Smuel's good morning extravaganza

Confession time: I played Pillars of Eternity for about 10 hours and stopped completely with no plans to continue. I found the combat system to be unfun and the plot not compelling enough to get me to stay. This could be due to my general distaste for party-based games though. Liking games like Arcanum and the new-ish Shadowrun: Dragonfall and not enjoying PoE might put me in a weird minority I guess.

Good morning.

 

I'm in the same boat Philes. I haven't been able to motivate myself to play past getting the keep which even that felt like a chore.

 

With my laptop acting up I don't think I would be able to play it currently, even so I think I need a long break before I go back into PoE again. I think the combo of restarting about 4-5 times to experience some of the different classes and mechanics, restarting about 4 times due to various bugs, then restarting to up the difficulty and go solo really killed the first few hours for me. If I'd had all those restarts sans the ones from bugs I think I would still feel enthusiastic over it, but currently it's left a sour taste in the mouth.

Good morning.

 

I also stopped playing around the first major city. I'm considering getting back now that a post expansion patch have improved stealth (and added party AI, if I recall correctly). Didn't encounter the abundance of bugs that the rest of you whine about though.

Good evening.

P.S. "Whine" obviously means "legitimately complain"

 

After a few months, looking back at PoE in retrospect, I too am a bit disappointed by it. A few key failings stand out in my mind. First, I was super irritated by the distinction between in combat/out of combat. So many spells, skills, and abilities are limited to "in combat" only. So if you see a fight approaching, there's not much you can do to prepare, beyond trying to position your party favorably. No pre-fight buffing allowed, you must blunder into an ambush whether you are aware of it or not. And it's not like you can stealthily pick off outliers to thin the enemy ranks, because as soon as you're "in combat," every enemy in the vicinity will beeline it to your squishy spellcasters unless you can post your tank in just the right spot to block a doorway. No skirmishing allowed either, so don't start a fight unless you're ready to take down ALL the enemies in the room.
Second, after so much was made about character creation flexibility, about playing the way you choose to play, I found the character progression very restrictive, and tactical decision making mostly limited to, "which door do I go through." Sure, there's a lot of variation permitted by the character system, but the way key derived statistics are associated with base stats feels like you're being funneled into choosing the most well-rounded build possible; and while you have a decent amount of options for skills/abilities, if feels like there's basically a right way and a whole bunch of wrong ways to choose from.
My third point has to do with the story, so Spoiler Alert.

Spoiler

I found the setting pretty interesting, and the story was mostly good. That is, until the highly disappointing ending. So you've got this world with its own pantheon of gods, and the gods squabble amongst themselves to the point of waging war on each other, with one god even outright killing another one, and their mortal followers struggle to keep the faith in a time of calamity and hardship. Much of the story hinges around these individual struggles. There's a villain out there sowing seeds of chaos and turmoil, and it seems pretty likely that he has something to do with the epidemic of soulless children. You reach the final showdown, you listen to his villain's exposition, and learn that the gods aren't really gods at all, just constructs devised by some long-vanished civilization and given power by some arcane technomagery. So basically, everything that everybody believes is wrong, the things they fought for are pointless, and the bad guy is the only one who knows the truth. Total downer of an ending, IMO.

Anyway, I enjoyed the game despite its shortcomings, there are certainly areas where it really shines, and I'll probably revisit it eventually. But I don't really feel compelled to dive back in to play the expansion at the moment. Still, I'm hopeful for a possible sequel, because I'm sure a lot of these issues would be addressed.

Good morning.

 

You all are making a perfectly good morning better by making me glad I don't give a care about PoE.

Good morning.

 

And yet you have the "Nasrudin incarnate - You helped us leave our mark on Pillars of Eternity, a share of eternal glory is yours!" trophy.

You must have cared a little about it at some point.

 

Back then it was all about the potential!

Good afternoon.

 

Just like in real life.*

Good morning.

*I kid, I kid.

 

Breakfast food for dinner at 9pm.

Good morning?

 

Breakfast food is good at anytime of the day 'cause it's always morning somewhere.

Good Morning!

 

At the time,leaving an indelible mark on the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate was very appealing, but I've come to find that my BG days are probably far behind me.

Good morning.

 

Still haven't played Pillars of Eternity. Though I may eventually try it.

Just got hit by the MMO bug recently, so I've played a lot of Dragonball Xenoverse and Destiny.

Good Morning.

 

I've put a solid couple of weeks into Destiny again since the launch of TTK. Finally reaches a point when I have been tapering off the game time on it now. It could also have something to do with my three weeks of leave has just finished up and I am now back to doing what I do.

 

Tracking down drunken, cocktail stealing, rape-monkeys and distributing your own unique brand of justice?

 

Sounds like an awful movie spec script. I'd still watch it!

Good morning.

 

Looks like I'm now supervising a master's student as of Monday, may god have mercy on them.

Good morning.

 

Not being conversant in these things, what exactly are you supervising them doing?
Sock darning?
How to be a living marital aid?
Proper incursion into the enemy’s political camp?
Proper punctuation in a twenty-page paper?

Seriously though, what's it mean? I've not the benefit of the higher educations past an A.S.
Wanted to. Just never worked out.