Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

[Trithne]

Can we get infinitron in here to merge all of Mole's fucking pentuple posts?

Was just a example of a game where is hard to be a wizard without being boring. That Pillars mechanics are completely nonsensical.

It's not even about wizards. Everything in the game is banalshitboring. I never once felt excited by a spell or ability, and found the moment to moment gameplay of trying to use any spell or ability to be tedious.

 

[Cryomancer]

Everything in the game is banalshitboring. I never once felt excited by a spell or ability, and found the moment to moment gameplay of trying to use any spell or ability to be tedious.

Well said. To be fair, original IE games had very lackluster martial classes. I mean, a Barbarian could be able to demoralize an enemy with a warcry, have superhuman speed and physical strength at upper mid levels, decapitate enemies and so on. but none of the fighter abilities seems cool too. Seems just different forms than "i attack"

 

[Rafidur]

Can we get infinitron in here to merge all of Mole's fucking pentuple posts?

If you click on his profile there is an "ignore" button. Press it to improve thread quality several fold.

 

[the mole]

Lacklustre and overpowered are not antonyms.

Yep. If Wizards had only fireball, but the fireball was enough to win any encounter wit it, it would be very lackluster and boring. Being a mage in Gothic 2 + RETURNING is not lackluster but is pretty hard. Took 14 hours for me to become a circle 1 necromancer in that game(the game is over 200 hours), not only being accepted into the circle of darkness require a long quest and grinding int(which can't be trained, you get int by reading books, doing alchemy, etc) and after it, I had to get reagents, a runestone and make a magical rune, each summon has a mana upkeep cost per second which can easily eats more mana than what you can regen with potion(which require a drinking animation and regents slowly)

When you get your first arrow of darkness spell, there are a lot of creatures which takes ZERO damage from it. In fact, as a dark magician you can only hope to defeat demons without spending expensive scrolls at circle 4. A thing which fire mages can do much earlier in the game. And circle 3 spear of darkness is strong enough to OHK dire wolves.

A RPG game is not like Chess where only the gameplay matters. The gameplay needs to be aligned with the lore. Disintegrate which never disintegrate anything, and works like a generic DoT, low INT wizards being possible despite the game's lore establishing that wizards are intellectuals, mundane animals soaking multiple fireballs(...) This is what makes magery lackluster on pillars.

so what does any of that verbal diarrhea have to do with pillars of eternity

a game you don't play and never play

1 - An example of a game which made caster's live very hard and was very fun
2 - An example that casters can be hard to be played without breaking the "role playing"
3 - I posted a screenshot some posts ago showing over 90 hours on Pillars 2

none of the shit you said had anything to do with pillars of eternity

I feel like you didn't read my question

what the fuck does any of that have to do with pillars of eternity

Was just a example of a game where is hard to be a wizard without being boring. That Pillars mechanics are completely nonsensical.

according to

 

[the mole]

Can we get infinitron in here to merge all of Mole's fucking pentuple posts?

If you click on his profile there is an "ignore" button. Press it to improve thread quality several fold.

yes idiots really need to complain about their feelings page after page as if some fucking idiot hasbeen has an opinion that matters

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Can we get infinitron in here to merge all of Mole's fucking pentuple posts?

If you click on his profile there is an "ignore" button. Press it to improve thread quality several fold.

I'm already ignoring that one guy who kept posting that awful fat heeb in the tits and ass threads. I refuse to ignore a second person. Besides, he's not really defeating arguments, just attacking people personally and crying about shit. He's a fucking newfag.

 

[the mole]

Can we get infinitron in here to merge all of Mole's fucking pentuple posts?

If you click on his profile there is an "ignore" button. Press it to improve thread quality several fold.

I'm already ignoring that one guy who kept posting that awful fat heeb in the tits and ass threads. I refuse to ignore a second person. Besides, he's not really defeating arguments, just attacking people personally and crying about shit. He's a fucking newfag.

kids with their precious feelings

the fact is you're 35 your brain doesn't work anymore and you feel the need to cry all day and night about a game that isn't baldurs gate 2

the game isn't a failure, you are

 

[the mole]

make things slightly more complex and you get 75 pages of complaining

this is the highbrow rpg crowd

or is it

 

[the mole]

back in the good old days we had a fighter ranger and wizard

that was all we needed kids

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Can we get infinitron in here to merge all of Mole's fucking pentuple posts?

If you click on his profile there is an "ignore" button. Press it to improve thread quality several fold.

I'm already ignoring that one guy who kept posting that awful fat heeb in the tits and ass threads. I refuse to ignore a second person. Besides, he's not really defeating arguments, just attacking people personally and crying about shit. He's a fucking newfag.

kids with their precious feelings

the fact is you're 35 your brain doesn't work anymore and you feel the need to cry all day and night about a game that isn't baldurs gate 2

the game isn't a failure, you are

I don't feel the need to cry all day and night about it. I simply hate Sawyer and spread that hate to everyone and anyone who will hear. Anyone who likes the Something Awful crowd and has a continual need for reassurance to the point of just talking about past successes and failures, and how the failures weren't his fault, kind of has a problem.

For a while, I was one of the few who didn't like him. Now, my opinion is becoming more mainstream here. Soon, it'll get more mainstream everywhere as his failures become more apparent through his clinging to past glories not entirely his own.

 

[Invictus]

Can we get infinitron in here to merge all of Mole's fucking pentuple posts?

If you click on his profile there is an "ignore" button. Press it to improve thread quality several fold.

He is literally why the “Ignore” function was invented; he gives nothing worthwhile to any discussion

 

[the mole]

Can we get infinitron in here to merge all of Mole's fucking pentuple posts?

If you click on his profile there is an "ignore" button. Press it to improve thread quality several fold.

I'm already ignoring that one guy who kept posting that awful fat heeb in the tits and ass threads. I refuse to ignore a second person. Besides, he's not really defeating arguments, just attacking people personally and crying about shit. He's a fucking newfag.

kids with their precious feelings

the fact is you're 35 your brain doesn't work anymore and you feel the need to cry all day and night about a game that isn't baldurs gate 2

the game isn't a failure, you are

I don't feel the need to cry all day and night about it. I simply hate Sawyer and spread that hate to everyone and anyone who will hear. Anyone who likes the Something Awful crowd and has a continual need for reassurance to the point of just talking about past successes and failures, and how the failures weren't his fault, kind of has a problem.

For a while, I was one of the few who didn't like him. Now, my opinion is becoming more mainstream here. Soon, it'll get more mainstream everywhere as his failures become more apparent through his clinging to past glories not entirely his own.

you're just an asshurt old man

this supposed failure is just humoring losers like you, I'm sure he'll keep doing his job he enjoys which is making games and being a project director and what you say means nothing in the end

you'll probably buy the next one too after all this sad misery

 

[the mole]

Can we get infinitron in here to merge all of Mole's fucking pentuple posts?

If you click on his profile there is an "ignore" button. Press it to improve thread quality several fold.

He is literally why the “Ignore” function was invented; he gives nothing worthwhile to any discussion

no one responded to any of my points

every allegation made about the game is wrong

and in the end the best you old retards have is, it wasn't "fun"

yea nothing is fun when your life sucks and you're pushing 50 and you have 100iq or less

 

[Trithne]

back in the good old days we had a fighter ranger and wizard

that was all we needed kids

It was Fighting-man, Cleric, and Magic-User thank you very much.

And Thief to round out the set. And it was all we needed. All these myriad classes we have now are all just variations on the original four.

 

[Rafidur]

BG2 had class quests, with the fighting-men managing a stronghold etc, which was a callback to old school tabletop. In the POEs your class matters fuckall in terms of plot.

 

[Desiderius]

you're 35

Nigga I’m past a half century and still got the spring in my step and swing in my sack. What are you, 12?

At the rate he’s going it’s going to take Soyer until my age at least to get all of that garbage out of his brain so he can get back to work creating something decent.

 

[Roguey]

BG2 had class quests, with the fighting-men managing a stronghold etc, which was a callback to old school tabletop. In the POEs your class matters fuckall in terms of plot.

The stronghold quests don't matter to the plot in BG2 either.

 

[Haplo]

Haplo That's very dismissive, but not a compelling argument against what I've written. I played PoE 1, right when v3.0 arrived. First as a Wizard, but a bit after arriving in Defiance Bay, I restarted as a Cipher. On that run I scoured every bit of content right to to Twin Elms. I uninstalled the game not long after arriving. I knew the end had to be close, but I couldn't be bothered. Highlights of the game included the art direction and Durance. I did not play White March DLC. I do think the game had a great deal of potential, but just missed the mark. It's not awful, but it is not good. For a game and developer that were supposed to be a triumphant risen phoenix, that's a sin.

Too bad you didn't try White March, as that is the highlight of the series - not only according to me. With the important reservation that you should not go there overlevelled, otherwise it will be far less enjoyable. In fact, try tackling WM1 at level 6 if you dare. 7 might be optimal overall.

Still, I've found the entire game more then okay. And the highlight for me was cipher and barbarian gameplay. Although I also respect how different a chanter is from typical "bard" class archetypes.
Really cannot understand how people can write that the gameplay feels same-ish regardless of class. Or that it could have/should have been a classless system.

 

[Riddler]

I mean honestly, I couldn't tell the difference half the time between one class and another. Magic items were all alike, no real crafting fun that I noticed. I mean, what was the difference between priest, wizard, cipher, etc.? A knockdown spell? Some other crap? I dunno. I mean, even the Paladin sub-classes could have had so much more flavor to them.

Yeah, it's full of people who approach PoE/Deadfire with some expectations formed by the IE games, and when they encounter qualitatively different, and much more complex and flexible systems, they never have the disposition to get into them and learn how to play by them. Instead they just drop the game and write uninformed comments like this one.

Is this a mistake on Josh's part, that his design diverged too much from what he was advertising he is "spiritually succeeding"? I think that's his core mistake. The systems themselves are quite good for something developed mostly by one guy who was also managing the whole gamedev project.

I'd say that the issue is that the combat isn't very fun and people have trouble articulating why. My personal theory as to why it feels lackluster to many is a combination of abilities lacking impact somewhat, the 1kk active abilities and the lack of unified rounds encouraging you to pause many times a second, lack of hard counters leading to the application of the same strategy every encounter.

The thing about itemisation being bad in Deadfire is just uninformed/retarded though, it has one of the best itemisations of any game ever released.

 

[Riddler]

Everything in the game is banalshitboring. I never once felt excited by a spell or ability, and found the moment to moment gameplay of trying to use any spell or ability to be tedious.

Well said. To be fair, original IE games had very lackluster martial classes. I mean, a Barbarian could be able to demoralize an enemy with a warcry, have superhuman speed and physical strength at upper mid levels, decapitate enemies and so on. but none of the fighter abilities seems cool too. Seems just different forms than "i attack"

That is a feature, not a bug imo. The game is built around using a party in semi-real time, excessive amounts of active abilities slows shit to a crawl. Giving every class tons of stuff to do makes sense in the context of playing one character (in table top or games like NwN) or in turn based games.

I think it's a much better idea to design martial classes around passive abilities, itemisation and positioning than active ability use if you want to make a RtwP game.

 

[the mole]

Everything in the game is banalshitboring. I never once felt excited by a spell or ability, and found the moment to moment gameplay of trying to use any spell or ability to be tedious.

Well said. To be fair, original IE games had very lackluster martial classes. I mean, a Barbarian could be able to demoralize an enemy with a warcry, have superhuman speed and physical strength at upper mid levels, decapitate enemies and so on. but none of the fighter abilities seems cool too. Seems just different forms than "i attack"

That is a feature, not a bug imo. The game is built around using a party in semi-real time, excessive amounts of active abilities slows shit to a crawl. Giving every class tons of stuff to do makes sense in the context of playing one character (in table top or games like NwN) or in turn based games.

I think it's a much better idea to design martial classes around passive abilities, itemisation and positioning than active ability use if you want to make a RtwP game.

you don't have to pick active abilities

you can pick all passives on every fighter in the game, infact I believe you are better off because that's what I usually do with all my fighters

another person who didn't play the game

what part of this post are you unsure is serious

 

[AwesomeButton]

Really cannot understand how people can write that the gameplay feels same-ish regardless of class. Or that it could have/should have been a classless system.

It's because of all the active abilities. People coming from the IE games expect two kinds of characters - the "point-and-click", and the "caster".

 

[the mole]

once again no one forces you to pick active abilities on your fighters

if you weren't aware of this you probably didn't play the game

 

[Old Hans]

Everything in the game is banalshitboring. I never once felt excited by a spell or ability, and found the moment to moment gameplay of trying to use any spell or ability to be tedious.

Well said. To be fair, original IE games had very lackluster martial classes. I mean, a Barbarian could be able to demoralize an enemy with a warcry, have superhuman speed and physical strength at upper mid levels, decapitate enemies and so on. but none of the fighter abilities seems cool too. Seems just different forms than "i attack"

you just don't understand the vibe of the fighting man.

 

[Shadenuat]

if we take what haplo says to be true, then how do we explain the blandness and tediousness of combat in pillars games?

having choices doesn't mean they will sync into flawless gameplay.