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Pillars of Eternity 2 is going turn-based, eight months after launch
- Thread starter BrokenFiction
- Start date
Also only used story characters. Yeah, looking back I made the experience a lot harder for myself.
But it was crazy fun.
Deadfire doesn't fix this entirely, but alleviates it a good deal by one reducing the party size from 6 to 5 and more importantly they completely remade the AI Pathfinding. It's way better, but not perfect. Characters are a lot smarter now and instead of characters being brick walls they will now shift around if possible to allow another character to get through, but this has the odd habit of sometimes resulting in one character pushing another around like they're on ice if they happen to be in their way. But it's not super common enough to become a real bother, at least my experience.
AI in general is way way better with an actual full suite of customizable behaviors and controls like those used in DAO and FFXII. PoE's AI options were quite poor which really left you no option but to micromanage everyone, which isn't the best way to ease in new players.
I don't know what character creation in Divinity is like, but Pillars asks you to make a lot of decisions before the game starts so you don't really know what those decisions amount to. All the tooltips and descriptions only go so far.
I feel like it's almost an unwritten rule in CRPGs to make a character, get a feel for the mechanics and stats and how they work for a few hours, then start over with a better understanding.
That is fairly typical for that the type of RPG. In fact, I am pretty sure PoE's target audience would riot if it were not the case.
Nice, as someone who hasn't played any PoE, would Deadfire be worth checking out? I think I'd prefer to play on consoles if that's an option.
Console versions are coming later this year. Deadfire is definitely worth checking out if you like (a) tinkering around with character builds and party compositions, (b) role-playing through a huge number of dialogue choices and events with skill and background-conditional responses, (c) finding handcrafted loot that can change your whole build concept for a character, (d) lots of tactical, party-based combat, and/or (e) sinking into a fantasy world in a novel, Pacific-island-like setting.
You do not need to play the first POE to enjoy Deadfire. Although the story picks up with the same main character and some returning companions, it's a whole new adventure. Probably the biggest advantage to having played the first game is that the first game does a ton of heavy lifting with the setting's lore.
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Sounds good, I always felt that 6 members was a bit much for the party.
Divinity has a similar start as most of these game do picking your class, as much as that matters in DoS, attributes and skills, but due to how that game's systems work and progress it's way more forgiving. Stat inflation is a major aspect of DoS both through leveling and especially equipment. Individual attributes are much simpler and limited in scope compared to PoE where there's no clear dump stats and each one influences a larger range of other stats, which can make it more intimidating, especially as it's one of the first things you need to choose and your locked in after that.
In DoS the stats you start with aren't the stats you end with even remotely, where as PoE is largely flat in comparison. Add to that in DoS if you want to you can respec any of your characters and change their attributes too, unlike PoE where you can respec everything but your attributes.
That said I think Obsidian did a great job with the Attribute. They are largely easy to understand and a gut feeling distribution usually works out. It's really hard to make an objectively bad character build, unlike older IE games where you could royally screw up your attributes pretty easily, it just may not be a build that works how you initially envisioned but is still viable.
Yes. Despite being a direct sequel it's still very accessible story wise for new players. It's mostly a new main plot, but the vast majority of the content is focused around the local factions and all the sidequests, and it's a brand new setting in the world so it's mostly fresh material for everyone.
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Excellent news! I've always been interested in Pillars of Eternity but the awful, awful RTwP combat is just a pain to deal with.
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This is great news for me. While I can deal with RTWP, I prefer turn based always. I own the first game on both PC and PS4 and I have tried it on PS4 and would really love to play it on the couch but damn the load times are brutal. Is there any word if the 2nd game will be better there? I'm willing to power through the first game on PS4 if I know the sequel will have much better performance. Otherwise I'll just bite the billet and play on PC with mouse keyboard
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/368721705##
Link to Cohn playing it.
There are a few issues here and there, and I think the UI needs quite a bit of work, but looks good.
Certainly good enough to justify doing a brand new run I think. It will be super interesting to see how the mode shifts priorities.
I imagine that stealth and CC become a lot different.
Link to Cohn playing it.
There are a few issues here and there, and I think the UI needs quite a bit of work, but looks good.
Certainly good enough to justify doing a brand new run I think. It will be super interesting to see how the mode shifts priorities.
I imagine that stealth and CC become a lot different.
man, this looks so good! why did this have to drop on kingdom hearts weekend!!
My experience with the this type of combat system so far has been bad. Most recently I tried Tyranny on a free weekend and the combat didn't click at all.
But yes I could still give the default system a try, just knowing theres a still a turn based system as backup if I'm too dumb for RTWP is freeing in term of testing it out.
Watching Coohs playthrough I'm still a bit concerned about some balancing. Hopefully, they can get it right, but with a system tuned to real time combat in terms of damage output miss frequency, etc, I think it won't be easy to really make it feel good in turnbased mode.
It's frustrating in real time seeing your character miss severla time in a row, imagine in a turn based game. They almost certainly have to tweak the hit/miss chance, and probably the damage outputs as well or combat will just take too long.
Coh, playing the very first few combat encounters, with animations on super fast still easily took from 50% to 3 times as long to resolve them as it would have taken me in real time, and this is a game with A LOT of combat, precisely because it's all real-time. It goes by pretty quick, except for the big set pieces.
It's frustrating in real time seeing your character miss severla time in a row, imagine in a turn based game. They almost certainly have to tweak the hit/miss chance, and probably the damage outputs as well or combat will just take too long.
Coh, playing the very first few combat encounters, with animations on super fast still easily took from 50% to 3 times as long to resolve them as it would have taken me in real time, and this is a game with A LOT of combat, precisely because it's all real-time. It goes by pretty quick, except for the big set pieces.
Yeah, I think the turn based mode looks good overall but my immediate reaction to watching the very first fight on the boat was "man this literally takes me less than a minute"
This sounds great. I'm a huge fan of Divinity OS2. HUGE. I avoided Deadfire because I don't really like the semi real time system. I'm totally in it for turn based.
I hate to tell you, but you're not an authority on what is the best or worst for other people.
From what I can tell watching Cohh's stream there is no engagement in turn based? Or am I just not seeing it? Because if so, that will render a lot of abilities/item perks totally moot and require them to be reworked.
edit: nm, I see "engaged" as a status in the combat text, I guess I just am not noticing any disengagement attacks.
edit: nm, I see "engaged" as a status in the combat text, I guess I just am not noticing any disengagement attacks.
There were engagement arrows in the announcement trailer. So I would assume it still exists. That's such a major aspect of combat so it would be surprising to see it removed. You still need to contend with enemy movements and getting to your back lines in TB.
So, I'm just asking this for the future since I intend to play this much later on: I've never played a CRPG before. Is it better if I play it as turn-based or real-time? Or does it just depend on my personal tastes?
Well Deadfire has more slowdown options than PoE had, so you can have Real Time progress at a much much slower pace as well as having all the various auto-pause options.
Totally depends on your tastes. RTwP can be a bit more difficult to start as there's a lot more you need to manage at once, but it can be a ton of fun and provides you much greater control over the flow and speed of battle.
TB can be a lot more manageable to start since you can take your time and each action occurs much more slowly and in sequence, though it can still be pretty hard/challenging overall, but depending on taste that slow, methodical aspect of combat may become annoying as things progress.
Basically at their worst RTwP can be "too chaotic" and as a result require too much micromanagement for some, basically negating the real time aspect of it for some. While TB can be too slow and aggravating for some to play as you are permanently shackled to turn cycles no matter how proficient and dominant you may be in battle.
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I haven't tried it yet, but I'd wager it would depend on your tastes and your patience levels. Also, fair warning, you may feel like restarting the game and roll a different character and change game modes a few time and thats OK. My first CRPG was Pillars 1 and I created a Mage since thats what I always pick when I play RPGs, but the game never clicked until I started over with a Fighter.
I don't know why these games don't have a training mode. Not even necessarily one with actual tutorials, though some optional ones certainly wouldn't hurt given the complexities of some mechanics and concepts, but just a dedicated mode where you can generate a character and jump immediately into some mock battles so you can get a feel for a build instead of have to slog your way through the entire intro section, making story choices and stuff to only find "hey I don't really like this build, I kind of want to try something else."
Yeah pretty much this. You will be tempted ot restart after a few hours of your first character. I would suggest starting two new games at once. One in real time and one with turn-based combat. Play a few hours of each and decide. You can even try two separate builds/characters and then make the third game be about the character and the combat style you most preferred.
This is a MANY, MANY hours long RPG. So a couple of hour investment at the beginning will probably be worthwhile.
Yep, 100% agree.
Hell it would be a boon for all the youtubers creating and testing builds for us :)
I would still suggest sticking with a character though unless you really are unhappy with how they play. Early impressions for a build are never great, especially when you only have one or two companions supporting you. Things can really change once you level a bit and gain access to more abilities and get a full party roster fulfilling different roles that support each other.
I think it's better to try real-time with pause first. It's an interesting question for a CRPG novice, because RTwP is definitely less accessible than turn-based combat. Where turn-based systems can foreground all the information you would want for every single combat event, because each is playing out in turn, RTwP generally requires the player to take a more active role in pausing and searching for attack resolutions, statuses, and the under-the-hood numbers explaining everything. Deadfire has fantastic UI design and does an excellent job of making as much information as possible visible to the player in a relatively intuitive way. But it's still got a steeper learning curve than turn-based. For the first few hours, you probably want to slow down the combat, pause frequently, and go into the combat log's detailed view to see why you're missing a lot or why your weapon that's supposed to do 16-23 damage just did 8.
All that said, Deadfire was designed for RTwP combat. Its combat is really, really fun. And the game does a lot to make that combat accessible to everyone. There's the UI design I mentioned. There are also lower difficulty settings, optional party AI (so you can focus on just one character for a while, if you choose), custom AI scripting, toggles to automatically pause combat when events you consider significant occur, and a speed slider that can bring the flow of combat to a very manageable, almost ATB-like pace. I recommend starting with RTwP mode and giving it at least 5-6 hours. It may even be worth starting on a lower difficulty setting where you don't really have to understand the ins and outs of combat and can just get familiar with the character systems, quests, and general world exploration.
It would be a good idea. As you and I have discussed before, I think these sorts of games would also benefit from a more hand-holding combat tutorial mode --available from the front menu, if not built into the campaign itself. I suspect players would grasp the combat more quickly if the game walked them through the elements one at a time. "Here's how you check an enemy's armor -- try comparing your weapons to see which will fare better against plate armor." "Here's how you interrupt an enemy's action -- try selecting an ability that will protect your ally from being interrupted." "Here's how you check the combat log--go ahead and press shift+click to see the detailed view."
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Thanks. I prefer turn-based but sometimes I get bored later on. RTwP does sound chaotic but I wouldn't mind having more control and taking advantage of this. I've played KOTOR where it wasn't really turn-based but you could pause.
Interesting. I don't mind experimenting with different things including characters, so I wouldn't mind starting over multiple times.
After reading what Enduin and decoyplatypus said and now you, I think I'm starting to edge towards RTwP. Speed-slider also sounds attractive because I enjoyed games like Chrono Trigger in terms of speed, even though that game was very simplistic in its combat. Can't wait to dive into this game since I've heard great things about it. I may try the first game too.
KOTOR is full on RTwP so if you liked that PoE is that just way way more feature rich. Things really only get chaotic if you let them. With time taken to understand the mechanics and practice you can maintain a strong grasp on all but the largest and hardest fights. Chaos is really a sign of bad tactics and strategy, which is totally understandable for newcomers.
Oh, that's interesting. I was indifferent with battling in KOTOR for some reason but that's fine. I'm excited to hear that everything's intuitive so it looks like chaos shouldn't be much of an issue if I plan and understand the mechanics well or improve my understanding of them over time, like you said.
Now I wish I was playing this now.
KotOR's combat is really awful mechanically. It's kinda-sorta based on D20 Star Wars rules, IIRC, but does a lot of stuff to make it work in real time. So you end up with this weird hybrid that never feels satisfying.
As a Star Wars RPG it's great, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.
If that's anyone's touchstone with RTwP, rest assured that Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, and others have much better takes on those systems. I think even Neverwinter Nights made it work better than KotOR, and it's just as much of a mess mechanically.
As a Star Wars RPG it's great, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.
If that's anyone's touchstone with RTwP, rest assured that Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, and others have much better takes on those systems. I think even Neverwinter Nights made it work better than KotOR, and it's just as much of a mess mechanically.
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I haven't played it yet, but based on Cohh's stream, doesn't it have a separate pool of points for acting and moving at the bottom of the screen? Is there more to it than that?