Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

[Desiderius]

Didn't they introduce resources for resting because of that, so people don't spam their spells and then rest spam for every fight.

And then made resting resources super easy to get.

Think about it. It's double moronity. Not only now there is no prebuffing, there is a resting cost and that is irrelevant.

Resting cost in P:K is best yet. Time is money straight up.

 

[fantadomat]

How to solve prebuffing:

By ignoring all the retards whining about prebuffing and making a good D&D game!

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Those damn Black Isle devs creating gaps between players who cast their spells and players who don't.

Toxic grognards. A smart dev will always aim for the lowest common denominator. The road to success as a game studio is to make every mouthbreathing fucktard succeed no matter what.
That's why every Obshitian game is better and more successful than the last.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Parties that don't prebuff deserve to die.

Says the person who recommends NWN mods that automatically prebuff you.

 

[Desiderius]

Parties that don't prebuff deserve to die.

Says the person who recommends NWN mods that automatically prebuff you.

Automation is a separate issue. No reason not to make pre-buff scripts available.

 

[Sigourn]

One thing I really loved about Icewind Dale was losing my shit against the Luremaster. I was getting wrecked so hard, until I looked at my spells, devised the optimum casting sequence to maximize buffs and rounds/turns active, and managed to defeat him with four of my party members left standing. Went from "this is impossible" to "this wasn't so hard".

 

[Desolate Dancer]

This is all so tiresome. There is literally no problem with pre-buffing. The problem always lies in the game mechanics themselves which of course is the failure of the game designer himself.

The last person to criticize pre-buffing in the (supposed) spiritual predecessor game managed to utterly fuck up the combat system, spell system and the rest system as well, aka everything that was working just fine in the BG series, yet it was an utter chore and shit in his own "visionary" vidya...

And just to summarize how the BG series proves that pre-buffing is fine, and was more or less implemented perfectly:
- The most important and most needed pre-buffs (i.e. combat protections) for the weakest class (Mage) lasted either for a very long duration (Armor, L1, 9-12 hours), easily defended against many attacks early on (Mirror Image, L2, 3+CL rounds) or had an almost instantaneous casting time with all the aforementioned benefits (Stoneskin, L4 for 12 hours). Using them on your Mage thus may have been necessary, but the long duration also meant you only needed to cast them if they had been destroyed/dispelled, rather than "before every combat". Since a clever player tries to position his Mage out of melée reach and even ranged attacks, this often meant that combat protection spells lasted thru their entire duration.
- Pre-buffing the party, at least in the vanilla games was inversely proportional to your meta-game knowledge. Someone who knew the mechanics didn't need to cast them at all. Yet newbies had an additional option to make fights easier or doable, and of course veterans with mods can also test their abilities with increasingly more difficult fights and more clever AI scripts decades later (all thanks to the miraculous IE).
- Connected to the above point, pre-buffing could easily become overkill, as many people just erroneously stick to casting them "just because" even when it is not needed. But this is the action of the individual, rather than a mechanical necessity of the game. But this habit/behaviour is no different than a tendency to drink all the consumables/potions on a "just because" basis, which is equally wasteful and stupid. Now compare this to Pillows, where you literally had no other option as a caster than to cast your fucking protection magic inside of combat since you had been either prevented to cast spells outta combat, or they simply had fucking atrocious 4.7886 seconds duration á la MMORPGs so you had no other way to benefit from them. If that wasn't enough, many of your spells became per/X abilities, so the more you progressed forward the less strategy and tactics were required (as opposed to Vancian casting, where despite your power level, you need to make an informed decision to split your defensive-offensive spells prior to resting) and the whole spell system was nowhere near to the complexities of the BG series' magical chess (e.g. Shadow Door-Detect Illusion-NonDetection-Spell Trust-Spell Shield-Pierce Magic-ProtFromAbj-RubyRay). So your hands were much more tied in a much more trivial system in a much more boring game... what a fantastic job Josh!
- Vancian casting maybe not intuitive at first, but it grants an unparalleled level of operational-strategic-tactical depth to the game, which was possible back then with IE, and were best delivered in BG2 (since it had a huge amount of spells and all spell levels unlocked compared to the original game). Operational level meant that you needed to decide which spells to learn (since you couldn't learn all on a given spell level), which consequently meant which scrolls to purchase out of your (initially limited) gold. Strategic meant that you needed to calibrate your Spell Book/Priest Scroll and decide your attack-defense potential ratio. Tactical level obviously meant which spells to cast at which foe at which phase of a battle. All that stuff was clearly visible in the vanilla games, and the mods took it even further. The game suddenly became almost infinitely complex, despite the common hatred against RTwP games here, this is still unmatched by any current tripleAtrash.
- We need to stress the importance of hard counters as well, a mechanic that our beloved Soywer also happens to hate just like every single basic game designing principle. In the BG series it was pretty obvious to cast Protection from Petrifaction prior to facing a basilisk, so it was more like a "ticket" in order to be able to fight in a battle. Ofc, this wasn't overused in the game - and it never should be in a crpg - but it goes to show how great it is to have something that can provide a sense of achievement to the player, since figuring out that a creature with the ability to turn you to stone is dangerous, and thus requires magical protection is intuitively deductible from the setting (and even without the spell, you could quaff a Potion of Mirrored Eyes to get the same result). The same principle is present in other genres like platformers, where there are certain "doors" and "keys" aka given obstacles that can only be overcome by having its matching ability (e.g. traversals) so it is not even a unique principle of crpgs, is is literally gamedesigning101 and a veritable source of fun. Oh but silly me, what am I talking about? A game should never be fun! And sense of achievement is problematic as it is a gateway drug to grognardism and discrimination and we don't want to exclude anyone, m'kaaay?! (Homilies of Blessed Soywer 12:9)

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Why in the world are you talking about fucking pre-buffs for 18 pages when the problem is something entirely different (the game is beatiful shit).

 

[Jimmious]

But actually the main issue of the game and its predecessor is that instead of acquiring some D&D ruleset license, Sawyer went on to "invent" his own bizarre set of rules and stuff and it simply felt awkward especially since he actively tried to "balance" all the fun parts of DnD CRPGs like ... pre-buffing.
I actually am 100% certain that the same exact games with a proper ruleset (which would affect encounters too ofcourse) would get praised to oblivion.
The story is not that bad but it feels much worse when (especially in PoE1, pre-patches) you have to claw yourself through endless waves of copy paste crappy combat while trying to figure out this slightly boring system.

*Btw PoE2's no-weapon-specialization and per encounter abilities made the whole thing feel even worse and "cheap". It sucks so much because PoE2 is fuckin beautiful - I really hope they can use the technology for something better

 

[fantadomat]

Why in the world are you talking about fucking pre-buffs for 18 pages when the problem is something entirely different (the game is beatiful shit).

Fanboys trying to derail the thread.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Why in the world are you talking about fucking pre-buffs for 18 pages when the problem is something entirely different (the game is beatiful shit).

Fanboys trying to derail the thread.

to underrail it.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Hold up... if Sawyer’s problem is that pre-buffing “creates a gulf” between newbies and more experienced players, making the game too hard for people who don’t know the mechanics, that’s easily solved. Why not use the game’s plentiful loading screens to give players a tip? I mean, Jesus F. Christ, he’s saying pre-buffing is bad because too many players don’t know they’re supposed to to do it. Just fucking tell them!!!

Imagine it. As you wait for the dungeon to load, the game gives you a helpful hint: “If you encounter a battle that’s too difficult for you to beat, try casting buffs on your whole party before combat.” There, I fixed pre-buffing.

 

[Prime Junta]

That's only half his argument though (the shitty half).

The less shitty half is that pre-buffing quickly becomes boring and rote, and in a game with per-rest casting encourages rest spamming which is also boring and rote.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

How to solve prebuffing: don't have prebuffing because it adds nothing to the experience except wasting your time.

 

[MajorMace]

Saying poe doesn't have prebuffing is not correct in practical terms. Sure, it happens at the beginning of the fight and not before, it's semantically not pre-anything.
But as long as design is concerned, you have little reason not to shift queue eldritch aim, bulwark, armor and other spells right off the bat. Their instant cast time means they'll all be up immediately anyway.

I guess the short duration was there to give some incentive not to, but then again we get back to the original, actual problem of poe (2 especially) = high level encounters don't require nearly as much planning as that. Maybe potd does, but I believe because of the nature of the systems, it's another sort of preparation (actual prebuffing through food and preparing quick use items).

But in the end poe's buffs are instant and combat-only because sawyer thought it was necessary to try something different from ie games, where you can just cast everything at every fight mindlessly. Problem is, it's necessary but not sufficient, and encounters (tuning of some monsters even) didn't support it as well.
In the end, poe's buffs problem doesn't come -at all- from prebuffing or not, hardcounters or not (game actually has these). Figuring it shows why one if better than the other is nonsensical, when the issue doesn't lie there to begin with.

EDIT : At the end of the day, the problem is that IE (I mean, d&d really, because that's what we're really talking about) way of dealing with it is that, well to take the example of the basilisk. Casting protection from petrification is a solution, and it feels good to see it work. But any other basilisk met will trigger this automatic good answer. Poe2 tried something interesting with its counter mechanic, as it's more real-time dependant (because short durations etc). There are some exceptions, like immunities through items and shit, but that's the idea. Problem doesn't change : is it supported by the encounters ? No, you can click the monster and it will go down.

 

[Butter]

That's only half his argument though (the shitty half).

The less shitty half is that pre-buffing quickly becomes boring and rote, and in a game with per-rest casting encourages rest spamming which is also boring and rote.

Rest spamming was almost fixed by the inclusion of the camping supplies in PoE. It just needed a bit of tuning.

 

[Nano]

Automation is a separate issue. No reason not to make pre-buff scripts available.

But then what's even the point of having prebuffing in the game?

 

[Desiderius]

Hold up... if Sawyer’s problem is that pre-buffing “creates a gulf” between newbies and more experienced players, making the game too hard for people who don’t know the mechanics, that’s easily solved. Why not use the game’s plentiful loading screens to give players a tip? I mean, Jesus F. Christ, he’s saying pre-buffing is bad because too many players don’t know they’re supposed to to do it. Just fucking tell them!!!

Imagine it. As you wait for the dungeon to load, the game gives you a helpful hint: “If you encounter a battle that’s too difficult for you to beat, try casting buffs on your whole party before combat.” There, I fixed pre-buffing.

Post-literacy.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Saying poe doesn't have prebuffing is not correct in practical terms. Sure, it happens at the beginning of the fight and not before, it's semantically not pre-anything.
But as long as design is concerned, you have little reason not to shift queue eldritch aim, bulwark, armor and other spells right off the bat. Their instant cast time means they'll all be up immediately anyway.

I guess the short duration was there to give some incentive not to, but then again we get back to the original, actual problem of poe (2 especially) = high level encounters don't require nearly as much planning as that. Maybe potd does, but I believe because of the nature of the systems, it's another sort of preparation (actual prebuffing through food and preparing quick use items).

But in the end poe's buffs are instant and combat-only because sawyer thought it was necessary to try something different from ie games, where you can just cast everything at every fight mindlessly. Problem is, it's necessary but not sufficient, and encounters (tuning of some monsters even) didn't support it as well.
In the end, poe's buffs problem doesn't come -at all- from prebuffing or not, hardcounters or not (game actually has these). Figuring it shows why one if better than the other is nonsensical, when the issue doesn't lie there to begin with.

EDIT : At the end of the day, the problem is that IE (I mean, d&d really, because that's what we're really talking about) way of dealing with it is that, well to take the example of the basilisk. Casting protection from petrification is a solution, and it feels good to see it work. But any other basilisk met will trigger this automatic good answer. Poe2 tried something interesting with its counter mechanic, as it's more real-time dependant (because short durations etc). There are some exceptions, like immunities through items and shit, but that's the idea. Problem doesn't change : is it supported by the encounters ? No, you can click the monster and it will go down.

Pretty much this. Obsessing about Pre-buffing is some ass backwards logic. If you're bored with the combat, adding an additional boring and repetitive mechanic isn't going to fucking help is it.

The main issue with the second game was always that resource/wound system is so inconsequential it may as well not exist. Although I think they added a challenge mode where food spoils quickly so maybe that helps somewhat.

But then what's even the point of having prebuffing in the game?

There isn't one other than old games had it therefore we must add it because reasons.

 

[Desiderius]

Automation is a separate issue. No reason not to make pre-buff scripts available.

But then what's even the point of having prebuffing in the game?

Action economy.

 

[Desiderius]

That's only half his argument though (the shitty half).

The less shitty half is that pre-buffing quickly becomes boring and rote, and in a game with per-rest casting encourages rest spamming which is also boring and rote.

It’s the important half, and the reason the game is mysteriously unsatisfying for so many (missing lightbulbs).

The second half can be and has been addressed in a variety of ways.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Action economy that

1) happens before action

2) you automate anyway

 

[Desiderius]

Action economy that

1) happens before action

2) you automate anyway

Precisely.

You're a little slow on the uptake but looks like you're making progress.

When you pre-buff, you expend resources (spell slots) before combat in exchange for the freedom to do other things in combat.

Compare Controlled Fireball or a comparable 4th level Cleric spell in P:K to the buff Divine Power.

Instead of spending his turn buffing his team or casting the Fireball that could also have gone in that slot but would have been laughed off by that particular enemy he gets to take his whacks.

Here he got lucky, but he wouldn't have been in position to get lucky without the pre-buffs.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I'm afraid I didn't play P:K because I can't stand cutesy graphics for horny teenagers, but that's nice to know I should also skip it because it has prebuffing.

 

[AdamReith]

Prebuffing is perhaps important because this is the gameplay loop of combat in BG (or it was for me at least):

Fight ->
if(Win) -> continue to next Fight
if(Lose) -> Repeat[Reload -> Relax/Chill -> Think about what you could have done better -> Prelearn different spells if desperate -> Prebuff -> Fight] -> continue to next Fight

This turns difficult fights into very interesting and fun puzzles with a break between each iteration where you strategically apply your powerful buffs.

I remember I actually got through the whole of PoE without learning anything about the spells at all because I either didn't need them or I just found other ways to cheese my way through. Complete opposite of my time with BG where I'd say 90% of my time was spent figuring out how to abuse spells.