Pillars of Eternity - To be released March 26th. Who's excited?

[StinkyPinky]

I agree you can build your own companions better than the pre-made ones, but why? PoE is a story driven RPG and the pre made companions have personalities and their own quests etc. You'l miss parts of the game if you don't make use of them.I enjoy them making comments etc from time to time. Although it's not as often as Baldur's Gate which is a shame.

 

[Mem]

I agree you can build your own companions better than the pre-made ones, but why? PoE is a story driven RPG and the pre made companions have personalities and their own quests etc. You'l miss parts of the game if you don't make use of them.I enjoy them making comments etc from time to time. Although it's not as often as Baldur's Gate which is a shame.

I sort of agree,first play through use the companions available ,some good banter there etc,second play through sure try your own.

 

[norseamd]

There are some good, meh, and less than ideal stuff about this game but Durance is one of the more well made and perfect content in Pillars of Eternity. There is a lot more I have to say about the game and will probably do so later but for now he is one of the companions that was as good as many of those from BG2. Makes me start to think if many of the companions from BG were not that good besides the well known ones like your usual starting party and the more well known companions like Minsc and possibly some few other companions.

 

[escrow4]

Meh, city tanks FPS for some reason and the quests are beginning to stack up difficulty wise. I'm moving on, no patience for 1995 era RPGs now.

 

[ImpulsE69]

So who just dropped everything and headed down endless paths?

 

[Mem]

So who just dropped everything and headed down endless paths?

I'm doing some quests in the city,some are quite fun,got so much loot now that got to go to the market and sell it all.

Quests do stack up fast however ,but then you can't complain you don't get your money's worth.


Very much a BG feel game wise in the city.

 

[Bulldog13]

Does anyone know a good site with recommended builds? I searched the obsidian forums a bit, but they are just kind of all over different threads. Just wondering if a site had compiled them yet.

 

[xantub]

So who just dropped everything and headed down endless paths?

I did about 5 or 6 levels, then went to the city. Didn't want to be overleveled for the main story part.

 

[TheUnk]

God the lack of AI can be frustrating.

You reveal traps, yet have to micro manage each member 1 by 1 to walk around them or else they'll commit suicide.

A room with 2 entrances right next to each other. Entire party gets blocked at 1 entry fighting, the melee too stupid to take 2 steps to the left and use the other entry.

Tell party to move from 1 part of the map to another, the party splits up, taking 2 entirely different routes. 1 of which not yet explored.

Use a skill and gets interrupted. Does not attempt it again automatically. Sometimes they seem to cancel even without being interrupted.

For some reason they switch targets from time to time.

If one of your party is charmed at the end of a fight, or even in the middle of, your party will attack them. If the fight is over you have to sit there spamming the stop button until it wears off.

 

[norseamd]

Very much a BG feel game wise in the city.

Well after I was playing Pillars of Eternity for a few days I went back and started playing Shadows of Amn and while it is not as big as I thought it was I still like it more than Pillars of Eternity. Still think Amn is somewhat more big than Defiance Bay especially since 3 of the 5 zones in Defiance Bay are tiny.

 

[norseamd]

God the lack of AI can be frustrating.

Yep. Not sure if the enemy AI seems that bad to me but holy crap is the companion AI just terrible. Granted I have not yet done most of the endless paths or gone to Twin Elms but the feeling I get is that Obsidian did not want to do that much work despite releasing it a full year after the originally promised due date in early 2014.

 

[slag]

So who just dropped everything and headed down endless paths?

Are these the tunnels under the stronghold?

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

I did about 5 or 6 levels, then went to the city. Didn't want to be overleveled for the main story part.

You won't get overleveed down there. It's extremely combat heavy, but light on quests, so with next to no XP for combat in this game there just isn't much XP to be gained.





There's a lot to like about this game, but lots to hate as well. Party AI is non-existent. Scouting mode slows movement down considerably even if there's nothing around, but since so much of the loot is hidden and found only by scouting with a decent mechanics skill, expect to move really slowly or miss a lot of loot.

The UI has issues out the wazoo. There's no appreciable transparency for environments - like trees - so if you happen to get into a hard battle under a tree, good luck seeing what's going on. That also applies to large enemies - huge fliers are a UI screw of the first order. I've had the visual effects of spells mask the aiming circle for subsequent spells. The spell interface itself is far less then useful, with no maximum range circle. Spells that target an enemy with an AoE and spells that target are displayed the same, so it's unclear whether whether your spell will track an enemy or shoot the ground where it was. Some spells - like the 1st level cipher spell that creates a cone behind the target - are completely fubar, with the UI cone extending from the caster, not the target, but having the effect properly extend from the target.

The red/green circles for AoE are themselves pretty ridiculous. Your guys are safe in the red circle, but not in the green circle - which is pretty much the opposite of what I think with a red and a green zone.


What I've seen of the characters, setting and story is pretty cool so far, but the game's interface is fighting me every step of the way. And since the combat is pretty tough to begin with, that's making every tricky battle into a nightmare.

 

[slag]

You won't get overleveed down there. It's extremely combat heavy, but light on quests, so with next to no XP for combat in this game there just isn't much XP to be gained.

There's a lot to like about this game, but lots to hate as well. Party AI is non-existent. Scouting mode slows movement down considerably even if there's nothing around, but since so much of the loot is hidden and found only by scouting with a decent mechanics skill, expect to move really slowly or miss a lot of loot.

The UI has issues out the wazoo. There's no appreciable transparency for environments - like trees - so if you happen to get into a hard battle under a tree, good luck seeing what's going on. That also applies to large enemies - huge fliers are a UI screw of the first order. I've had the visual effects of spells mask the aiming circle for subsequent spells. The spell interface itself is far less then useful, with no maximum range circle. Spells that target an enemy with an AoE and spells that target are displayed the same, so it's unclear whether whether your spell will track an enemy or shoot the ground where it was. Some spells - like the 1st level cipher spell that creates a cone behind the target - are completely fubar, with the UI cone extending from the caster, not the target, but having the effect properly extend from the target.

The red/green circles for AoE are themselves pretty ridiculous. Your guys are safe in the red circle, but not in the green circle - which is pretty much the opposite of what I think with a red and a green zone.


What I've seen of the characters, setting and story is pretty cool so far, but the game's interface is fighting me every step of the way. And since the combat is pretty tough to begin with, that's making every tricky battle into a nightmare.

I completely agree with everything you said. Still, its a fun game, but with some minor flaws. I never played BG or IWD.

 

[norseamd]

I completely agree with everything you said. Still, its a fun game, but with some minor flaws. I never played BG or IWD.

Pillars of Eternity mainstreams a lot of the mechanics and other gameplay from the old IE games that were made by Bioware and Black Isle.

 

[JamesV]

Scouting mode slows movement down considerably even if there's nothing around, but since so much of the loot is hidden and found only by scouting with a decent mechanics skill, expect to move really slowly or miss a lot of loot.

Play in fast mode.

Ever since I tried it, I never play the game at normal speed. SO MANY 'waiting for group to get to the edge to travel' moments, fast mode makes it a little more bearable.

 

[norseamd]

What I've seen of the characters, setting and story is pretty cool so far, but the game's interface is fighting me every step of the way. And since the combat is pretty tough to begin with, that's making every tricky battle into a nightmare.

Honestly whoever came up with the concepts for this game must be like in Mensa or something. But it is just too bad that the production trashed all the good ideas from preproduction. Honestly I was looking at Feargus and Brenneke for this but then I found this crap.

JS: We really put a lot of effort into our stat spread. We've tweaked and tweaked and retweaked this over time. For instance, the Might score increases damage and healing for everything. You might say, "Dude, why should Might affect the damage of my pistol?" and I say, "Shut the $#&^#& up." The point is that it's good for any class that wants to focus on that.

JS: (To Carver) Show one of Aloth's AOEs. You can see there are two radii for that. The inner circle is completely friend-or-foe. Everyone will be hit [by the spell]. That border area? That's a bonus from his intellect, and that area is foe-only. So you can throw a fireball and if something falls in that outer ring, if it's an ally they won't be hurt. That's a way we allow those spells to scale without, "This gets bigger but my party gets hurt more easily."

 

[Mem]

Are these the tunnels under the stronghold?

Spoiler

yes,lots of levels underneath,don't expect to do them all in one go,since the deeper you go the tougher it gets.

I'm at level 8 of the tunnels at the moment ,but gone back in the city for a bit.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Play in fast mode.

Ever since I tried it, I never play the game at normal speed. SO MANY 'waiting for group to get to the edge to travel' moments, fast mode makes it a little more bearable.

I do. Even in fast mode, scouting is pretty slow. And since they do in fact hide treasure in towns and other completely safe zones, I have to use scouting all the time.

And since scouting is tied to mechanics and won't show hidden treasure if it's too low, I expect I'll probably have to keep using scout mode all the time as I level up and raise mechanics, to find things I'd have missed at a lower level.


I don't suppose there's a ini tweak or something to make fast mode even faster?

 

[slag]

Spoiler

yes,lots of levels underneath,don't expect to do them all in one go,since the deeper you go the tougher it gets.

I'm at level 8 of the tunnels at the moment ,but gone back in the city for a bit.

I had to do the same.

Spoiler

Stuck at the drake on level 5 so I went back to town for a bit.

 

[Mem]

I had to do the same.

Spoiler

Stuck at the drake on level 5 so I went back to town for a bit.

Spoiler

I did the drake at level 6,the archway east of the pool of blood where the traps are,I had my team in there and use it has a bottle neck with fighters at front,send one up to shoot one of the mobs and run back to that position,you can control the fight then,since they can't over run you if you have your fighters/tank blocking the archway,priest behind buffing so was not that hard.

 

[slag]

Spoiler

I did the drake at level 7,the archway east of the pool of blood where the traps are,I had my team in there and use it has a bottle neck with fighters at front,send one up to shoot one of the mobs and run back to that position,you can control the fight then,since they can't over run you if you have your fighters/tank blocking the archway,priest behind buffing so was not that hard.

That's the exact same thing I'm doing, but my toons are level 5.

Spoiler

I can kill everything but the drake and get him down to two dots left of health, but then he decimates me. I also pretrap the area with missiles so that as they pursue me back to the doorway, it hurts them.

 

[Mem]

That's the exact same thing I'm doing, but my toons are level 5.

Spoiler

I can kill everything but the drake and get him down to two dots left of health, but then he decimates me. I also pretrap the area with missiles so that as they pursue me back to the doorway, it hurts them.

Reread my last post,I got the level wrong .

 

[Red Storm]

The red/green circles for AoE are themselves pretty ridiculous. Your guys are safe in the red circle, but not in the green circle - which is pretty much the opposite of what I think with a red and a green zone.

The red (inner) circle is where anyone gets hit, friend or foe. The outer circle - which can be increased with INT - only affects enemies. I like that it works like this.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

I get the underlying mechanic, and the reason it works the way it does makes sense to me. But that's after I saw the one loading screen hint that mentions it.

My gripe is the interface, particularly the coloring. Green and red typically mean 'safe' and 'unsafe' anywhere else you encounter them in life, and having the unsafe zone be green while the safe zone is red is counterintuitive as hell.