Train of Midnight
Banned
Oh, I just murdered everyone instead, LOL
Sounds like you're looking for a melee rogue.
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Pillars of Eternity |OT| You must gather your party before venturing forth.
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
Oh, I just murdered everyone instead, LOL
nrvalleytime
Member
Whoops - meant to create a thread.
LurkerPrime
Member
Don't do it. It's already been discussed. The so-called controversy is really overblown when both sides - Obsidian and the backer - agreed to the change.
Pewpewlazors99
Member
Thanks
I was prompted by the Grieving Mother and she said like "Don't let this happen, I can help her. So I wasn't sure if you meant stop the girl from walking away, or what
Retaliation question
I've heard there are 4 pieces in the game, does anyone know how to get the clock? Or where you can get Vengiatta Rugia?
Double dagger rogue with Two weapon Style is probably your best bet.
nrvalleytime
Member
Crap. Too late. I tried searching for threads, but only found kick-starter related discussions.
Oh well. It'll probably die quickly.
Raphael
Member
Melee rogues just chop down fools. It's so great I'm not even sure who to play on my second playthrough as I feel it will be subpar.
You just have to watch out for the agro of the 90-150 dmg hits.
Well, it's lower for a at least half way through, but still You get into this ballpark for a sginificant part of the game. Depends also on the enemy.
The only barbarian report I saw had to use an actual game bug (
you can apparently reset your autoattack to attack at crazy speeds
The rogue person said they were able to do it with shadowing beyond and running around very fast, but I don't think they had a video and didn't seem to want to send their save file to Obsidian (who had requested it if anyone got solo triple crown) as far as I saw.
From your description? Wait for a sale.
Raphael
Member
Buy it right now. It takes the best from all of those worlds. The writting may not be PST tier, scale of the world is not BG2 tier, but it's the best overall IMO. It's GOTY material for sure.
EDIT: Oh, and for me, the party members are the best part of the game. Eder is the best bro You can think of.
EDIT2: And besides Obsidian deserves Your money more than anyone for this effort. I should not really comment on this as I got it for free from Noivern's giveaway (thanks a lot dude!), but I will make sure to buy every single DLC there is. It has it's flaws, but it's still that good.
I enjoyed it a lot more than BG2 and a bit more than DA:O so I dunno, if you're not particularly low on cash, I think you should give the game a try.
If you're not sure, It hink you can wait, so maybe there will be more patches/upgrades/mods make your experience better.
hemtae
Member
It's been a few days since I finished and I've gathered my thoughts about it and let the hype recede.
Dislikes
-The engagement system. The game is probably better off with it than it is without it but I think thats just because it was designed with that in mind in the first place and that it causes just as many problems as it solves. I think it was made to alleviate the issues of frontline control in the IE games which is a noble goal. There are times in the IE games where I put a few people in front a door thinking theyve been placed perfectly one for an enemy to push my guys out of the way and beat on my squishy team members. That problem doesnt really exist with the engagement system but it also does away with a large amount of moment-to-moment planning in combat. Instead focus is shifted towards the positioning before the fight begins. If things go well the first few seconds of the fight, then great and you can pretty much keep doing what youre doing but if things dont, then its really hard to right the ship when your characters are attached to a complex series of engagement tethers.
-Itemization. It isnt really bad so much as its really boring. The unique items are fine by themselves I suppose, the problem is that the enchantment system lets you create items that are pretty much on par with the unique items so without combat XP, the only reason to explore and clear out areas and dungeons is because it was in the quest log. Dragon Age: Inquisition had a somewhat similar problem with itemization in that its crafting system made all the other items completely obsolete but it had a more robust crafting system. Its other problem was that items could be boiled down to one stat and were class-restricted unlike Pillars of Eternity but whatever. Underrail does itemization right with a robust crafting system like DA: I but without the MMO-esque gathering of ingredients, and it also has the great unique items unlike Pillars of Eternity.
-Encounter design. Like itemization, it isnt terrible just boring. It isnt Dragon Age: Origins levels of trash mobs everywhere that required no thought or god forbid Dragon Age 2s wave based encounters that trivialized positioning but it definitely isnt at Baldurs Gate 2 level of encounters. The engagement system has some blame here since it shifted focus to the opening part of combat instead of any moment-to-moment planning so encounters are all mostly defeated with the same strategy leading to it feeling the same. Then there is Sawyers dislike of hard counters which I feel turns effects that would necessitate a strategy change into something thats more of a mild annoyance. Its due to this reason that I think the fampyr fights are some of the best in the game which, until I got the level six priest spells, was basically trying to kill them before they could charm multiple members of the party.
-The stronghold. This is the only one that I think is truly bad through and through. During the documentary video, Sawyer said they were kind of making things up as they go along and it does look like they didnt really have a good idea of how to fit in the stronghold in this game. Outside of the stronghold, only one character to my knowledge even acknowledges you as owner of it. It seems to serve three purposes to me none of which justifies it. Its a place of free rest with a small bonus. Its a money sink but doesnt get you much. Certainly a really good item could be made that costs however much money all the upgrades cost. Its a place where you can gather your companions which probably could have just as easily been done in the same way as the companions that are created at an inn. Then the prison and breakout system was woefully underused.
-Story and writing niggles. Generally speaking, the story and writing were well above average for video games and RPGs even if it wasnt at the level of Planescape: Torment or Mask of the Betrayer but there were still some stuff that annoyed me.
Likes
-Character System. First I have to thank Obsidian for not falling into the whole modern trap of good character customization means having a face editor with a bazillion options and then nothing else. The attributes are well designed and support a wide range of builds even if they seem unintuitive at first. Every build within a class isnt equally effective, which I think was never really the point, but there are more viable builds within the classes than the IE games. The skills system also allows for a wider range in party composition. A rogue is no longer required (as evidenced by the fact that theres no rogue companions) since anybody can put points into mechanics and then disarm traps and open locks. The talents further the ability to build viable characters from an unconventional attribute spread although the lack of metamagic feats and a somewhat lackluster spell list might make wizards feel a bit dull. Lastly the endurance system and per encounter abilities reduced the need to rest spam while health, camping supplies and per rest abilities still kept some resource management.
-Roleplaying. While it may not have been used to its fullest potential regarding reactivity, the role playing system is still top notch. Attributes, skills, which god you follow, class, background, race, and culture are all checked in dialogue (the last two probably not enough). Then there are the dispositions and faction reputations you build up during the game and checked during some of the dialogue. Quest wise, its great. Even the simplest of quests often have the quest giver intentionally leaving out or giving misleading information or the quest will take a slight curve. Theres mostly never just a be a good guy or a bad guy resolution to it. Thats all while it incorporates the attributes, skills, reputation, and dispositions mentioned before and even if you pass those checks they arent always an instant win button. Then there are the choices that allowed me to flush out my characters back story. They dont really have a gameplay purpose but it was nice to see them fill in my characters biography.
I still agree with what I said before in that Pillars of Eternity is better than BG1 and modern Bioware's attempt at an IE revival with Dragon Age: Origins. It is still surpassed by Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate 2, and Mask of the Betrayer but those aren't really bad games to have above you. Now that Obsidian has an engine, ruleset, and setting to work with, I'm expecting epic things from Pillars of Eternity 2.
Dislikes
-The engagement system. The game is probably better off with it than it is without it but I think thats just because it was designed with that in mind in the first place and that it causes just as many problems as it solves. I think it was made to alleviate the issues of frontline control in the IE games which is a noble goal. There are times in the IE games where I put a few people in front a door thinking theyve been placed perfectly one for an enemy to push my guys out of the way and beat on my squishy team members. That problem doesnt really exist with the engagement system but it also does away with a large amount of moment-to-moment planning in combat. Instead focus is shifted towards the positioning before the fight begins. If things go well the first few seconds of the fight, then great and you can pretty much keep doing what youre doing but if things dont, then its really hard to right the ship when your characters are attached to a complex series of engagement tethers.
-Itemization. It isnt really bad so much as its really boring. The unique items are fine by themselves I suppose, the problem is that the enchantment system lets you create items that are pretty much on par with the unique items so without combat XP, the only reason to explore and clear out areas and dungeons is because it was in the quest log. Dragon Age: Inquisition had a somewhat similar problem with itemization in that its crafting system made all the other items completely obsolete but it had a more robust crafting system. Its other problem was that items could be boiled down to one stat and were class-restricted unlike Pillars of Eternity but whatever. Underrail does itemization right with a robust crafting system like DA: I but without the MMO-esque gathering of ingredients, and it also has the great unique items unlike Pillars of Eternity.
-Encounter design. Like itemization, it isnt terrible just boring. It isnt Dragon Age: Origins levels of trash mobs everywhere that required no thought or god forbid Dragon Age 2s wave based encounters that trivialized positioning but it definitely isnt at Baldurs Gate 2 level of encounters. The engagement system has some blame here since it shifted focus to the opening part of combat instead of any moment-to-moment planning so encounters are all mostly defeated with the same strategy leading to it feeling the same. Then there is Sawyers dislike of hard counters which I feel turns effects that would necessitate a strategy change into something thats more of a mild annoyance. Its due to this reason that I think the fampyr fights are some of the best in the game which, until I got the level six priest spells, was basically trying to kill them before they could charm multiple members of the party.
-The stronghold. This is the only one that I think is truly bad through and through. During the documentary video, Sawyer said they were kind of making things up as they go along and it does look like they didnt really have a good idea of how to fit in the stronghold in this game. Outside of the stronghold, only one character to my knowledge even acknowledges you as owner of it. It seems to serve three purposes to me none of which justifies it. Its a place of free rest with a small bonus. Its a money sink but doesnt get you much. Certainly a really good item could be made that costs however much money all the upgrades cost. Its a place where you can gather your companions which probably could have just as easily been done in the same way as the companions that are created at an inn. Then the prison and breakout system was woefully underused.
-Story and writing niggles. Generally speaking, the story and writing were well above average for video games and RPGs even if it wasnt at the level of Planescape: Torment or Mask of the Betrayer but there were still some stuff that annoyed me.
The main drive behind the story is finding a man with answers about who you were to avoid going crazy which is an inevitable side effect of being a Watcher. To show that, there are a few times where your companions will initiate dialogue telling you how poorly you slept. Yet, I would still have no fatigue and no sort of penalty or anything to show that was the case. What is also weird is that this is a problem Obsidian has already solved before with the Spirit meter in Mask of the Betrayer. That system had stat penalties the closer you got towards zero and showed clearly the degenerative effect of the curse placed on you. It also had the added benefit of preventing rest spamming. Then there was the very end of Act 2. The trial part was very well done I thought with people reacting to your dispositions and who you were invited with and what you were saying. But then none of that really has a gameplay effect as Thaos kills the Duc with an ability you knew about but couldnt say, the city riots and destroys the Sanitarium, and the Hadret House gets completely destroyed and theres nothing to do about anything. Yay for plot railroads.
Likes
-Character System. First I have to thank Obsidian for not falling into the whole modern trap of good character customization means having a face editor with a bazillion options and then nothing else. The attributes are well designed and support a wide range of builds even if they seem unintuitive at first. Every build within a class isnt equally effective, which I think was never really the point, but there are more viable builds within the classes than the IE games. The skills system also allows for a wider range in party composition. A rogue is no longer required (as evidenced by the fact that theres no rogue companions) since anybody can put points into mechanics and then disarm traps and open locks. The talents further the ability to build viable characters from an unconventional attribute spread although the lack of metamagic feats and a somewhat lackluster spell list might make wizards feel a bit dull. Lastly the endurance system and per encounter abilities reduced the need to rest spam while health, camping supplies and per rest abilities still kept some resource management.
-Roleplaying. While it may not have been used to its fullest potential regarding reactivity, the role playing system is still top notch. Attributes, skills, which god you follow, class, background, race, and culture are all checked in dialogue (the last two probably not enough). Then there are the dispositions and faction reputations you build up during the game and checked during some of the dialogue. Quest wise, its great. Even the simplest of quests often have the quest giver intentionally leaving out or giving misleading information or the quest will take a slight curve. Theres mostly never just a be a good guy or a bad guy resolution to it. Thats all while it incorporates the attributes, skills, reputation, and dispositions mentioned before and even if you pass those checks they arent always an instant win button. Then there are the choices that allowed me to flush out my characters back story. They dont really have a gameplay purpose but it was nice to see them fill in my characters biography.
I still agree with what I said before in that Pillars of Eternity is better than BG1 and modern Bioware's attempt at an IE revival with Dragon Age: Origins. It is still surpassed by Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate 2, and Mask of the Betrayer but those aren't really bad games to have above you. Now that Obsidian has an engine, ruleset, and setting to work with, I'm expecting epic things from Pillars of Eternity 2.
Raedric was easier than I expected even on hard.
It went way smoother than I thought it would and no one really lost any significant endurance, it was really fun.
Fun fact
I left his keep until last in Gilded Vale and had Eder, Durance, Kana and Aloth with me all at level 4, cleared out the Dungeon first and then tackled the keep from the vines after that and worked my way through all the guards, eventually his entire castle was cleaned out and then I placed my character at the main door leading into Raedric's hall, with Durance, Aloth and Kana behind me. I used Eder and the others to set up traps along the stairs and then while everyone was waiting at the main entrance, I had Eder use his warbow to trigger the fight and quickly run down to the door next to my character, so we were both ready to go. A couple of wizards ate shit on the traps and the surviving ones were pretty banged up, so my character and Eder faught the Paladins at the door while everyone bunched up behind them trying to reach us. From there I just had Durance buffing the Party and had Aloth and Kana firing shots at the mages behind the Paladins to pick them off, Kana would summon skeletons whenever he could and I used that horn figurine to have Durance summon an animat behind the enemies, the Animat distracted everyone for awhile and eventually it and Raedric had their own fight off to the side, eventually Raedric was the last enemy standing, so my party piled on to him.
It went way smoother than I thought it would and no one really lost any significant endurance, it was really fun.
Fun fact
Raedric is part of the Bleak Walkers
LurkerPrime
Member
Your pros and cons are agreeable, though the encounter niggle doesn't make sense to me because it's just a cleaner implementation of D&D's Attack of Opportunity system. Anyways, I also agree that Pillars 2 should be fantastic.
FYI, there's a Pillars spoiler thread. I feel like you'd have good stuff to say there.
I don't think this is an issue with the engagement rules at all, actually. This is striclty an encounter design/AI issue.
The AI should be able to prioritize certian targets in certain circumstances, over not drawing an attack of opportunity. But it doesn't. As soon as an attack of opportunity becomes a possibility, that mob stays put.
Encouters where you have to contend with enemies coming at you from different sides are almost non existent. And there ar eonly a couple of creatures with abilities to bypass front line fighters, or who ar ewilling to target squishier NPC's with ranged weaponry.
hemtae
Member
The only other RTwP games I've played with AoO were the Neverwinter Nights games which weren't the best combat systems ever. D&D is turn based where AoO exist to approximate simultaneous action which isn't really necessary in real time games for obvious reasons.
Also I have posted in the spoiler thread
. Most of my issues were with gameplay stuff so I posted it here but I'll post the story/writing thing there as well.An AI overhaul would probably make it a lot better (I think I got two disengagement attacks against enemies the whole game) but I'm not sure more ambush encounters would change things significantly. For me, it would just make it so I used two strategies to beat 90% of the encounters instead of 1.
Shake Appeal
Member
Yes. Fixes the camera bug.
famfrit
Member
How big is the script of Pillars of Eternity ?
Reference for comparison:
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn - 1.000.000 words
Planescape: Torment - 800.000 words
Dragon Age: Origins
1,000,000 Words
1,000 Cinematics
1,000 Characters
56,000 Spoken Lines
60 Hours of Gameplay
Dragon Age II
400,000 Words
2,500 Cinematics
500 Characters
38,000 Spoken Lines
40 Hours of Gameplay
Reference for comparison:
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn - 1.000.000 words
Planescape: Torment - 800.000 words
Dragon Age: Origins
1,000,000 Words
1,000 Cinematics
1,000 Characters
56,000 Spoken Lines
60 Hours of Gameplay
Dragon Age II
400,000 Words
2,500 Cinematics
500 Characters
38,000 Spoken Lines
40 Hours of Gameplay
Depends whether you count backer content or not I think
it's obviously closer to Dragon Age than Final Fantasy... but it's also a good introduction to RTWP combat (and, generally, Infinity Engine-style games), especially because the presentation isn't as obscure or noob-unfriendly as the old IE games. It contains refinements on that formula and some changes that most hardcore RPG players would consider "casual pandering" or stuff like that. I'd say go for it, you can start out on "easy" to get the hang of it, learn how to position your party members, when to pause, etc.
Then again, if you're unsure, you can wait until the price goes down a little - but I don't know when that'll happen.
EndcatOmega
Unconfirmed Member
Dragon Age has more words than Pillars? Huh. Would never have guessed.
I'd say Pillars has more words than DA2 but less than Planescape, but until someone spends $900 on Unity we won't know for sure!
I'd say Pillars has more words than DA2 but less than Planescape, but until someone spends $900 on Unity we won't know for sure!
Lanrutcon
Member
Highly highly doubt DA:Origins has a larger script than Torment. There's just no way.
EndcatOmega
Unconfirmed Member
Several different origin stories? I could see it, though 200k more seems a little weird.
Lanrutcon
Member
Torment is the king of 'oh, this quest had several different outcomes and hidden pieces of dialogue if you'd done something seemingly completely unrelated 4 hours ago', to a degree where seeing everything the game has to offer requires a shitload of saved games, research and time. I don't see any way Origins catched up to Torment unless you flub the numbers by counting male/female versions of dialogue as different, text where the racial identifier varies, etc.
Depends on playstyle. You can do a lot of things in 40-50 hours.Around how many hours is this game, if you do most/all of the sidequests? Need to figure out if I can beat it before The Witcher 3 releases. I barely get to play during the week at all with work
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
Its text line count is smaller (its word count for dialogue text is like 750k iirc) but i remember Bioware saying that there was like a million total if you add in all the other text (item descriptions and the like). i dont know what Torments word count would be if you added in all the non-dialogue stuff.
EndcatOmega
Unconfirmed Member
Okay that's cheating.
Lanrutcon
Member
Now it makes sense.
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/02/25/news-tidbits-dragon-age-origins.aspx
Also the dev achievements lol
Also the dev achievements lol
Ok thanks. I've about 13 hours done in around a week so should get there.
Where was it, out of interest?
Just 12 hours in, so yeah pretty early. It's at Raedric's Keep.
There's like 11 people waiting out here (probably more). You take on the first 4 or so first, then the other ones are waiting up above where I'm standing.
I haven't really played RPGs like this, so it was a little overwhelming at first. Ended up just sitting down and reading every spell I had and just pausing a lot to get the right ones off.
It felt great and it's making me love the game because I have to be very focused now.
Oh awesome, I got a similar email too just now! (Finland)
No mention of the weight, I backed the basic collector's edition
so, finished. Extremely good game, with some quibbles that go way back to my beef with Obsidian, since they're always the same ones. A bit on the short side, took me 56 hours to finish all quests, missions and events and all fifteen floors of Od Nua, I only failed
but loved almost every minute of it. Two instances gave me some real big frustration, this is a game that wants you to learn to play. I'm down for a whole serie of those, hopefully POE 2 isn't that far off
the Durance quest at the final boss, and have to figure out why
Lol, I couldn't figure out another way. I went in through the
side of the castle
I know it's pretty much a moot point now but there are
three ways of getting into the keep: 1) left side of the map, scripted storyline point that checks on athletics (climbing up a vine to the top) that leads you to a couple of fights but a stealthy entrance to the second floor; 2) kicking ass through the normal entrance, and 3) right side of the map, there's a hidden-ish path in the moat that leads to the sewers/dungeons directly