Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian's new CRPG in the vein of Baldur's Gate

Itzena_sl said:

You only get XP for killing mobs when you're still learning about them - once you've capped that, they stop giving xp.

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This is the first time I'd fought any of his guards, so even if I capped it after a single kill, I should have gotten 'some' XP. Also doesn't explain the trap thing (had the same thing happen with quests, where the XP in the log doesn't match up to what my party gets).

Also, that's a retarded system. Not quite as retarded as only being able to camp 4 times before going back to the inn, but getting up there.

Fuck it, that's what I get for trusting early release reviews and nostalgia. Back to the IWDEE.

I saw on Quill18's let's play that you get less and less experience each time you kill the same mob. So if you have killed 10 spiders you probably get 0 xp from them.

Azrayne_sl said:

This is the first time I'd fought any of his guards, so even if I capped it after a single kill, I should have gotten 'some' XP. Also doesn't explain the trap thing (had the same thing happen with quests, where the XP in the log doesn't match up to what my party gets).

Also, that's a retarded system. Not quite as retarded as only being able to camp 4 times before going back to the inn, but getting up there.

Fuck it, that's what I get for trusting early release reviews and nostalgia. Back to the IWDEE.

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Iwdee is a super lazy enhancement. I did not like what they did to it.

Azrayne_sl said:

Is the XP bugged? The rate at which my characters gain XP seems completely randomized. Sometimes I'll kill level appropriate mobs and get absolutely no XP at all (ie. just killed a group of 5 guards in Raedric's Castle at level 3 and didn't get a single point of XP), sometimes some mobs in fights will give me XP and some of them won't, or sometimes it just throws out completely random numbers that don't match what the log says (ie. I undid a trap and it says I gained 30 XP. Check character sheet and my XP there has gone up by... 2).

So yeah, what the fuck?

Otherwise enjoying the game, although the combat and the animations are a bit clunky and the setting isn't really doing it for me (I get that GRIMDARK is all the rage in fantasy these days, but I was hoping for a bit more of the old classic BG feel. Sure the BG story was rather dark, especially if you went balls to the wall evil, but the world was bright and colorful and engaging, not just greys/browns/blacks and huge dead trees with dozens of fucking corpses hanging off them). I find it kinda ironic that the IE spiritual successor has a darker atmosphere than D3 did.



Burning Hands (or whatever it's called so the D&D peeps don't sue them) wrecks shit, highly recommend it. One of the advantages of the slightly clunkier combat (and the targeting markers) is that it's much easier to throw around AOE spells without raping your own party.

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I keep looking at the manual and figure out the save or suck spells...but that looks like those are put on the cipher

Azrayne_sl said:

This is the first time I'd fought any of his guards, so even if I capped it after a single kill, I should have gotten 'some' XP. Also doesn't explain the trap thing (had the same thing happen with quests, where the XP in the log doesn't match up to what my party gets).

Also, that's a retarded system. Not quite as retarded as only being able to camp 4 times before going back to the inn, but getting up there.

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To each his own I guess, but I like the camping restriction. One of the silly things about allowing camping all the time is that you can blow every major spell constantly. This system makes you have to decide every combat how serious you want to treat it. Really liking it.

As for the xp, shrug. It discourages farming and encourages finding new shit to do. Probably also gives the developers a better idea of how much total xp people can get in their game. Not sure how it is any more retarded than the DnD system before. It is all arbitrary.

radditsu_sl said:

Iwdee is a super lazy enhancement. I did not like what they did to it.

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Honestly, I never played the original IWD - I skipped it over back in the day when I found out it had no major storyline or NPC party members ala. BG series, but the EE was only $20 and came out just as I was in my DA:I midgame burnout, and with the updated resolution and the new spells/kits etc. I'm actually enjoying it quite a bit (I can finally cast Dimension Door! Been wanting to do that since I first played Baldurs Gate when I was like 8) even if it is just dungeon after dungeon after dungeon.

To each his own I guess, but I like the camping restriction. One of the silly things about allowing camping all the time is that you can blow every major spell constantly. This system makes you have to decide every combat how serious you want to treat it. Really liking it.

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I can understand that, but I'm still really not a fan. Maybe just because I'm big on caster heavy parties, but all it means to me is wasting time running back to town half way through a zone/dungeon so I can refill my camping supplies. If they wanted people casting less spells, they should have just given us less spells and rebalanced the game around that. They could at least make it optional or some shit (I know you get extra camps on lower difficulty, but that kinda defies the point). I thought the whole idea was that we can play the party however we wanna play and not have all those stupid arbitrary DND restrictions or be stuck on certain builds, but stuff like this is just as dumb, discouraging parties heavy on per-rest skills in favor of those heavy on per-encounter.

As for the xp, shrug. It discourages farming and encourages finding new shit to do. Probably also gives the developers a better idea of how much total xp people can get in their game. Not sure how it is any more retarded than the DnD system before. It is all arbitrary.

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I'm not talking about the XP cap per mob time - the XP gain is straight up broken for me . Quests, mobs, traps, all of it. I can go back through my saves and take a screenshot of getting 2xp for unlocking a trap while the log says I get 30 if you really want.

And seriously, who farmed in IE games anyway? The big XP was always in quest rewards (from memory you'd get 5x - 10x the XP from the reward than you would from the mobs you killed doing the quest, if you killed any), but it's nice to get 'something' for the spiders you were just forced to spend a minute or two killing.

At least they didn't put in that annoying "you were interrupted while sleeping" thing.

To be fair resting/killing enemies was a nominal experience gain compared to booting people out and memming/deleting spells.. or infinite range giant spam In saradush, or pickpocketing that amulet from that one summon for gold. I always dug the NWN modules that had limited resting.

I tried the temple with my main monk, the wizard and fighter from the town all at level 3.. I could kill the shaedes but it was painful.. I went back to the inn and hired a level 1 cipher and level 1 chanter and went straight back and that made it much more doable. They are both really good classes. When the shades teleport to my squishes i just run them away, the mobs give up and go back to the tanks pretty quickly.

Is the stronghold stuff as in depth as it looks? I think I'm in love.

Only problem I have with the limited resting in PoE is that it makes wizard and priest strictly inferior to cipher and chanter, when they are already of questionable use even if you don't consider the per-rest limitations. Druid is the only per-rest spell caster I feel is done correctly, and the only one I ended up using a hireling on.

Vorph_sl said:

Only problem I have with the limited resting in PoE is that it makes wizard and priest strictly inferior to cipher and chanter, when they are already of questionable use even if you don't consider the per-rest limitations. Druid is the only per-rest spell caster I feel is done correctly, and the only one I ended up using a hireling on.

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Yeah I actually like the look of the druid - reminds me of the Vanguard druid - less hippy tree huggy heal bot, more tear your ass open with lightning and thorns and claws. (interestingly, the made a similar change in the IWDEE by adding a ton of offensive spells to the druid, but most of them are too restrictive or have too long a cast time to be viable for constant use, which is a shame).

Might try a druid reroll, see if I enjoy that more, if it sucks, guess there's always patches/mods in 6 months time.

Gilgamel_sl said:

Is the stronghold stuff as in depth as it looks? I think I'm in love.

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I looks pretty good all told, I am about to complete my dungeon. I have the barracks, some general defenses - hired 8 mercenaries to man the place. I'm enjoying it for what it is, and if it continues to surprise me - that's rad too.

Without limited resting, where would any kind of challenge be? The spells are the most powerful tools you have by far. I'm not sure I agree that if there was infinity casting that that would be a superior system. I always go back to the same thing though, why do people spend so much time treating a single player story rpg as something that needs mmo levels of class balance. I agree that maybe you prefer the way other classes play certainly and in the case of the rogue I will take personal posts in this thread as fact that their mechanics are just not working right, but its not as if a wizard priest party can't easily accomplish the game with a slightly different set of tools. Limited resting is a consequence of not having to heal the shit out of your party after combat with memorized spells - requiring you to rest if you wanted any more heals.

Maybe certain classes(companions) are inferior in some absolute sense - but they aren't irrelevant and if you can use them to complete the game isn't that the agreement anyways? I prefer hearing about the companions everyone enjoyed the most versus which companion did 9999 dps. The soul of what I love about these games is the depth of the wrapping not the precision of the combat. There are many other genre's of game where the precision and balance of the combat system is absolutely the most relevant point, but this kind of isometric RPG it definitely is not that place to me personally. When I look back fondly on BG2, I don't really think much about which companion could beat the other companion in a fight.

"Which side were you on?"

"The one that blew up my god."

Dandain_sl said:

I looks pretty good all told, I am about to complete my dungeon. I have the barracks, some general defenses - hired 8 mercenaries to man the place. I'm enjoying it for what it is, and if it continues to surprise me - that's rad too.

Without limited resting, where would any kind of challenge be? The spells are the most powerful tools you have by far. I'm not sure I agree that if there was infinity casting that that would be a superior system. I always go back to the same thing though, why do people spend so much time treating a single player story rpg as something that needs mmo levels of class balance. I agree that maybe you prefer the way other classes play certainly and in the case of the rogue I will take personal posts in this thread as fact that their mechanics are just not working right, but its not as if a wizard priest party can't easily accomplish the game with a slightly different set of tools. Limited resting is a consequence of not having to heal the shit out of your party after combat with memorized spells - requiring you to rest if you wanted any more heals.

Maybe certain classes(companions) are inferior in some absolute sense - but they aren't irrelevant and if you can use them to complete the game isn't that the agreement anyways? I prefer hearing about the companions everyone enjoyed the most versus which companion did 9999 dps. The soul of what I love about these games is the depth of the wrapping not the precision of the combat. There are many other genre's of game where the precision and balance of the combat system is absolutely the most relevant point, but this kind of isometric RPG it definitely is not that place to me personally. When I look back fondly on BG2, I don't really think much about which companion could beat the other companion in a fight.

"Which side were you on?"

"The one that blew up my god."

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It's not about balance, it's about gameplay. When I roll a wizard as my main character (and end up with a second one as my first party member) and he/they spends most fights autoattacking with his wand after dropping 2 shitty, short range, per-encounter AOE's because I have to choose between having fun throwing fire and magic missiles around or not having to run back to town every 45 minutes, that's just plain shitty and boring. The fun part of having a spellcaster in your party is casting the fucking spells, and artificial limits which intentionally make sure I spend most of my combat timenotcasting spells goes against the entire purpose of the class. If that means they make the spells weaker so we can spam them more often, fine, but any mechanic which prevents a class from fulfilling it's specific gameplay/lore/general image role is a bad mechanic. Imagine if rogues could only spend 2 minutes in stealth before needing to rest? They'd have to choose between being a shitty warrior-lite or running back to town every 45 minutes, and that would... suck!

So does might affect ranged weapons? This is like 3.5... except when it isn't.

I agree with you about one thing, Eder should have been the first companion and not required you to rest at the inn before he would join you. But beyond that I'm not sure that suggesting that playing the game with only 2 mages (with a party limit of 6) is the most genuine way to express your full commentary about gameplay. My experience does not match the one you express.

Palum_sl said:

So does might affect ranged weapons? This is like 3.5... except when it isn't.

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Might increases all damage types, including spells. Its part of their stat design to allow any character archtype you want to deal more damage. The documentation in game is good within the journal.

Wizards never got to cast continually though, not any any BG game, not in any D&D version. I dont know what you expected but casters always start slow and end up absolutely amazing later. It seems more of a misunderstanding of how the traditional caster classes played.

They need cantrips.

This a co-op?

When you get higher level, some of the caster lower level spells upgrade to per encounter instead of per rest. I agree that casters are a bad choice for a main character, but they are certainly powerful. None of the other classes can do things like aoe nuke for 50 damage, dealing like 400+ damage in a single spell during a big pull.

If my druid could drop a hail storm on every single combat, it would totally overshadow the rest of my dps. I don't mind that for the basic, trash mobs, my druid just sits in the back shooting a wand for minimal damage while my rogue/ranger clean up. I know when I turn that corner and run into a pack of 6 monsters, my druid's about to carry the team with some devastating aoe.