Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

[the mole]

some people just can't handle novelty they want to play the same thing over and over, I've got friends that still play battlefield 1 literally every day, he's played it every day since it was released

 

[Harthwain]

an unusual setting

I wish people stopped blaming the setting. A fresh and unusual setting is not a bad thing. Planescape Torment is a cult classic, Disco Elysium was a surprise hit, PoE2's setting is pirate-themed and many people like pirates.

Planescape: Torment and Disco Elysium became a success thanks to the writers managing to make their settings and player interactions interesting. Just look at Torment: Tides of Numenera - its setting is also unique (and it had a lot of text), but it failed to achieve the same acclaim, because the writing there wasn't good enough for the people to bother reading it at some point. And when you're making a narrative-driven game the quality of text becomes the most important aspect of your creation.

 

[the mole]

I didn't really think talking to a house was very interesting in planescape torment, infact I stopped playing it when I started talking to a house

maybe if you're schizophrenic you can find incoherence riveting

but I actually like a moderately coherent story in which things are setup and make a bit of sense

 

[Jvegi]

I didn't play Deadfire because my laptop is too old.

Also, because PoE1 is crap. But mostly for the first reason.

 

[Sykar]

it's a design failure to generate interesting situations on-stage.

Nail on the head right there.
I'll always remember Donn Throgg staging a riot with orc factory works in Tarantum, the general position of orcs in the city, the conversation with Bill Gates Gilbert Bates about orcs.
And that's just Tarant. Without getting into the tech vs magic stuff between Dernholm and Tarant, the politicking in Caladon, or the fact that gnomes are Jews.
I remember very little of Deadfire.

And the socio economic difficulties of lower races is nothing new, irl or in fiction. It's been done to death. But it was done well in Arcanum, with real examples in its world.
Fucking show, don't tell.

Yeah the way Arcanum handled world reactivity was amazing. Tarant would even change and add new content at different stages of the game, with the orcish labor strike only popping up later in the game. The gnomes being evil jews planning to rule the entire world with their guile wasn't loredumped on you, but you got to experience a conspiracy first hand with the Half Ogre Island quest. And then there was the persuasion master quest where you had to go to Caladon and convince the king to join the Unified Kingdom in an alliance treaty, and you were encouraged to make him agree to points that would put Caladon in an inferior position, transferring much of its power and economy to Tarant. When you know what the gnomes are like, it's obvious that they're trying to gain control over Caladon the same way they gained control over Tarant, but it's never spelled out to you.

Oh yeah and if you wanna live dangerously, you can do a quest for someone who wants to see Caladon's king dead. If you perform the assassination, the entire fucking city will become hostile towards you, but you can still finish the game.

There's nothing of that in the PoE games. You hear a lot about this faction and that faction and get pages of lore thrown at you, but when you ask "Ok cool can I actually do something related to that lore stuff?" you get cockblocked. The lore doesn't exist to be interacted with, it just... exists. You can't even play with it. Fucking lame.

Reading the gnome related stuff somehow triggered my brain into a vague idea for a parody of "Empire strikes back" -> "Gnomes strike back" with Darth Wichtel as the main antagonist.

 

[Cryomancer]

God punished the Romans for killing Jesus by making them into Italians.

Actually, what happened is their conversion.

The main thing that makes it feel like a slog is the non-decisiveness of everything. There are no combat-ending moves that fuck the enemy up, everything is just one little bonus here, one little bonus there, and then of course there are pretty sizeable health pools so combat lasts a long time. Boring, boring, boring.

Yep.

This video explains well why Pillars 1 is not that fun. Triggering a cloudkill trap or casting a cloudkill on BG2 was great. On Pillars, Malignant cloud has almost zero impact. Lack of impact kills any "combat" game. This is my greatest problem with Hellgate london and Pillars.



Which situation sounds cool?

A ) You after a long time and money, managed to reach the rank master in dark magic. Your most powerful spell eats almost the entire mana pool but deals a lot of damage. If you misjudge the distance, you can kill your own party with that spell splash damage(M&M VI style)

B ) Everything is a slog. Being hit by a volley of arquebus shots and the deadliest spells just dish a little damage.

 

[the mole]

God punished the Romans for killing Jesus by making them into Italians.

Actually, what happened is their conversion.

The main thing that makes it feel like a slog is the non-decisiveness of everything. There are no combat-ending moves that fuck the enemy up, everything is just one little bonus here, one little bonus there, and then of course there are pretty sizeable health pools so combat lasts a long time. Boring, boring, boring.

Yep.

This video explains well why Pillars 1 is not that fun. Triggering a cloudkill trap or casting a cloudkill on BG2 was great. On Pillars, Malignant cloud has almost zero impact. Lack of impact kills any "combat" game. This is my greatest problem with Hellgate london and Pillars.



Which situation sounds cool?

A ) You after a long time and money, managed to reach the rank master in dark magic. Your most powerful spell eats almost the entire mana pool but deals a lot of damage. If you misjudge the distance, you can kill your own party with that spell splash damage(M&M VI style)

B ) Everything is a slog. Being hit by a volley of arquebus shots and the deadliest spells just dish a little damage.

pillars and pillars 2 are soloable on the hardest difficulty

literally just shit boomer logic

pillars and pillars 2 also have incredibly overpowered unique weapons

 

[the mole]

muh arcanum is good because I can get 2 companions with the balanced sword and rape the whole game with no effort

 

[JarlFrank]

pillars and pillars 2 are soloable on the hardest difficulty

Yes but are they fun?

 

[the mole]

pillars and pillars 2 are soloable on the hardest difficulty

Yes but are they fun?

subjective asshurt boomer logic muh 90s

 

[JarlFrank]

muh arcanum is good because I can get 2 companions with the balanced sword and rape the whole game with no effort

I am the biggest Arcanum fanboy of all time yet its combat (especially the encounter design) isn't good. It's a great game for other reasons.
At least its combat isn't a slow, tedious slog, but over quickly.

PoE has bad combat that isn't over quickly but takes a long time, and it doesn't have anything else of quality to make up for it.

 

[the mole]

muh arcanum is good because I can get 2 companions with the balanced sword and rape the whole game with no effort

I am the biggest Arcanum fanboy of all time yet its combat (especially the encounter design) isn't good. It's a great game for other reasons.
At least its combat isn't a slow, tedious slog, but over quickly.

PoE has bad combat that isn't over quickly but takes a long time, and it doesn't have anything else of quality to make up for it.

all of the combat in the game is trivial

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

What if Galawain and Abydon were secretely gay lovers but all the evidence was erased by Eoran historians?

 

[JarlFrank]

muh arcanum is good because I can get 2 companions with the balanced sword and rape the whole game with no effort

I am the biggest Arcanum fanboy of all time yet its combat (especially the encounter design) isn't good. It's a great game for other reasons.
At least its combat isn't a slow, tedious slog, but over quickly.

PoE has bad combat that isn't over quickly but takes a long time, and it doesn't have anything else of quality to make up for it.

all of the combat in the game is trivial

easy and trivial + takes a long time is the worst combination possible

 

[the mole]

muh arcanum is good because I can get 2 companions with the balanced sword and rape the whole game with no effort

I am the biggest Arcanum fanboy of all time yet its combat (especially the encounter design) isn't good. It's a great game for other reasons.
At least its combat isn't a slow, tedious slog, but over quickly.

PoE has bad combat that isn't over quickly but takes a long time, and it doesn't have anything else of quality to make up for it.

all of the combat in the game is trivial

easy and trivial + takes a long time is the worst combination possible

arcanum is turnbased thus takes longer and you rape the whole game with 2 companions and no effort

pillars you might actually have a challenge and grow as a player

 

[Cryomancer]

pillars and pillars 2 also have incredibly overpowered unique weapons

Which only makes the game a bit less "sloggy"

easy and trivial + takes a long time is the worst combination possible

Yep. People say "but you also have trash trivial encounters on BG1/2" But you end that encounter with a single fireball.

 

[the mole]

pillars and pillars 2 also have incredibly overpowered unique weapons

Which only makes the game a bit less "sloggy"

easy and trivial + takes a long time is the worst combination possible

Yep. People say "but you also have trash trivial encounters on BG1/2" But you end that encounter with a single fireball.

jeez why have combat or dialogue

video games are such a slog

 

[the mole]

basically all the logic in this thread is

I'm an old asshurt boomer and I just want to be a kid again

 

[Cryomancer]

why have combat or dialogue

video games are such a slog

You should have dialog, combat and other stuff when this things are interesting and fun.

In a RPG game, the game mechanics should reinforce and promote RP, not be in the way of it.

 

[grimer]

jeez why have combat or dialogue

video games are such a slog

basically all the logic in this thread is

I'm an old asshurt boomer and I just want to be a kid again

yea ive noticed a lot of ppl here are averse to any semblance of challenge in games and would rather indulge in their power fantasies yet have the audacity to act intellectually superior and deride other ppl for playing popamole

In a RPG game, the game mechanics should reinforce and promote RP, not be in the way of it.

in an rpg your dm wouldnt let your characters become gods within 1 hour of the first session either

 

[Cryomancer]

averse to any semblance of challenge in games

Wrong. Knights of the Chalice 2 on hardest difficulty is a very challenging game and everyone loves here.

in an rpg your dm wouldnt let your characters become gods within 1 hour of the first session either

That depends a lot of the DM. Some DM wanna to only run low level adventures but if I find a DM and a group wanting to DM a session where the players plays as literal Gods with portfolios and divine ranks, why not?

 

[the mole]

jank is good because I played games in the 90s is not an argument

and even still pillars has jank you can exploit anyways

so it's literally subjective opinion, the fact that sawyer entertains you boomers with christlike flagellation for his own amusement is really more than you deserve, but I'm sure he's entertained by it

 

[Ismaul]

i feel like there's a mole among us working for Sawyer

 

[grimer]

That depends a lot of the DM. Some DM wanna to only run low level adventures but if I find a DM and a group wanting to DM a session where the players plays as literal Gods with portfolios and divine ranks, why not?

i meant that your character would become overpowered relative to the campaign where every subsequent encounter is trivial. at which point what is the point of playing when youve already won the game?

 

[luj1]

He's too much of a soy beta to give a fuck about fixing his weak erections.

Ironically, he refused to fix core systems after the first game and focused on bloat, eye candy, minigames and talking parrots.