Codex Review RPG Codex Retrospective Review: Pillars of Eternity Revisited

[Roguey]

Playing a fighter in BG is great because where else are you going to get 18/00 strength (those ogre power gauntlets are a long way off)? Yeah, it's not so important in BG2.

 

[Darth Roxor]

This is what libtards said about the US 'lections too. Guess what sonny?

So when's the election?

already happened i'm afraid

 

[Shadenuat]

PoE Rangers and their pet talents might be interesting if not for retarded engagement mechanics and terrible AI - I played whole game + WM on PotD with DPS-pet focused Ranger (pet talents + sabres i.e. Resolution > Acid sabre). The "merciless companion" is a 1.5 damage multiplier to base pet's damage which do not stack with each other (I.e. 1.5 multiplier from a graze of 5 would be 2.5 extra damage, another 1.5 multiplier would be another 2.5 damage - pet himself would have 80-150 whatever HP, late game creatures can feature 200+ hp).
Pets are fun idea and they can do some good damage, but they are notoriously dumb and also get 1-shotted by many end-game enemies.

the differences between Valygar and Minsc are almost non-existent.

What?

Valygar features Stalker kit, which gives him Backstab multiplier, which is fucking huge, bonus stealth and doesn't allow using any armor but leather. He also gains ability to Haste himself and party and MSD. MSD might seem not much, but it's effectively a moba-like counter-spell. It counters any spell up to level 7, meaning something like a Lich casting Finger of Death would absorb it while Minsc would get one-shotted. In a spell system where absorbing save-or-die spell is so important it means Valygar has an in-built oh-shit button.
Add to this innate proficiency with Katanas and you have yourself an asassin with Celestial Fury, backstabbing with up to x4 multiplier while getting away hasted.
Concidering backstabbing is pretty much one of a few separate gameplay types of melee characters in IE games (really the only one, if we don't count reach weapons and cc-spells and other minor deviations), Valygar is *completely* different from Minsc.

Minsc, OTOH, can pack full plate armor and can gain immunity to mind spells. Add his basic choice of weapons and bonus damage to vampires, and you totally can see what kind of character he is.

 

[Darth Roxor]

poe ranjers with pets are a very sad and pathetic imitation of guild wars bunny thumpers anyway

 

[Parabalus]

Playing a fighter in BG is great because where else are you going to get 18/00 strength (those ogre power gauntlets are a long way off)? Yeah, it's not so important in BG2.

For "real" fights you buff up, so it doesn't really matter how much you have for thrash encounters. DuHM, potions and spells are plentiful, the difference is mostly a sentimental one if you have 18/50+ already.

There is also a 19 STR belt in the EE.

 

[Tigranes]

That would be like saying the only right way to play Fallout 2 is to make a beeline straight for the Power Armor as soon as you get out of Arroyo. I mean, it's a game feature, it's doable - that must mean it's supposed to be played like that.

Let's leave aside the fact that this requires metaknowledge and that it's possible because of silly design decisions ("Hello stranger! Here, have some free power armor!"). You can tell some one that they shouldn't go to Arroyo. You can tell someone they shouldn't use the harm spell. No one is telling people they shouldn't rest in BG2, though - just that they shouldn't rest "too much", without being able to define what "too much" even means. Yes, "don't rest after every fight," but that's a straw man since just about no one is blowing through some orc trash mob, getting a slight cut, and then deciding to rest. The people who rest once in a dungeon and the people who rest twice and the people who rest 4 times and the people who rest 8 times will all tell themselves that they only rested when they needed to and weren't resting after every fight.

It's an issue when you need to add self-imposed rules in order to make a game challenging. But it's a much bigger issue issue when no one is even able to articulate what those rules are. And for all the words that have been spent defending the BG2 rest system, no one's been able to come up with a rule beyond "rest whenever you feel like as long as you don't feel like it's too much."

Actually, in all the whining about POE's camping supplies, I've seen plenty of people who effecrively say that they rest after every single fight or close to it, because they like to be able to start off a fight with Disintegrate and three Fireballs and the idea that they should fight some battles without their toys seems silly to them.

 

[Janise]

Whats hilarious is that
Sawyer is a retarded autist
while
Obshitians are larpers

 

[Drowed]

 

[Roguey]

For "real" fights you buff up, so it doesn't really matter how much you have for thrash encounters. DuHM, potions and spells are plentiful, the difference is mostly a sentimental one if you have 18/50+ already.

Hmm but what if I don't want to bother with any of that micromanagement when "click, kill" will do?

There is also a 19 STR belt in the EE.

Beamdog "balance"

 

[Parabalus]

Hmm but what if I don't want to bother with any of that micromanagement when "click, kill" will do?



Beamdog "balance"

If "click,kill" will do, why do you care about a 5%-ish boost to THC or damage per point of STR?

 

[Roguey]

If "click,kill" will do, why do you care about a 5%-ish boost to THC or damage per point of STR?

It's a relief not to have to put 18, 19 points into strength to have an effective click-kill character.

 

[Iskramor]

Arguments ? Any ? D&D was made by someone who think that wearing better armor makes you harder to hit (?) How someone can be that much detached from reality? Maybe by basement windows? Dont make me started on spell memeorising when yo ucan memeorize 1 spell multiple times how is that even possible? Or unwieldable weapons like 2H hammers wtf???

This is the target audience of PoE and Obsidian in general.

This is why we can't have nice things.

This is why RPGs are dead.

Nah this is target audience for 3 digit IQ instead of 2. Nice stuff =/= illogical.

 

[Lacrymas]

There is no 19 str belt in the main campaign of the EE, it's in the Black Pits.

 

[Iskramor]

Dude, but how can you forget spells after you memorized them????? wtf????? Also what is THAC0 lol.
D&D is such shit thank god for Sawyer's system, by autists for autists.

P.S. Sorry I triggered you Prime Jewta, but clearly you are the target audience of Obsidian as well.

Autist because im pointing out things that does not make any sense at all? If you want to have fun buy console or play skyrim or da inqusition for all i care.

 

[ArchAngel]

There is no 19 str belt in the main campaign of the EE, it's in the Black Pits.

Actually I think the shitty Monk's special quest awards something like that. Not sure if it is a monk only item.

 

[Iskramor]

Dude, but how can you forget spells after you memorized them????? wtf????? Also what is THAC0 lol.
D&D is such shit thank god for Sawyer's system, by autists for autists.

P.S. Sorry I triggered you Prime Jewta, but clearly you are the target audience of Obsidian as well.

Refrain from insults if you want to participate in civilized debate and try use some arguments instead . This is not about sawyer its about d&d being fundamentally flawled system made by someone detached from reality ligic and simple math.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yeah, I remember now, it's http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Big_Fisted_Belt. It's a failed attempt to make the monk useful.

 

[fobia]

They've resorted to posting edgy memes and raging. I guess that means we won.

This is what libtards said about the US 'lections too. Guess what sonny?

Yeah, because a vote represents the validity of an argument...

But that point of view explains the behavior* of many codexians.




*shitposting

 

[Colour Spray]

Sawyer's light shines so bright it blinds those who dare gaze upon it with disdain. That's why they think +1 on a 1d20 roll isn't a percentage increase because it's a flat number.

Integer based scaling can't give fractional values, whereas 3% of 15 damage gives you less than half a point of extra damage.

But yeah, you can express the output as a percentage if you wanted, although that's a bit pedantic. Multipliers can be pretty dodgy in general and viewed from two different perspectives they can skew progression rewards. Either by accelerating them too quickly at the high end; such as stacking weapon buffs in Tyranny, or in modern Blizzard games; or by providing no noticeable difference at low values until you stack enough of it that you risk tilting your end-game towards the former. Personally I prefer the latter more conservative approach, and +5% to shadow damage, for instance, is narrow enough that further increases won't immediately begin scaling the games numbers by powers.

I think dps values are always less interesting than flavour, however, because they can't be leveraged by the developer in cases of special exception. For instance, like Junta mentioned before; it's satisfying that the Paladin in particular has a weapon tailored to themselves that better enables their prime-motivation in smiting evil and that you loot it from an evil dragon, no less. Although I disagree that it required any particular foresight from the developers when the flavour is intuitive to naive gamers. It would be like including dwarves but not warhammers, otherwise.

 

[Kev Inkline]

PoE is the revealed game with NBA2K17 at humble monthly (USD 12):

https://www.humblebundle.com/monthly

Perhaps you should buy it and write another review?

I mean, we could do with more NBA game reviews around here.

 

[Iskramor]

You gays are still at this? WTF.
Why are you even discussing character builds when minute to minute gameplay of PoE is cancer. Every character having their own turn, every attack having different time of attack animation and recovery time, engagement system combined with terrible pathfinding during combat. No pre buffing, no running away from combat, spell effects and shit still obscuring the battlefield. The stupid low health high weapon damage system where it is almost expected in tougher fights some of your characters will fall down so the retard Sawyer can use the Constitution sytem as a way to force people to rest. He made the graze system for this reason and even left the full effect of disable spells but only with shorter duration.
Character builds mean shit if gameplay itself is cancer. And I didn't even mention tank and spank tactics that were supposedly fixed in 3.0 or something (but I bet you can still position 2 melee at door for same effect which is how I did most encounters in 1.0 anyways).

EDIT: Oh and how do character build help to survive the lore dumps or shit story and terrible main antagonist? Or 100 other problems with story and setting.

Thats becasue you fall for false marketing hoax that poe will be spiritual sucessor to IE games. Which is not its marketing trick to raise fund so they wouldnt go bankrutp...

 

[FeelTheRads]

You gays are still at this? WTF.
Why are you even discussing character builds when minute to minute gameplay of PoE is cancer. Every character having their own turn, every attack having different time of attack animation and recovery time, engagement system combined with terrible pathfinding during combat. No pre buffing, no running away from combat, spell effects and shit still obscuring the battlefield. The stupid low health high weapon damage system where it is almost expected in tougher fights some of your characters will fall down so the retard Sawyer can use the Constitution sytem as a way to force people to rest. He made the graze system for this reason and even left the full effect of disable spells but only with shorter duration.
Character builds mean shit if gameplay itself is cancer. And I didn't even mention tank and spank tactics that were supposedly fixed in 3.0 or something (but I bet you can still position 2 melee at door for same effect which is how I did most encounters in 1.0 anyways).

EDIT: Oh and how do character build help to survive the lore dumps or shit story and terrible main antagonist? Or 100 other problems with story and setting.

Actually, this is 100% correct. PoE could be 1000 times more complex than all IE games put together, but the absolute shit gameplay would still be there.

Refrain from insults if you want to participate in civilized debate and try use some arguments instead . This is not about sawyer its about d&d being fundamentally flawled system made by someone detached from reality ligic and simple math.

The system if flawed because you don't understand the concept of abstraction. Sure.
And talking about making sense when here we have a system where strength increases magic power and you have an infinite inventory, but that's only accessible when Sawyer wants.
I never thought I'd see someone comparing D&D to this negatively based on making sense, but here we go. A new brand of retard.

And learn some English if you want to have any kind of conversation. Also, you are completely clueless about not only D&D, but about RPG systems and gaming in general. I suggest you die.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Refrain from insults if you want to participate in civilized debate and try use some arguments instead . This is not about sawyer its about d&d being fundamentally flawled system made by someone detached from reality ligic and simple math.

No. I won't stand for this shit.



Asking for civilized debate on the codex? The nerve. And refraining from insults on top of it.

 

[an Administrator]

Fucking nerds

 

[mindfields]

PoE is one of the most boring RPGs I have ever played, whenever you enter a new map you just get this sinking feeling of "well I'm gonna have to clean all this black shit off my screen now".