Codex Review RPG Codex Retrospective Review: Pillars of Eternity Revisited

[Ninjerk]

Wouldn't expect people to go back to play a 20+ hour game they didn't like solely to prove a guy on the Codex wrong.

...

 

[Zero Credibility]

When you google it, sure, but what if you yandex/baidu/duck duck go it?
Isn't that partially because google knows your preferences (and is spying on you basically, even when you're logged off they have your IP)? This is how it looks like for Yandex, Baidu and Duck Duck Go:
Roxor's review is highest on Baidu only.

Nah, I change IPs all the time and am not in the habit of logging in. It is simply that the original review by our rat overlord is the most viewed, most discussed and most linked by far, which is what puts it on the top of google search. And that is not going to change any time soon, nobody outside of codex cares about codex PoE review number... is this five or six now? I lost count. Retrospective ( ) or not. As for other engines, well Baidu has at least some users, but it too prefers the DR review. The other three are... well, let's face it, insignificant. Google is the big boy here, for good and bad.

 

[Goral]

Nah, I change IPs all the time

So what's your Codex alt?

 

[Zero Credibility]

Don't have one. Yet.

 

[Grunker]

Wouldn't expect people to go back to play a 20+ hour game they didn't like solely to prove a guy on the Codex wrong.

Strawman. Your points remain outdated (and sort of missing the actual reason for the problems to begin with). I'm not expecting you to do anything, but that's fact.

On an unrelated note, most "fighter"-type monsters in the IE games have almost 0 variety and share AI. That's one of the reasons why the amount of trash is more bearable in IE than in PoE even though there's way more (another is combat speed w. Haste and the general ease with which you dispatch most types of enemies, since they, as original PoE enemies, lack defenses).

 

[ArchAngel]

<---- retard

Though, what's your point then? Your points aren't really relevant at this point. Also the lack of imperative to switch tactics at launch was more due to lack of hard counters and monster defenses/AI than missing monster diversity per se.

Ok, please tell us how many of these interesting encounters that are now different are in base PoE and not the expansion?

 

[Fairfax]

The whole "patches made it great" pitch is just ridiculous. A patched combat system and the addition of combat-heavy DLC somehow turned the game into a "masterpiece". All the other fundamental flaws are glossed over, and critics are supposed to eat it all up or keep their "outdated criticism" to themselves.

 

[felipepepe]

Rev
That doesn't change the fact that saying that he was a "fierce critic" of PoE is a huge exaggeration (or that PoE is MILES ahead of Tyranny, lol), he was basically disappointed and his critique was mild at most.

Bitch, this was my critique at release: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...illars-of-eternity-very-minor-spoilers.98295/

If that's "mild", you don't know the difference between being critical and being edgy.

And this is the difference for me, Chaotic_Heretic , they did what I asked two years ago:

So the real question now is if Obsidian will revel in this new-found glory and take a conservative route for the expansion and sequels, or if they will try to expand Pillars the same way Baldur's Gate 2 expanded from Baldur's Gate 1. If so, we might then have a true long-lasting classic. In the meantime, Pillars of Eternity is a great game, but still not a long-lasting classic that warrants countless replays.

Hard counters, better itemization, better encounter design, a kinda of multi-classing, less trash mobs, more use for the keep... all this was added. I bash when needed, but also praise when they fix it. Sawyer is more experienced than any of those other projects, yet was the one that listened the most to criticism.

More importantly, there's a difference between being critical and being just butthurt. PoE has serious issues, but shit like "worst combat than Tyranny" just makes you look stupid. No one will take that seriously, even if you backpedal to "I mean RELEASE POE!!!1".

 

[Grunker]

<---- retard

Though, what's your point then? Your points aren't really relevant at this point. Also the lack of imperative to switch tactics at launch was more due to lack of hard counters and monster defenses/AI than missing monster diversity per se.

Ok, please tell us how many of these interesting encounters that are now different are in base PoE and not the expansion?

Roughly 2/3s of the fights are very different now, but especially noticable are: any beetle fight (highlights are one upon entering Dyrwood Crossing as well as a 2-level fight by a staircase in Od Nua), all Drake-fights, most Warden's Lodge fights (these include some of the very best encounters in the game period), all spirit fights (highlights include Temple of Eothas' lower levels as well as the Od Nua fight itself), the Vithrack fights in Od Nua, all Pŵgra fights in particular (real highlight here is in I believe Woodend Plains with multiple of them as well as trolls, you have to either focus on killing very, very efficiently, managing your priest well or buffing resistances/healing - sidenote: don't bring a priest, they are the most boring class and too much of an advantage in some encounters IMO) and all fights with humans (AI updates to Skaen cultists and Raedric's Hold enemies really shine here). The main factors making these fights much better are improved defenses and resistances working with improved AI meaning the abilities and distinctions that make monsters different actually matter now, which they didn't before even if they were actually in the game.

Of course this all depends on your level. PoE doesn't use level scaling so if you're sufficiently overleveled you will cream nearly every fight in the game, as is the case if you utilize abuse (like any RPG, PoE can be cheesed).

EDIT: felipepepe agree with everything except the keep. Yeah tons more content was added and there's even a huge fight between you and an invading army, but honestly it's still the most "forced" part of the game. I really don't like it, it's an annoying diversion at the best times. Feels tacked on.

 

[ArchAngel]

How are beetles different?
How are drakes different?
Bounty fights were always more interesting than the rest.
How are spirits different? Even before they would teleport to your back line and 2 hit mages.
How are Pwgra different? They would swarm you before as well.
How is human AI better? Their squishy casters learned how to prebuff and survive the first attack by my whole party using guns?

 

[Blaine]

Had I spent any significant amount of time or effort contemplating this weighty topic, I would no doubt have concluded that the resident Obsidian knob-polishers could never be content to let the "White March fixed everything, best game ever" propaganda campaign languish in the obscurity of the official thread.

Here it is at last, triumphantly out in the open, escorted by a conquering army of verbiage marching in paragraphical formation, marshaled by the Codex's preeminent Danish socialist-feminist LARPmaster. Stripped to its essential parts, we find the predictable conclusion: All possible faults one might reasonably find with Pillars of Eternity have been sent to the pre-White March gulag.

Who are you, proletarians of the Codex, to simply assume that a fresh coat of paint can't fix deep-seated systemic issues with the game's fundamental design and presentation? Have you bought White March yet, comrade? No? Then I suggest you defer to the more informed opinion of your betters.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

felipepepe

So the changes you mentioned may have improved your PoE experience; but it doesn't make PoE with latest patch 11/10 as the shill's review would have you believe.

The literary diarrhoea of lore dumps still persists and makes the game a chore. And the 3.x.x patches didn't fix it.

The overall combat is still a clusterfuck and a chore with different action intervals for different party members as Josh did away with rounds present in IE and MotB. The combat system still doesn't mesh well for a RTwP party game even with the changes.

In spite of all the changes, PoE is still mediocre in all aspects with absolutely shit writing and tedious clusterfuck gameplay with an abomination of a system.

EDIT: Blaine writes it much more elegantly than me. A fresh coat of paint doesn't solve the severe systemic flaws inherent in PoE design; and that is excluding the horrible literary diarrhoea where every tom dick and harry gives you a dry essay on past and present events

 

[ArchAngel]

felipepepe

So the changes you mentioned may have improved your PoE experience; but it doesn't make PoE with latest patch 11/10 as the shill's review would have you believe.

The literary diarrhoea of lore dumps still persists and makes the game a chore. And the 3.x.x patches didn't fix it.

The overall combat is still a clusterfuck and a chore with different action intervals for different party members as Josh did away with rounds present in IE and MotB. The combat system still doesn't mesh well for a RTwP party game even with the changes.

In spite of all the changes, PoE is still mediocre in all aspects with absolutely shit writing and tedious clusterfuck gameplay with an abomination of a system.

EDIT: Blaine writes it much more elegantly than me. A fresh coat of paint doesn't solve the severe systemic flaws inherent in PoE design; and that is excluding the horrible literary diarrhoea where every tom dick and harry gives you a dry essay on past and present events

All this and still disengagement is another layer of terrible on top of the clusterfuck combat.
And no prebuffing, alpha strike I am sure still works (and unlike IE you don't even need to use it from darkness). I am pretty sure you still cannot leave combat or exit map during combat.

And I am sure in addition to ever present lore dumps they didn't improve main story, boring Defiance Bay, terrible trial where nothing you did matters and the rest.

 

[Infinitron]

Well Codex started out as a sort of a Troika-Black Isle fansite so maybe this is natural progression. Sign of the times that it champions the mediocrity that is Avelone-less (not just him of course, all the best talent has left) Obsidian.

FNV is not one my favourites but I can concede it's a genuinely great game (even a great Fallout game) but this much adulation for PoE (a solid game at best) feels out of place for Codex IMO, then again everything changes over time I guess. Next Codex all-time RPG list will be interesting, we'll see whether this is pushed from the top (I mean a retrospective after 2 whole years, hilarious) or if PoE is really that insanely popular in the nu-Dex.

Had I spent any significant amount of time or effort contemplating this weighty topic, I would no doubt have concluded that the resident Obsidian knob-polishers could never be content to let the "White March fixed everything, best game ever" propaganda campaign languish in the obscurity of the official thread.

Here it is at last, triumphantly out in the open, escorted by a conquering army of verbiage marching in paragraphical formation, marshaled by the Codex's preeminent Danish socialist-feminist LARPmaster. Stripped to its essential parts, we find the predictable conclusion: All possible faults one might reasonably find with Pillars of Eternity have been sent to the pre-White March gulag.

Who are you, proletarians of the Codex, to simply assume that a fresh coat of paint can't fix deep-seated systemic issues with the game's fundamental design and presentation? Have you bought White March yet, comrade? No? Then I suggest you defer to the more informed opinion of your betters.

January 2017: Infinitron asks Grunker to write a long overdue review for Pillars of Eternity: The White March.

July 2017: The Revolution Begins. Nu-Dex ascendant.

 

[Grunker]

You forgot: "December 2017: Paradox contacts Infinitron with promise of fat paycheck on publishing of glowing White March review"

 

[Fenix]

I don't understand.
The game is boring, and in general is a SHIT.
Why are you still discussing it after these my words?

 

[Azarkon]

Very early in the development process, Lead Designer Josh Sawyer vocalized his dislike of total fail states in system design. Central to this dislike was a distaste for 'hard counters', like a fire elemental being completely immune to fire damage. For this reason, Sawyer also initially designed Pillars of Eternity's system with no misses, substituting them with "grazes" that dealt less damage. He also based his armor-system on gradual damage reduction rather than outright evasion. Furthermore, Sawyer announced his goal was to make every skill, talent and attribute of his system useful. Not necessarily equally good – but the intention was to make sure that there were no "traps" – abilities which were downright awful.

In theory, I lauded these goals, which were predictably criticized by grognards everywhere for being implicitly poor design. The grognardian criticism was based on the idea that there must be bad abilities and pitfalls in order for players to feel rewarded for building a good character. I certainly do not mind systems that do this – I am an avid Pathfinder player in my spare time, after all – but I also fail to see why it should be a general rule. With Pillars of Eternity, Sawyer was attempting to give the player a framework of classes and abilities that they could toy around with to their heart's content, safe in the knowledge that all combinations of assets in the system would at least provide some measure of functionality.

Do people understand why the game was only enjoyable on Path of the Damned? It's because when you design a system where every build functions and there are no hard counters, the significance of strategic and tactical decisions is made that much smaller, and consequently only in a set up of razor thin margins can they have the desired effect of separating the highly competent from the barely functional. That is to say, in order to force relevant combat variety and challenge into such a system, your encounter designer has to work within the tiny confines of the few differences that DO exist between well-built, well-executed parties and poorly-built, poorly-executed parties, to find the few places where the game DOES distinguish between having the correct approach and not having the correct approach.

...And all for what? So people can't make bad characters? So creatures literally made of fire can still be hurt by fire balls? These are utterly underwhelming justifications. I can see why you might want to make all abilities useful and to reduce the quantity of total fail states in a system, but this is typically done through increasing the complexity of the system, for example by introducing more potential synergies, not by reducing strategic dimensions.

More than anything else, Sawyer drew inspiration from the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, which many consider to be a failed experiment, but which Sawyer lauded for its game balance and uniformity. 4th edition compromised on the fundamental difference in feel between classes to provide "something to do" during combat for all classes, to do away with the "boring auto-attacks vs. exciting spellcasting"-feel that characterized fighting and spellcasting classes respectively in earlier editions of D&D.

A commendable goal, but for the fact that Pillars of Eternity is a party-based, REAL TIME WITH PAUSE game that does not need more something to do, since there's only so much you CAN do within a certain unit of time. But this topic has been discussed to death.

Pillars of Eternity's story bases itself entirely on a twist-and-reveal gimmick. The twist in itself is executed fairly well, and the last one or two hours of the game, after entering Sun in Shadow, is where the story starts to take shape and become enjoyable. In that final part, the game provides both the player and the villain with much-needed motivation and contextualizes the setting in an interesting way.

...

So how do you make a story spanning over 80 hours work when you cannot give any details whatsoever until the last hour? The writers of Pillars of Eternity clearly could not answer that question. They tried desperately, even throwing Thaos' old love interest at us who, unsurprisingly, has nothing to say about the man, because remember: due to the game's twist, we cannot learn anything of substance about him until the end.

This is a poor excuse. Many games with strong twists nonetheless feature involved antagonists who are anything but absent. Thaos could've easily done more. His back story had him destroying entire civilizations. That's more apocalyptic than anything Sarevok achieved. The problem is that for most of the game, Thaos was simply not there. It doesn't matter whether he reveals his motivations to the player - a man like Thaos wouldn't have cared to explain himself to insignificant persons like the player, in any case. It does matter, however, that he didn't do much of anything.

But then again, I don't think Pillars of Eternity's plot was built around Thaos. Raedric, Defiance Bay, even most of Twin Elms were set up as generic CRPG locations with generic laundry lists of problems to solve. The game was filled with side quests and areas built more for adventurers than an individual tracking down an ancient, body shifting super villain while searching for a cure to his madness. Such content distracted from, rather than added to, the main plot, and THAT is what's responsible for the game's lack of focus.

This leads us to the White March... Which, though an expansion, takes place in the middle of the game - a game in which, by virtue of the plot, the player is either trying to cure his own madness, or trying to track down Thaos. What a wonderful time to go on a long adventure in the frozen north!

In a display of intellectual honesty that few designers can boast of, Josh Sawyer recognized his mistake and reintroduced counters as a larger part of the gameplay to incentivize tactics-switching. Obidian's team refined the character system and made many talents more build-defining, while simultaneously diversifying abilities and nerfing strategies that were too efficient. The White March also features encounters that feel like Obsidian had a whole team of people who did nothing but plan out, test and re-test battles, filling areas with monsters placed in innovative and annoying combinations – especially on Path of the Damned difficulty – to encourage even further planning on the part of the player. Spamming the same abilities fight after fight is no longer an option, not only due to enemy resistances, but because of the placement, attack type and abilities of your opponents. Even a few, basic trash fights in difficult areas such as Longwatch Falls demand diverse tactics.

The review started off praising Sawyer's decision to go in a different direction than Dungeons and Dragons, yet now it seems like you're just praising his willingness to go back to it. So which is it - did Sawyer succeed in pushing the genre forward, or did he fail, and in case it is the latter, on what basis do we call Pillars of Eternity a masterpiece of game design?

Consider this description:

My next playthrough will feature four paladins as the party's backbone, and while they will all pick up the same low-radius AoE damage abilities in the late game in an attempt to stack them on top of each other, their initial, different talents and combat styles will make them feel like four distinct characters. This is in no small part due to another sound success of Pillars of Eternity, making each weapon type and gear setup feel distinctive. In the original game, these differences were masked by poor design choices - mainly that rote strategies could defeat every encounter. In The White March, however, the differences between the weapon types shine.

If you are not paying attention, chances are as well that you will find some encounters oddly easy and some nearly impossible if you rely too much on the same strategies or are unwilling to have different weapon setups. The trick is that resistances, defenses and the armor type of your opponents have a huge impact on the number-crunching in the background, and switching attack types can be as important as changing the overall battle plan.

So basically... Builds that matter, weapon choices that matter, resistances and armor types that matter, and counters that matter. You know what this sounds like? Yes, it sounds like Dungeons and Dragons - and an invalidation of Sawyer's entire initial philosophy towards mechanics design.

Pillars of Eternity: The White March is a rare phenomenon because it sorts through the past with clarity of vision, doing away with quaint mechanics and obsolete system design while holding onto what always worked, what was never broken to begin with.

Or in other words, understanding that the core design philosophy behind Dungeons and Dragons was never broken, to begin with, and that outside of a few nitpicks about the arbitrariness of Gygax's design, the downright arrogant criticism by Sawyer and his fans was simply not deserved. After all, we are talking about the single most influential and long lasting game system on the planet.

 

[Grunker]

^ ftr I agree with or at least consider fair most of what you comment on the first two quotes.

This is a base excuse.

It's not an excuse, it's criticism. I'm saying that the story's main conceit hampers the vast majority of the plot in a major way.

What a wonderful time to go on a long adventure in the frozen north!

Criticism that could be leveled against nearly every story-driven, sandbox RPG ever. It's valid I guess but not really unique in anyway to PoE and that you use it is a good indication that PoE are held to other standard than other RPGs. The same could be said of most of your other criticism: that holding other cRPGs to such minute standards would damn them all.

generic CRPG locations

Calling Gilded Vale and the Hollowborn crisis generic is just lazy and edgy

The review started off praising Sawyer's decision to go in a different direction than Dungeons and Dragons, yet now it seems like you're just praising his willingness to go back to it.

Strawman. I specifically state that I believe Sawyer could have accomplished his goals with better AI and encounter design. He chose instead to reinstate hard counters which did fix the issue (well he chose both, really). There is no conflicting argument here.

Yes, it sounds like Dungeons and Dragons - and an invalidation of Sawyer's entire initial philosophy towards mechanics design.

There are no outright useless assets in PoE's character system. Sawyer achieved this. There are plenty in D&D and Pathfinder. That was Sawyer's stated goal, and he reached it.

I still prefer Pathfinder due to the massive variety since my main joy from RPGs is character customization, but as this juncture, it's a question of taste, not of objective merits IMO. And there really are a staggering amount of build variety in PoE at this point, much more than most RPGs and certainly way, waaaaaaaaaay the fuck more than in the IE games.

the core design philosophy behind Dungeons and Dragons was never broken

AD&D is a broken, terrible mess of a game that has nearly no objective merits and there is certainly no reason for anyone to base their game on it.

Pathfinder and 3.5 have many strengths, but also many completely apparant weaknesses - chief of these not even being game balance but being that any fight with competent adversaries will be decided by the initiative roll since the first round of combat is so important.

Getting truly great gameplay out of Pathfinder and 3.5 around a table takes an extreme amount of knowledge so you can make encounters that limit the troublesome design implicit in the system.

If anything, I am not making excuses for PoE but for D&D: with modern D&D, you get awesome levels of customization, but it comes at a steep price. The price being that the game really doesn't work that well "out of the box"; you need an experienced GM with a deep knowledge of the game's pitfalls to make it shine, and a group willing to make an effort to get characters that are not extremely different in terms of power level.

 

[Prime Junta]

How are beetles different?
How are drakes different?
Bounty fights were always more interesting than the rest.
How are spirits different? Even before they would teleport to your back line and 2 hit mages.
How are Pwgra different? They would swarm you before as well.
How is human AI better? Their squishy casters learned how to prebuff and survive the first attack by my whole party using guns?

The targeting algorithm is different, and most importantly, all of them now use their special abilities intelligently. All of them also keep track of per-encounter abilities and use a mix instead of just endlessly spamming the same one. Applies to all of them.

 

[Grunker]

^ you omit that most of them also have increased resistances or outright immunities where they had none before.

EDIT: also "use their special abilities intelligently" is less vague than it sounds. They will use different abilities based on distance to enemies, what abilities you use, what armor you have on and what character they are targeting

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

...Swayer fixed it...
Sawyer achieved this...
That was Sawyer's stated goal, and he reached it...

Can you stop sucking and stroking Josh's cock for a moment and just review what you post.
PoE is mess of systems; of which some of the flaws were patched only after readapting things from DnD which Josh naysayed earlier. Thats called being full of himself and backtracking.

AD&D is a broken, terrible mess of a game that has nearly no objective merits and there is certainly no reason for anyone to base their game on it.

BG2 is infinitely more fun than P:E could ever be. And multiple reviews approved by the Ministry of Truth will not change it.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Oh, look, another thread devolved into discussion about PoE.

 

[Infinitron]

I specifically state that I believe Sawyer could have accomplished his goals with better AI

AD&D is a broken, terrible mess of a game that has nearly no objective merits

I believe that enemy AI is the big hurdle preventing grognard acceptance of modern ability-based RPG systems in real-time party-based tactical games. Last year I wrote about how AD&D's simplistic "badness" actually made it more suitable for a RTwP AI:

I think that in a system that features lots and lots of only moderately powerful character abilities, it's difficult to create battles that can't be trivialized by coordinating all those abilities to lay THE PERFECT AMBUSH on every enemy encounter. The enemy AI will rarely be smart enough to do the same thing to you. You can tell that Obsidian understood this and put an effort into creating enemies that can stun you and ambush your backline, especially in The White March expansion, but even that can be predicted and defended against. The deck was always stacked against them because they're working with an inherently difficult paradigm.

The secret of AD&D is how it seems to be unintentionally incredibly well-suited to computer AI. At low levels, neither you nor the enemies have much in the way of abilities and your ability to put together the perfect alpha strike is limited, so you have to just dive into combat and "fight fair". And at high levels, there are OP abilities that are crude and simple enough that the AI can use them effectively against you without needing split-second coordination. Give the enemy an insta-killing spell, give him magic immunity that needs to be stripped away, and presto, "memorable encounter".

Beyond all the grousing about engagement and balance and combat XP and whatnot, I think it really all comes down to that. Grognards load up the game and create a character, they get all these ability buttons to click that the IE games never had, they click all the buttons in every battle and watch the helpless enemies get slaughtered, and they cry foul. "Fake complexity! Busy-work! You're pulling a fast one on us, Sawyer!"

Give them enemies that can fight back, and their tune will change very quickly - no matter how balanced the game is, no matter when they get XP, no matter if it's per-rest or per-encounter, no matter if Strength makes magic spells more damaging or not. All of that stuff has always been just noise.

 

[Grunker]

I'm not sure I agree because base level IE game AI isn't that much better than base level PoE AI. You can end huge encounters with enemy mages in BG1 that were clearly meant to be big, difficult showdowns by casting a single spell that kills all of them because of their insignificant hp levels.

EDIT: or well, I agree completely that enemies that fight back changed this, but more than fight back, it's about defense. The crux of Sword Coast Stratagemens for instance is pre-buffing and the AI using spells and abilities that set up key defenses. And it's also the concession that Sawyer gave grognards on 2.0 and forward: enemy defenses are what make the player switch tactics if you can't make sufficiently diverse abilities and encounters to ensure that the same strategy isn't equally good in every encounter.

 

[Prime Junta]

The keywords system in P2 is actually pretty interesting from this PoV. It would be trivial to write an AI that uses it perfectly, much better/faster than a human could, instantly countering anything you throw at it. I think most players would find that really frustrating.

On the other hand, with a more human-like and less perfect AI, it could make for some quite interesting mage duel type situations. But it's all in the execution.