Hi I'm a huge fan of pillar of eternity as well as path of exile, I enjoy a lot of minmaxing and creating good "builds", I made a path of the damned pillar of eternity wizard full game solo guide a few months ago on obsidian forum with the same user name. I've been playing this game for while, the game overall feels great, but the character creation just feels kind of "wrong" in my opinion, no offense, let me explain my reasoning.
First, the sigils are easily obtained in game, which makes the character creation sigils, as well as the conquest fire sigil completely useless, there are no reasons to choose them at all, as those useless sigils is nowhere as good as a talent point, or a conquest ability, my suggestion for this is to make it so the first class choice not only gives a sigil but also a talent point in the magic tree and change the scarlet chorus conquest choice to an ability just like the other two, or restrict fire sigil to be obtained from the conquest only so it feels unique.
I cannot explain how much I'm annoyed by the experience system in this game, I mean if we are doing pure gain exp from doing something, I'm ok with it, or pure gain exp from quests, that works too, but this game is a mix of both, which result in useless skills being leveled and taking potential useful exp room/spot, since one stops leveling eventually.
Let's talk about the skill bonuses from character creation, the ones gained from history background choice as well as class choice. Let's ignore the fact that utility skills are the best in the game and diplomat is the best background choice almost always, and focus on the skills gained from choosing classes, these skills not only not always have positive effects but, in many cases, bring downsides.
For example, because spells are superior in this game, (just like in pillar of eternity) I want to build a mage tank, and because those sigil choices are bad, I am "forced" to choose the other talents, which I personally chose to be "slice" in agility tree so I can unlock arrow shield and "shield bash" in defense so I can unlock other defense talents in the defense tree. Here is where the thread topic comes in, because I chose dual wield and shield/1h in the character creation, although I've never hit anyone with single handed weapon or dual wield, I gain single hand weapon and dual wield experience from quests objectives, this is very stupid in my opinion considering the game is suppose to be, "do something and get better at something", so basically for me, the experience poured into dual wield and single handed are completely wasted, since I never use melee weapons and makes my lore and spells total exp lower. Currently, the bonuses from the classes don't have that great of an effect even If I go full shield/1h x 2 and not bother with spells at all, because the lower the skill level is the lower the experience they are worth, so choosing the class only gains tiny a bit of experience. Finally, my suggestion is to make it so the skills one gain from background and class choices are added at the end like the skill bonuses from attributes, so they are impactful even towards end game, and not just be like a hundred points of experience, and with this change, I won't have to worry about gaining dual wield experience when in fact I've never dual wielded at all.
Another issue I have with the skill system, again, is skills gaining experience when I don't want them to, for example, this time it's the healing spells, healing spells can be obtained as soon as one recruits Lantry, and is very useful in path of the damned gameplay. It gains experience and level ups very quickly, but the healing spells don't improve all that much from skill increase, healing spells are guaranteed to hit, the healing skill increase only increase crit chance by a little bit, while offensive skills and spells on the other hand have to bypass enemy accuracy, and each point of skill is a percentage of chance to hit, which is way more important than a tiny bit of extra chance to crit on healing spells.
This is the same for a lot of strong buffs, through sigil combinations one can create really useful buff spells, like illusion sigil and guard form sigil creates a powerful defensive buff, but this buff barely gains anything from increasing illusion skills, only a small chance to crit, which is pointless when the duration is already long enough.
My problem with this system is that in order to get the most powerful character, I shouldn't use healing spells until i'm level capped, or 3 levels ahead of the monsters, that way the healing spells don't gain experience and most the experience goes to lore and magic, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, I mean I'm sure few people minmax the way I do, but this still feels wrong in my opinion. My suggestion is to make it so one can choose to disable a skill experience bar so it stops gaining experience, this way a player have a better control over their character in terms of building.
Another thing that don't make sense to me is that parry doesn't really gain much experience from evading enemy but gains a lot of experience from taking a lot of damage instead, and the fact that my wizard companions' experience gain will be wasted in parry for the rest of the game just after getting hit by a single melee attack once at the start of the game.
These are just some rants from a player who loves the game, thanks for reading and please take some of these into consideration if possible.
First, the sigils are easily obtained in game, which makes the character creation sigils, as well as the conquest fire sigil completely useless, there are no reasons to choose them at all, as those useless sigils is nowhere as good as a talent point, or a conquest ability, my suggestion for this is to make it so the first class choice not only gives a sigil but also a talent point in the magic tree and change the scarlet chorus conquest choice to an ability just like the other two, or restrict fire sigil to be obtained from the conquest only so it feels unique.
I cannot explain how much I'm annoyed by the experience system in this game, I mean if we are doing pure gain exp from doing something, I'm ok with it, or pure gain exp from quests, that works too, but this game is a mix of both, which result in useless skills being leveled and taking potential useful exp room/spot, since one stops leveling eventually.
Let's talk about the skill bonuses from character creation, the ones gained from history background choice as well as class choice. Let's ignore the fact that utility skills are the best in the game and diplomat is the best background choice almost always, and focus on the skills gained from choosing classes, these skills not only not always have positive effects but, in many cases, bring downsides.
For example, because spells are superior in this game, (just like in pillar of eternity) I want to build a mage tank, and because those sigil choices are bad, I am "forced" to choose the other talents, which I personally chose to be "slice" in agility tree so I can unlock arrow shield and "shield bash" in defense so I can unlock other defense talents in the defense tree. Here is where the thread topic comes in, because I chose dual wield and shield/1h in the character creation, although I've never hit anyone with single handed weapon or dual wield, I gain single hand weapon and dual wield experience from quests objectives, this is very stupid in my opinion considering the game is suppose to be, "do something and get better at something", so basically for me, the experience poured into dual wield and single handed are completely wasted, since I never use melee weapons and makes my lore and spells total exp lower. Currently, the bonuses from the classes don't have that great of an effect even If I go full shield/1h x 2 and not bother with spells at all, because the lower the skill level is the lower the experience they are worth, so choosing the class only gains tiny a bit of experience. Finally, my suggestion is to make it so the skills one gain from background and class choices are added at the end like the skill bonuses from attributes, so they are impactful even towards end game, and not just be like a hundred points of experience, and with this change, I won't have to worry about gaining dual wield experience when in fact I've never dual wielded at all.
Another issue I have with the skill system, again, is skills gaining experience when I don't want them to, for example, this time it's the healing spells, healing spells can be obtained as soon as one recruits Lantry, and is very useful in path of the damned gameplay. It gains experience and level ups very quickly, but the healing spells don't improve all that much from skill increase, healing spells are guaranteed to hit, the healing skill increase only increase crit chance by a little bit, while offensive skills and spells on the other hand have to bypass enemy accuracy, and each point of skill is a percentage of chance to hit, which is way more important than a tiny bit of extra chance to crit on healing spells.
This is the same for a lot of strong buffs, through sigil combinations one can create really useful buff spells, like illusion sigil and guard form sigil creates a powerful defensive buff, but this buff barely gains anything from increasing illusion skills, only a small chance to crit, which is pointless when the duration is already long enough.
My problem with this system is that in order to get the most powerful character, I shouldn't use healing spells until i'm level capped, or 3 levels ahead of the monsters, that way the healing spells don't gain experience and most the experience goes to lore and magic, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, I mean I'm sure few people minmax the way I do, but this still feels wrong in my opinion. My suggestion is to make it so one can choose to disable a skill experience bar so it stops gaining experience, this way a player have a better control over their character in terms of building.
Another thing that don't make sense to me is that parry doesn't really gain much experience from evading enemy but gains a lot of experience from taking a lot of damage instead, and the fact that my wizard companions' experience gain will be wasted in parry for the rest of the game just after getting hit by a single melee attack once at the start of the game.
These are just some rants from a player who loves the game, thanks for reading and please take some of these into consideration if possible.
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