Pillars of Eternity (PoE)
" Wat? PoE fights become boring real quick. No hardcounters that require different tactics, terrible encounter design, ... PoE doesn't have anything that is remotely as fun as BG 2 mage or group vs. group battles. " But at the same time are heavily penalized for movement due to the engagement system. PoEs system fits better to turn based combat imo. " Mental Binding is so much better than any other Cypher spell that the opportunity costs for using other spells is just too high to bother. But the focus mechanic is nice indeed. " I appreciate GGG even more now because they stayed true to diablo 2 while making it even more complex. Pillars is just a modern MMO-like version of the IE games. " I'd recommend it to people who like MMO fight systems or people who played IE games mainly for the story. IE veterans who enjoyed the BG games with the SCS mod or other difficulty mods could wait till PoE is cheap and got decent mods. e: SCS mod (Sword Coast Strategems), not SRS Last edited by Sa_Re on Apr 26, 2015, 4:13:57 PM
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" I hope you don't talk about the classic BG / BG2. The characterlevel adjustments were just too small. If you talk about heavily modded BG/BG I agree but the regular ones weren't difficult.. The most difficult fights in BG were Drizzt you could do with level 4 characters if you sacrificed one(mostly forever), The Deathknight in Durlags Tower which already gave you tons of level ups, The Tanar-Ri in Ulgoths Beard(you already were on a good level), Shandalar(the problem was rather he used Dimension door really soon), Valinor and the greater Werewolf. Modded BG on the other hand did stuff like replacing Fire Arrows with explosive arrows. BG2 also didn't have than many difficult encounters either. Kangaxx(far more difficult that the other Demilich), Firkraag if done early, Drizzt's group. There was the Lich in the Inn, the twisted rune and the temple distict boss some players considered difficult. Demogorgon if the fight dragged on. But the really difficult encounters started through mods. Eclipse group, Torgal(heavy regenation, extremly low armorclass, his claw was a dagger+6, the random bounty hunters, the twisted rune actually got difficult, several empty areas had hasted NPCs added wearing weapons like the silver sword, the kensai mage after you obtained the "well then second best katana" and so on. BG2 had far too strong items. I remember that cloak that got changed in a Patch or if you added ToB. It reflected literally every spell. You equiped your main character with it and beholders imprisoned, killed or petrified themselves. Only modders fixed that because they gave minions either a level adjustment, removed damage caps so a fireball could do far more damage than 6D6 or they received undroppable versions of your items. If you want a challenge you played Hearth of Winter mode in Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale 2 from level 1 on(only worked if you took 1 mage/sorcerer with summons. That was literally the only unmodded classic RPG being difficult. " You realize that those games are actually turnbased but they you don't have to roll dices and end turns manually. " WTF? PoE is a typical classical RPG just like the IE ones. There isn't anything like an MMO there. Maybe you should compare Path of Exile to random MMORPGs and see that it has litarelly most stuff MMORPGs also have. " Do you realize that those fighting systems are all based on PnP rulesets? It doesn't matter if it's Diablo or Baldurs Gate. Story is the keypart or classic RPGs. I don't care about the story in ARPGs, Beat'm ups, Shoot'm ups. Classic RPGs aren't meant to be too difficult. Sure you can make them difficult, by increasign the amount of enemies give them dispell and Areadamage abillities and make bosses so tough that you need to go all in to defeat them. But be aware resources are limited. You know BG2 had several broken classes such as Fighter/Mage(Hybrid), Kensai/Mage(human), Assasin/Fighter(human) and items like AC3 gloves made it even easier. The only overpowered Hybrid was Seamon Havarian and he used crappy items and always ran away. Only mods added AIs with skillsets similar to player ones on a higher level. They started to use those broken class combos. And if you used the Infinity explorer you saw that their stats were far higher than the most difficult bosses. You could also see that the original games had enemies in the game files with higher stats you could only summon with the LUA console, that's why mods like unfinished business exist. The devs deemed those encouters as too difficult, they tested those mobs with codes like DrizztDefends. The original Drizzt is able to kill 2-3 clones(So did Sarevok iirc). But there are ememies in the gamefiles which are able to kill 4-6 in BG1. In BG2 there was another creature which always spawned friendly and could be used to check the difficulty of an encounter. Sure they left the strongest Mage characters in the game which was Kangaxx but they were many strong melee and ranged characters which didn't make it into the game. And the devs certainly didn't think of enounters like the Eclipse encounter like Weimar, which was immune even to timestop. And iirc they didn't even use that powerful items something like +4 weapons. They were only using skills similar to players having a dynamic group and had the skill "Total darkness" but on the other side you had Solaufein. | |
" All you need for a challenging game is the Sword Coast Stratagems mod which mainly improved the AI. It's not so much about the difficulty but that you need to use different tactics vs. different enemy compositions and have many viable options. In PoE every fight basically plays the same with a few exceptions like shadows or spores. " There were a few OP items, true. There were many OP things, like casting web followed by fireballs and rest after every fight. I don't really mind that in a single player game though, you don't compete with anyone and don't have to cheese. Those games gave you a lot to toy with while PoE forces you to stay balanced to a degree which basically means that the devs assume their players have no self control and are not able to avoid things which breaks the game for them. There were many powerful (not broken) "unique" items you could base your chars around which added replayability. PoE is again boring in this regard. " While somewhat true, especially for IE games where a turn lasted 6 seconds, this is a poor argument. In an RTWP environment there are things which are not possible in turn based games, like moving simultaneously. " PoE classes are (supposed to be) balanced as in multiplayer games, have clear roles (fighter = tank, ...) etc. " For me, it's a keypart, not the. Fun, sandbox like tactical combat with interesting encounter design is the most important thing for me in cRPGs. " A decent AI with interesting combat mechanics (like SCS mod with IE's modified AD&D rules) are the best way to create challenging combat. Just bloating stats like PotD is a cheap way. To PoE's defense I gotta say that PotD doesn't feel cheap though, it at least challenges the player to use decent strategies. " Yeah or Ranger/Cleric with Crom Faeyr, a well built Sorcerer, Berserker/Mage (human) etc. I don't see the problem in a single player game with that. If its fun for the player to faceroll the game with them, fine. It's the same thing as rest spamming. A player with a minimum of self control can decide himself how he wants to approach the game. You could play the IE games very different than me while we both have fun. It's not about mindless difficulty. PoE would likely be very difficult if you don't play it as an MMO (tanks - cc - dd). I'm not arguing that Pillars is a bad game, I just find it boring and can't force myself to finish it. It's not trivial on PotD with minimal fedEx sidequesting to not get hopelessly overleveled but every encounter plays like the same and combat gets just tedious for me. I also don't like the story enough to finish it anyway. What I find strange is that people who are very critical with Path of Exile are so lenient with Pillars. I would compare Pillars vs. IE with Diablo 3 vs. Diablo 2. In both cases, the application of "modern design philosophies" made both genres worse. Last edited by Sa_Re on Apr 26, 2015, 4:16:14 PM
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" Fact is modding made BG/BG2 difficult ;) " Web, stinking cloud combos were broken in BG1 because enemies had low stats. Remember the Chess game in Durlags Tower? it punished you with Stinking Clouds, Web and Death Clouds if you didn't move like the piece you are. " TBH aside from games like JA2 there were very few good turn based games and the good ones were far more based on strategy. " How is this any different from BG? Sure there were Hybridclasses. But usually it was like Fighter, Paladin, Ranger(bow ones aside), Berserker are Tankclasses. Monk, Thief were Techclasses Cleric and Bard were buffclasses, especially clerics were mostly healers. Mages/Sorcerers were Casters. Only the druid could be a Caster and a Techclass. " Rangers couldn't wear hammers iirc. Berserker Mage actually wasn't possible(unmodded) I think you mean Barbarian(Special Fightertype with good fighter, but rangerlike skillsets) Mage but aside from halforcs in some mod this hasn't been used that much. " So would BG2. Try defeat Kangaxx without magic protection and without the Ravagerform. The only thing that worked was the berserker sword but that's a +3 weapon. You had to hope to do critical hits and he never uses imprisonement(which is very unlikely) " That's because you look for games that are close to something. Path of Exile in CB gave the D2 feeling but OB+ felt like a generic MMORPG to me. Same with PoE and IE games. It gives you the BG2 feeling. There were many actionbased RPGs sure they were good but if you look at cRPGs, they were below average. Look at NWN or NWN2. NWN got overhyped and everybody received a bugfestival, a D&D 3rd edition ruleset, 1 companion later 2(unless modded) and pretty linear Gameplay. BG and BG2 modding became popular from 2002 to 2007 because the successors were such failures. Bioware tried to push modding in NWN and NWN2 but it never got popular as modding in IE games or ARPG games like Morrowing, F3, Oblivion, New Vegas.... Sure PoE is improveable but this depends on the step of the devs. Several games received a lot of attention in the modding scene because the src has been released. | |
" Yes, because in vanilla, mages used dumb spells although they were supposed to be very intelligent beings, didn't prebuff not even long lasting buffs even when ambushing you, enemies could be sniped using the fog of war, ... The AI in PoE is not that dumb but the devs stated somewhere that a decent AI in those games is not necessary. With a meh AI, you better design interesting enemies and encounters to compensate. " Not arguing which system is better, I'm just saying that I find it strange that they designed a party of 6 system with many per encounter abilities and where movement is punished as an RTWP system. " Rangers could. The reason Ranger/Clerics were OP or very strong is that it would get both cleric and druid spells. So it was a like a Fighter/Cleric on steroids with stoneskin, insect plague (or what it was called) etc. Iirc only the cleric restricts the weapon choices but the juicy flail was definitely the "standard" weapon for that build. Berserker/Mage dualclass was similar to Kensai/Mage. Ofc it was possible in vanilla BG2, it's just a dual class fighter kit to mage. | |
" Rangers never got access to high level Druid spells. The level 3 insects weren't strong the level 5 were strong Iirc Rangers couldn't get level 5+ spells outside of Icewinddale 2 which used D&D 3 ruleset. Cleric restricts were Flail(Flail of Ages), Mace(that upgraded +1 vs undead mace), Hammer(Crom Fayer), Staff(there were tons of strong ones), Sling(only a good few existed but they were also strong), Throwing dart(useless). The items which didn't have powerful version till ToB were Crossbow,Throwing Dart/Dagger, Bastard Swords and Spears. Yeah I made a mistake Berserker is the class kit of fighter not Barbarian. | |
" Yeah but the multiclass ranger/cleric did (not sure about dual class but I think it worked, too) . Noone really knows if it's a bug or feature. " Right, iirc I rolled a ranger/cleric dual wielding flail of ages and crom once, what a beast. The mace was the mace of disruption. That's the kind of interesting, kinda OP but situational unique I miss in PoE. Another example is the +1 attacks scimitar. An example how to not do it is Katanas. All were basically shit except for a stupid OP one you could get very early by randomly slaughtering a group. I think the unfinished business mod added a near invincible NPC that would forcefully demand it back.^^ Last edited by Sa_Re on Apr 27, 2015, 1:33:15 PM
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" Not without mods. You could only multiclass that way in NWN. Classes you could multiclass were Mage, Fighter, Cleric and Thief. But you could have taken a special class as Human. All class combos other races could pick as Hybrids. " Yep Mace of Distruption +4 if you kept the original metal and gave the sculptist a fake. It could kill like every undead with 1 hit(even kangaxx when he didn't use protection from magic weapons) I only found out about it after I read the entire gamescript in Infinity explorer. " That was the cult in the temple district and the katana collector is from the Solaufein Mod. And he was OP because he was a Kensai+Mage. When I played Fighter Mage I actually speced into Katanas because that +3 Katana could be otained early on and with TOB you could upgrade it to +5(side effects) one of the strongest weapons of the game.Well with Solaufein Mod I alsways used the Acid Katana anyway even it only had +4 because the Regeneration+ Ring of Gaxx + that overpowered mirror cloak(even the non reflecting version) made you literally unkillabe unless you were imprisoned. Now thinking about BG2 I think the Hazardeur Class would be the most favorite class of GGG^^ | |
" Nope, both dual- and multiclass ranger/cleric were possible in vanilla BG2. Not sure about BG1, haven't played it without Tutu after the 90s. http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Cleric_/_Ranger http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/258273-baldurs-gate-ii-shadows-of-amn/faqs/39404 " Ah ok, Solaufein mod it was then, an excellent one btw. I guess everyone rolled a F/M with celestial fury at some point, me too ofc. lol But do you see the difference to PoE now after our discussions? So many memorable, unbalanced, fun things to remember from the old BG games. I hope it will be the same with PoE in 10 years after expansion packs,maybe a sequel and mods. The only unique from PoE I remember by name right now is the Disappointer.^^ " So that's how they called the Wild Mage in german, thx google. lol Last edited by Sa_Re on Apr 27, 2015, 3:38:22 PM
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" Then I remember it the wrong way. I remembered it being available an Mods like other uncommon combos like Monk/Thief etc. BG1 was a bit different. My favorite battle in BG1 was if you talked about your heroic deeds many times in that bar(break when he spawns and talk again you could spawn the enemy party over 60 times) While it was easy to kill them with AoE combos it was more difficult to make the allied party survive against 300 NPCs filling the entire pub. Or that Phoenix Guard esteregg in Nashkell when you read the wrong tombstone. " Or you had Valygar in party, dual wielding Katanas even for a +3 weapon the Stunchance and lighting damage were really powerful. " Indeed and Weimar ramped the difficulty so your game actually took months to finish so you had those random Solaufein encounters after nightmares like the Spiderqueen, the Demonhorde or the Ecplipse Gang. The Solaufein romance lore was hilarious btw "I had a nightmare" "Nothing will happen" next time you rest. Surrounded by enemies or teleported into a special location, with the most difficult fights you have ever seen. Sure but BG2 mods became really popular after NWN turned out to be a failure. Maybe they need to work on PoE2 to create a big PoE modding enviroment ;D " Yep. Actually I believed they named him the same way in English too, because him casting the RNG spell could be really hazardous. I actually forgot which polymorphs could be dispelled and which actually meant "Game Over". It would have been more hilarious if you had to finish the game as polymorphed creature and the NPCs had some mocking Dialogue added like "The most powerful child of Bhaal is a Squirrel/Wolf?" "Bhaal was into Bestilality?"(well Dragons actually can tranform into a humanoid Form) |
