Will PoE be shit?

[Athelas]

I wouldn't call the encounter design bad - i.e. the trifecta of poisonous wood beetles, earth-burrowing hard-shelled stone beetles and spell-casting adra beetles is interesting enough for a wildlife 'trash' encounter, but it does need some tweaking, which is something that mods should be able to do. Though NPC combatants will likely need quite a bit more work.

 

[Shevek]

Encounter design looked alot better in Sawyer's stream than in the BB. The beta areas were some of the first they did. I am curious what they will look like when they give them another pass.

 

[Sensuki]

Really? I thought the Megadungeon encounters weren't very good. Heratige Hill looked okay though.

 

[Shevek]

I thought the megadungeon stuff seemed good. Easily better than the dungeons in the beta and certainly on par with early level parts of low level IE Dungeons like Durlags Tower or Kresselacks Tomb.

 

[Sensuki]

That was Hard difficulty and it looked pretty pissant to me. Hopefully they do another pass so the encounters are actually fun to play. My understanding is that the megadungeon is supposed to ramp up in difficulty fairly quickly, and that it's a place you'll come back to every now and again to have another go. Those encounters could have used some better enemies/better positioning and less copy/paste - but that's just me.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I thought the megadungeon stuff seemed good. Easily better than the dungeons in the beta and certainly on par with early level parts of low level IE Dungeons like Durlags Tower or Kresselacks Tomb.

Having replayed Bg recently, most of the so called dungeons are boring as hell, firewind bridge and ulcaster make PoE's design positively inspired.

PoE area design is not the problem, now encounter wise... They could do with a lot of improvement

 

[Shevek]

Well, we dont know how geared Sawyer was vs the challenge level of the dungeon. Some of the enemies had some interesting paralyzing abilities and the trap placement/power seemed nice. I liked the promotion of stealth. Enemy groups were a respectable size and all the encounters seemed respectably challenging without excessive micro. I liked that head priest encounter since it showed a formidable caster enemy. I dunno, it looked real good to me.

 

[Athelas]

Yeah, the mega-dungeon in the stream didn't look particularly exciting. It looks inferior to Lle Rhemen with its variety of phantoms (one of which has ranged stunning attacks). Though I've never fully explored Lle Rhemen (saving the experience for the full game).

I liked that head priest encounter since it showed a formidable caster enemy.

 

[Sensuki]

PoE area design is not the problem

Both the Wilderness Exteriors are pretty underwhelming IMO.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Both the Wilderness Exteriors are pretty underwhelming IMO.

Agreed, I was talking about the dungeons.

 

[Apexeon]

What Sawyer doesn't seem to understand (and probably never will) is that fun doesn't happen during encounters with carefully thought pre-scripted solutions or choosing branching options and seeing consequences, fun happens in between those parts, fun happens in that zone we call the unexpected, fun was not using the god wand on the blind beholder, but using it on the lich thus winning a fight way out of your league at the time (BG2), fun was using speed potion + rain of fire to kill 100 orcs in an instant in G2Notr, fun is doing something no one expects you to do and getting rewarded for it...fun is freedom of expression and interaction.

But like a mediocre GM, Sawyer thinks fun is to follow the plot, go through the prescribed motions, save the world and go home. A dull view for a dull man who makes games for dull players.

Some wisdom in this. You remember the moments when you can bend the rules.

 

[Sensuki]

The strange thing is, is that he (or maybe Chris Avellone) fully recognized this for Fallout: New Vegas - and his most played game on Steam is Hitman Blood Money which excels at emergent gameplay - yet here we have very controlling gameplay experiences.

 

[Apexeon]

The art is highly polished (at a 4 million $ budget you would expect some polish) vanilla fantasy.

Not one map I would consider inspires anything really.
IWD's, BG2 and PST art teams leaves it for dead in the memorable maps department.
Nothing is a stand out at the moment and the art is matching the Balanced combat system "bland".

 

[Shannow]

Lol, no man, nothing has been debunked.

Lol, man. Has so. Re-read the last few pages without dumbfuck-blinders.
This lies mostly in your extreme and exagerated claims.
Your claims about meaningless of stats and super-important items are plain wrong.
If you'd instead argued that (certain) stats (for certain classes) were not "meaningless", but instead that they should have been more meaningfull (at least in dialogue checks, etc), nobody'd have argued with you. Saying that every stat should have had the same importance for every class, would have brought a lot of argument, but it would have been an acceptable opinion.
If you'd stated that you dislike certain items simply setting certain stats to a certain value instead of giving a certain bonus. That would have also been a valid opinion. Instead you simply made baseless claims about builds pivoting around single items.
About classes one could have argued (and accepted your opinion), if - again - it hadn't been presented as so extreme and absolute. *shrug*

One attribute being useful for one build of one class is not good design. Also the debate only showcases how difficult it is to determine the REAL value of an attribute point.

Actually this sounds pretty cool. However, it's the opposite of what Sawyer set out to do, isn't it?

Btw, the votes here are public. Zagor voted "It will be a good game."
So there's no flip-flopping going on. Not that flip-flopping is bad per se. Being able to change ones mind if one is presented with superior arguments is a sign of intelligence.
Also, (constructive) criticism is a sign of interest. Fanboys always seem to interpret it as "hating". The problem of thinking in absolutes. *shrug*

 

[Shevek]

Shannow
Dude, if you want to ignore arguments and call things "baseless" simply because you disagree with them, go ahead. I couldnt care less how much you want to delude yourself.

 

[Arsene Lupin]

Wow. These votes are all across the board.

In terms of narrative and aesthetic, judging solely from my experience with the Backer Beta (which has no companion), I think it PoE feels fantastic. It feels like a BG1.5 to me rather than a BG3. I really love the text-adventure segments. Unfortunately the combat does not feel good. At all. But PST had really bad combat, too, and so could BG1 and IWD1 (with the right party) early on. So I think it will definitely live up to the Infinity Engine legacy (especially if this engine is used for a bunch of games, as seems likely)... But it does NOT feel like a solid successor to Shadows of Amn.

And that's all down to the combat.

So its not really the game I wanted, or the game they originally pitched... But I still think it will turn out awesome. Especially since they ditched that nonsensical November 2014 release window.

 

[Infinitron]

or the game they originally pitched

They pitched a successor to Shadows of Amn?

 

[Arsene Lupin]

They pitched a successor to Baldur's gate, which means the whole series, and the combat doesn't feel like it's succeeding any of them.

 

[Abu Antar]

They pitched a successor to Baldur's gate, which means the whole series, and the combat doesn't feel like it's succeeding any of them.

They pitched a spiritual successor to the Infinity Engine games.

 

[Infinitron]

They pitched a successor to Baldur's gate

Not quite.

Besides, you just said it's like BG1.5, and considering that this is a low level campaign that isn't supposed to have BG2-ish stuff in the first place, that's actually a big compliment.

 

[Arsene Lupin]

Not quite.

Besides, you just said it's like BG1.5, and considering that this is a low level campaign that isn't supposed to have BG2-ish stuff in the first place, that's actually a big compliment.

And I meant it as a compliment. But that refers only to the visual aesthetic and narrative tone. Combat is arguably the biggest aspect of an IE game, and combat in POE only superficially resembles an IE game. It doesn't feel like one at all.

Am I articulating myself well here? I think the game is great, but I just don't think its fully living up to what they wanted it to be. Kind of like Citizens of Earth or Dragon Age Origins. They spend so much time trying to hype up a game by comparing it to another title that they forget to really go all out to make something that stands on its own. By associating PoE with BG, Obsidian is inviting a comparison that isn't exactly fair.

 

[Infinitron]

Combat is arguably the biggest aspect of an IE game, and combat in POE only superficially resembles an IE game. It doesn't feel like one at all.

Doesn't it? Maybe you'll be surprised.

Personally, I still think they should have released the opening areas of the game in addition to the Dyrford beta. Would have shut all the whiners up good.

 

[Arsene Lupin]

I think the BB must just be a vertical slice they made out of haboit. Its really not a very good way to show off the game. And you're completely right. A big part of IE game feel occurs at the very beginning--the low level areas. By cutting us out of that in the BB, its hard to get a real feel for combat since we have no investment in the characters, gear or abilities.

But at the same time: we know the two most time consuming aspects of the game will be travel and combat, and a lack of combat EXP will only make combat feel more tedious because there's that much less reward.

 

[aeonsim]

Wow. These votes are all across the board.

In terms of narrative and aesthetic, judging solely from my experience with the Backer Beta (which has no companion), I think it PoE feels fantastic. It feels like a BG1.5 to me rather than a BG3.
...
So its not really the game I wanted, or the game they originally pitched...

So feels like BG1.5 but is not a spiritual success to the infinity engine games, that's a bit of a contradiction.

I agree BG1.5 sounds like a reasonable descriptor (though with a different combat engine, which is in some ways better and others worse), which means they've done a bloody good job of producing a result within the space they made there pitch.
Now it's certainly not what you were expecting when they said spiritual successor or a number of other vocal members of the community. But there was no chance in hell the game could have meet everyones personal idea of what a IE successor would be, and it'd pretty much be impossible to do short of time travelling and kidnapping the entire BGII & PST teams and forcing them to immediately make BG3 or PST2. Even then the resulting game would be different from a lot of peoples idea of what the next IE game should be but they'rd at least be able to say we made BG2 so shut the f**k up so it's the perfect successor (though considering Bioware made NWN next who knows what BG3 would have been like if they made it).

At the end of the day it looks like they've managed to make a good game it's not going to dethrone BG2's 95% score (metacritic) but I'd expect it to compare favourably with Wasteland 2 (which is sitting around the 81% mark), and it should get a lot of respect for the writing and the environmental art.

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

... Combat is arguably the biggest aspect of an IE game...

Glad I'm not the only one who thinks this.

PoE is looking a lot better than I thought it would. Looking forward to giving it a go.