Quickfire Systemic Criticism that contributes to banality of gameplay

[Ninjerk]

PoE's pantheon of gods is indeed amazing.

I don't see how. It's a rudimentary generic fantasy pantheon.

I never thought of the pantheon itself as being mediocre, but they really blew their load early on the reveal.

 

[Rostere]

PoE's pantheon of gods is indeed amazing.

I don't see how. It's a rudimentary generic fantasy pantheon.

I never thought of the pantheon itself as being mediocre, but they really blew their load early on the reveal.

No, I think they came far too late.

By the time of the reveal you had already guessed it ages ago, it also got revealed twice (first by Iovara (if you trust her not being a liar), then by Thaos) making the second reveal even more anticlimactic. If it had been revealed earlier they could have further reinforced it as the point of the narrative.

Anyway, the reveal does not really change any of the premises for future games.

 

[A horse of course]

I'm taking about the pantheon independent of the fedora-tipping reveal, which doesn't add or subtract anything from them anyway - it's pointless, as others have pointed out. It's like a college film student's homemade magnum opus ending with "and it was allllllllllll a dreeeeaaaaaaaammmmmmm *5spooky*".

 

[Rostere]

But it IS interesting from a philosophical point of view, even if you take the instrumentalist viewpoint that it makes no difference. It's not pointless, it just does not change the game mechanics or the game world in practice. It is interesting because you can relate it to real-world philosophical discussions.

I'm just disappointed there wasn't a fake creation myth, or an existing underground group of atheists, or something like that. Because they held on to the reveal to the very end, Obsidian kept themselves from exploring this concept in earlier parts of the game.

 

[Sensuki]

I think you're one of the only people here that actually gives a shit.

 

[Rostere]

I think you're one of the only people here that actually gives a shit.

So... Apparently there are not enough monocled storyfags on the Codex then?

 

[Sensuki]

There's plenty, I just haven't seen many people give two fucks about the Eora Gods stuff.

Personally I find the actual cultures more interesting. I couldn't give a flying fuck about animancy, souls or gods and nothing in the game made me remotely care either.

 

[A horse of course]

But it IS interesting

It's not. To each their own, but I think most intelligent people with large penises would agree that in lieu of doing anything smart with this twist, it's just faux-intellectualism, like Fable 2's "RESURRECT YOUR DOG, YOUR FAMILY OR MILLIONS OF DEAD SLAVES YOU'VE NEVER MET".

 

[Copper]

There's plenty, I just haven't seen many people give two fucks about the Eora Gods stuff.

Personally I find the actual cultures more interesting. I couldn't give a flying fuck about animancy, souls or gods and nothing in the game made me remotely care either.

Hoping the cool fantasy culture aspect picks up in Twin Elms then, because I couldn't care less about Dyrwood/Valian culture, which doesn't seem to go very deep into interesting fantasy territory.

Being a graphics person, there are some other UI issues that are really annoying and also make me inclined towards the path of least resistance with the game, such as equipping items without seeing the impact on stats / knowing the change in deflection / accuracy / real damage.

Unless the left side of your screen is being cut off, you should be able to see the change in stats when you equip something.

Okay, it's only the actual attribute modifying ones that are a massive pain in the neck, and you do see the 'impact' of them on the derived stats anyway, but I would still say the lack of hard figures in the item stat box for your currently selected character, especially when you're comparing them or enchanting them, is a flaw - people generally don't 'get' percentages anyway. It's not bad, it just lacks any elegance or real in-depth design thought on how best to display semi-complex data.

 

[Athelas]

Okay, it's only the actual attribute modifying ones that are a massive pain in the neck, and you do see the 'impact' of them on the derived stats anyway, but I would still say the lack of hard figures in the item stat box for your currently selected character, especially when you're comparing them or enchanting them, is a flaw - people generally don't 'get' percentages anyway. It's not bad, it just lacks any elegance or real in-depth design thought on how best to display semi-complex data.

I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say percentages. Both the equipment and inventory screen show integers on the left side - damage range, accuracy, defense scores, damage reduction, health/endurance numbers. I guess the interrupt/concentration scores are absent, which is a fair complaint.

 

[Copper]

Okay, it's only the actual attribute modifying ones that are a massive pain in the neck, and you do see the 'impact' of them on the derived stats anyway, but I would still say the lack of hard figures in the item stat box for your currently selected character, especially when you're comparing them or enchanting them, is a flaw - people generally don't 'get' percentages anyway. It's not bad, it just lacks any elegance or real in-depth design thought on how best to display semi-complex data.

I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say percentages. Both the equipment and inventory screen show integers on the left side - damage range, accuracy, defense scores, damage reduction, health/endurance numbers. I guess the interrupt/concentration scores are absent, which is a fair complaint.

Are the figures in the right click inspection box the 'real' figures for the selected character, or do the items have to be equipped to see the modifiers from Might, etc? I think for percentages I was mostly irked at the enchantments - the weapon does damage in a set range, so give me a hard figure for the enhancement too; as well as not bothering to remember the formulas behind which stat affects what.

 

[Athelas]

Are the figures in the right click inspection box the 'real' figures for the selected character, or do the items have to be equipped to see the modifiers from Might, etc?

The item description tells you the figures for the selected character, followed by the item's base figures unaffected by stats. I'm not sure how you could miss this.

I think for percentages I was mostly irked at the enchantments - the weapon does damage in a set range, so give me a hard figure for the enhancement too; as well as not bothering to remember the formulas behind which stat affects what.

I suppose, though it's not as if said formulas are complex in any sort of way. This is game that has a stat that determines every kind of damage.

 

[Copper]

True enough, but all the complexity of the system is also kind of pointless when you can play on hard and still be as ignorant as me!

 

[Hatred]

You would be able to get by on PotD actually.

 

[Copper]

I don't think I can handle that much awesome.

 

[aweigh]

is PoE good?

 

[Sensuki]

There's plenty, I just haven't seen many people give two fucks about the Eora Gods stuff.

Personally I find the actual cultures more interesting. I couldn't give a flying fuck about animancy, souls or gods and nothing in the game made me remotely care either.

The Dyrwood is probably the most boring culture in the game (Murica). I like the general ideas of some of the other ones though.

 

[Hatred]

don't think I can handle that much awesome.

aaaaah you may be right. If PotD is your idea of 'awesome' you may just be part of the 5% of the population who can't do it. Dw it only makes the combat more drawn out instead of more interesting so you don't miss much.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

But it IS interesting from a philosophical point of view, even if you take the instrumentalist viewpoint that it makes no difference. It's not pointless, it just does not change the game mechanics or the game world in practice. It is interesting because you can relate it to real-world philosophical discussions.

I'm just disappointed there wasn't a fake creation myth, or an existing underground group of atheists, or something like that. Because they held on to the reveal to the very end, Obsidian kept themselves from exploring this concept in earlier parts of the game.

Meh, real-world philosophical discussions regarding faith don't interest me in the slightest. I liked the whole "Gods are artificial constructs/machines made by technologically advanced race" because of the Sci-Fi vibe, reminded me a bit of Torgal (a Belgian comic). I also think conversations with them are one of the best written parts in the game (both descriptive text and dialogue), would be interested in more interactions with them in the sequel (or expansion).

 

[MicoSelva]

A few words of reply, Sensuki. You have some good points, but I do not agree with everything you wrote.

Combat in Pillars of Eternity is mostly based around positioning and strategy (positioning, initial positioning, gear selection, opening ability selection, initial movements). There are lots of options (in like what characters, gear or abilities/spells you use) but the game generally promotes solving most encounters in a similar fashion - you send a couple tanks in to tank and you drop a bunch of damage/disables on top of the enemy, and you don't really have to react or adjust to anything the enemy does. I find the combat less reactive than most of the Infinity Engine games.

That is true. The abundance of options is pretty pointless as there usually is one variant that will be optimal for 90% of the encounters, good enough for another 9% and will only force you to change something in the remaining 1% of fights, which is not enough.

Armor system: The IE games did not have damage reduction from armor, and armor didn't really have a penalty (if you exclude Max Dex Bonus in IWD2). Characters wore the highest AC armor they could find that they could wear (as there were either limitations or proficiency/spellcasting penalties) or armor based on what passives/abilities it granted. This was problematic from a character building perspective, as there was no real reason to play a Fighter in leather armor, but it worked very well from a moment-to-moment gameplay perspective. Better armor made you harder to hit.

Pillars of Eternity's armor system aimed to make it so that you could roleplay your character concept, if you wanted to make a Fighter who wore leather armor, you could do that. This was the primary goal of the system - that goal was achieved. However it was achieved at the cost of having some negative impacts on the gameplay. You could build a leather armor fighter and make a build where that was effective, but it doesn't really make sense to wear armor as a ranged character unless you're facing encounters with enemies that deal damage in large AoEs or that have creatures that specifically target low DR. Wearing better armor also comes at a cost, you pay in action speed for every point of base protection, meaning that the heavier armor you wear, your character will be less offensively effective in combat. This outcome in a broad sense is not necessarily bad, but it helps create the situation where characters who wear the heaviest armor are always taking aggro and sent in first because they are going to take way less damage than the other characters.

One might argue that in the Infinity Engine games that you would have high AC characters targeted specifically in combat, and in BG1 and IWD1 that might have been true to some extent, but what about the Kensai in BG2? They have a fucking awful AC. What about the Barbarian in IWD2? They don't usually have a good AC either. I don't believe that Pillars of Eternity has this flexibility to the same efficiacy. There's nothing stopping you from making a high Deflection, low DR character but I don't think it would be that great of a character, and you definitely do not want any low Deflection characters tanking at all due to being easier to crit, which leads me to my next point.

I will be honest with you - I hate Armor Class as a system and am glad to see it gone. The idea of stronger armor making you harder to hit never clicked with me and switching armor to provide damage resistance, while separating defense from it is a good move in my opinion. And I am not saying this just because it allows for my favourite kind of character to exist - a lightly-armored fighter focused on accuracy and defense.

However, as you say, it is too easy to make an uber-tank in this system (high defense + high DR) and make him (or rather them, two are better than one) the lightning rod to absorb enemy attacks while the rest of the party focuses on dealing damage.

I also do not like that heavier armor just makes you act (attack) slower - I feel like higher DR could have been balanced in some other, better way, but it would probably require redesigning other systems with it (like attributes).

Attack Resolution system: The fact that Accuracy increases your chance to crit gives the game adds to the fact that you really want only high Deflection characters tanking/taking aggro, as you do not want to get critted more often (by damage or durations). I think the four different outcomes (miss/graze/hit/crit) gives the game an incredibly swingy feel, moreso than the Infinity Engine games which I think have a pretty consistent pace and consistent results but it can lead to situations where you won simply because of luck of the dice roll. Not to say that doesn't happen in Pillars of Eternity either, but it seems to have less impact in the early game in Pillars of Eternity than it did in Baldur's Gate 1. That was one of the goals of the system (to make outcomes less reliant on luck in the early stages of the game) combined with the addition of more crits coming as a result of a character building choice rather than being random. Josh achieved his two goals at the expense of the overall swingy combat feel and pigeonholing high Deflection characters into always tanking as much as possible / low Deflection characters being sissy bitches and really, really high damage crits from strong damage attacks. The aim of this system seems to have been more focused on character creation choices rather than actual outcome on general gameplay / combat feel.

I love this system. Well, ok, "love" is too strong a word, but I like it a lot. The idea that your attacks are more effective against enemies worse at defending is simple yet brilliant. I only wish that critical hits were not as anemic as they are, or maybe if they were tiered in some way, not just 100+ providing a +50% damage bonus, but maybe 150+ (if you manage it) giving +100%.

I was not that keen on grazes when they were announced, but they seem to work pretty well in practice.

Health System: I think the Health system also attributes to the polarized combat where tanks tank and everyone else is a sissy bitch. The system is very similar to 4E's Healing Surge system. Classes start with an integer amount in Endurance, gain a specific integer amount of Endurance per level and gain a percentile bonus of that total from Constitution. Health is then a multiplier of that number. There are items/etc that give bonus Endurance that does not increase total Health. The split health system allows for a consistent baseline for which encounters/systems can be tuned against - Full Endurance. The only way that health can be regenerated is via resting or via a couple of optional talents. Characters always regenerate back to full Endurance until they are down to their last health multiplier, which takes away the immediate concern and management from losing Health over the course of the adventuring day in most cases. I've often found that I rest because of Major Fatigue more often than low health (even with 3+ Athletics) and never because of running out of spells/abilities.

In contrast, in the Infinity Engine games you have to manually heal HP either via spells or potions (unless you have regeneration). Healing spells are a per-rest resource, and healing potions are (technically) a finite resource. You might want to save your healing spells/potions for when you need them rather than healing characters straight away, and often you are not at 'full strength' when facing encounters, and as the adventuring day goes on you are gradually whittled down. This led to situations where due to not being at full HP you might have had to alter encounter strategy or tactics based on who was wounded. Personally I would often leave wounded characters behind, and take on encounters with less party members. You cannot/shouldn't do this in Pillars of Eternity. When characters got badly wounded in combat, I would have them quaff a potion, or move them out of the fray. You don't really do this in Pillars of Eternity either. If that character is engaged - you leave them where they are. Potions do not heal Health, so you don't drink potions unless they're in danger of being KO'd and because being KO'd has no negative impact on the character other than them not being able to take part further in the encounter, whether or not you heal a wounded character is debatable, so changing what you are doing whether strategically or tactically because of considerations to do with the Health system comes into play way less often in Pillars of Eternity.

An odd anomaly is that Barbarians who have a x6 Health multiplier can't really tank because of their low Deflection, the fact that they need action speed to be effective in combat and don't really have many defensive abilities. This is more because of how the attack resolution system works as it makes them more prone to being hit and critted more often, and thus taking a lot more damage than a character with those extra few Deflection points would over a period of time. However a strong health multiplier combined with high DR and high Deflection makes for a super resiliant tank that can always stand at the forefront of combat, take as much aggro as possible and do so all day long, where characters who didn't build for tanking will suffer more total percentile health damage from just a few attacks than these tanks will over a much longer amount of time. There's not really anything in the game other than being petrified that makes it a bad idea for these characters to always be doing this, nothing that changes this mold.

I agree that this is not a good system. So far I have only used a potion once in combat - and it was a misclick, as I tried to use knock down with Eder. I was very surprised when he got healed, because I had forgotten that potions existed altogether.

Having said that, I do not mind how it works too much. From a mechanical and gameplay perspective I would prefer if healing spells and potions restored health (maybe only if used outside combat?) as they are a per-rest/finite resource and it would not unbalance the game too much. But since magic not being able to heal is kind of rooted into the lore of the game, I am willing to let this pass, because I am the type of guy that prefers consistency between lore and mechanics to wondering why they did not use Phoenix Down on Aeris (aka Aerith).

Although the solution to this would be quite simple - get rid of knock downs, give characters less endurance (half?) and much less health (1/4?) but make endurance be "on top" of health - when you run of endurance, you start taking health damage and can die. Suddenly, healing endurance matters, it can still regenerate outside combat, and lore consistency is preserved.

There are also probably some people who will try and attack this point because of how resting restrictions are handled in the Infinity Engine games and in Pillars of Eternity. I don't believe that you are 'supposed' to rest very often in either game and both games have preventative measures in place. The Infinity Engine games prevent resting in many areas and interrupt your resting in cities and in the wilderness (the latter is more of a simulation thing). Pillars of Eternity allows you to rest anywhere but limits your resting to Inns, Stronghold and Camping Supplies, and the camping supply limit changes with game difficulty. I don't think that because it was possible to rest spam in the Infinity Engine games that this was the intended way to play, and any statements made from the basis of having rest spammed are null and void in my opinion. The IE games have been out for a long time, and I think many people have been playing with the Rest Anywhere mod, which does indeed make it easy to spam rest, but it is a bit tedious in the default games. It's still possible in Pillars of Eternity too it just requires more backtracking (and the cheat commands include a rest command).

I never played with that mod, and I never spam-rested in those games too. I think you may be overestimating how many people actually do these things, and JES overestimated it too and felt the need to create counter-measures.

Per-encounter abilities/spells: On the one hand, per encounter abilities and spells are a good idea because it gives units something to do other than making an auto-attack. Using Pillars of Eternity as an example, Rogues now have special attacks that deal more damage and inflict status effects. Fighters have similar abilities usually related to disable. Wizards have a per-encounter Foe only AoE damage spell which is very useful. Priests have a per-encounter AoE heal that can optionally buff allies and debuff enemies, and an optional large AoE debuff. These things give classes more stuff to do in combat other than auto-attack and give them options to do different things. In some ways per-encounter abilities are a good thing.

However, I think they negatively impact the moment to moment gameplay. Per encounter abilities have a number of issues. The first being they are rote. Because they can be performed every encounter, you should perform as many of them as you can every encounter, as there is no downside to doing so. Like D&D 4E, per-encounters also lead to combat that leans heavily on combat opening and alpha striking, because per-encounters can be used every encounter and are more powerful than an auto attack but don't waste strategical resources, it makes sense to perform offensive per-encounter abilities at the start of combat every single encounter. I almost always opening up combat with a Fighter Knockdown, a Rogue special attack, a Ranger Wounding Shot, a Paladin Flames of Devotion and a Priest Interdiction or Holy Radiance. Particularly abilities that have multiple uses, it just makes no sense to not use at least one of them straight away, unless the encounter is so easy that you can't be bothered.

It may be that per-encounter abilities could have been handled a bit differently to be less rote and to add more deliberation about when to use them. Limiting per encounters to 1/encounter and designing them around that would have made them less spammable and added more deliberation about when to use them, although it would have taken away efficacy in the cases of Fighter Knockdown or Rogue Crippling Strike. There's also the issue of choice. Non-caster classes don't have much choice and only have a few active abilities to perform throughout the whole game, and it's impossible to obtain all of them due to changes made to character advancement (which make character advancement more meaningful but ultimately gives characters less options in moment to moment gameplay). If a Fighter had a choice of four or five different per encounters, then using Knock Down at the beginning of every encounter may not be such a rote/no brainer decision. This is an advantage that classes like Ciphers have with their resource-based approach, which I think works better from a moment to moment gameplay perspective.

However, it makes one wonder if simply removing per-encounters and making everything per-rest wouldn't solve the issue as that would indeed remove the roteness of using such abilities and add the deliberation about when to use them, because there would now be a strategical consideration to consider (and it would also help fill the void of the lack of resource management that the game has in general).

This is my biggest problem with combat mechanics in this game. Per encounter abilities make most fights feel repetitive and samey (unimaginative encounter design does help too). This feels especially bad because I like the idea of per eoncounter abilities, but not how they are implemented (as a straight copy from D&D 4E).

I believe it would be much better if per encounter abilities were more numerous but shared a pool of "uses". If you had one use of a per encounter but could choose one of two (more on higher levels), it would make you think which one is better suited for current situation. The number of uses would go up separately (+1 every three levels?) to getting new abilities.
As these would make per encounter abilities weaker overall, they could also provide passive bonuses - like knock down giving you a guaranteed knock-prone attempt with active use, but also a low % knock down chance on every strike as well. I think many passives could be redesigned into per encounters like this, making a larger pool of these abilities available.

No Immunities, Hard Counters or Counterspelling: Hard counters do not exist in Pillars of Eternity. They were deliberately not included for some reason or another. I honestly forget which but I think it could be a combination of the fact that Josh Sawyer doesn't like them and SA/badgame goons among others don't like them either, and they don't like 'chess-like' elements to combat, or something like that. The game includes a few soft counters, such as abilities and spells that suspend the duration of hostile effects (those spells also appear to be buggy, as discovered by codexer ushas) and the Priest has some spells that add defense bonuses against certain types of afflictions and halve them if they're already in effect.

Having played through most of the game, I have not cast a single "Prayer Against ..." spell. Not one. I never felt that I needed to, for a number of reasons. You can't cast it as a pre-buff. They don't dispell the current effect. Most durations in the game are fairly short anyway. Most status effects are not very severe. The spells are a per-rest resource and I could instead suspend the effect if I needed to or cast a spell that actually helps me win the encounter, like a debuff or damage spell. When using Durance as a Priest, I've also only run out of second level spells twice in the game as I took Bonus 2nd Level Spell and found some ring that gave me more per-rest casts, so if I needed to actually use Suppress Affliction (which was only a handful of times) then I always had it available.

Because you can't remove an affliction, can't prebuff and 'protecting against it' is almost never worth casting in combat, the tactical option of casting protection against afflictions in combat is removed from the gameplay, as are in many cases 'dispelling' an affliction. Your choices are either to plan against the affliction, play around it, or ignore it. I think this has a negative impact on the moment to moment gameplay as it makes the player actually react to situations in combat a lot less. If I was going up against a potential hold, paralyzed, entangled, poisoned, diseased, cursed, level drained or a number of other afflictions in an Infinity Engine game, most of the time I would have either cast a protection spell either as a pre-buff or as a reactionary protection spell in combat, or dispelled it after it took effect. The reason I actually cast protection spells (or drank debuff potions) in combat in the Infinity Engine games is because the effects were often very severe. In Pillars of Eternity, if you do get affected by an affliction it will either end shortly or it's no big deal, and if it is, you can suppress it. Another BIG difference in Pillars of Eternity is that many affects end when the unit that inflicted them is killed in combat, so instead of dealing with the affliction, you're better off simply killing the person who inflicted it and most effects END when combat does, so it's better to just kill enemies faster than to deal with ongoing effects. Encounters are short, per-hit damage is high and ongoing effects don't often have much of a chance to be an issue. This wasn't the case as several effects in the Infinity Engine games were a stategical concern - Curses needed to be removed. Level drain needed to be restored. Disease needed to be removed. Poison was dangerous if not neutralized. Disables lasted quite a while, including after combat ended. Confusion / Charm could be very dangerous to your party even after combat had ended.

There's also just a bunch of awesome stuff that you could do in the Infinity Engine games that is flat out missing from Pillars of Eternity. If a unit is charmed in an Infinity Engine game, you can dominate them back. You can Vocalize yourself and silence everyone else so they can't cast spells with a vocal component. You can wake up slept characters by attacking them (punch with unarmed etc). You can drop stuff like Webs and Entangles and Free Action yourself.

I also think the lack of Immunities sucks. While enemies may have high DR versus a damage type or a certain high defense, this rarely ever causes you to change what you're doing. Early on in the game I had to use a Greatsword instead of my Estoc to kill a Forest Lurker at low level because of their high pierce resist. Every other time I encountered a Forest lurker, I didn't need to because the damage I was doing because of the better items/levels/stats that I had were more than good enough to dispatch it without a worry. Immunities actually force you to change what you're doing and use different strategies and tactics. I think the reason they were excluded might have been because dumbfucks will never learn and some idiot might try and attack a unit immune to fire with fire and not realize it or some shit. This can mostly be overcome with UI (Diablo, anyone?) but it's also another thing that the Infinity Engine games had going for it that forced you to play specific encounters in different ways rather than just being able to breeze through the game with the same strat every single encounter without really having to change much. The debuffer classes have the tools to make most high defenses or DR scores not matter anyway. It's pretty dumb to use fire against Drakes, sure - but you still do 20% minimum damage 8).

I agree on this too. I have never used a "prayer against" too. The main source of the problem here is IMO too much separation between combat and non-combat states. Too many effects and abilities are based on being in-combat, making dealing with them secondary to just finishing the encounter and automatically ending everything. Also, many effects are too weak (did someone say poison?) or too short-lasting (I am paralyzed!... for two seconds) and therefore completely pointless.

As for immunities, I am generally not a fan and D&D 3E switching from immunity to non-magical weapons to DR against non-magical weapons was a good thing for me. But I also believe they have their place in certain situation. A fire elemental should be immune to (or even healed by) fire - not receive 0.01 damage from it.

Melee Engagement: Yeah, you've all heard this before but Engagement also impacts the moment to moment gameplay. It's various implementation issues and bugs aside, the Engagement system contributes a fair amount to the emphasis on positioning and strategy and takes some emphasis off encounter tactics. The Engagement system forces you to plan your positioning so that melee enemies will aggro to your tanks who you will keep stationary, so that your other characters can move about the battlefield without suffering disengagement attacks. All Engaged enemies other than Trolls and some other creature will only target enemies that are engaging them and this makes it very easy for the player to control the battlefield with initial tank positioning (no easier than using forward tank positioning in the Infinity Engine games, but in the IE games units would re-target other characters). If you make a positional mistake or accidentally move, you are penalized for it so it pays to get it right the first time every time.

Melee Engagement makes encounters more static than they were in the Infinity Engine games unless you didn't use movement based tactics as a response to enemy actions. Quite often in the Infinity Engine games I move units after the opening to optimize targeting or positioning, or to micro a wounded character away from melee. The engagement system penalizes these actions, so I don't do them in Pillars of Eternity - I send my tanks forward first, and only send in other characters after the initial engagement have begun, which is completely different to how I played the Infinity Engine games. You could technically spend per-encounter resources to fix positioning mistakes, but it's better to just not make them, or just kill enemies engaging certain units first so they can move. I think the Engagement system also contributes to the roteness of combat because there's a correct way to position your party every encounter to avoid suffering disengagement attacks and not having your squishes engaged.

I think the Engagement system has a big impact on the moment to moment gameplay because it prevents simple movement based tactics that I used every encounter in the Infinity Engine games. I do think it has less of an impact on the gameplay than the way some of the other systems interact with eachother, but it's still worth mentioning as a problematic system.

I also recognize that there are a lot of people out there who do not care about the existence of movement based tactics, think they should be punished, enjoy anything that removes unit micromanagement or anything that adds emphasis to the strategical and character build side of the game even if at the cost of viable tactics, but for me and many others personally, this system is a kick in the ribs of enjoyment.

I do not like the engagement system too - it makes combat too static. I have learned to live with it and exploit it, so I see its uses, but the game would be better without it - or if there was some way to break engagement - maybe as a situational active command giving you % chance to break engagement and move away at the cost of forfeiting other actions? Anything that would give an option to move away without getting a crit to the face.

Yeah, I know there are abilities allowing to disengage or giving bonuses to defense against disengagement attacks, but nobody will get such an ability for a character that is not supposed to be in melee, and it is those characters that need a way to disengage safely the most.

Other problematic factors that aren't really related to the impact of system design decisions are encounter design and itemization. At least on the Codex, the itemization in Pillars of Eternity is widely considered to be disappointing to downright abysmal. Magic/Unique Items in Pillars of Eternity lack flavor, and unique items are banalced so badly that they are unremarkable. Items with any sort of non-mundane property are in overabundance in the game, but the special properties are far too generic. The restrictions put on the Enchanting system haven't really done anything to placate this issue either.

The reason that the low-fi itemization in BG1 worked because magic items were scarce. Sure there might have been a lot of Longswords +1 but there was only one Longsword +2. In BG2, unique items were crazy good, and had all sorts of amazing features. There were a fair amount of cool items in Icewind Dale, but yeah, there were a lot of "+2 item with random X property". The extreme balance on items is not fun, and makes looting kind of unrewarding. And yeah, FUCK RANDOMIZED LOOT.

Agreed, although I think a large part of this is presentation - if abilities were presented in a better way than a laundry list of features, it would make items seem better than they are.

One of the problems with the encounter design is that I think the designers went out of their way to 'justify' the existence of creatures in areas, "why does this creature exist in this area, what lore explanation can we come up with for them to exist". Problem with this approach is that it seems to have lead to repetitive encounters and copy-paste encounters. The Skaen Temple has like 70 Skaen Cultists in the level of the same few classes - Fighter, Rogue, Priest and Cipher being the most common, and you fight encounters consisting of these guys over, and over and over and over and over again. The Megadungeon is the same. So are a lot of the Wilderness areas. The issues with the system design already make it not very fun for me to play encounters, and then to put salt in the wound encounters are repetitive and there is a severe lack of unique enemies, named villains or pre-combat banter to spice things up. Unfortunately due to the problems with the system design, there's not much that could be done to make these encounters more fun. Instead of 10 Pwgra, 2 Forest Lurkers and a Menpwgra - changing the encounter to some Ogres, Menpwgra, some Xaurips and a Wizard would probably not make the encounter more fun to play. The only thing that could be done other than adding new systems or changing system design would be to improve encounter flavor - more named enemies, more dialogue, better loot etc.

Yeah, encounter design makes sense... And that is the best you can say about it. There is not enough unique and named enemies - far too few of these.

I don't think it has anything to do with playstyle, but many or most of these issues may or may not matter to a lot of people because there are people out there that put much more emphasis on role playing, character building and planning/strategy than the diversity of moment to moment gameplay, changing it up or tactical diversity. The design for Pillars of Eternity definitely caters to this crowd more than the latter. The game definitely supports a wide variety of character concepts, and making a character is one of the best systemic things about the game - there's lots of choice, however the way in which the things that facilitate this variety have been designed or implemented has negative impacts on the moment to moment gameplay when compared to the moment to moment gameplay or BG1/2 or IWD1/2 that quite frankly makes it not very fun to play for me.

Agreed. I am having great fun with this game, but I do not believe I will be replaying it many times, as I did/do with Baldur's Gates, and not just because I do not have have as much free time as i did when I was seixteen. We will see, though.

 

[Sensuki]

I will be honest with you - I hate Armor Class as a system and am glad to see it gone. The idea of stronger armor making you harder to hit never clicked with me and switching armor to provide damage resistance, while separating defense from it is a good move in my opinion. And I am not saying this just because it allows for my favourite kind of character to exist - a lightly-armored fighter focused on accuracy and defense.

However, as you say, it is too easy to make an uber-tank in this system (high defense + high DR) and make him (or rather them, two are better than one) the lightning rod to absorb enemy attacks while the rest of the party focuses on dealing damage.

I also do not like that heavier armor just makes you act (attack) slower - I feel like higher DR could have been balanced in some other, better way, but it would probably require redesigning other systems with it (like attributes).

My criticism of the system is basically the Armor system in Pillars of Eternity impacts the moment to moment gameplay feel indirectly. Armor absorbing damage on it's own is not a bad thing, but when combined with the current attack resolution system (miss/graze/hit/crit) and additive percentile bonuses to damage instead of integer bonuses plus heavier armor slowing the action speed of the unit, the result ends up being two very polarized situations with not too much incentive for in between.

I did not state that DR systems are bad.

I love this system. Well, ok, "love" is too strong a word, but I like it a lot. The idea that your attacks are more effective against enemies worse at defending is simple yet brilliant. I only wish that critical hits were not as anemic as they are, or maybe if they were tiered in some way, not just 100+ providing a +50% damage bonus, but maybe 150+ (if you manage it) giving +100%.

I was not that keen on grazes when they were announced, but they seem to work pretty well in practice.

This is another one where the idea for the attack resolution system is a good idea but it just doesn't work in conjunction with the other systems in the game, or well 'doesn't work' might be going a bit too far but 'creates worse gameplay than the Infinity Engine games' is more what I meant. In the OP I stated that multiple systems together help to create the problems in the game, not just one system on it's own.

On it's own in a different game, this might be a very good system.

I only wish that critical hits were not as anemic as they are, or maybe if they were tiered in some way, not just 100+ providing a +50% damage bonus, but maybe 150+ (if you manage it) giving +100%.

Well, crits are not anemic but they do scale with the efficacy of the attack/spell. For instance a crit on a 6 second disable becomes a 9 second disable. That's pretty good. Crit on a 15 second charm becomes 22.5 seconds - great. A crit on a 50 damage spell could become 75+ damage, also pretty good and when DR comes into play, crits are even more valuable as they often give more than 50% through DR.

When damage and durations were multiplicative, crits were an absolute joke and it made accuracy the most important thing ever over everything else. It's still a very important combat stat in the release version but nowhere near the magnitude of before. 300 damage Arbalest crits are no more.

 

[RK47]

*Didn't read but brofists anyway.*

 

[Hatred]

for reals ? I think its better to read it and not upvote it than to ignore and upvote. Also it does seem a little fanboyish to just blindly upvote.

 

[RK47]

Seeing them so invested in this game struck a chord somewhat.
I feel they've wasted enough of their time and I felt compelled to reward them in a manner of brofisting.
But not so much I want to know how or why this game work/don't work.
This game, like a bad restaurant trip, is something I want to forget and not want to remember or discuss about ever.
Perhaps a mere mention of 'Wow, did you remember how crap the service was?' would suffice.
But a dish to dish analysis, how that joint can be improved further - I'd just wave my hands and say I believe what you two have said was enough, and if none of the franchise owners took your advice seriously it would not matter.

Sensuki has done his best. It is unfair for him to see POE end up like this, but whatever, shit happens.
It won't be the first nor the last time I hate a video game.
I don't want to dwell on it anymore.
Reading Roxor review, reading the reactions was enough.
I had an odd dream last night, I felt happy that my enemies couldn't hit me due to my high deflection score.
Then I grew sad when the enemies won't try anything else to hit me. They moved the same way. They swung the same way. Failing to hit me every time.
When the battle was over, it felt as if I was merely putting them out of misery.
At that point I realized, I had killed the game and wanted to bury it deep.
I woke up at 7.15 AM and uninstalled it before getting ready for work.

Thanks, Josh. At least it was short.

 

[MicoSelva]

RK47