Codex Review RPG Codex Retrospective Review: Pillars of Eternity Revisited

[Jim the Dinosaur]

You can build an uber-squishy paladin

especially noticable are: any beetle fight

You will face high level kobold ambushes that engage you on three levels of the same area

For all of AD&D's mechanical faults, at least it tended to encourage some kind of consistency between gameplay and setting. A paladin was inherently non-squishy; kobolds were inherently weak scavengers. You didn't need loredumps to tell you that, it came forward in simply playing it. Sawyer's philosophy of making each portion of a game as functionally sound as it can possibly be seems to inevitably undermine the way these portions interact (a pure DPS-stat suddenly is treated like physical strength in text adventures, etc.).

talking about sawyerism again feels nice, we should have a review like this again in a couple of years, feels like a reunion of sorts

 

[Azarkon]

(Of course, everything is relative. It is true that in AD&D there is only one optimal way to distribute your stats per class, and making the wrong choices will give you an unplayable character -- a wizard who can't cast spells, or a fighter who won't do any weapon damage. Why someone would consider a system with only one right way to distribute stats per class good is beyond me though. I mean, why even have stats in a such a system? You might as well bake the bonuses directly into the classes and get rid of the system altogether. Always assuming you're using a point-buy system rather than a genuinely random one; cf. my comment about stats in original tabletop D&D.)

Stat distribution wasn't supposed to be a form of character progression in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. It was supposed to model the intrinsic capabilities of your character. The goal of the system was to allow for a variety of basic ability profiles, not to min/max your super hero. It was part of the strategic matrix - you adapted to your character's limitations and did the best you could with the cards you were given, just like in life. The whole idea of rolling the dice until you had 18/18/18 is considered munchkin behavior and strictly a product of poor Infinity Engine implementation.

The arrogance of thinking that the designers of table top games were that stupid... It gets me every time.

 

[ga♥]

Could we have a futurespective neutral positive review of PoE2 based on the kickstarter updates please? I already have the title "Did Sawyer surpass Leonardo da Vinci, the answer is yes!" by Roqua

 

[Ulfhednar]

The arrogance of thinking that the designers of table top games were that stupid... It gets me every time.

No one is saying they are stupid, just that in twenty years of iteration, we have learned some things.

 

[FreeKaner]

Could we have a futurespective neutral positive review of PoE2 based on the kickstarter updates please? I already have the title "Did Sawyer surpass Leonardo da Vinci, the answer is yes!" by Roqua

By the time Deadfire is released, Sawyer will already be canonised and you will be referring to him as St. Sawyer.

 

[Azarkon]

You can build an uber-squishy paladin

especially noticable are: any beetle fight

You will face high level kobold ambushes that engage you on three levels of the same area

For all of AD&D's mechanical faults, at least it tended to encourage some kind of consistency between gameplay and setting. A paladin was inherently non-squishy; kobolds were inherently weak scavengers. You didn't need loredumps to tell you that, it came forward in simply playing it. Sawyer's philosophy of making each portion of a game as functionally sound as it can possibly be seems to inevitably undermine the way these portions interact (a pure DPS-stat suddenly is treated like physical strength in text adventures, etc.).

talking about sawyerism again feels nice, we should have a review like this again in a couple of years, feels like a reunion of sorts

This is an important concept, but one that is often missed or dismissed by people who are mesmerized by Sawyer's intellectualizing. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons gets bashed for having certain unintuitive rules, but there is nothing more unintuitive than Pillars of Eternity's system where you have classes with well-defined roles at creation, but the talents can make the class completely unrecognizable. Why make it class-based, then? Why not just make it skill-based? Sawyer's only explanation has been that he wants to capture the old Infinity Engine feel and so the game must have classes; but in that case he failed completely because the game doesn't capture the old Infinity Engine feel because of the very fundamental changes he made to the system.

Same with the ability scores. Might sounds like it wants to be Strength, but it's not Strength, it's an abstract concept of the ability to project force through the universe. Dungeons and Dragons at least tried to have a semblance of verisimilitude, so that you could make rough analogies to living persons. Pillars of Eternity acts like anime: a wispy wizard who spent his whole life studying magic can kick down a wall just as well as a warrior who body built like Schwarzenegger on drugs, because they both have SOUL MIGHT. A HEALER should pump Might, because being strong makes you ... Heal more. Intelligence increases the area of effect of your abilities because, well shit, IT JUST DOES, OKAY? And why is Resolve the way to increase your ability to deflect attacks? Shouldn't that be Constitution or Might?

The bottom line is: character definitions are abstract, convoluted, constantly changing, and the only justification for all of it is so that Sawyer could say he accomplished his ideological goal of making ability score choices not obvious and classes not required. What the fuck? Shouldn't the system reward common sense, rather than punish it? This is the central flaw of much of the design behind Pillars of Eternity - it is driven by ideology, rather than sense.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

"Actually playing Pillars of Eternity: The White March reminds me why I still own a PC. Nothing less."

 

[Lady_Error]

Sensuki's therapist told him to stay away from PoE discussions.

 

[ga♥]

So when PoE2 comes out for tablet, ps4, and blahblah all the cucks will just use their PC Mac to post pics of their cuckbeards on instagram, I guess.

 

[Janise]

POS2 has
-less chars
-unvancian mmo casting
-instant retargeting
-resting gone
-scrapped injuries
-same linear graze mechanics on erything

Guys! Lets practice our cocksucking arguments for the future neutal positive reviews of an offline feminist anime mmo!

 

[ga♥]

POS2 has
-unvancian mmo casting

Better than Baldur's gate! woohoo!

 

[Sentinel]

-instant retargeting

what's bad about this

-resting gone

false

"When characters receive injuries or run low on/out of Empowers, they can be replenished by consuming food while resting. Food is no longer consumed directly from the inventory or quick item slots in Deadfire. When the party rests, there is a resting interface where the player can specify which food items they want each character to consume (it remembers the last choice). Food items always grant bonuses, but common/cheap food grants modest bonuses. The party is not restricted in how much food they can carry, but if they rest frequently, they’ll be operating on those “lesser” bonuses or burning through their really good food/better bonuses."

-scrapped injuries

false

"Characters can receive injuries from being knocked out in combat (as in the 3.0 patch of Pillars 1), from scripted interactions, and from traps. In fact, all traps now inflict injuries and a modest amount of damage. This is a change from Pillars 1, where traps inflicted enormous amounts of damage but wouldn’t inflict injuries unless the character was knocked out (post-3.0). The range of injuries is similar to Pillars 1, but each injury also lowers your maximum health cap by 25%, and a fourth injury always results in death.

We currently do not inflict injuries in combat (outside of KOs or tripping a trap). In Battle Brothers, the pace of combat and the clarity of the character icons makes it easier to see when characters receive injuries (usually). I’m concerned that inflicting injuries outside of those discrete events would make them hard to notice/confusing for players."

-same linear graze mechanics on erything

what does this mean

 

[Crispy]

The party is not restricted in how much food they can carry

Why? Why, Josh?

Why do you have such an aversion to placing even somewhat realistic limitations on seemingly minor details like this? A thousand of these little cuts are what killed any joy for me playing PoE. Unlimited stash, for example. Basically meaningless rest. Inconsequential time between quests/traveling. So many things abstracted all in the name of "fun". Why?

In contrast, things done the opposite way are what make Underrail incredible for me. Tightly controlled economy, for example. Very hard to find the best items. Monstrous difficulty spikes (but fairly distributed). Attention to detail in ways that made the player plan, think about his approach, plot revenge on the last encounter that wiped the floor with him. None of that exists in PoE. Not even with the adra dragon fight which had to be ultra-cheesed to beat.

Stop playing it so safe, Josh. Take some chances and throw some all-or-nothing components in there. Give us the equivalent of a Disintegrate spell. Force us to limit our supplies. Those little details are what keep us coming back night after night, playing until 2AM.

PoE never did that for me even once.

 

[Roguey]

Why? Why, Josh?

Why do you have such an aversion to placing even somewhat realistic limitations on seemingly minor details like this? A thousand of these little cuts are what killed any joy for me playing PoE. Unlimited stash, for example. Basically meaningless rest. Inconsequential time between quests/traveling. So many things abstracted all in the name of "fun". Why?

In contrast, things done the opposite way are what make Underrail incredible for me. Tightly controlled economy, for example. Very hard to find the best items. Monstrous difficulty spikes (but fairly distributed). Attention to detail in ways that made the player plan, think about his approach, plot revenge on the last encounter that wiped the floor with him. None of that exists in PoE. Not even with the adra dragon fight which had to be ultra-cheesed to beat.

Stop playing it so safe, Josh. Take some chances and throw some all-or-nothing components in there. Give us the equivalent of a Disintegrate spell. Force us to limit our supplies. Those little details are what keep us coming back night after night, playing until 2AM.

PoE never did that for me even once.

There was a limitation on how many camping supplies you could carry and guess what, people kept using them all up after every battle and backtracking. Josh does not want people doing that, period.

 

[Barnabas]

Poe is a good game.

 

[Crispy]

Yeah, that example of a limitation is one that I just found rather bizarre when I first started playing the game. Here you have this magic chest that can hold thousands of pounds of hundreds of weapons and armor and God knows what else but you're only allowed two camping supply sets?

And where one is safely able to camp has always been a point of contention in RPG design discussion. The best solution I've ever seen is the random encounter chance while sleeping. Is that even possible in PoE?

I guess it just boils down to what Josh says is what goes at Obsidian. It's a shame, because these types of games should be what us fantasy nerds die for. Ironic that what he brings back to us repels us (some of us? Most of us?) so.

 

[Roguey]

Yeah, that example of a limitation is one that I just found rather bizarre when I first started playing the game. Here you have this magic chest that can hold thousands of pounds of hundreds of weapons and armor and God knows what else but you're only allowed two camping supply sets?

The intent was that it was supposed to be a gamey convention to discourage you from going too crazy with per-rest spells in dungeons and wilderness areas.

And where one is safely able to camp has always been a point of contention in RPG design discussion. The best solution I've ever seen is the random encounter chance while sleeping. Is that even possible in PoE?

No, because people will just keep reloading until they don't get one.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

And where one is safely able to camp has always been a point of contention in RPG design discussion. The best solution I've ever seen is the random encounter chance while sleeping. Is that even possible in PoE?

No, because people will just keep reloading until they don't get one.

Fixed seed yo.

 

[Roguey]

Fixed seed yo.

Backtrack to an inn it is then.

 

[almondblight]

And where one is safely able to camp has always been a point of contention in RPG design discussion. The best solution I've ever seen is the random encounter chance while sleeping.

That's the worst solution; if it incentivizes anything, it incentivizes constant resting. Either the random encounters are easy, in which case they don't make a difference either way and are just a waste of time, or they are difficult, in which case you're better off facing them with 75% health and spells than with 25% health and spells.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Fixed seed yo.

Backtrack to an inn it is then.

Monster respawn with no xp for second kills.

ETA:

Either the random encounters are easy, in which case they don't make a difference either way and are just a waste of time, or they are difficult, in which case you're better off facing them with 75% health and spells than with 25% health and spells.

The punishment isn't the encounter, it's that you don't complete your rest and have some additional resource depletion. So resting is a risk in that you may have even fewer resources than when you started (Just don't give xp for the encounter.)

Or hell, just disable resting and respawn monsters with no xp. What do I care.

 

[Delterius]

people kept using them all up after every battle and backtracking

Whatever retards say they do in SA is not representative of reality.

 

[Rivmusique]

In the run up to PoE's launch, Sawyer had said that "Hard" was his ideal difficulty (they designed Hard first, removed tough enemies and replaced with weaker ones for easy/normal and bumped things up for Path of the Damned). Has there been anything from Obs to suggest this changed to PotD at any stage during development?

How about for PoE2? Anything been said to suggest that an attempt has been made to bring Hard closer to what PotD is for PoE? Or are those that vastly prefer PotD in the original best off jumping straight in to PotD2?

 

[almondblight]

The punishment isn't the encounter, it's that you don't complete your rest and have some additional resource depletion. So resting is a risk in that you may have even fewer resources than when you started (Just don't give xp for the encounter.)

Well, that's a different system. In a game like BG2, there's no additional resources that are used up (unless you're typically chugging potions and firing scrolls for every random encounter, but again, that'd mean more resources used up resting at 25% than 75%).

If instead you're talking about a system where resources are consumed upon rest (like in PoE, but not in BG2) and the random encounter is used to waste one of these, you're talking about a system where you're just upping the cost of the resource a bit (so if it cost you 100 GP to rest 4 times normally, with 1/4 chance of a random encounter it now costs 100 GP to rest 3 times). But instead of just upping the price, you're adding a bunch of repetitive trash encounters. And repetitive trash encounters is one of those complaints about PoE that people then completely ignore outside of PoE, even suggesting adding more of them in "solutions" like this.

 

[Prime Junta]

(Of course, everything is relative. It is true that in AD&D there is only one optimal way to distribute your stats per class, and making the wrong choices will give you an unplayable character -- a wizard who can't cast spells, or a fighter who won't do any weapon damage. Why someone would consider a system with only one right way to distribute stats per class good is beyond me though. I mean, why even have stats in a such a system? You might as well bake the bonuses directly into the classes and get rid of the system altogether. Always assuming you're using a point-buy system rather than a genuinely random one; cf. my comment about stats in original tabletop D&D.)

Stat distribution wasn't supposed to be a form of character progression in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. It was supposed to model the intrinsic capabilities of your character. The goal of the system was to allow for a variety of basic ability profiles, not to min/max your super hero. It was part of the strategic matrix - you adapted to your character's limitations and did the best you could with the cards you were given, just like in life. The whole idea of rolling the dice until you had 18/18/18 is considered munchkin behavior and strictly a product of poor Infinity Engine implementation.

...or as I put it elsewhere...

The D&D/AD&D stat system only really makes sense if used as originally specified: roll once, then pick the best-fit class for whatever you came up with, and deal with it. You might end up with a genuinely handicapped character, and then it's up to you and the DM to make it work in a campaign. No casualisation like redistributing the stats. You want to play a magic-user but rolled shitty INT? Too bad, you'll be a thief and fucking like it.

The arrogance of thinking that the designers of table top games were that stupid... It gets me every time.

Sort of like assuming your fellow Codexians are that stupid.

(In all fairness, they often are. In both cases.)