Pillars of Eternity

Okay, I was considering posting this a while ago, but somehow never got around to it. Now I have to!

In 2016, Josh Sawyer gave an extensive presentation about PoE’s attribute system at the GDC. Fact of the matter is, they really tried to change up the classic formula. Their primary design goals were “no bad builds” and “no dump stats”. This had interesting ramifications (e.g. class abilities not being tied to attributes) and I think their system actually succeeded in a way. In Divinity Original Sin, for instance, I felt you could easily get stuck with your character built, wheras this seemed like less of a problem in Pillars. I would say this though: Pillars did a terrible (!) job of communicating their design philosophy to new players (when creating my characters, absolutely nothing gave me the idea that a high intelligence barbarian could be awesome). Second point: an overly balanced game isn’t actually all that fun. If everything has little impact, I, as a player, have little impact. Pillars items, for instance, were so overly balanced that I simply didn’t care about them.

The presentation explicitly talks about the “companions are awful” critique at 34:55. It is quite thoughtful, so do check it out.

Last observation: you Americans have an unhealthy obsession with D&D! It seems to be the reference point for just about anything!

The problem is that their system is so convoluted with a UI that just makes it worse. I still don’t really know if a spell I cast that reduces dexterity by 3 does much. I can look at what dexterity affects, but in the heat of combat, it doesn’t mean much to me. How much of an attack speed reduction is that? How much of a reflex deduction is that? They constantly tell me stat adjustments, but I never know how good or bad they are.

To make matters worse the character sheets are a mess of bonuses without giving a summary. Heck, I can enchant a piece of armor to give me a 15% bonus to recovery, but instead of telling me the armor has a 35% recover stat, it tells me on one line it is 50% and then on another line further down that it’s reduced by 15%. I can use a ring of +3 resolve, but it is not reflected on my character sheet. Even worse I can use a cape of +9 deflection, and on some characters my defection doesn’t change, on others it does. Is there some sort of stacking rule I am missing? Is it a bug? The whole UI is a confusing mess.

I really enjoy the game, but I have given up on understanding how it works. I either don’t understand it, or there are still numerous bugs.

Tyranny, while it still has problems, I found it much easier to understand. Really hoping POE2 reflects that.

The stacking rule is: nothing stacks. Literally nothing.

So if your Resolve isn’t showing up, you have other Resolve items. Same for Deflection/Saves. He has some other piece of gear that’s give a Deflection bonus.

The only exception I can think of is shields and feats or whatever they’re called. A shield will stack with a +Deflection ring and so will any feats or abilities, but as far as gear that has just a flat +(whatever) on it, they never stack with each other. A ring of +3 Resolve and a helm of +2 Resolve gives you +3 Resolve, the helm is doing nothing for you at all.

And in fact, in your character sheet will list as being “suppressed” and grayed out.

I’ve had this problem too and it was killing the game for me. Then I started doing some napkin math and suddenly it dawned on me how powerful some of the talents or spells are. 5 accuracy doesn’t sound much but if you have 50 accuracy that’s 10% which is pretty significant - even more so once you realize that all combat rolls are on the same scale. My high PER cypher was mopping the floor with enemies because I stacked accuracy like it was going out of style.

This system unfortunately falls in the same trap as many other RPG systems - you need some meta knowledge about the game and its mechanics to really develop the feel for relative strength of abilities and talents

I don’t hate the Pillars mechanics. That said…

My big problem with the Pillars system is that it’s just not intuitive at all, particularly the stats. Int boosts the size of your Barbarian’s sweep attack because…reasons? Resolve something something deflection? Say what you will about the tenets of Dungeons and Dragons, at least it makes obvious sense on the face of it: Strength lets you hit things harder, Constitution lets you take more hits, Dexterity lets you avoid hits more easily. Yes, Wisdom is a little muddy and no designer in the history of the game has ever had a damn clue what to do about Charisma, but the core slots into place very neatly indeed.

They (Obsidian) very much fell prey to the balance uber alles disease as noted upthread, which I’ve ranted about so very many times in this context and others. But I’m weird…I get stabby when people start worrying about +1 this and -1 that in these kinds of games. Ah well.

Still all in on Pillars 2, obviously.

Thanks. I wish it said suppressed on the inventory screen. At level 15, my character sheet is huge with all the bonus and skills. Guess I missed that.

That would be really helpful.

I got to the point where when I’d equip something I’d watch then numbers on the left side and make sure they changed. If they didn’t I’d know I had something else applying said bonus. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked okay.

I’ve just gotten the el cheapo deal on Steam for the two White March episodes, which passed me by at the time. I very nearly finished the main game and enjoyed it thoroughly, until I suddenly didn’t … I’m enjoying it again now because I’ve forgotten a lot of it, and I can now luxuriate in the new stuff. The rich detail on the story and background side is still something to get lost in.

But all the tweaks and improvements I know nothing about. Can anyone give me a good up-to-date Druid build and general sense of tactics as the game is now? Thankee.

Honestly, since the 2nd White March expansion was the final major overhaul, if I were you I’d Youtube build recommendations. There are a surprising # of videos per class.

Well into it again at lvl 8 now (on Path of the Damned difficulty, using IE Mod mainly for the ChangeClass console command, as I’m constantly fiddling with builds). Fortunately I’d forgotten most of the story bits so it’s all quite fresh again, plus I have the expansions to look forward to now. Woohoo!

I have to say, whatever they did with the game since release they’ve really improved it all-round. I remember the combat being a bit irritating before because of the almost-good-but-not-quite-working engagement mechanic, now it all seems to be much smoother and more enjoyable.

I’ve also done a lot of checking out of build and Youtube advices, and I think I can grasp the mechanics much better than I did before. Like some of you guys above, I had thought the mechanics weird and unintuitive, but now that I’ve got a sense of them, I’m finding it all makes sense nicely. The RPS-ish thing around the attack vs. resistances/DR mechanic is quite satisfying to work with (as someone mentioned above,about gearing up specifically for big fights). About the worst I can say about the system now is that high-Might Wizards and high-Int Barbarians are still a tad immersion-bruising :) Even the stacking makes sense now that I know it tells you when things are “suppressed” and you can shuffle things around (either in terms of gear or spells v spells) so as not to waste anything.

The way they seem to have fixed up the game gives me some confidence in PoE2. It’s a shame the gameplay side of things wasn’t as polished as this on release, it would have probably gotten an ‘A’ all round from everyone (as opposed to the “B+ meh” it got), as the obsessive IE “feel” is definitely there. There really is something magical about beautifully painted isometric settings with your wee characters going about their business.

The “Complete” Edition of Pillars of Eternity is coming to consoles! Kind of a crazy thing.

Gamespot had some hands-on with it looks like.

I haven’t read it, as I have no interest in a console based PoE, but others may, so I hope you enjoy!

That’s pretty amazing, but good god I never want to play any party-based RPG of this style on a console. The management and controls would be a nightmare. Perhaps that feeling is due to my own comfort level with PC vs. console controls, and I rather like consoles for the simple RPGs (D3), but leave anything that requires complex management to the PCs for me.

If you don’t have a decent computer, though, or just want to play PoE away from your desktop, this might be a great way to experience a fantastic game.

Nice!

I’ve been sucked into playing PoE again, and I’m not displeased. I love this game and, although I felt I was done after two plays (187 hours), a break makes it feel good to be back with it. Sorry backlog, you just didn’t excite me.

i have an extra copy to give away and have no takers amongst my IRL friends.

I’ve really tried with this game and just drifted away. If anything I had the opposite experience - everything else in my backlog seemed to be more interesting than this formulaic self-important (yet polished) title.

Do enjoy it more than it’s spiritual successor BG2?

At this point I do, but that’s just my complete sense of “nope” over 2nd edition AD&D after all these years. I love BG&BG2 and have played them both many times, but PoE is new and I like what it’s doing a lot. I can’t wait for PoE2.

But is it just the mechanics that are better (which they probably are) or do prefer the game?

Because it really left me cold and thoroughly bored. I thought maybe it was just rose-tinted glasses but I’ve since gone back and played Icewind Dale 1 and loved every bit of it.

With PoE it’s like they sat down with a checklist and methodically just added the things that they thought needed (probably an inherent problem with Kickstarter really) and the playing experience demonstrates that.