Review RPG Codex Review: Darth Roxor on Disappointment, thy name is Pillars of Eternity

[Angthoron]

Oh boy! This thread is so delivering.

To be honest I'd like to hear from the (butthurt) fanboys, or from anyone else really, what they really liked about the game.

Check my thousand of 173 posts on PoE subforum. Particularly the "The writing in PoE is average" thread. My favourite spot is where I dissect every criticism to Act2 ending.

Oh, that was a dissection? Cool.

The process of disassembling and observing something to determine its internal structure and as an aid to discerning the functions and relationships of its components.

Yeah, I guess I'd call it that. It was a grand and fun discussion that made me think a lot and I'm grateful for your as always reasonable participation.

It was also an exercise in rhetoric, I'm slipping.

I could've continued, but it was also an exercise in futility, since you'll hardly concede to my points, and I hate repeating my points ad nauseum. Conversely, you can't persuade me to see it your way (in part because writing for me is like economy for you) and I'd hate to waste your time on it. Still, it was a reasonable insight into the hows and whats that worked for people that really liked the game, which is undeniably gud.To be fair, this thread could probably use more of that kind of discussion, it's way too much about feels. What is this, young mothers' forum?

 

[Irenaeus]

I love that kind of discussions, but considering this review, this thread was never meant to be liked that and I played the role I stoically prepared myself to since I heard about Roxor's gang nefarious plans and plots. In any case, this thread served my ulterior purpose and hidden agenda: Being a shinning beacon of reason and hope to the silent majority.

 

[zeitgeist]

At the same time, it seems to me to miss a fairly essential point. Imagine that Dr. Frankenstein carries out his experiments, but rather than stitching together a beautiful, brilliant, well-made man, he creates something less appealing: its limbs a bit misproportioned, its body somewhat unfit, its mind perhaps not as discerning as one might hope. A comrade looks upon the doctor and says, "All that hype, and you merely made a mediocrity?" This scornful comrade may help drive the good doctor to even higher heights, but it seems to me that he is looking at things all wrong: whether or not you would invite Frankenstein's mediocrity over for supper, the doctor has made a whole living man out of the parts of corpses! That is a brilliant achievement, no matter whether the end result is perfect or flawed.

Indeed, an excellent point, people do seem to forget that this is literally the first game of its kind, a marvelously inventive experiment produced by intrepid pioneers of a new field, who have never designed or programmed a single piece of entertainment software in their lives, created in a world where neither pen and paper nor computer role playing games have ever existed before.

Dare we dream of what awaits us if only we hold our hands together, pool our positive thoughts, and send the very best of vibrations the way of these men amongst men? Customizable party AI? Non-blobby combat? A dynamic gameworld? Decent character building? In our lifetimes? It is too much.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

I like D&D, but it is designed to be played by a group of people without a computer, and as such there's a lot of abstraction. Creating a ruleset that's better for CRPGs shouldn't be impossible; the fact that developers consistently fail to do so is a testament to their ineptitude.

seems that way. And 20 years ago I would agree more with the point of view as you have stated it above.... But at this point in time I would just rather game developers spend their efforts and money on making the engine run using established rules and even modules. The results of games following such a method has been vastly superior IMO when compared to games which try and design their own worlds, or god forbid systems.

It takes such much time and effort to get all of that right- just seems like such a waste that almost always ends the same way.

 

[Kz3r0]

The only enlightening exchange I came across centered on the rather peripheral issue of Descartes, and at the risk of extending that already tangential issue I can at least that this fairly minor criticism in the review wasn't terribly on point. FWIW, modern philosophy doesn't take the Cogito very seriously

So PoE is post modern shit?
More reason to dismiss it.

 

[WhiteGuts]

Waidwen's Legacy caused PoE to be a Hollowborn.

This is some philosophical shit y'all keep missing.

 

[Athelas]

Perhaps the price of crossing a god insulting D&D.

 

[Black]

I guess this review is indicative of this site becoming a parody of itself. Never seen such low quality in a codex review before. Roxxor comes of as a contrarian edge lord tbh.

You've yet to point out what's he wrong about.

 

[hivemind]

I guess this review is indicative of this site becoming a parody of itself. Never seen such low quality in a codex review before. Roxxor comes of as a contrarian edge lord tbh.

You've yet to point out what's he wrong about.

Disliking things that I like.

 

[Haba]

Being a shinning beacon of reason and hope to the silent majority

The intellectual quality of the said silent majority is most eloquently exposed by the revelation that this shining beacon plays on normal difficulty and is challenged...

 

[Black]

Ugh, the audacity!

 

[Irenaeus]

Being a shinning beacon of reason and hope to the silent majority

The intellectual quality of the said silent majority is most eloquently exposed by the revelation that this shining beacon plays on normal difficulty and is challenged...

The shining beacon is not a min/max muchkin and actually wants to play the game like a normal person, by trial and error, experimentation and learning, getting scars. Not reading guides, using known OP and cheesy tactics/builds.

An amazing person, I know.

 

[Western]

Oh boy! This thread is so delivering.

To be honest I'd like to hear from the (butthurt) fanboys, or from anyone else really, what they really liked about the game. Granted that pretty much every one agrees that GFX and SFX are quite good, doesn't anyone have anything really positive to say about the gameplay (mechanics, ruleset, writing, quests, design) aspects of PoE?

I'm not much of a fanboy
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...-poe-negative-or-positive.98693/#post-3875124

But...

I liked some of the character creation, and ability to make a custom party, there are some interesting synergies between builds. I do find the character and party creation interesting. There is also some interesting weapon variety.

Relative power progression seems slower than previous IE games, something positive since I loathe high level D&D, it's going to need better encounter design (and magic needs some work) for that to shine though.

A couple of the characters were ok, but I'm disappointed they were cut back.

A lot of the individual elements are lacking, but as a sum of its parts it's still enjoyable, just not nearly as good as it could have been. I guess that also means the game is salvageable in terms of more universal praise for it, if Obsidian is willing to a work on various aspects of the game.

Also the lore is also not necessarily bad, however its presentation was not great, too much info dumping, I suppose in an attempt to introduce the setting, but conversely that means the lore itself is potentially salvageable.

 

[Dreaad]

Being a shinning beacon of reason and hope to the silent majority

The intellectual quality of the said silent majority is most eloquently exposed by the revelation that this shining beacon plays on normal difficulty and is challenged...

The shining beacon is not a min/max muchkin and actually wants to play the game like a normal person, by trial and error, experimentation and learning, getting scars. Not reading guides, using known OP and cheesy tactics/builds.

An amazing person, I know.

What min maxing? All you need to get through PotD is those summoning charms and switching weapon sets. You get real manly scars from being beaten while trying your best not by loosing on purpose.

 

[Black_Willow]

Iren and Roxor should perform the sacred ritual of exchanging plane tickets.

 

[Irenaeus]

Being a shinning beacon of reason and hope to the silent majority

The intellectual quality of the said silent majority is most eloquently exposed by the revelation that this shining beacon plays on normal difficulty and is challenged...

The shining beacon is not a min/max muchkin and actually wants to play the game like a normal person, by trial and error, experimentation and learning, getting scars. Not reading guides, using known OP and cheesy tactics/builds.

An amazing person, I know.

What min maxing? All you need to get through PotD is those summoning charms and switching weapon sets. You get real manly scars from being beaten while trying your best not by loosing on purpose.

I'll come up with my own tactics, that's part of the fun for me. But thank you for your advice.

 

[Lockkaliber]

I guess this review is indicative of this site becoming a parody of itself. Never seen such low quality in a codex review before. Roxxor comes of as a contrarian edge lord tbh.

You've yet to point out what's he wrong about.

I'm not sure I said he was wrong. I am sure that I wrote that he comes of as a contrarian edge lord however.

 

[Irenaeus]

Iren and Roxor should perform the sacred ritual of exchanging plane tickets.

We are bros, this is just a polite gentlemanly debate.

 

[mastroego]

Well, positions have radicalized too much, at this point.

Time will tell.
But I stand by my prediction that this will fail to be remembered as one of the "pillars" of the genre, or even remembered at all.

It will be the most discussed RPG on the Codex. Actually, it already achieved that - before it was even released.

That's because of the anticipation.

But will it ACTUALLY be re-played over and over again for 15 years?
Scores of people playing it like dozens of times, trying multiple party combos, soloing, et all?
Will it spawn huge, long-lived modding communities?
That's what I'm talking about.

 

[ArchAngel]

I liked the review and mostly agree with it. Parts that I don't agree with was bashing the setting, classes and races for being too similar to D&D and IE games.
It was expected that they would be and more people would be angry/disappointed if they were not similar (including me). Their wizard was attacked from beta for being too different, not too similar.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

Just browsing through the last few pages of the thread, people bring up that 'nobody actually addresses anything Roxxor said, people are too lazy to defend PoE, people know that the review is right', etc. I don't think that the review thread necessarily has to be a hotspot for indepth discussion considering that every concievable point has already beein discussed ad infinitum. There are currently at least two megathreads, the PoE Released thread in the news and the one in the subforum and in addition to that numerous other smaller threads (review threads, poll threads, threads about the certain elements). Does a released review warrant to go over all that stuff again in yet another thread? Thus people picked up what was sort of new - the mention of philosophers - and they posted whether they agree with the gist of the review or not. Do people really expect someone to go over the whole fuckhuge review and disect it point by point even though everything has already been said a million times in every other PoE thread? PoE is probably the most discussed game on the Codex, just take a look into the subforum and take your pick.

One of the things you will find is a maddening amount of repetition. There is only so many times you feel like going up against 'the game is too easy', 'the setting is bland', 'the combat is boring', 'muh no combat xp' before you feel like just giving up on the issue because it just doesn't get you anywhere. Perhaps thats just the nature of internet debate, its not like I post all that much to begin with.

Nothing to do with the review here, but I tried for example to interject into the difficulty discussion in the subforum because detractors just keep repeating over and over how the game is too easy for them, which apparently in their mind makes it objectively too easy for everybody.
Nevermind that they are experts and play the game in a completely different way from thousands of others and their experience has fuck all to do with what most other people experience. I played the game for so many hours and had several tough fights and to reload many times (playing on hard) and I log into the Codex and people go like 'muh easy fights Sawyer balance failed so hard trolololo' and there are handful of other grognards who keep reinforcing that shit and it just feels like Bizarro World to me.

Almost none of the most repeated points of critique have anything whatsoever to do with how I experience the game.

You can read through pages and pages of people complaining about the difficulty, every now and then there will be a guy like J_C or Iren saying they are playing on normal and find the game plenty challenging but of course the autists won't care and keep repeating that its too easy over and over and over. To bring up that most 'normal' players experience the difficulty diifferently from them is pointless, cause most normal players are of course 'the stupid retarded masses' in their mind, so there goes your argument. Inside their little grognard fish tank of course they find enough reinforcement to make their argument objetively true, at least 'for the real RPG fans', not for the unwashed plebs that is the outside world. Note also how these people have apparently endless time on their hands to just keep posting and posting. Nothing wrong with that in principle if posting is your thing, but there are certainly people I deliberately avoid since I don't feel like engaging in a pointless internet debate for the next few weeks.

And by the way, you will notice in that subforum (much like in this thread) that the detractors just keep circlejerking themselves for the most part, which could give you the wrong impression that they are actually the majority now. If you look into the rating polls there are many people who really like - some even love - the game. So where are all the fanboys defending the game? Perhaps they are just sick of the circlejerks, the endless whining, the stupid arguments endlessly repeated? Perhaps they are just busy playing the game? Perhaps they just don't give a fuck about 'muh geam is shyte where is my cumbat EXX PEE!?' ?

I don't know.

I suspect however that there are still plenty more of the people who like/love PoE than those who don't. We will find out when the next review comes out, or when the year comes to a close and it is time to vote. For the time being I rather spend my time playing than trying to explain to some grognard that his personal experience is probably kinda different from what everybody else experiences.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I love wall of texts, there's something in there that stands as a sheer testament to the tenacity and perseverance of the person making them.

Fucked if I ever read 'em though.

 

[hivemind]

tbh it's not even a wall of text because hit has proper paragraphs and what not

 

[Irenaeus]

I love wall of texts, there's something in there that stands as a sheer testament to the tenacity and perseverance of the person making them.

Fucked if I ever read 'em though.

That's something that could be said about this clown review.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I love wall of texts, there's something in there that stands as a sheer testament to the tenacity and perseverance of the person making them.

Fucked if I ever read 'em though.

That's something that could be said about this clown review.

Nah, I read them all, I just like acting edgy.