Pillars of Eternity

[TimJames]

I thought that the camping supplies system was elegant and a good balance between endless camp/save and on we go and die/reload.

It’s either tolerable or something to cheat past, and I think everyone has stated their preference in the thread, but let’s never call it elegant.

No, I don’t have a better solution.

[robc04]

So is there any way to get an accurate number of hours played if I’ve left the game paused for dozens of hours?

[stusser]

It’s either tolerable or something to cheat past, and I think everyone has stated their preference in the thread, but let’s never call it elegant.

It’s a perfectly elegant solution, if you want attrition to be part of the game. My complaint isn’t in how they implemented limited rest, but that it’s coupled to combat difficulty.

[phero.1]

So is there any way to get an accurate number of hours played if I’ve left the game paused for dozens of hours?

lol, I have the same problem. No real clue as to how long I’ve REALLY played.

[Scuzz]

So I’m on the last fight. The numbers in this fight are just beyond the pale.

It’s like fighting the end boss of Throne of Bhaal. With your dudes from Sword Coast.

The Melissan fight? I hated that fight, unfair as hell. Played to that point three times and only ever won “legally” once.

[Blips]

have a dozen quests and the second major city yet to even start exploring,

Out of curiosity, are those quests that you’ve accepted or is there a statistics screen that display the total number of quests and such?

[inactive_user]

I haven’t checked the Endless Paths at all though they are open to me – are they post-game, or during-game, or some mix?

[stusser]

They’re during game, but you won’t finish them the first time. They’re designed so you start playing, progress until you run into 17 angry green dragons in a room entirely made out of acid, and decide to come back with a few more levels under your belt.

[Scotch_Lufkin]

Out of curiosity, are those quests that you’ve accepted or is there a statistics screen that display the total number of quests and such?

Yeah, they are quests actively open in my journal, and to top it off I’ve only done ONE companion quest to completion, maybe two (not sure), and the one I thought I’d wrapped up had a crazy wrinkle when I talked to said companion (randomly) back at the Stronghold. Right back into the party he went! I suspect there is WAAAY more quests than there are XP to be had though, so whatever I don’t get to this play through will get prioritized for a second play through.

One thing you can’t deny, you definitely get your money’s worth with this one.

Also, now I’m finally making my through the endless dungeon, I’m finding there are some quests/tasks to find in here, too. I just got to level 6, it took me 45 minutes is all, but I’m level 10 and clearly should have been here much earlier. I’m sure I can’t get all the way to level 15 though, not at level 10.

[quarryman]

Any other wusses like me playing on Easy difficulty?

I’m in it for the experience rather than the micro-management. Thoroughly enjoying it so far. I’d like to think I’ll be pushed a bit harder in more important battles down the road though. So far, I don’t have to do much scouting or tactics.

[Scotch_Lufkin]

Try it on Normal, you’ll be surprised how much better you get at the game’s combat when you have to think strategically, and you can always scale back to Easy if you feel overwhelmed, too.

[krayzkrok]

It’s a perfectly elegant solution, if you want attrition to be part of the game. My complaint isn’t in how they implemented limited rest, but that it’s coupled to combat difficulty.

But it is part of combat difficulty though, and how you ration your per-rest resources that are required for the harder fights. I’m sure that was their reason behind it. Still, I don’t disagree with you, having a separate option for camping supplies would have been great (too few people copy the System Shock formula of having difficulty settings for different gameplay aspects).

I made the mistake of thinking that if I put my camping supplies into my stash, I could grab them later (because, you know, it specifically stops you from putting them in a character’s inventory). Nope. All gone. Still, I’m playing on Normal and still close enough to the inn that the trek back there isn’t a problem, but later on down some dungeon it might hurt.

[zombo77]

This game has some the best dungeon design in a CRPG ever. Just when you think you’ve seen it all you run into another gem and a random, minor side quest leads into a sprawling dungeon. 2015 is still young but I think I’ve already found my game of the year.

[Murbella]

The problem with linking camping resources to difficulty is it exponentially hurts spell casters. Not only do their spells help out less because enemies are stronger and (depending on difficulty) more common, but they also can use their spells less frequently.

I tried messing with a wizard again after getting to level 4 and being able to recruit level 3 custom npcs. I still can’t understand why anyone would take one of these on path of the damned.

[mok]

The problem with linking camping resources to difficulty is it exponentially hurts spell casters.

That’s a great point.

[Granath]

So has anyone completed the game yet? I’ve heard some very conflicting game length times. Apparently some people on steam have already beat the game twice?

Yes. 45 hours for me and I completed most but not all quests.

The final fight was not enjoyable for me. It was far too difficult.
HINT FOR END FIGHT

- take two tanks in the final dungeon as you will need them -

This felt very much like Baldurs Gate 1 to me. BG2 was truly epic in scope and story. BG1 was good but not great. BG1 was more condensed with less imaginative locations, fewer epic tales, a main story that is not quite as well told, a villain who is not quite a well fleshed out and so forth. I felt much like that in Pillars. The locations, dungeons, monsters and so forth were well done but felt a bit generic at times. There were some good quests but very few I felt were memorable. So it was an exceptionally solid RPG experience but not a great one in my opinion. It is like they are growing into the universe and combat system and another game would perfect these and allow them to concentrate on making the story even more epic.

A couple of gripes I have -

Even after almost 50 hours I do not have a grasp of the combat systems and how they interact. I feel like someone who was playing BG2 but had never played D&D before. I was confused and never did grasp it. For example there are supposed to be lines from enemies showing which characters they are engaged with but I never saw them (like on page 4 of this: http://www.pcgamer.com/pillars-of-eternity-a-beginners-guide-to-combat/ what are they talking about as I can not tell who is engaged with who), quite often spells or abilities would not trigger and I do not know why even if my character was not engaged, there were so many priest talents I never did figure out which ones if any were any decent, there are different types of damage but I have no idea what does what and a few other issues like that. To be fair I did not spend a ton of time trying to research these because I figured that I would eventually understand.

Itemization was incredibly poor or again this is a concept I did not understand. It seemed that I only had two levels of enchants so that aspect was exceptionally limited. Some regular items hit harder than supposedly fine ones. I was rarely excited to find another piece of gear. In some cases I found no upgrades at all. For instance I never found an upgrade for Kana Rua’s gun. Not one in probably 30 hours of him being in my group. I think I found only one other “fine” gun like his the entire game. I did not understand what most of the potions were supposed to do so I rarely tried them. Same with food. Since I did not understand the combat system, the situational nature of potions and food remained a mystery.

I did not think the main story was told particularly well and often I did not know quite what was going on. There may have been story queues that I missed but for instance there is a certain ghost that speaks to you in depth in the end of the tale (that character reveals the whole story) who I really did not have a clue about until seemingly well into the 3rd Act. I still do not know if I just entirely missed something or where/how she fit in. It was an interesting tale but I was not very emotionally invested in it because I had no awareness of this character for the first 30+ hours of playing. Rather than playing an epic tale, I am more confused about the ending than anything else.

These things detracted from my enjoyment of the game since the story and combat are pretty major points but not enough for me to not have an overall favorable impression of the game and a desire to play it again sometime.

[krayzkrok]

I know when I’m really, really enjoying a game; I want to take everything really slowly, I read every bit of flavour text and lore that I can, and I almost don’t look forward to completing areas because that puts me just that bit closer to the experience being over. I’ll stop playing each night after a couple of hours, just so I don’t play too much at once. I will readily admit that I’m weird.

[robc04]

Wow they really ratcheted up the number of enemies in a battle. The battle still isn’t hard, but it’s impossible to retain control of the battlefield. I need to take greater care in having folks stay put and keep to entryways.

I must have at least played 20+ hours and I’m still in Act I. Not complaining, but how did some of you finish so fast. Do you skip a lot of the reading? I don’t read all item descriptions, like the plants and gems, but I’ve read all the books and some of the other items.

[phero.1]

Was checking out Eric Fenstermaker’s(Obsidian writer) Twitter, he re-tweeted this gem: https://twitter.com/ninabuttmonkey/status/577957408368029697

Also, this was brilliant:

[olaf]

Its interesting so many of you don’t like the Chanter system - You are of course aware that his chants go on from the beginning of the combat, right? Also that you can change his chants to offensive chants?
I find , like many of you, that the easy battles are over before I think about using his summons, but there are tough fights, like the castle attacks, the bounties (Dear lord!!) and some random encounters that are VERY tough, where his continuing buffs are a godsend, so to speak, and his summons are quite useful.

I switched my mage out for a cipher, but haven’t had much of a chance to use it yet. The spells seems more utilitarian that offensive - is that correct?

Chanters are towards the bottom of current class power rankings, IMO. The chants are pretty trivial in what they do and 9 of 10 fights are over before you can cast an invocation and have it actually influence the fight. I like them better than Wizards but Druids and Ciphers crush them in terms of overall power.

I get that it could be more prominent, but since I click on each of my characters in pause every second or so of combat, it’s not exactly a huge issue. When you select your chanter, it’s pretty obvious because the chant icons are lit up.

And that is just one of the reasons why the combat system should have been turn based. Honestly I can not imagine doing what you say, checking each party member once a second on pause…but even that level of micro does not afford you the control you would have in a turn based system. With a hell of a lot less tedium.

The “blindingly obvious thing” is that attrition (=supplies) should be a separate difficulty setting from combat challenge. I want “hard” level combat, but I don’t want to hoard my abilities.

“You’re playing the wrong game” is a bullshit internet bad-faith response. “Don’t like it, don’t play!” is not valid. Fuck anyone who says this sort of thing. We’re here because we love the game, but we don’t think it’s perfect.

Baldur’s Gate had limited AI. Pillars of Eternity would be a better game for many of us if it offered something similar. Enjoy micromanagement? Cool, turn off the AI. Same experience for you, better one for me.

Yeah I would really appreciate some of the difficulty/tedium settings being broken up more. I would love to play on Path of the Damned with respect to mob density/level increase, but fuck that single save start over if you die bullshit. And yeah of course supplies. I do not think they should be unlimited but 2 on Hard is just dumb. Some maps/dungeons are really in the sticks and getting back to the place where you can buy 2 more supplies is not hard, its just tedious. That said…there is a balance issue here. If you can rest every fight, and just unload your whole spellbook with a Druid, Priest or Wizard then there is really no reason for Ciphers and Chanters to be in your party.

I think I found a “reset” for the missing (and haunting) status effects. I was previously effected by some sort of insect swarm giving my main party a perpetual -20 Concentration, plus I hadn’t seen the racial Battle-forged ability on my Monk since basically last Thursday. I swapped out and back in the party members and that fixed them, looks like, but how to fix my main character?

On a whim I beat him to death.

Of course, he didn’t die (I have “maim before death” enabled) but he did get maimed. However, when he stood back up I looked and his reduction in concentration and other strange active effects were gone! Best of all, I saw his Battle Forged kick in again! So hopefully that works for others, as well.

An auto-pause when a Chanter hits a specific threshold (ala a slide bar) would be awesome. I don’t know how many fights I ended with a Chanter sitting on like 4 chants.

Great find. I will try that tonight, a code red on my PC. And yes they definitely need to add a chanted counter auto-pause threshold into the auto-pause options.

I know when I’m really, really enjoying a game; I want to take everything really slowly, I read every bit of flavour text and lore that I can, and I almost don’t look forward to completing areas because that puts me just that bit closer to the experience being over. I’ll stop playing each night after a couple of hours, just so I don’t play too much at once. I will readily admit that I’m weird.

I have a similar problem but for me, when I really love a game, I find myself spending as much time scouring message boards reading about and discussing the game as I do playing it. In fact for POE, especially considering the time I had playing the backer beta vs reading about/talking about, I know I have spent more time on message boards for the game than actually playing the game.