Eternity PoE II: Deadfire Sales Analysis Thread

[aweigh]

Sawyer dindu nuffin

 

[lophiaspis]

Poe is shit

Deadfire is shit

Sawyer is shit

Feargus is shit

Obsidian is shit

You can stop talking about this shit now

 

[Metal Hurlant]

I'd love to hear from any investors out there and their thoughts on their investment.

 

[DalekFlay]

Microsoft worse than EA? I don't really think so.

Whatever else one can say about EA, at least they release their games on PC. When they stumble into publishing a good game like Mass Effect I'd like to be able to play the fucking thing. I know Microsoft release their games on PC now (for who knows how long), but the opposite was true when Mass Effect and Dragon Age came out.

 

[Yosharian]

I think he nixed rounds so he could add action speed and recovery as additional mechanics, and they are (IMO) extremely cool.
Additionally it removed the degenerate gameplay which the rounds mechanics had, the running around like a monkey with no cost part.

It's obvious it resulted in readability issues for majority of players though, the question is how you would combat/add the above while retaining fixed 6 sec rounds?

You don't have to retain fixed 6 second rounds. All you needed were: clean visual effects, less stacking effects, longer effects that are more significant, slightly slower combat speed, cut the amount of abilities by like 80%, then balance the rest of the game accordingly.

The biggest mistake of Pillars of Eternity's combat system isn't getting rid of the 6 seconds round system, it's the prevalence of a bazillion stacked spell effects that are short lasting and which have poor visual representation, along side a huge addition of per encounter abilities. In Baldur's Gate, you could see a web spell wrap enemies in place, you could see a sleep spell cause them to doze off, you could see a hold monster spell petrify them. The game got by without you having to stack 4 to 5 different detrimental effects on an enemy in order to get through its absurd defenses; it got by without the vast majority of beneficial effects lasting 15 seconds requiring you to keep track of them constantly; and it got by with most of its classes not having to do anything other than click and attack.

A mage armor in Baldur's Gate last, what, 20 minutes? Even the vast majority of 1 round per level effects eventually last through the entire combat by the time you used them regularly. Had you replaced Baldur's Gate's list of spells with Pillars of Eternity's spells, Baldur's Gate would also have a problem with effects constantly stacking on and falling off, and consequently a similar amount of second to second player management.

The perfect description of Pillars of Eternity's system, which I came across in a video review, is that it's not real time with pause, but pause with real time. The only way to play the game is to pause every ability refresh cycle, which isn't synchronized obviously, so you'll be pausing all the time. This completely wastes the real time aspects of the combat, and you might as well go to a turn based system, which is what Pillars of Eternity's game system was actually designed for, with its tedious management.

A 6 seconds round might help make the combat feel less of a mess, but it'd still suck, because you'd still be pausing every round to mouse over effects and click abilities. The only reason the game is at all capable of being enjoyed is because the AI can handle most fights at lower difficulty levels. It is a frustrating experience when you're actually trying to control all 5 or 6 characters.

But this has all been said before, so I'm not sure why we're still repeating it. The system sucks because it's too tedious and complicated for real time with pause - emphasis on real time here because the system was inspired by real time strategy games where a professional gamer managing three marines with no abilities can be considered impressive. Sawyer should've made the game turn-based; or just admitted that he didn't understand what real time with pause is, because it's ridiculous this shit was able to make it through play testing.

I never thought about it like this before. Spot on.

 

[Theldaran]

Looking back, I did many mistakes playing POE like a BG. One of those was relying on people like Eder and Kana to autoattack (I used more of Kana's abilities, mind you), while Aloth was hurling spells at the back. I guess POE's system is so simple it relies on buffing the heck out of your party. Not really much room for melee-based parties, and magic has even more impact than in D&D (I played a Cleric and was mostly OK)

 

[Lacrymas]

That's kinda true actually. I somewhat want to replay the WM content sometime, but I dread the rest of the game. It's a shame, really, because the combat isn't very bad and it could've been a nice IWD-style game, alas.

 

[FreeKaner]

The problem with PoE1's combat is that it has way too many overlapping systems and very contrived interaction between them, this has been exacerbated even more in PoE2 despite the streamlining it has went through. There needs to be a sensible layers of mechanics that that support each other instead of being there just for sake of some weird combination of simulationism and obsession with rulesets. There also needs to be somewhat intuitive interaction between different elements of the systems.

A RTwP even if it is a RPG should first and foremost look at a RTS and appreciate why it works despite having more potential to be a clusterfuck. A game system should be there to enact the aspect of combat, not the other way around. A RTS then tries to create a system in which there is an attempt to bring to action the general theory of how different particularities of the setting they have chosen would work. This is where PoE1/2 fundamentally fails, it feels like they were more concerned about drawing up a system that could be put to practice during gameplay rather than giving mechanical background to how combat would work in their setting.

You can tell this most easily by how the categorised weapons by speed and base damage, if a flail and a dagger are both same speed and damage, why are they even there aside from clustering? This cannot be work of mechanics trying to enact combat, it can only be done so by mechanics starting disconnected from roleplaying. It starts as a game and elaborates itself as a game, thus leaving player to only understand it by knowing its details. After that, every step taken needs to have extra effort to have clarity, because it is necessarily not intuitive. End result is trying to explain what the fuck is going on in their game with several diffent HUD elements.

This is not the say the problem is the numbers, formulas or the elaboration that requires player to learn its rules, items and spell etc. Instead it's the fact they did not start from a point of trying to bring to formula a world, real or imagined, so that we cannot understand the game naturally. Although there is still a bloating.

 

[Safav Hamon]

The biggest problem with POE1 was poorly designed encounters. It was 90% trash mobs that would swarm you in close quarters. The best tactic was always to lure enemies into a chokepoint and fling spells over your tank. White March an improvement, but Deadfire is even better.

 

[Trashos]

You don't have to retain fixed 6 second rounds. All you needed were: clean visual effects, less stacking effects, longer effects that are more significant, slightly slower combat speed, cut the amount of abilities by like 80%, then balance the rest of the game accordingly.

The perfect description of Pillars of Eternity's system, which I came across in a video review, is that it's not real time with pause, but pause with real time. The only way to play the game is to pause every ability refresh cycle, which isn't synchronized obviously, so you'll be pausing all the time. This completely wastes the real time aspects of the combat, and you might as well go to a turn based system, which is what Pillars of Eternity's game system was actually designed for, with its tedious management.

Well, even your post explains how the lack of Rounds made things worse. I won't outright claim that we NEED Rounds, but I will claim that the best and most celebrated RTwP combat around is the one in BG2, and that one has Rounds. So until someone proves otherwise, I am inclined to suspect that we do need Rounds.

Look, when I am about to face a dragon or a lich in BG2, I have a detailed plan on what everyone in my party will be doing for the whole battle. In Round 1, I do this, Keldorn does that, Anomen does that etc, in Round 2 I do this, Keldorn does that etc. You take away the Rounds, you take away my ability to plan ahead in detail.

PoE took away the Rounds, PoE took away the pre-buffing. It was all part of the same plan: Players shouldn't have to plan ahead, but also players won't be able to plan ahead. OK, it's their game, they can do what they want, but I don't like it.

And so the story goes, and so BG2 still has the best RTwP combat.

 

[Azarkon]

I don't think many people played Baldur's Gate 1 or 2 round by round. Maybe I'm wrong, but playing on core difficulty, this is what I did:

Trash fights:

* Cast long duration buffs at the start of the dungeon, refresh when needed
* For the vast majority of fights, send everyone to auto attack
* Maybe cast 1 or 2 spells, like haste, web, or sleep

Boss fights:

* Before combat: buff up the party, drink potions, equip appropriate weapons, etc. This stage usually requires pausing to issue orders simultaneously, in order to maximize duration of effects
* Send in the tank to soak up initial spells, damage, etc.
* Everybody else follow in to auto attack
* Pause and cast spells on the spell casting classes, as needed
* Pause and drink potions, as needed

Thus, only boss fights approach the kind of round by round play that you're describing, but even then, the complexity is constrained. When a fight is going well, I'm not doing much, and indeed against many bosses, there is no reason to do much because there's usually a set routine to follow. For example, for powerful wizards, they usually have many layers of spell defenses you have to get through before you can do damage, so all you're doing is chain casting dispel on them while reacting to what they do - ie remove negative effects, heal characters that get damaged, making sure your instant death protection is still working. Against dragons, you're basically just auto attacking, keeping up haste, or doing the lower resistance trick. Against adamantium golems, it's just 99% auto attacking while keeping up stone skin, haste, and heal as needed.

None of this requires issuing orders to 6 characters every few seconds. Most of the time, all the warriors, archers, etc. are doing is auto attacking after using rage, whirl wind, etc. 99% of your attention is on the priests and wizards, but since spells have a cast time, and most spells don't work in boss fights, there's only a limited amount of useful actions that you can perform each round. Most of the management is actually done outside of fights, and since effects are few and usually long lasting buffs, it's sufficient to just look at what's happening on screen to know whether your party is still under haste, protection, etc.

By contrast, in Pillars of Eternity, you do feel the need to pause every second because you need to issue commands to all your characters because they all have abilities that should be used as soon as they're available. Then you have all those short duration effects, both positive and negative, that have to be kept up, and the complexity quickly gets out of control, especially since fights in the original Pillars of Eternity were designed so that even trash fights required pause management.

Designers need to ask, when designing real time with pause systems, whether the game actually can be played in real time most of the time, with a pause here and there to issue commands, because in case the answer is no, then there's no reason to make it real time. Turn based systems are designed to be played round by round; real time systems are not.

 

[Lacrymas]

Except PoE's system is not complex in any way, it may be obtuse to actually play, but the result is faux complexity leading to simple tactics. There are some older games that you need to be familiar with the documentation for to simply start them, PoE is nowhere near that level, it's simply annoying in its obfuscation, terrible UI and clusterfucky combat. The fact you don't know what is going on a lot of times, yet still being able to complete the game without any trouble, speaks volumes.

 

[Trashos]

Azarkon, I am talking solely about BG2, BG1 is a much simpler game. I play on Hard/Insane, and the tactics you are describing are too risky there. Much more detailed plans are needed, unless one is content with depending on the dice and reloading all the time. For example, in a dragon fight I need several rounds to raise saving throws, lower magic resistance, and take down defences. My mages' and priests' hands are full for several rounds. And that's only one part of the (offensive) plan for the beginning of the battle. BG2 is a game that supports planning ahead by design (and Rounds are a big part of it), while PoE isn't.

But while the lack of planning ahead makes PoE encounters lack personality, the issue at hand is the pacing. Personally, I don't mind having to pause often. It's RTwP, I expect to have to do some pausing and thinking, that's why I play RTwP. But I think that BG2 did the pause pacing better. Actually, due to the Rounds BG2 has an "official" pacing that could be optimized, while PoE... is what it is.

 

[Payd Shell]

Azarkon, I am talking solely about BG2, BG1 is a much simpler game. I play on Hard/Insane, and the tactics you are describing are too risky there. Much more detailed plans are needed, unless one is content with depending on the dice and reloading all the time. For example, in a dragon fight I need several rounds to raise saving throws, lower magic resistance, and take down defences. My mages' and priests' hands are full for several rounds. And that's only one part of the (offensive) plan for the beginning of the battle. BG2 is a game that supports planning ahead by design (and Rounds are a big part of it), while PoE isn't.

But while the lack of planning ahead makes PoE encounters lack personality, the issue at hand is the pacing. Personally, I don't mind having to pause often. It's RTwP, I expect to have to do some pausing and thinking, that's why I play RTwP. But I think that BG2 did the pause pacing better. Actually, due to the Rounds BG2 has an "official" pacing that could be optimized, while PoE... is what it is.

On the other hand, casting mandatory buffs and debuffs is hardly interesting, especially if there's no downside to it.

 

[fantadomat]

Except PoE's system is not complex in any way, it may be obtuse to actually play, but the result is faux complexity leading to simple tactics. There are some older games that you need to be familiar with the documentation for to simply start them, PoE is nowhere near that level, it's simply annoying in its obfuscation, terrible UI and clusterfucky combat. The fact you don't know what is going on a lot of times, yet still being able to complete the game without any trouble, speaks volumes.

That is more of a poor encounter design than simple system. If there ware more difficult fights it would have been different thing. A few 21 level boss battles would have been nice.

 

[DalekFlay]

Maybe I'm weird but I never found much need for intense strategy in any of these games. I did the basic tank/mage/positioning stuff, but not much deeper than that on any of them, Baldur's Gate on through PoE. Granted I never played any of them on hard mode either, or with less characters than max, because that's not really my thing.

 

[Sensuki]

Well, even your post explains how the lack of Rounds made things worse. I won't outright claim that we NEED Rounds, but I will claim that the best and most celebrated RTwP combat around is the one in BG2, and that one has Rounds. So until someone proves otherwise, I am inclined to suspect that we do need Rounds.

I've had to say this a few times but the IE games don't have rounds, but I can understand why people hang onto the idea that they do.

Unit actions are very easy to understand though because there aren't very many inputs that change the speed and the rules are clear, simple and standardized.

Units can perform 1-5 attacks per 6 seconds at 30 FPS, or 1.5,2.5,3.5,4.5 per 12 seconds at 30 FPS. There are a few things that increase attacks, but it is done at increases of .5/6s or 1/6s only - very easy to understand rules, very low inputs, very standardized.

OR

Use one item (potion, wand, etc) - haste-like effects may or may not change the speed of this, I dont think anything else does

OR

Cast one spell (they may not finish casting it during that time though) - Not too many inputs that change cast time from base - some items, slow/haste like effects

AND/OR

Move around

Units that are idle stand still, units that have an action 'queued' have a bobbing animation which goes at the speed of X bobs per 6 seconds (per individual unit timer), so you can tell which units are 'active' or not, and you can subliminally read the bobbing to understand the flow of combat.

The more exceptions and differentiations you add (Pillars has tenfold-twentyfold more of these), the more muddled things get.

 

[Azarkon]

Azarkon, I am talking solely about BG2, BG1 is a much simpler game. I play on Hard/Insane, and the tactics you are describing are too risky there. Much more detailed plans are needed, unless one is content with depending on the dice and reloading all the time. For example, in a dragon fight I need several rounds to raise saving throws, lower magic resistance, and take down defences. My mages' and priests' hands are full for several rounds. And that's only one part of the (offensive) plan for the beginning of the battle. BG2 is a game that supports planning ahead by design (and Rounds are a big part of it), while PoE isn't.

But while the lack of planning ahead makes PoE encounters lack personality, the issue at hand is the pacing. Personally, I don't mind having to pause often. It's RTwP, I expect to have to do some pausing and thinking, that's why I play RTwP. But I think that BG2 did the pause pacing better. Actually, due to the Rounds BG2 has an "official" pacing that could be optimized, while PoE... is what it is.

Rounds set a concrete pace to the combat, which makes it feel more organized, more like a turn-based game, but depending on how fast the recovery time on abilities is, it shouldn't feel like a mess just because you don't have rounds. Say you didn't have rounds, and your warriors and rogues are just swinging away at the speed of their weapons, while you chain cast spells on your priests and wizards. Does it matter that they do so every X seconds where X is the cast time of the spell, instead of once every 6 seconds? I'd think the garbage time in between rounds is actually a source of confusion. How is it more intuitive, for example, when I tell a wizard to cast two spells and he casts one in 1 second, and then stands there for the next 5 seconds with dick in hand? In case you want to imitate this in order to slow down spell casting, just put in a longer recovery time for spells, or make their cast times longer and balance interrupts accordingly.

Also, I think Sensuki is right about the old games not having synchronized rounds. It's a per character system, so rounds in Baldur's Gate, etc. weren't actually made together, either. The reason I can guess: the designers didn't want characters to look like they were all executing their actions at the same time, like robots, so they sacrificed synchronized rounds for more individual behavior and predictable garbage time. But in fact, a system with no rounds can accomplish the exact same effect by just having an universal recovery time. Now, I personally prefer action time, rather than recovery time, but you can imagine doing it either way. The problem comes when recovery times are either too short, or impossible to predict, such that you have to pause every second to see whether you can issue more orders.

 

[Trashos]

Indeed, the BG rounds are not exactly synchronized, there are shifts. But it does not make much of a difference practically, does it? We can still plan according to Rounds and it works. The thing that does muddle the waters is movement, but I actually think that's a plus. It makes proceedings a bit less formulaic, you may have a winning plan but you still have to worry about its execution, and ultimately distinguishes the BG2 design from TB design. It plays to RTwP strengths, so to speak.

You may call the above "rationalization" if you wish, and it may well be, but apparently that system made a lot of people happy, even with the silly fake attacks. It worked for me, it worked well enough for almost everyone. Rounds still set the pace of spells/buffs, which is very important practically. The synchronization is not absolute, but hopefully we all understand what we are talking about when we use this word for the BG system to compare it to PoE.

Rounds don't matter much for swinging swords, but they matter a lot for spells/buffs. I think that the relative problems in PoE are apparent. Add to that the fact that there are usually a lot of actors on screen, and it becomes the clusterfuck that it is (especially for full parties). I think part of it is how our brains process information. Our brains need a compass so to speak, something to provide time perspective, and Rounds provide one. Now, if someone proves they can design a system as clear/better than BG2's without Rounds, I will be the first one to applaud.

PS. Choose a hypothetical "Round duration" for PoE (eg, 4 seconds), and express all in-game durations relatively to the chosen Round length (in a way that is clear, ie no 1/138 durations, lol). Instantly things become a bit more clear and memorable, although we have cheated a bit by actually altering the durations as well. This goes to show how important Rounds are.

 

[Trashos]

On the other hand, casting mandatory buffs and debuffs is hardly interesting, especially if there's no downside to it.

I agree with this. I always say that prebuffing should have specific disadvantages (ie, raise something, lower something else), so that it is only used where it actually fits the tactics/situation. For buffing during the battle this is not as important, there is already the cost of not attacking instead.

 

[Sensuki]

Also, I think Sensuki is right about the old games not having synchronized rounds. It's a per character system, so rounds in Baldur's Gate, etc. weren't actually made together, either. The reason I can guess: the designers didn't want characters to look like they were all executing their actions at the same time, like robots, so they sacrificed synchronized rounds for more individual behavior and predictable garbage time.

I think the reason is that because they already had an RTS engine, they took the combat system they had already prototyped and abstracted the AD&D 2E rules into it.

On the other hand, casting mandatory buffs and debuffs is hardly interesting, especially if there's no downside to it.

I agree with this. I always say that prebuffing should have specific disadvantages (ie, raise something, lower something else), so that it is only used where it actually fits the tactics/situation.

Having to cast a spell is consumption of a resource, a per day resource. IF resting was a big deal, resource expenditure would be as well.

 

[Trashos]

Having to cast a spell is consumption of a resource, a per day resource. IF resting was a big deal, resource expenditure would be as well.

Yeah, but the resting system makes no sense to me whatsoever. "This battle is tough, unless you can rest and then it is easy". It also produces an enormous amount of side effects when trying to make it work, I don't even know why we are still considering it as a legit system. It probably has more to do with tradition than the actual merits of the "solution". Anyhow, I know I 'll get flamed for this.

Having advantages and disadvantages for each pre-buff is the ideal solution, afaic. Much more elegant, keeps the brain working, rewards mastery of the system (I know Obsidian doesn't give a shit about this), no side effects.

 

[Lacrymas]

No pre-buffing is fine, it actually makes you think whether to buff or do something else. Having an opportunity cost is enough.

 

[Lacrymas]

Lhynn, I expect an explanation for that shit rating.

 

[Lhynn]

There are several reasons why prebuffing should be allowed in any rpg.

1) Party based rpgs are, or should be, about preparation first and foremost. Its the best part of them, you recruit a team, with coherent synergies, you gear them up to tackle an adventure, you build them up in such a way that you empower said synergies. pre-buffing is one more element of that.

2) Narratively it makes no sense not to be able to. You may as put a transition screen when you start combat, the very rules of reality change as soon as someone wants to attack you. Systems are there to allow the player to interact with the gameworld not to get in the way of it.

3) Its jrpg design. Not being able to cast healing or buffing spells outside of combat is fairly common in jrpgs, its a different design paradigm that i dont want to see seep into western rpgs.

4) Has shit flavor. Spells lasting as long as a fart makes magic feel weightless and as if it only exists with combat purposes.

5) The opportunity cost can always be there. You can use memorization slots, concentration rules, or another million ways to make people just not default to this behavior instead of an outright ban.