Pillars of Eternity: pillars lasting more than four hours

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Pillars of Eternity: pillars lasting more than four hours

A Catastrophe: Jun 26, 2014

Vermain posted:

Could you explain why?

I was flat out figuring out who to leave home as it is.

I think that the party just has too much room for artillery, and the spellcasters are still just too powerful when stacked. I didn't do much feedback on the backer beta past a certain point because I was confident they were making an effort on various fronts, but now that I've played the game I feel like spell aoes and party size combine to make pretty much every fight a wash if you can lock in those positions. And those don't need to be big aoes- even super small aoes can take out two, three foes at a time. I wasn't evne using slicken, although I was playing on Hard as opposed to POTD.

I guess encounter design and monster design can solve this, but it would rely on people checking out monster stats and maybe even the log to figure out what's going on, and learn the lessons of hard fights and foes with more unconventional tactics. Some more sophisticated movement animations and FX might help also, so that people can keep track on screen of how monsters are flanking them, ect.

A Catastrophe fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Apr 14, 2015

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 16:19

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 22:33

A Catastrophe: Jun 26, 2014

A Steampunk Gent posted:

I like being able to fling 8 different types of bullshit at the enemy and even if it can result in cheesy strategies it's something I'd rather not see sacrificed on the altar of the Balance Gods

It's not about removing the strategy, it's about making other strategies viable as well, and changing the script every now and again. If anything, breaking monsters out of the bottleneck will challenge people to use more and different spells in more creative ways.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 16:24

A Catastrophe: Jun 26, 2014

I agree with criticism of the act 2 finale, however it is very BG, and in particularly BG2, in which at one point Irenicus sits up on a balcony and taunts you in one of the dungeons. The second I saw that 'viewing point' in poe I was all OH poo poo HERE COMES THE CHOO CHOO

# ¿ Apr 15, 2015 04:52

A Catastrophe: Jun 26, 2014

MiltonSlavemasta posted:

Agreed. I haven't been this invested in a game of this genre in a scary amount of time.

Regarding Act 2, I think one issue is It's relatively inconsequential to just walk out of the hearing after the murder. I think if you had to fight your way out through Leaden Key and/or Rival Faction enemies and rescue your chosen representative (or none of them), it would be a lot more exciting and feel more like a conflict. But I think the real reason it feels so inconsequential is that Defiance Bay has zero new Act 3 sidequests after the supposed change. If the City turned into a post-apocalyptic nightmare and you could do a lot of work trying to save it and put a new authority in power, it would shore up the Defiance Bay arc significantly. But instead, you just sort of move on while the city is burning, which felt pretty out-of-character for my dude.

This is certainly a problem in act 2's end as well. As it is, you just kinda shrug like a chump and and wander out of town after Thaos kicks over your sandcastle. It makes the entire sequence feel like you don't have anything to do, and no way to influence what's happened. I also think that they missed a great opportunity to put the players in the middle of a huge, hair trigger standoff, which could explode in several directions. Instead, you step out of the balcony and everything has already happened.

MechanicalTomPetty posted:

You can kinda reason out why Eder's brother did what he did if you pay attention to the plot and finish Durance's sidequest. Waidwen/Eothas probably told him the truth about the Leaden Key and their plans so he went turncoat to protect his homeland in a weird roundabout sort of way. That would also go some way to explaining why he died near one of the Engwithian ruins: they may have been going after one of the soul relays to prevent the LK from using them. That's how I interpreted it anyways.

I think that's a pretty good take, especially considering the geography, and the fact that Magran supposedly teamed up with Wodecia to take down Waidwen. To me it sounds like Wodica came in to 'help' Magran in order to shut down Eothas/Waidwen's play, and stop the truth from getting out, safe in the knowledge that Magran would also act to cover things up. Not to mention the purges, which may not have just been driven by 'human nature', in fact isn't it indicated that the Leaden Key were involved in them? All of this suggests that Waidwen and other Ethosians were probably aware of the threat of the Leaden Key, as opposed to just Eothas.

I'm also wondering how much the founding of the colonies pissed off Thaos and the Leaden key, because any challenge to the traditional status quo of the ruins is also a challenge to the secret they conceal. The leaden key might even have taken steps to stir up trouble between colonists and the locals, or to sabotage the colonies in other ways. Remeber, Readceras was a failed colony twice over before Waidwen turned up.

While a lot of the events can be explained in more mundane ways, and obviously familiar themes from our own colonial history, i'm wondering if there was more than that going on.

A Catastrophe fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Apr 16, 2015

# ¿ Apr 16, 2015 06:07

A Catastrophe: Jun 26, 2014

MiltonSlavemasta posted:

Well, Firstly, her worshippers were being punished for heresy by the Eothan invasion. And then you have a God who is inherently Aggressive and the patron god of explosions, so how could she resist the chance to try and kill another God when they put themselves out in the open like that? It's just too tempting. ALSO, she became the most popular deity in the Dyrwood after killing Eothas, so it's clear the political calculation actually made sense; Getting rid of the competition did make her deific top dog. Also, the alternatives would have been diplomacy or cowardice, which aren't really in her nature at all.

Her ideology/portfolio suggest a certain kind of resolution and mindset in a conflict. She embodies confrontation, a trial by fire, as opposed to the kind of crusade Eothas and i'd say, Waidwen were on. It feels like the only way Magran could react to such an event would be to start blowing poo poo up. Magran is about a form of strength and empowerment and triumph, as are her primary allies.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 04:27

A Catastrophe: Jun 26, 2014

Fintilgin posted:

It does sort of make me want to post a bunch of wide eyed fake spoilers which I can then cover up when people complain.

I'm doing the Joshua Graham fight, and I get how he lost most of his tech when Jehova teleported him to Eora, but why don't his .45's work against Arcane Veil?

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 04:47

A Catastrophe: Jun 26, 2014

Lunchmeat Larry posted:

If we're in a reality where I can steal people's magic soul juice through fighting them it makes more sense to me that this would happen through physical contact between me and them ok

If all the swords were copper and arda i could see your point, in fact that would make a boss special melee weapon for a cipher. Not that they need one.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2015 09:57

A Catastrophe: Jun 26, 2014

I'm going to make my second run a party of gun-toting jerks. Choose all the clever options, and a few cruel and 'rational' to taste.
What's some good classes/builds for guns? Apart from ciphers?

# ¿ Apr 23, 2015 06:13

A Catastrophe: Jun 26, 2014

Hypocrisy posted:

There are some things that imply that Eothas was trying to save the Dyrwood like Eothas being the god of rebirth so he would be the god to notice and take action and Eder's brother siding with Waidwen when he met him but there's no confirmation of what Eothas was thinking. He might have just decided that his religion was best. Or got mad at Magran.

And yeah, this should be spoilers'd. It was one of the best part of the story if you had the right companions with you.

Well when you consider that Magran supposedly got help from Wodeca to create the godhammer, things get a little more clear.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2015 08:12

A Catastrophe: Jun 26, 2014

rope kid posted:

We could make classes have closer to exact parity in terms of number of abilities, utility of abilities (at least with regard to defenses attacked, etc., if not access to the same types of CC), and amount/variety of per rest abilities. That set up would probably look kind of 4Eish. A lot of people really hate 4E. I don't. I played it for two and a half years and had a lot of fun with it. One of the most common complaints about 4E is that all classes are the same. This isn't true, but it is the perception people have of it from looking at the handbooks and playing less than 3 sessions.

Something could look(and more importantly, act) a lot like 4e without those people realizing it (unless somebody told them :ninja:

# ¿ Nov 24, 2015 01:29

A Catastrophe: Jun 26, 2014

Furism posted:

I don't know if they invented and have a monopoly on that, but they sure pushed that to the front of game designers concern. In a table-top game, since it's ran by a Game Master, classes with "boring" abilities can always have fun by having the GM custom-tailor interactions for them.

They can't 'always' have fun that way, usually an underpowered/dull class in tabletop is just boring, frustrating, and causes people to quit playing. It's difficult if not impossible for a GM to custom-tailor content for such a class, especially compared to the vast power of spellcasters.

Nor did mmos push class balance in non-mmo rpgs- people being bored shitless by crappy classes in tabletop did that, quite distinctly from EQ or WOW.

verybad posted:

That's great but when playing the game it mostly felt like it was restricting me from controlling my dudes. Engaged an enemy melee with my fighter? Great, now I can't move him even an inch or he'll lose a ton of HP. Enemy melee breaks through somehow and engages my backline? Great, my wizard is going to die because if I move him he eats a poo poo ton of disengagement damage and if I don't, well, he'll drop like a sack of poo poo in two seconds because that's how wizards roll.

It's not a brilliant idea to have such powerful disincentives to move your dudes in combat in an RTS style combat system, because RTS combat is fundamentally about moving dudes around.

I think one of the key issues here is that the lockdown can be very mutual- which limits the ability of your defenders to go and defend where they're needed.

Lt. Danger posted:

Engagement is cool, but it's of limited use on PotD because enemies are so numerous and so tough. Chokepoints are still better for crowd control.
What if it was restricted to certain enemy types and/or classes and/or PC characters only? Might make particular monsters/tank classes feel more distinct if "melee stickiness" was their specific thing rather than something you gotta wrestle with every time you make a move, anytime.

I think this is key. Not all monsters should mirror the PCs, even if in theory that's an IE-ism. Lockdown is an annoying thing for a player to have to deal with, and should be relatively rare in encounter design.

I do think POE fighter design is still just too anemic to make room for a fix based on character creation decisions. They just don't have much design space to use at present, that won't force a trade-off.

One thing to consider is what if fighters could turn engagement into a liability for foes who use it on them? After all, that's kind of the idea- a fighter wants people to fight them, instead of fighting somebody else. So what if 'engaging or engaged by' was a common trait to fighter abilities? It could even be a stand-in for targeting-fighter powers could simply target all engaged, which could help to keep their management overhead low. You could even turn it around and give fighters a bonus vs foes who are engaging other pcs.

A Catastrophe fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Nov 27, 2015

# ¿ Nov 27, 2015 00:56

A Catastrophe: Jun 26, 2014

^^Boring warriors in RPGs are a legacy of traditionalist design. I understand why a lot of people liked the 'walking chainsaw' of an old 2nd ed IE style warrior, but to bring those classes forward they need to have enough design space. I think POE made an efffort at that, but I don't think it was successful because of key issues with engagement, and because of encounter design- both the number of PCS and the number of foes amplified the flaws in the approach in various ways. The number of encounters is a factor also, because there are a lot of trashier mobs that encourage people to clear them in particularly dogmatic ways.

idonotlikepeas posted:

Fighters in 1-3rd edition AD&D are stupid boring, mechanically. This matters less in tabletop, where a clever player and DM can, if they choose, come up with tactical options beyond "hit thing with sword again".

What special clever tactics do you think can let people have fun reliably when the other pcs are freezing time, flying, and shapeshifting into dragons? What choices are available, really?

In POE or a similar game, you're controlling a squad. Class balance is less important, and I can accept the appeal of having some simpler pieces on the board, if party size is going to remain what it is. But in a multiplayer game if you only have one character, having that character be dull underpowered garbage is a bad thing, even if people make time honored excuses for it.

A Catastrophe fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Nov 27, 2015

# ¿ Nov 27, 2015 14:34

A Catastrophe: Jun 26, 2014

Who do people feel are the best companions to do the white march expansions with? I assume the new ones, but apart from that?

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 13:13

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 22:33

A Catastrophe: Jun 26, 2014

Rascyc posted:

I really hope Fig doesn't gently caress them.

Yeah I really hope they know what they're doing with Fig. I mean they're closely tied to it but I just want them to keep making games and hiring people, and i'm not sure fig is a good way to do that.

I'll probably back this on fig despite my misgivings, but it's about the only property I can imagine backing on those terms.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2017 08:32

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Pillars of Eternity: pillars lasting more than four hours