Pillars of Eternity II - About Programmable AI

PCGamesN explores Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire and enjoys the customizable AI.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire rethinks companions. As an RPG born from the Infinity Engine mould - which birthed Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale - a heavy emphasis is placed on party-based combat. Its predecessor replicated Baldur’s Gate’s combat perhaps a little too faithfully, creating a system that was not only deep, but often confusing. With Deadfire, the team at Obsidian aim to rectify those problems, leaving behind not only the problems of its predecessor, but making your companions smarter and more engaging to be around.

Take a closer look at Pillars of Eternity II's ship combat.



A few key changes have been made to Pillars of Eternity II’s party system. You can expect to see:

• Cleaner combat mechanics that don’t sacrifice the original game’s depth.
• A new AI system that provides more challenging enemies and smarter companions.
• The ability to write AI behaviour routines for your companions.
• A new multiclass system that allows you to craft highly diverse characters.
• Companions that can argue or even fall in love with both you and each other.

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More information.

To be honest, I never use programmable AI in cRPGs; as I much prefer to micromanage and do everything myself. I certainly hope the implementation here doesn't trivialise the harder difficulties and let the player off the hook too much with key decisions in combat.

I welcome the customize options for AI. It was one of the best features in Dragon Age orgins. It is strange that so few games have done something similar.

Watched a few vids from backers. Unsurprisingly, despite all the compromizes, players can not still play in RTwP. Same slideshow as previous, despite dishing so much from RT essentials.

They should have made it ugoigo.

FFXII AI was a pinnacle of real time with pause games IMO, and I'm really glad for it making a comeback at last.

I did use the customizable AI in DA:O, and it worked well. The problem there was the number of AI options you could add was tied to skills ranks. Hopefully they haven't made the same mistake here.

I found the battles a little tedious in PoE1 with too much micromanaging required to combat the general chaos of the battles. I look forward to the AI... it was helpful in DA:O - hopefully it will be here too.

SSIGuy said:

I found the battles a little tedious in PoE1 with too much micromanaging required to combat the general chaos of the battles.

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Yeah, but in PoE I not the micro was the problem, but the chaotic combat. This was a pretty big bummer before the heavy patching started. It became better later (a bit).

rjshae said:

I did use the customizable AI in DA:O, and it worked well. The problem there was the number of AI options you could add was tied to skills ranks. Hopefully they haven't made the same mistake here.

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It's not limited like in DAO. The system is also more complex than in DAO but you can share scripts so that shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Darkheart said:

Yeah, but in PoE I not the micro was the problem, but the chaotic combat. This was a pretty big bummer before the heavy patching started. It became better later (a bit).

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I didn't have an issue with that. But that's probably because I'd recently replayed BG2 and IWD2, where the combat can be just as chaotic.

I like a certain level of AI, but not much. I don't like my characters in Baldur's Gate just standing there, not attacking, so I turn on Attack Enemies in the AI settings. Yet when I click them away to either heal or get out of the fray, I don't want them running back in because their AI is set to Attack Enemies.

I'd like to see an option that gives a small "override" for basic AI. So if I choose to enable Attack Enemies, it will do that, but if I click a character and take control, now their AI will be in override for 10 seconds or so. So I can click a character away to be healed or retreat and wouldn't have to worry about them running back in against my orders. Yet I wouldn't have to turn AI off, either, so my other characters could continue attacking.

Now in a game like NWN, I'd like to see the AI vastly improved for non-controllable party members. Just to create a unique type of experience (party-based CRPG, yet I focus on my main character. The companions act autonomously but also intelligently, with their own unique personalities and abilities, and the main char focuses on overall leadership of the group and "playing their role" in the group dynamic.) That's a different type of experience than what we're talking about here, though, but I thought I'd just mention it as it's an idea I've had lately.

Other than that, I'm not big on programmable AI. The way DA:O did it was cool, but more from a novelty perspective, as I prefer to make the choices in a total control CRPG.

I want full on AI with personalities, interactiveness, chatter, etc. Real AI, not some decision trees, pfff.

Wake (or dig) me up when that happens.

I wanted personality and character AI that is more tied to stats and the character sheet in something like Neverwinter Nights rather than just another RPG with full party control. But everyone was quick to tell me that is impossible and/or not worth doing so I stopped sharing that idea.

<=== micromanages

I didn’t have issues with the POE combat being too chaotic pre-patches either. But I did set the options to pause on every character’s turn.

Thrasher said:

I didn’t have issues with the POE combat being too chaotic pre-patches either. But I did set the options to pause on every character’s turn.

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I had a bunch of pause option on as well. It made the combat slow and irritating but it was impossible to micromanage otherwise.

My biggest issues were combat pathing ("*why* did you walk there!?") and the super bright spell effects that made some parts of combat invisible. I ended up pretty muich micromanmaging because I was afraid my character would trigger an AoO by moving in a silly way. I'm curious to see how (if) they have addressed this - pathing outside combat was fine.

booboo said:

My biggest issues were combat pathing ("*why* did you walk there!?") and the super bright spell effects that made some parts of combat invisible. I ended up pretty muich micromanmaging because I was afraid my character would trigger an AoO by moving in a silly way. I'm curious to see how (if) they have addressed this - pathing outside combat was fine.

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Yea, those were also my issues. And both were never made better with new patches. One of the main reasons why I never made myself replay PoE.
There is a mod that can remove those opportunity attacks and makes combat pathfinding better as a result but I never got around to figuring out how to install it.

SSIGuy said:

I found the battles a little tedious in PoE1 with too much micromanaging required to combat the general chaos of the battles. I look forward to the AI… it was helpful in DA:O - hopefully it will be here too.

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Looking forward to people streaming it. Inputs during combat are minimal, they might even be got ridden of with scripting and story decision inputs are branched, meaning that someone somewhere did the same thing.

Product that does not require people to sit behind their desk to unfold, impersonal product, material for streamers.

ChienAboyeur said:

Looking forward to people streaming it. Inputs during combat are minimal, they might even be got ridden of with scripting and story decision inputs are branched, meaning that someone somewhere did the same thing.

Product that does not require people to sit behind their desk to unfold, impersonal product, material for streamers.

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Oo
_

Why are you looking forward to people streaming it if you conclude than it is an impersonal product? Does it no mean that it is an uninteresting product for you?