Pillars of Eternity II - Preview @ MMORPG

MMORPG checked out Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire:

The RPG Files: Pillars of Eternity 2 Hands On Preview - It May Be Obsidian's Best RPG Yet

Over the course of the last several days, I've had a chance to sit down to play Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, the latest in a stellar line up of cRPGs that have taken gaming by storm over the last couple of years. Taking note of the original game and expanding on nearly every aspect from the technical to the aesthetics to the story itself, the game moves the Pillars IP forward in fantastic new ways.

Character Creation - It's an A+ Feature

As with all great cRPGs, you'll start Pillars 2 with a robust character creation feature. But before that, you'll select game options. There are five available (Story, Relaxed, Classic, Veteran and Path of the Damned, each increasingly difficult over the last. There are also two additional, yet separate, game features: Trial of Iron which is essentially hardcore mode with a single game file and permadeath; and Expert Mode that scales enemies to meet your party level no matter where you are adventuring.

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Thanks Hak'n'Slash!

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Sounds like a review of the beta build. Seems a little premature to be judging the game at this point.

Yeah for level-scaling!

Darkheart said:

Yeah for level-scaling!

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Haha, I feel the same but opposite. Yay for being given the CHOICE to have level scaling. Win-win.

To be a bit skeptical, though, I hope the leveling option isn't just a fix for the fact that completionists will far outlevel the later game again.

How do you solve it tho?

Lets say there are 100 quests yielding xp.
40 are story specific.
60 are sidequest related or not integral to story continuing.

If you make the 40 yield too little xp to finish game on average difficulty, the majority will complain its too hard.
If you make the sidequests yield too much then you are overlevelled too fast. If they yield too little its either not giving reward appropriate to quest,or you have to do all of them.

Wisdom said:

How do you solve it tho?

Lets say there are 100 quests yielding xp.
40 are story specific.
60 are sidequest related or not integral to story continuing.

If you make the 40 yield too little xp to finish game on average difficulty, the majority will complain its too hard.
If you make the sidequests yield too much then you are overlevelled too fast. If they yield too little its either not giving reward appropriate to quest,or you have to do all of them.

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My answer would be that if a situation like that exists, and leveling is required, then it ought to be built into the fabric of the game. I'm not so keen on this idea of having to switch it on if your play style doesn't match the average progression.

I'm not actually against leveling - I just think it could be done in much smarter and subtler ways than, say, TES games. Those really just use scaling lookup tables, and it becomes painfully clear that the world is changing around you.

I'd go for a mixed system where discovered areas stay at the level they were when you discovered them, so bandits in those places will have a very bad day if they try to mug you later on. Then I'd have areas that are of fixed difficulty throughout the game. And then I have other locations, particularly on the main quest path, that adjust to the right level of challenge when you reach them. Ideally, not through just scaling up the levels, but by adding extra and more dangerous foes to enemy groups, and so on.

EDIT: Essentially, what I'd be trying to achieve is that, as you become powerful, you should actually have a fair number encounters where you crush the enemy - but you should still have a sense that if you venture into the dark places, you may still find yourself in jeopardy.

Wisdom said:

How do you solve it tho?

Lets say there are 100 quests yielding xp.
40 are story specific.
60 are sidequest related or not integral to story continuing.

If you make the 40 yield too little xp to finish game on average difficulty, the majority will complain its too hard.
If you make the sidequests yield too much then you are overlevelled too fast. If they yield too little its either not giving reward appropriate to quest,or you have to do all of them.

Click to expand...

I think, historically, a lot of RPGs solve the problem by making the amount of experience granted by kills be dependent on the difference in level between the player and what you've just killed. So for example, if you skip a bunch, then when you get to some specific point (let's call it point X) in the game, your level may be 2 less than the enemies at point X, causing them to grant a lot of experience per kill, and acting as a "catch-up" mechanism to where you should be, although obviously the fights will (should) be harder for you than they would be for someone who didn't skip anything. Meanwhile, the guy who didn't skip anything, once he reaches point X, perhaps he's 1 level above the enemies, and they grant him very little experience, acting as a "slow-down" mechanism for him. In the end it tends to even out although the guy who didn't skip anything will always be a little ahead, making him feel slightly more powerful. That's the way an RPG should work, IMO, and when you have this system, there should really be no need for "scaling", stuff works itself out naturally.

Pillars is a lot more screwy because they don't even give experience for kills. (Bad design decision, IMO.) I guess they could assign levels to each quest though and do a similar thing, not sure how well that would work out since many quests don't necessarily even involve combat, so that could enable cheesing of XP by low level players.

Yea, its interesting re: the debate over level-scaling. I was just playing Divinity Original Sin after a long absence from playing, still in the opening stages though. I'm a completionist type player, and am finding the monsters very easy now, that before were destroying my party, without my party standing much of a chance in the battles, unless I got really lucky in dice rolls, etc.. But ever since I leveled my party up, it has been easy - too easy. I'm playing on classic mode, and I guess maybe I might be forced to bump up the difficulty because of this now.

And I can tell these monsters are supposed to be difficult fights - I'm talking boss-type monsters and fights - but since my party is leveled 2 levels higher than before, they are child's play to defeat. Because levels really mean something in this game. There are definite pluses and minuses to each way of handling this, I think. If I had to pick one, probably I would choose no level scaling, because even though it sometimes can result in situations where you are over powered, it can still be fun playing the game in this way as well. Hard to find a perfect balance.

Not giving exp for kills is actually great design to me. You get exp when you overcome the obstacle, so you get the exp when you enter the temple, no matter if you killed the guards outside, or if you talked your way out of it, or if you lured them away from the entrance and sneaked past in, etc.