRPGs before that too, but BG was the first game of this style I played. And now, here we are. Pillars 2, the beta. And don't worry, I'll keep it simple.

 

THE GOOD:

 

- Easy to use interface. Very easy to figure out what everything is and does, without being too streamlined for its own good. I like it. It gives me a good impression that I'm playing a pen and paper RPG, but still makes it easy enough to get into for newcomers. There's your weapon slot, there are your quests, here is your spellbook, and so on. Easy to use, and doesn't feel cluttered with all sorts of useless info, yet also deep enough to not feel too restricted.

 

- Two classes makes a third class. This might be a small thing, but I like how picking a priest and barbarian made me a shaman. I could have wanted this to be clearer, perhaps especially during character creation. At first, I didn't even notice that I was a shaman, so it was confusing to be both a barbarian and priest, yet the stats told me which one was useful for a class I'm not playing. Also, when looking at the character sheet, I want to be a Shaman only, and ignore both barbarian and priest levels. Don't get me wrong, we do need them when leveling up, and I should still have access to them. But personally, I think being listed as a Shaman is good enough. Listing it as Shaman, Barbarian and Priest together is just confusing.

 

- Spells work really well in combat. Granted, I haven't played Pillars 1 on PC in ages, though I loved it on PS4. But I do like how I can simply select a spell level, then see all the avaliable spells. Like the UI in general, it makes it easy to find what I'm looking for, without feeling too restricted or crowded. Nice work. And just for the record, I installed Pillars 1 last night, so I'm going back in there today. I'm intrigued how the UI there works in comparison. Haven't played the PC-version in ages.

 

 

THE BAD

 

- I created a female dwarf as my main character. Why, then, do I still have access to all the male faces? It's not a huge problem, but I would strongly prefer having only faces of the correct gender appearing. So if I make a female character, I should have female faces only. And if I make a male character, I should have male faces only. I'm fine with enabling this under options, though.

 

- What am I supposed to do? As in, what is the point in the beta? I don't have quests or a mission. No one tells me anything what to do. Every area I can go to are too high level for me. I still managed to sneak past one, but couldn't find anything to do there, either. The only thing I managed to do in town was to release a couple of things from a cage, and lost reputation because of it. Oops...

 

- When I create a character, it's was difficult to figure out how to get back to the main menu. I found that little X in the top right corner, but I would have prefered a Back-button in the lower left, or at least easy to find. Same goes for the options menu. How do I return to the main menu from there?

[IndiraLightfoot]

Finally, a comment on the language -- certainly too late to change now, but anyway for what it's worth: I interact daily with people from literally all over the world, and nobody talks like that. The Russians don't go "Da, today is very nice day, harasho nyet?" and the French don't go "Oui mon ami, indeed the weather today is la belle." It's cool that you've got a conlang but there's way too much of "That kamahima has tipu my raumanuma, if I ever catch him he's going to be kaunahini!" It's grating, and the hypertext kind of underlines the "Look at how clever we are" aspect of it.

Heh, I missed this final remark of yours, PrimeJunta!

It's spot on. At least judging from what I saw in that starting village, I'm quite worried how the rest of dialogues in the game will be handled and what they'll look like:

Oh, my sweet fraggula [Tooltip: This means strawberry in Oompaloompian], don't unleash your anger out on me, Keupitzcj?

Edited November 16, 2017 by IndiraLightfoot

[mrhawn]

A lot of my impressions have already been typed out here, but I think the volume of the same feedback is also meaningful. So I will post my feelings in full.

I won't bother with clear bugs/omissions/inconsistencies here (looking at you subrace traits), but rather give my feelings on core mechanics and feel of the game.

 

Game speed:

Normal movement speed is great, I feel like it takes enough time to feel like I'm actually traveling, and with fast mode doing exactly what I think it should.

 

Issues arise in combat and in the overland map.

 

Combat feels too fast, I enjoy a lower combat pace where I can enjoy all the new and fancy visuals and animations and not feel rushed to act.

This would easily be fixed with having the slow mode back in the game. This would not slow down combat for those who prefer the fast action, and keep people like me happy.

 

On the other hand the overland map feels too slow, even in fast mode I'm drumming my fingers on the mouse internally trying to hurry the icon along the trail.

There are no pretty effects/animations here for me to look at and it does not benefit at all from the slow pace.

 

Characters:

New character creation is divine, easy to understand and having a preview of the skills is something I wish more RPG's incorporated in them.

 

Multi-class characters feel great, I think you hit the sweet spot between power and possibility there with loads of interesting combinations.

 

Sub-classes feel mostly great, some feel like you have to sacrifice a lot more than you gain, but in general I think they bring great build possibilities inside the same class.

 

I feel there are not enough skills in the game right now, only way to bring strong variety to the characters people make would be to have more options for people to choose from. Like creating a dual wield hunter with the subclass 'Stalker' feels like it's missing skills to take. Feels like if you pick the subclass, then you only have a single option as to what skills you can take each level.

 

I dislike the spells == skills that is implemented in the game, lot of the power and fun in spell casters is to have possibility to have something for every situation. Right now as a priest I feel stuck with always having to pick the heal to fill my role and missing out on other fun stuff. Some help might be if casters got some extra skill points, but I'm not sure that would really address the core issue there.

 

Combat:

I touched on the overall speed already in the first section. For the specific combat speeds:

Movement is too fast, feels like it takes absolutely no time to close a gap and ranged units are in melee before they barely get a shot off.

Spells take too long to cast (for their power at least) my casters sometimes died before getting a spell off and instead of making me think what spell to use, it made me want to not use any at all. Say the cleric spell 'Spiritual weapon' in the time I finished casting it on my hybrid melee cleric the 2 enemies were already dead. This might affect some spells more than others but these in the very least need re-balancing.

 

The new mechanic where you stumble into your teammates felt fun, made the combat feel more positional and tactic. This was then somewhat diminished by the enemies sprinting around the battlefield like race cars.

 

Partly for the reason above, but damage spells felt lackluster. Paralyzing the enemy or blinding them for the same cast time it took to deal minimal damage, was a lot better option than trying to deal damage with spells. And while on the subject of spells, missing with a long cast time spell was a devastating loss, now that there is no grazing, getting no return is devastating to the combat.

 

I disliked the new penetration system, no matter what weapon / attack I used the 'No Pen' text kept flashing everywhere and it was making the combat confusing. I also think that the new system was a bit more boring than the old. Now a shift of 1 pen might do nothing or it might do a lot. Old system had nice straight way of calculating penetration and made it simpler to use and think about.

 

I'm a little torn about the new health system, on one hand it's easier to understand but in game play it's worse. Combined with my final point below it makes the game feel too plain, I enjoyed thinking about who's health to top up with the few skills in my disposal and saving those camping supplies for when they were really needed.

 

And finally on the combat section; I enjoy per rest spells/abilities that is what makes them stand out, makes them cool and interesting and timing them is an interesting tactical challenge, now everything mushes together and nothing can stand out.

 

Conversations:

These feel good, I love the UI and can't wait for the voice overs and to really delve deep into the story.

 

The new dilemmas feel great I love the way the portraits pop up from the bottom to let me pick people who will perform the actions.

 

Graphics:

Just a big thumbs up, game looks good and I hope the final version will get even more of that sweet eye candy.

 

Oh my, that ran a bit longer than I expected, I'm a little passionate about RPG's so forgive me for the wall of text.

 

Edit. Fixed a typo

Edited November 16, 2017 by mrhawn

[anfoglia]

 

+ nice art 

+ good character creation

 

- Lots of missing text (very forgivable at this stage)

- the deadfire archipelago background is missing its bonus

- the UI flickers in fights when the game has been running for a while (making it very hard to select spells or abilities)

- the level up sound keeps ringing every now and then for no reason

- many icons (specifically items) are a bit too small...

 

 

 

• Great job on the new stealth mechanics. The UI is intuitive and easy to understand and it feels a lot more "real."
• Great job on the various QoL improvements.
• World map is nice.
• Dialogue reactivity is nice.
• Health/Endurance ---> Health only is a loss. Since there's no strategic cost, I don't care about taking some damage, which makes the game feel less "tactical."

Finally, a comment on the language -- certainly too late to change now, but anyway for what it's worth: I interact daily with people from literally all over the world, and nobody talks like that. The Russians don't go "Da, today is very nice day, harasho nyet?" and the French don't go "Oui mon ami, indeed the weather today is la belle." It's cool that you've got a conlang but there's way too much of "That kamahima has tipu my raumanuma, if I ever catch him he's going to be kaunahini!"

 

 

 

+I like the new atmosphere and visual style in Deadfire, really feels like I'm in a new part of the game world. Reminds me of NWN2: Storm of Zehir alot.

 

+Graphics and animations seem to have improved on all fronts, which is always great to see.

 

+Character creator and new big character paper dolls look very nice.

 

+I like the beta version of the world map way more now than when it was a flat barren wasteland from the older builds. 

 

+Much improved area loading times

 

 

-Where are the sub-race unique bonuses? For example, what's the incentive to choose between a wood elf or a pale elf except the aesthetics now?

 

-Combat still feels like a cluster**** at times. Maybe that removal of slow mode was a premature decision.

 

-There definitely needs to be a better explanation about power usage for skills. Maybe a hoverable pop-up text in the combat bar.

 

-UI text needs to be bigger/better scaled for large resolutions. At 130% text scale only dialogue, scripted interactions and item descriptions had serviceable scaled text, but at the cost of cluttered text box, which has a rigid frame size. My suggestion - if the text itself is scaled into a bigger one, the text box itself should also automatically widen to accommodate it. Journal, pop-up texts are too tiny for large resolutions.

 

-UI interface windows also need to be bigger/better scaled for large resolutions. The only thing that is ok size wise in the inventory right now is the large character paper doll. I can't stress this enough if (but more likely, when) you're gonna port POE2 to consoles (which too have 4K resolution now) - everything needs to be bigger for better visibility! Don't be so stingy with screen space!

 

-Skills icons are too varied and confusing. There should be an option to choose between skills icons with hover text and actual skills names in the brackets like it was in POE1.

 

 

1) the buttons need better highlighting; they go from like brass colored to gold colored and it's not clear ; for example, after my first levelup I wasn't clear if I'd finished levelling up or not

 

 

3) Sure this is on the platter but the game needs to show racial bonus traits in character creation not just in game

 

 

My impressions after playing for just one hour:

 

++ the integration of scripted interactions on the world map, adds a feeling of proper adventuring, consequences of scripted interactions (leading to encounters or not etc) seem stronger

 

--- biggest thing I would hope is improved is the feel of combat. I can see animations are better and sounds are nice. but for me it's way too fast. I would prefer to have both the speed at normal reduced and to have a slowmotion option back. Enemies seem to move very fast so positioning your party is very difficult. Also since casting takes a long time, the fight can be half over before I've had the chance to cast 1-2 spells. 

 

I agree with each of these points. I'm keeping an open mind about the new distribution of abilities, but I share the concern that choices at level-up are quite narrow. It takes some of the fun out of leveling up, and it pushes more of the decisionmaking into character creation--when you know least about the game or how a particular build is likely to function within a party.

[Ivorystate]

I don't like how we are bald when wearing hats, I know it's a big issue with modeling for each hat and hair, but I would really like if you there was just a single hair piece for when wearing a hat. Even having a single hair piece with hat equipped regardless of hairstyle would be preferable to being bald, which frankly makes me not want to wear any hats, particularly for female it is pretty bad.

[una322]

The transparent UI is odd, it a be nice to have an option to have this or the classic well designed wood finish background or something to match the theme of deadfire instead. Depending on the area you're reading text sometimes it can be hard to see the text well.

 

-Combat  speed is abit all over the place, often even on normal speed i notice somone run at 100mph to the target

-The a.i options for your party are kinda basic there no defend party or buff options at all

-The little quests in the game are not to clear in what you're suppose to do, after solving the fruit issue in town, i then went up north of the map got afew items from the lizard people and thats it. Because of the lack of information in my quest log i have no idea if thats just the end of the beta or if im suppose to kill the lizard people? Because i really dont want to kill them if i dont have too, but there is no way to know.

-Whats with some of the sound effects in combat, i still cant figure out what some of those sounds are suppose to mean, and they dont really seem to fit the theme so there just like random noises that take me out of the game abit too much.

-Selecting full background Ui for your interface doesn't seem to work.

-The weather cycle is to fast, one secend its raining the next its sunny, repeat over and over.

 

Apart from those nit picks i had fun, enough changes to feel new, combat is fun when it works, graphics are very nice, weather looks great as well. The lack of loading is probably the best change.

 

[Harlath]

Enjoyed diving in to the beta so far. Clearly a product of love and care, so the below is intended constructively!

 

First impressions:

 

- Characters feel far more samey due the loss of the Universal Talents. This removes much of the fun/creativity from leveling up and creating characters. Adding my voice to similar feedback from a number of other players. Multi-classing alleviates the problem to an extent, but missing out of fast/top tier abilities just to have some character build choices is a shame and multi-classing still doesn't have the breadth of talent choices that POE I had. There were all sorts of interesting ways you could build characters in POE I (explicitly noted by design a few times as something they were keen on), it would be a shame if this went away. A page of general options would be fun and fit the existing system.

- I think there should be an indicator on level up screens of how many selections you can make on that level (matters for multi-class characters, can tell from whether "Next" is grayed out or not but nice to have a number).

- I'd like an option to have text instead of symbols for conversation options unlocked by disposition/background/class. It will be hard to remember the wide range of symbols.

- I've not made my mind up on the Penetration system yet, need to test more.

[Boeroer]

- I think there should be an indicator on level up screens of how many selections you can make on that level (matters for multi-class characters, can tell from whether "Next" is grayed out or not but nice to have a number).

Right! Good point! I also wanted to write about this. 

[Aramintai]

Some more feedback on the UI:

 

-It's not clear how many points a character has to spend on abilities on each level up, sometimes it appears to have 1, sometimes 2. There needs to be a clear number.

[Dr <3]

To join the fray: My impressions so far:

 

+ everything about graphics, animation, ecc, you did excellent job

+ the word map and navigation tools

+ AI of enemies (es: xaurip priest acually try to save his comerades with retreat, ecc)

+ patrolling enemies joining fights

+ terrain effects

+ better godlike balance

++ weapons specific modals

++ new stealth mechanic

+ 1 point advance in 1 skill (mechanics, survival, ecc) always need 1 point, not scales anymore

 

 

+/- the new penetration system : i liked the idea, but actually is complicated to put at a good use. Maybe i just need more time to understand it correctly, but the impression so far is that we migrated from a "granular" system to a "thrashold" system. Before you looked at the armor ratings and could say : oh, the skelly have 10 res vs piercieng and slash 5 vs blunt. Better to use a blunt weapon, but my estoc will do enough dmg anyway, no need to absolutely swich weapons. Now it is : oh the skelly have 10 res vs piercieng and slash 5 vs blunt, my dagger reach 9 penetration so for 1 point my dmg is 70% less, but my mace maybe could reach the trashold.. ah no wait i can go for stiletto + modal and reach 11 for full dmg... is a bit complicated to always guess how to do good dmg.

+/- new rest system : i feel neutral . I used to like the split between endurance and health, but also this version can work. Anyway rest is a bit easier, so rarely you are compelled to go back to town, and you won't run out of camping supplies 

 

 

- like others said: the single class character now feels way poorer than before. Not many choices aviable. I would have liked a bigger pool of "common talent" whare you could pick, like before. I mean really only fighter can have a weapon style now? And to heve + 10 to a fortitude or reflex i have to pick only 1 or 2 specific class? What if i wanted to build a high fortitude priest and didnt't wanted to  multiclass? The single class way is too narrow. Maybe you could compensate with the variety of items, but by design also the crafting options will be more restricted so i feel a bit crossed

- why no more graze on normal weapon hits?

- difficult to understand how it works with attacks that targets specific defence and ability that grants bonus vs attacks that targets might or intelligence

- AUTOSCALE LEVEL??? what is it?

- why no unarmed proficiency?

 

 

MISC:

* Do you mind to share some console codes with us for "better check" some things?

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

+ AI of enemies (es: xaurip priest acually try to save his comerades with retreat, ecc)

+ patrolling enemies joining fights

+ terrain effects

 

I'm so glad you listed these three plus points. Xaurip priest soon became rather worthy opponents and enemies to fear.

Edited November 16, 2017 by IndiraLightfoot

[Dark_Ansem]

I like the looks of the new game. But performance is abysmal.

[Mazisky]

The new world map look pretty nice but it would be awesome if the day\night cycle could be showed there too.

[brankel]

Random things I noticed on my first/second times playing the game. 

• Dialogue slider bars often don't work or take a number of clicks to get to work.
• The icons for offscreen characters don't match the characters offscreen, they all use one mercenary character's icon. 
• Food quantity in inventory should probs decline as you hand it out to party members.
• All formation icons are the same, regardless of the name of formation. 
• There don't seem to be any inventory sorting options. 
• Healing spells should be available out of combat for priests.
• characters hair/clothes becomes white when looking at level up screen (player character and mercenaries) and stayed white in inventory screens after
• would be cool to have an auto-level option for companions (at least mercenaries) to choose skills/abilities for you
• there doesn't seem to be target information on spells anymore (IE: enemy, enemy AOE, all AOE etc.) for some spells (IE: Maura's Writhering Tentacles)
• Character doll size in inventory screen changes size when equipping weapons
• It's weird that you can't look at your inventory while on the overworked map
• Disappointed you can't copy spells from/to grimoires anymore
• Are there random encounters on the world map? I haven't run into any but I really feel there should be
• I can never actually exit the game properly, it always freezes/crashes. 

[Dr <3]

Another big + : is harder

[cheesevillain]

I don't like how we are bald when wearing hats, I know it's a big issue with modeling for each hat and hair, but I would really like if you there was just a single hair piece for when wearing a hat. Even having a single hair piece with hat equipped regardless of hairstyle would be preferable to being bald, which frankly makes me not want to wear any hats, particularly for female it is pretty bad.

 

 

The devs have mentioned that they will do this if possible. It's apparently a surprisingly large amount of work.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Armor penetration seems kinda brutal. It makes it hard to function in most fights. May be a scaling issue.

 

Spellcasting takes a REALLY long time. It feels like the monsters basically always get to cast first regardless.

[Dimitri Berman]

 

I don't like how we are bald when wearing hats, I know it's a big issue with modeling for each hat and hair, but I would really like if you there was just a single hair piece for when wearing a hat. Even having a single hair piece with hat equipped regardless of hairstyle would be preferable to being bald, which frankly makes me not want to wear any hats, particularly for female it is pretty bad.

 

 

The devs have mentioned that they will do this if possible. It's apparently a surprisingly large amount of work.

 

 

 

It's still a lot of work/problematic, but it might still happen. Other stuff like head variants have higher priority ATM. 

[demeisen]

​Unfortunately my ability to comment about balance is limited since the beta is Windows-only on the PC, but from watching other people play my first impressions are:

​

​Good:

​

​+ Generally a positive impression of the character creation and leveling related UI changes.  The skill trees are easier to visually understand, etc.  It seems a bit nicer.

​

​+ Even without the final lighting effects, the art direction is, like POE1, very nice.  Looking forward to exploring more of this world.  I like the more "alive" feel, e.g, boats bobbing around on water, etc.

​

​+ The environmental effects are nice.  I'd like it if they had some minor in-game impact, such as rain lowering detection distances (since you can't see as far) and raising stealth (since it's harder to hear things approaching).

​

​+ I like the overworld map and more open-world feel.  I hope it'll be possible to go places you aren't prepared for, with appropriate in-game hints to that effect.  Let me explore, and it's up to me to tackle things I can handle.​

​

​+ Writing seems good, but might be hard to tell from the beta.  I like dialog and reading, but there were some excessive lore-dumps in POE1 here and there.

​

​Bad:

​

​- Not happy about many of the changes to the spell casting system.  Discussions abound in other threads.

​

​- Not too happy with the injury system as a replacement for a long duration health stat.

​

​

[mpking52@gmail.com]

I'm enjoying the movement skills.

[vanyel54]

I haven't played a lot but i have already some thins to tell :

--- The combat speed is just underwhelming. For my point of view, it's almost unplayable at this time.
I'm an veteran of POE1 with many POTD run (solo etc...) and i struggle to win a fight in normal difficulty
Perhaps i need to start in story mode (can't believe i write this ).
This is a really game breaker for me. Please, please, i need a slow mode and not a Benny Hill mode !

--- Spell casting increase. It's a really big downgrade from POE1. At this time, casting any spell is really difficult (and i don't talk about crowd control). And i think the chanter invocations recovery time has been increased too (i have to do some more tests).

- Spells as abilities the wizard.

No more flexibility to choose your spells before a difficult fight. No more spell books to found (so sad)...

+/- The new penetration system is a bit strange. I really don't like threshold system. I still have to understand it.

+/- I add my voice to the crowd for reclaiming more flexibility in the character creation. Common abilities could be nice.
But i have yet to test the multi-class system. Clearly single class is a NO choice for an experience player actually.

++ Graphics, UI, many good things there
 

[cheesevillain]

- Spells as abilities the wizard.

No more flexibility to choose your spells before a difficult fight. No more spell books to found (so sad)...

 

 

 

You can still use new spells you find in Grimoires, and switch Grimoires before a difficult fight to switch up your spells. There's a better Grimoire than the one your wizard starts with near Tikawara, which you should probably pick up before doing the dungeon on a high difficulty.

[HooAmEye]

Plenty of people seem to be upset at how health systems are handled this time round, along with dialogue choice. However, are those things even possible to be changed at this point in time?

[vanyel54]

 

- Spells as abilities the wizard.

No more flexibility to choose your spells before a difficult fight. No more spell books to found (so sad)...

 

 

 

You can still use new spells you find in Grimoires, and switch Grimoires before a difficult fight to switch up your spells. There's a better Grimoire than the one your wizard starts with near Tikawara, which you should probably pick up before doing the dungeon on a high difficulty.

 

 

Ok i don't know this. Thanks for the information.

Edited November 17, 2017 by vanyel54