Pillars of Eternity - Preview @ PC Gamer

PC Gamer's Andy Kelly has new preview of the beta version of Pillars of Eternity that he calls a beautiful, detailed ode to the Infinity Engine era. I humbly agree with him.

I know this is a faithful homage to the Infinity Engine RPGs of yore, because I’ve been on the character creation screen for almost an hour. It’s an overwhelming sea of options—exactly as it should be—and I can’t decide what kind of person I want to be. In the end I settle for an aumaua, a race of tall semi-aquatic beings with blue-green skin and tribal markings on their faces. Their size gives them a +2 might bonus, which makes them powerful fighters.

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More information.

I'm having a hard time figuring out what they're trying to achieve. The game is heavily centered on creating characters that can handle and survive battles, yet your character gains no experience from fighting; only a chance for plunder. XP comes from questing which seems extremely stupid in a game with as much fighting as this one has. If you're not going to reward combat xp, then limit the amount of combat in the game and lower the amount of combat only skills. I've been playing the beta and it just isn't fun; at least not yet. This game also looks nowhere near ready for release, so I'm guessing February and/or the typical Obsidian bugfest we're all used to by now.

crpgnut said:

I'm guessing February and/or the typical Obsidian bugfest we're all used to by now.

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Watch this clip of the Matt Chatt episode where Feargus says Pillars of Eternity will be out this year, and will not be delayed for any reason. So your probably right.

Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur…vRaqcIKw#t=730

They still have four months to fix it at least, and bugs in games don't really bother me as they did in the past. We now have digital patches on release.

This is the Industry standard nowadays for every game. We also have Wasteland 2 releasing this month , and I expect it will need more patches.

Best solution is to wait a month or two after release to play.

This is the one game I've backed that I haven't gotten beta access for, and reading what you guys have to say, I'm kinda glad about that. Waiting until after release to play a hyped title is something that's new for me, but probably healthy in this case.

And I really liked this PC Gamer article, btw. The screenshots were exciting.

Personally I don't care much for not receiving XP on combat as long as the game is balanced correctly between questing, exploration and combat. The demo does not show this balance really, but I'm only going for the Gamescom presentation as I did not back the game at a level I would get a key, nor bothered to ask them for one. That presentation showed way too much fighting for my taste.

Myrthos said:

Personally I don't care much for not receiving XP on combat as long as the game is balanced correctly between questing, exploration and combat.

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I agree but it seems a percentage of backers don't like the decision to not allow XP in fights, and I'm reading negative feedback online about the mega dungeons.

Though I can't really judge the whole game yet as based on the beta it's just a small sample of what you can do. Though I do look forward to the new patches.

(Off -topic from here on. Just a little warning everyone,)

Anyway I highly suggest everyone watch the new Matt Matt Chat videos. Feargus gives an inside look at the game, and Obsidian's failed projects over the years.

Whats really shocking was he tried to get Black Isle sold for $22 million, and Interplay told him they weren't worth it. It's nice to see publishers haven't changed.

I backed the game, but I don't like the concept of their current class/level/skill/XP system at all. -> thread

It looks like an IE game, but the game mechanics are different.

Like a Porsche Replica car with a VW golf engine.

Myrthos said:

Personally I don't care much for not receiving XP on combat as long as the game is balanced correctly between questing, exploration and combat. The demo does not show this balance really, but I'm only going for the Gamescom presentation as I did not back the game at a level I would get a key, nor bothered to ask them for one. That presentation showed way too much fighting for my taste.

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There is 4 quests/tasks in the demo, I know that 3 of them can be completed without killing anyone if you have the right stat/skill to select certain dialog choices. I haven't finished the 4th quest, so I can't say what are the possibilities in it.

That leaves the "wilderness" mobs. Some testers are complaining that the density is too high, but I have the impression it is more that they find each encounter tedious because they still haven't grasped the game mechanics and rules.

I don't ever want to fight a battle that has no reward. It is a time waster and there are several of these in the demo. You'll waste valuable resources engaging in these fights and get nothing in return. As my teenage niece says, Epic Fail.

I don't get the combat either. It is confusing and there needs to be a tutorial section that goes through a few combats step by step. The aforementioned insects did a party wipe on me because combat rounds fly by at light speed on a fast rig. I turned on every pause option available until I get a good grasp of the options. Not user friendly and it will get panned in reviews.

Obsidian games always have a major flaw and the cumbersome rules are the problem in this game. They need to explain these in detail, within the game.

Yeah, regarding that Feargus video… For anyone who is familiar with how to read body language— Feargus knows it won't be ready on time. Looking forward to the delay announcement. I have no problem with that. They have to get it right or any further KS by Obsidian will... not be as popular.

crpgnut said:

I don't ever want to fight a battle that has no reward.

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If the combat itself is fun, why not? Or does the fun count as a reward?

crpgnut said:

I don't ever want to fight a battle that has no reward.

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Even though I personally prefer to get xp for slaying things since it FEELS better to me, in the end it doesn't really matter if the game is fun.

Sounds like you should be playing modern MMORPGs - instant gratification for every trivial little action and zero challenge or danger.

Ideally this game is a throwback to the days of old and less like the new modern warfare style or console game with dumbed down easy mode that's more like TV than a PC game.

If you're working towards a quest goal, or any goal, and having to chop down monsters on the way, aren't they part of the big picture and your ultimate goal? So ultimately you DO get a reward for fighting them, just not IMMEDIATELY.

A quest isn't 1000000xp for talking to one NPC in the end, it's xp for the whole, for the entire process, including killing mobs along the way.

It's kind of cheesy but by not giving xp for mobs it lets them control content flow better, I'm sure. Some players may fight more, some less, and you don't want those that fight tons of mobs getting way more xp and ahead of the quest/content level than others. They either design such that most combat is unavoidable to ensure all players get roughly the same xp, or they allow you to avoid some combat but put the bulk (or all) xp with quest rewards that you can't so easily miss. Or you make scaling content (which many don't like). They do have a limited and relatively small budget so they're going to have to make some decisions here and there.

I always felt like infinity engine games had a good amount of combat so for people to be complaining about that seems really screwy. Have you actually played BG and IWD? Battles tend to take a while too since you pause, think, make decisions, plan, plot, execute. This isn't going to be diablo where you mow down 100 mobs in 10 seconds.

Voqar said:

I always felt like infinity engine games had a good amount of combat so for people to be complaining about that seems really screwy. Have you actually played BG and IWD? Battles tend to take a while too since you pause, think, make decisions, plan, plot, execute. This isn't going to be diablo where you mow down 100 mobs in 10 seconds.

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I think people have a skewed perspective of BG/IWD combat after playing them so much. They played these games many times and they know all the encounters, all the spells, etc. PoE is all new: new rules, new monsters, new encounters, etc. You have to learn how to play the game and this mean reading spells/abilities/items description, the combat log, etc.

Few people seem interested in doing that.

crpgnut said:

I don't ever want to fight a battle that has no reward. It is a time waster and there are several of these in the demo. You'll waste valuable resources engaging in these fights and get nothing in return. As my teenage niece says, Epic Fail.

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I believe the goal is to discourage grinding as a means to improve your character. The game rewards successfully avoiding battle just as much as it does defeating your enemies--combat is no longer an end unto itself.

But I suppose that philosophy won't be to everybody's taste. The benefit of choosing to fight is in the gear that you gain.

The reward in all other games is XP. That is satisfactory to me. I kill x number of critters so I can unlock y skill. Simple. Take that away and there is no reason for the multitudes of battles that the game throws at you. I have a beta key and am talking from experience, not idle speculation. I'm not far enough along to form solid opinions yet though, this is just a first impression from a couple hours of play.

I'll need to start over as mages require might in this game for damage calculations. Since that goes against every crpg ever made, I didn't give might to my wizard. I gave him intelligence. Since giving intelligence makes your AoE spells absolutely huge, so big that they'll always hit the party, I need to lower that stat and raise might instead. Weird. Counter-intuitive. Moronic.

Might as a damage enhancer for mages AND fighters is completely gamy and not intuitive. But you can of course create a balanced Muscle Wizard…

The basic problem is the devs just seem totally out of touch with what people want. The things that they used to do well seem to have been thrown out and they're instead focusing on where they've always been weak. This game system is a mess, or at least the beta is a wreck. Another massive tell is that the Steam thread and official beta forums are getting about 4% of the posts that Larian had at the same time. PoE is looking like a bust at this point, but I sure hope I'm wrong.

crpgnut said:

The basic problem is the devs just seem totally out of touch with what people want. The things that they used to do well seem to have been thrown out and they're instead focusing on where they've always been weak. This game system is a mess, or at least the beta is a wreck. Another massive tell is that the Steam thread and official beta forums are getting about 4% of the posts that Larian had at the same time. PoE is looking like a bust at this point, but I sure hope I'm wrong.

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Activity on the forum is not really an indication of quality, and in fact previews over the board are very positive for PoE. Larian had many updates so you would expect more activity on their respective forum.

Finally, PoE is not Skyrim.

I sure hope not. I'm hoping PoE is Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, not Skyrim. If it was the Gold Box games that'd be even better. I sure hope this is just my pessimistic nature kicking in and the lack of fun I'm having in the beta will turn around as I get deeper.

I'm not sure one can judge the game's chances based on the forum activity. The D:OS beta had people playing the actual game from the beginning, warts and all. Some people were dedicated to playing as far as they could go in the game. But this PoE demo (I don't consider it a beta) is a thin slice extracted from the game with no context. Nobody will play it for any significant period of time. If they do, they're not doing it to actually play the game, they're doing it solely to test things out.

Personally, I'm not interested in being a tester. I just want an early peek at the actual game, not some bastardized snippet that automatically gives you 5 levels when you first log in. I played D:OS for a couple days when the beta was first released, just enough to know that it was a winner and I needed to hold out for the real thing; but I haven't even touched the PoE beta because it doesn't interest me. However, the game itself still greatly interests me. I just don't think we'll get any good representation of the game from this demo.

You do raise some valid concerns about the game systems, and one concern I have is that Sawyer and Avellone sometimes come across as the smartest guys in the room, and unwilling to really take in feedback. They've worked really hard on these game systems, and I hope they do some serious iteration on it to get it right, even if it means drastic changes to what they first envisioned. But I don't have a warm and fuzzy feeling that they'll take feedback seriously if it goes against their "vision".

To be fair, I think D:OS could have used some serious iteration as well. The character progression and how skills work seems off to me. It works OK I guess, but it seems like there could have been some iteration and polish in how new skills are gained, how skill books are obtained, documenting what the requirements are (and the penalties for not beign skilled enough in that magic domain), etc. Maybe I'm just frustrated because at level 12, all of my low-level crowd-control skills are all I really need to pwn most battles. So the pull of advancing my characters to get better abilities just isn't there.