Combat system: awful

[Kuritza]

I am a huge fan of Pillars of Eternity. I have beaten the game several times on PotD difficulty and consider it to be the best RPG in many years.

I am hugely disappointed with Tyranny. Couldnt get my refund in Steam (took me more than 2 hours to make my mind), so I am not buying the next Obsidian game.

Combat system is a huge spit to my face. Guys, you had a very good, clean and transparent combat system in Pillars. Icons indicating current action for each character, nice spacing between characters etc. Why the HECK is combat in Tyranny such a freaking chaotic mess?

Oh and the useless spells. You had this problem in PoE too, but you had several spells on each layers so each caster had something good.
Now Atrophy. I chose it as my starting skill. GREAT, 'stand still for several moment and DO NOTHING. -3 strength -3 vitality, barely noticeable on PotD and definitely not worth its long casting time.

Please fire whoever designed this combat system, and for GOD'S SAKE dont repeat this crap ever. Do it PoE-style. Dont fix what aint broken... and tyranny is broken all over.

 

[haruf]

^This.

Also, is there any reason why you need to click absolutely dead center on an opponent to initiate an ability or spell? PoE is a lot more forgiving in this regard and it's usually enough to click anywhere as long as it's somewhere inside the red selection circle.

And why exactly can't I initiate combat with anything other than the adversaries you're supposed to fight anyway? In PoE you can attack (by clicking on the "Standard Attack" button or by pressing "A", iirc) or use pretty much all of your abilities on neutral or even friendly NPCs anytime, if you want. In Tyranny you can't even engage a deer or a boar in the wilderness.

For AoE abilties it's the same: In PoE you can initiate them anywhere anytime by clicking either directly on the target or somewhere close to the target (i.e. on the ground), but in Tyranny you're only allowed to initiate an AoE ability if there's a valid (hostile) target available to click on.

So yeah... Tyranny is a huge step backwards in this regard as well.

 

[firolas]

Yep, feel the same way.
I also think that going from Pillars' per-encounter abilities to cooldown abilities was a bad decision. Makes combat in Tyranny almost feel like you're playing one of those mindless Hack'n'Slashers or MMOs.

 

[Ninjamestari]

The whole character development system is broken; the only good thing about it is the spellmaking, which is awesome, but the skill system that is copied and pasted from Skyrim is just so obviously bad idea that I seriously wonder how it got into the final product. I also hate cooldowns; please for the love of Kyros, just make a traditional mana based magic system that actually forces you to think what you cast instead of just always firing the most powerful ability you happen to have available at the moment.

 

[Kuritza]

Cooldown system actually has more merit than vancian magic, which is usually making casters overpowered and leads to frequent camping - or trying to make do without spells.

But the interface, the overlapping healthbars without friend/foe distinction, hard to read action icons etc... its atrocious.

 

[Ninjamestari]

That is actually false. Cooldown system is incredibly rigid and acts as a restriction to forming strategy or tactics instead of enabling them, and the few strategies it does allow are judged by the whims of a RNG. Vancian system at least allows you to try and cast a spell again in case the first one was interrupted or resisted, although Vancian magic is infinitely inferior to a well designed Mana system. The only reason Vancian is used at all is because it works better under the restrictions of PnP where the math of the game cannot be calculated automatically.

 

[Daenyx]

I'm not quite as spectacularly upset with the combat (my tolerance for shitty combat is high - if I got through Dragon Age: Inquisition, I figure I can grit my teeth through just about anything if I like the story enough), but I am definitely unimpressed. They had a really amazing thing going with PoE. It was everything I loved about the isometric RPGs of yore, only smoother, with better AI, and without the counterintuitive AD&D underpinnings.

I'm assuming that Tyranny was explicitly intended to be a bit more accessible for players who are less zealous about challenging cRPG combat than most of PoE's fanbase, and while that doesn't play to my own preferences, I understand it. But that doesn't really excuse a lot of the aspects others above me have already mentioned (e.g. difficulty distinguishing between enemy and allied healthbars, finicky targetting, etc.) - what is with some devs taking something that already works and making it worse in later game generations?

I also think switching to cooldown-based magic was a bad idea, at least as currently implemented. The extremely-reduced need to be conservative with powerful spell usage in Tyranny relative to PoE takes a pretty huge layer out of the tactics. (I don't, personally, dislike the create-a-spell aspect; it's not original, but neither are most things, and I've had fun with it.)

I play RPGs primarily for the story, but I really enjoy deep, well-realized tactical combat, so PoE was pretty much an endless joygasm for me. In Tyranny, the fighting is mostly just shit I have to get through to find the next story bit (and hey, those are disappointing me in some pretty huge ways too, unfortunately, but that's not what this thread is about).

 

[WolfofCinders]

I can understand the idea behind what Obsidian were trying to create with the combat system, however when it comes to actually putting those ideas in practice, they come together to form a convoluted mess. Each to their own, but personally I want my warriors to feel like mighty and powerful warriors, I want my mages to feel like supreme spell casters, I want my archers to feel like... Well archers.

Between the basic attacks, the ability skill trees, the spell crafting system, and then the unique companion abilities, combat just feels such a mess. So far I've noticed the single best tactic every time is to just go mage, nuke everything, every single battle with as much AOE as you can, and effectively ignore everything else.

I love the premise behind the storyline in Tyranny, much more than PoE. I personally find the Bronze/Iron age setting so much more intriguing than PoE, hating the entire fire arms aspect of that game with a passion. Oh how I hate fire arms in RPGs so much. However PoE still absolutely destroys Tyranny when it comes to crisp clean combat!

This games replay value is one of it's main advertised features, and for the most part I would agree, with enough storyline content to justify playing it twice I'd say. Three times probably pushing it, until they add onto the games ending or add in some serious hefty DLC. Having different and unique classes though, to the likes of PoE had, would greatly help with that replay goal I think.

 

[Luckmann]

I am a huge fan of Pillars of Eternity. I have beaten the game several times on PotD difficulty and consider it to be the best RPG in many years.

I am hugely disappointed with Tyranny. Couldnt get my refund in Steam (took me more than 2 hours to make my mind), so I am not buying the next Obsidian game.

Combat system is a huge spit to my face. Guys, you had a very good, clean and transparent combat system in Pillars. Icons indicating current action for each character, nice spacing between characters etc. Why the HECK is combat in Tyranny such a freaking chaotic mess?

Oh and the useless spells. You had this problem in PoE too, but you had several spells on each layers so each caster had something good.
Now Atrophy. I chose it as my starting skill. GREAT, 'stand still for several moment and DO NOTHING. -3 strength -3 vitality, barely noticeable on PotD and definitely not worth its long casting time.

Please fire whoever designed this combat system, and for GOD'S SAKE dont repeat this crap ever. Do it PoE-style. Dont fix what aint broken... and tyranny is broken all over.

I'm not sure I would've called combat in Pillars "very good, clean and transparent"; it was a chaotic mess with tons of issues on multiple levels.

That being said, I do agree that Tyranny is even worse when it comes to messy combat, and I frequently find myself trying to work out who's who and what they're doing. Characters regularly don't do what I've queued up for them to do, and there's no way to know what is queued up for them to do. Even something as simple as showing the chants of Sirin, her basically being a Chanter with Cipher flavour, have been needlessly muddled.

Instead of having indicators of for relevant information, such as current ongoing action or recovery, we are informed of the current level and how close we are to the next one, which has no practical application whatsoever. And if you're wanting to save an attribute point to spend next level to increase an attribute past 19, I hope you enjoy having the character icon lit up like a Christmas tree for a few hours, constantly confusing you as to what character you currently have selected, forcing you to double-check.

And while I love the spell system - although I find it a bit limited, asking myself why there's not options for all Core Sigil/Expression Sigil combinations - I do agree that quite a few combinations are pretty useless, especially before you get (incredibly powerful/broken) Enhancement Sigils. This is especially obvious with Atrophy and it's piddly -2/2.5 Might/Vitality for Touch of Atrophy and other near-useless buffs. It is also very obvious when using the insanely expensive Limitless Boundaries Accent, adding +1m AoE to something; meaning they literally have to be touching balls to be affected; it's better for spells that is already AoE, but not by much.

But once you get something like the Sigil of Rooting Enhancement, it suddenly goes from "worst thing ever" to "this is absolutely broken". By this time, however, you've probably practically given up on using the Atrophy Sigil, resulting in it being heavily under-used, and thus underleveled. Meanwhile, there's other Sigils that are strong as hell from the get-go, like the Sigil of Fire, which you can get for free if you make the "right" options during The Conquest (which is honestly pretty BS, because it doesn't tell you this). The Force Sigil is also a lot more powerful, and it can also use the Sigil of Rooting Enhancement, for whatever reason (I honestly think it should be restricted to Atrophy).

So I wouldn't say that magic is useless, but there are definitely some useless spells (Touch of Atrophy never gets good, no matter what, even with Sigil of Rooting), and it's definitely wonky, in that some spells have incredible utility while others seem just plain forgotten, and some entire Core Sigils are practically forgotten, such as Atrophy, and to a lesser degree Vigor (Vigor at least has some extremely powerful spells). No Sigil of Material Force for Atrophy, no Sigil of Guarded Form, no Sigil of Distant Impact. It and other wonkyness leaves the system just feeling unfinished, and the fact that there's such a disparity between the usefulness of the combinations makes it feel like it was never playtested.

And I believe those two things to be true; the game wasn't finished, and it was never playtested.

 

[hitchens]

Agreed. I enjoyed Wasteland 2 and thus got a taste for that type og RPG's, bought Tyranny as I absolutely love Obsidian. But the combat is just rubbish, 45 minutes of game play and its refund time. Obsidian is still one of my favorite developers, I hope they do a better job in the future.

 

[paulkingtiger]

It's definitely not the POE combat system, but I like the more casual MMO style combat of Tyranny.
I found the many small combats in Pillars to get grindy (although the combat is great for the boss fights). Fighting in Tyranny is generally faster and more streamlined, so it doesn't get in the way of the story.

Also I love the manga style power-up effects for spells and combat abilities.
Shame the OP decided not to buy Pillars 2, it's a fantastic addition to the series!