Thoughts/discussion/first impressions of Pillars of Eternity!

Yeah, I have the observation regarding conversations. If go in in sneak mode, I should come out of the talkie-talk in search/sneak mode. Annoyance, but minor.

played my longest stint today thanks to a job fallen through and an early day at work.

I've settled on a rouge and have pretty much figured out sneaking and flanking. It's not a problem now and i get a ton of sneak attacks. I just let a guy engage move my rouge behind the enemy and i'm flanking and every hit is a sneak attack.

I got the evade talent to break engagement so I can now sneak attack with my rouge then break engagement with evade and lead the enemy right to my fighter.

I thought I read somewhere that level 12 was the cap, if true that's a bit disappointing since I'm level 3 after a few hours.

Is there any reason to read all the soul things? There's alot and only one that I've read gave me any useful info. (that I can tell)

Now my only problem will be putting it down because I had planed on waiting for more patches, content or whatever as I usually do but I might have caught the bug.

saki, The purpose of the characters whose souls you can view is mostly for entertainment and not necessary. Some of them are really well-written, though, and worth reading. Most of them are, actually. But no, they are not necessary for anything other than enjoyment of reading something.

Originally Posted by Fluent
saki, The purpose of the characters whose souls you can view is mostly for entertainment and not necessary. Some of them are really well-written, though, and worth reading. Most of them are, actually. But no, they are not necessary for anything other than enjoyment of reading something.

That's why I agree with Ripper about finding a mod to remove all backer added content in the game. As I don't mind the tombstones & memorials, but I hate the named NPCs.

You know the first time I played the game I actually thought some of them were important quest givers, but no they are all just a waste of space on the screen.

Oh, I made that same mistake, thinking they were important. They aren't a total waste of space for me as i enjoy some of the stories they tell. At least they are optional so both of us are happy.

So the bear cave one is the only useful one. That's too bad.

Originally Posted by sakichop
So the bear cave one is the only useful one. That's too bad.

This is the only down fall I see in the game. I would have rather seen them take the vision part out of the game and even if they used a quarter of that information to fill those characters with something meaningful in the game.

This could be as simple as conversation that doesn't have to be linked directly into the mechanics of the game. The conversations could be useful information that you don't need to help in a quest but could be useful. Really anything to fill what seems to be emptiness in a full looking area's.

It would have to trigger an other action the game like other conversations do.
I agree with Fluent that the writing of some of them is interesting but I stopped reading them awhile ago.

This being say it doesn't take away from how good the game is, just seems like a big waste of resources.

I actually enjoy the soul-stories. Though I do wish they were part of some overarching mechanic better integrated into the gameplay. Memorials, however, I don't care one lick about.

Originally Posted by sakichop
I thought I read somewhere that level 12 was the cap, if true that's a bit disappointing since I'm level 3 after a few hours.

I takes longer and longer to get to each level. After 67 (steam) hours I am on level 7 now with most characters. Imho it's actually a good idea to have only 12 levels and make level gains something special as having 6 party members to manage can be quite overwhelming.

Which brings me to the skills of the characters. While I initially liked the limitation of having 5 skills and the way they were implemented, I don't like the frequency they were used.

While Athletics 3 is useful on all characters, same as a higher sneak value and mechanics on one character, everything else is basically useless. Even on the main character there was hardly any skillcheck so far. A couple of lore checks and that's it. On other party members these skills were completely irrelevant.
In presentations it sounded like scripted events were a big thing. I found it somewhat disappointing that they are extremely rare - and then often solved by the items you got with you.

Well, my party is pretty much all level 8 after less than 30 hours played (according to the savegame).

Originally Posted by Kordanor
I remember to have seen them talking to each other maybe 5-10 times. 3 times of that (or more) was something which they already said before. And that is within over 60 hours of gameplay.

The little argument between Sagani and Eder should be already five by themselves. And there are similar arguments between many characters.

When playing the game, the impression that the studio took many remarks on previous games into account jumped to mind.

One frequent reproach that was done about bantering: the process went overdone as it went more popular. Players usually requested that they should not be done too frequently.

As to repeats, never got one, they have a chronological order and it seems that once they are done, they will no longer come up.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Now how long would this have taken in Turn Based combat? Probably it would have been shorter >and< more precise.

The video reveals an approach "ugoigo" style.
Typically the kind of figths that can be fought in real time without ever pausing (according hotkeying happens) by many players as long as they are willing to play with real time requirements in mind.

The video starts with the absence of scouting. The enemy is spotted, no information on the enemy is gathered, number, weaknesses etc are unknown when the fight is initiated.
The fight is triggered as the rest that follows would be "ugoigo" type.

Then the rest of the party is not in position when the fight is triggered and worse, there is no planning ahead before the fight is triggered.

Here is a simple way to address an encounter of this type in real time, by sticking to real time requirements:

• Scouting: the number, weaknesses, strengths etc of the enemy must be known before triggering the encounter. It can be done in real time (all it takes is not shooting, moving around, mousing over enemy etc) fall back
• Planning ahead: once the information is taken, match it with the strength and weaknesses of the party. This gives at least the first two or three sequences of actions in the encounter
• Once it is done, positioning the party members before the encounter begins, this could include moving some party members in stealth behind the enemy group so that they have a clear charge line after the front line is formed.
• Trigger the fight.
• Apply the plan.

I've restarted a game (this time with a barbarian instead of a ranger), on hard, and so far, the emerging impression is that the game could have been real time without pause. I've yet to pause a single time in my current game.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Well, my party is pretty much all level 8 after less than 30 hours played (according to the savegame).

I was at 55h when they hit lvl 8. I guess I enjoy my quality games more

The level thing isn't a huge deal for me, I've just gotten used to modern games endless leveling and actually enjoy it.

The level limit is pretty on par with the IE games and that's what they were going for. If I hit 12 to long before finishing though I will miss leveling I'm sure. I would be surprised if I did though with the no xp for combat thing they should be able to control the leveling pretty precisely.

I'm sure there will be DLC or an expansion allowing a higher level cap.

I hope they don't include backer content in PoE2. I want the content I experience to be written by the professionals at Obsidian. Crowd funding is great but crowd sourcing content usually isn't.

I've worked in advertising and there is a reason we used to call "user-created-content": "Loser-created-content".

Plus it's not worth all the internet drama we've seen recently.

As for the level cap, I think it would be smarter to have quest-related "unlocks" at specific points, integrated well into story and flow. As in, have a "training" session available in the Stronghold once you reach, say, 50% and 75% of main quest progress. Whatever would give the best flow.

But I do think you need to allow players to enjoy a max level character for a while before the game ends, which is why you need the level 12 cap unlocked a good number of hours before the end.

They could simply track your quest progress and add whatever XP you have accumulated during your time at a cap.

Well, that would be one way of doing it.

I don't understand why this basic and extremely established common problem with so many RPGs hasn't been solved yet.

I can't be the only one who remembers Fallout 3 suffering from the same problem - with the level 20 cap.

Is it REALLY so hard to think outside the box?

Don't even get me started on the omission of Prestige classes in PoE. They would have added a lot to the class flavors.

@ChienAboyeur
There was no scouting as this was not the first but the third of fourth attempt.
Of course positioning and something like that would have to be done beforehand If you play without pause.

Take into consideration that Path of the Damned comes with more enemies which have higher stats than the high difficulty. I am pretty sure, that the majority of fights are not winnable without using pause.

I think the level cap is important in a game like Pillars because they are planning on sequels, expansions and the like. Think of Pillars as the first Baldur's Gate game and you'll see many similarities in the level progression.

I'm sure the second Pillars game will have higher level adventures and *hopefully* we can carry over our created characters to play it.

Until someone does the lighthouse top floor battle realtime no pause in a video, I won't believe such claims either. and slow mode doesn't count.

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Until someone does the lighthouse top floor battle realtime no pause in a video, I won't believe such claims either. and slow mode doesn't count.

I didn't fight that fight, I went the peaceful route.

(but the first time when I was ignorant, I attacked and got thoroughly destroyed in mere seconds )

If I had known i could have solved it peacefully, I would have…