Eternity Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Pre-Release Thread [BETA RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[santino27]

Why people are so upset with romances? You dont have to do it, if you dont like. But if you do like, its a nice feature.

Win win situation, guys. Stop crying.

everything is a compromise. that's writing/voice acting/testing time that could have been spent elsewhere.

not that i have an issue with romance in general in the game. just the Solve Daddy Issues/Say The Nicest Options/Have Awkward Sex Cutscene autistic relationship simulator that idiots want from rpg romances.

I'm not sure it's fair to assume Obsidian would deliver Bioware-level romances. I'm more or less okay with romances (I care less about the romance part than I do that companions are more than just walking lore dumps), but if it potentially brings in another few hundred k, I don't see that as a bad thing.

 

[Hyperion]

Except romances probably mean they're tied to achievements....which means it will affect Berath's Blessing features, and thus New Game+'s bonuses. So yes, romances will be necessary for those of us who like to min/max even though we want nothing to do with it. Let's hope Sawyer's heavy handed autism prevails here.

Fucking lonely deviants and their need to romance pixels.

 

[undecaf]

Tomorrow, February 14th, we have a super special feature announcemen

Multiplayer...

Nah, it's probably the ship.

 

[AW8]

Tomorrow, February 14th, we have a super special feature announcement

 

[Nuclear Explosion]

IMO, if there is an area where PoE is undoubtedly shit compared to the IE games, it's the combat. And I don't care about excuses in the lines of "they were learning the technology as they were developing the game", or "D&D has years of development behind it". Shit is shit, and for me it was evident from the first time I fired up the backer beta, that this is bigly inferior to the IE games. I was clicking around and each time I paused/unpaused I would go "Ok, this is a beta, right, they surely can't leave this like that in the final game, can they?"

Have you played IWD lately? PoE's encounter design at release was better. PoE's combat feel is also fine, if not quite as good as the IE games'.

 

[santino27]

Except romances probably mean they're tied to achievements....which means it will affect Berath's Blessing features, and thus New Game+'s bonuses. So yes, romances will be necessary for those of us who like to min/max even though we want nothing to do with it. Let's hope Sawyer's heavy handed autism prevails here.

Fucking lonely deviants and their need to romance pixels.

Adam already said the blessings will be a mix of positives and negatives, with examples like:

Additional starting copper, start with a different weapon, and naked mode (can't equip armor) are a few examples. We want to add some things that make the game more difficult and a few options to make the game easier. All purely optional of course!

So it seems unlikely anyone (especially a min/maxer) would ever want to do all the divergent and possibly contradictory blessings for a given playthrough anyway, so you needn't fear romances (if indeed they even get added at all and if they then take the next step of being linked to achievements).

 

[AwesomeButton]

IMO, if there is an area where PoE is undoubtedly shit compared to the IE games, it's the combat. And I don't care about excuses in the lines of "they were learning the technology as they were developing the game", or "D&D has years of development behind it". Shit is shit, and for me it was evident from the first time I fired up the backer beta, that this is bigly inferior to the IE games. I was clicking around and each time I paused/unpaused I would go "Ok, this is a beta, right, they surely can't leave this like that in the final game, can they?"

Have you played IWD or BG1 without SCS lately? PoE's encounter design at release was significantly better than what is in those games. PoE's combat feel is also fine, if not quite as good as the IE games's.

In fact, I am playing IWD Complete (GOG version), without SCS, right now. Playing on Core rules, with a very suboptimal party, because I wanted to go in without meta knowledge beyond some general information about AD&D. I even made the silly mistake to make an elf enchanter in the party. Now I have a squishy character who costs me 7400 gold to revive if she accidentally dies (which has happened twice), and plus - she can't memorize to use Fireball, Magic Missle, etc., can only cast them from a scroll. I am not dual/multiclassing anyone. I also made a pretty suboptimal druid, with way too low strength and dexterity. The party is currently between lvl7 (the paladin) and lvl 10 (the thief), and I'm on the 2nd level of Severed Hand. It looks like a Mozart symphony of a dungeon with clever positioning of enemy ranged and caster units and with mobs of melee units ambushing you from all sides. So good luck proving PoE can beat that, especially the base non-TWM part of it.

Your claim about PoE's combat encounter design being better is so utterly ridiculous that I'm not going to waste irony on it. I doubt there will be a single person on this forum to agree with it, even the biggest PoE fanboys. Since my memories are fresh, I can cite a long list of set piece encounters in IWD which have no counterpart in PoE. I don't know what's your experience with PoE. I'm playing it since the beta and I don't deny that combat has improved since the "1.0" release version, with the reduced trash mobs and the additions of AI, which the game simply didn't have at release, and I'm talking about enemies, not just about party AI. Even with those fixes, PoE is miles off from IWD specifically in terms of encounter design. As a known diehard fan of IWD, Sensuki can talk in more detail than I could off the top of my head.

Regarding combat feel, as I've said myself, it's my opinion, because this is a more subjective topic. I think PoE combat is objectively harder to read than IE combat, but if someone claims the opposite, I can't really do anything to dissuade them.

 

[Iznaliu]

The surprise stretch goal will be something that nobody will be expecting

 

[Nuclear Explosion]

In fact, I am playing IWD Complete (GOG version), without SCS, right now. Playing on Core rules, with a very suboptimal party, because I wanted to go in without meta knowledge beyond some general information about AD&D. I even made the silly mistake to make an elf enchanter in the party. Now I have a squishy character who costs me 7400 gold to revive if she accidentally dies (which has happened twice), and plus - she can't memorize to use Fireball, Magic Missle, etc., can only cast them from a scroll. I am not dual/multiclassing anyone. I also made a pretty suboptimal druid, with way too low strength and dexterity.

Your claim about PoE's combat encounter design being better is so utterly ridiculous that I'm not going to waste irony on it. I doubt there will be a single person on this forum to agree with it, even the biggest PoE fanboys. Since my memories are fresh, I can cite a long list of set piece encounters in IWD which have no counterpart in PoE. I don't know what's your experience with PoE. I'm playing it since the beta and I don't deny that combat has improved since the "1.0" release version, with the reduced trash mobs and the additions of AI, which the game simply didn't have at release, and I'm talking about enemies, not just about party AI. Even with those fixes, PoE is miles off from IWD specifically in terms of encounter design. As a known diehard fan of IWD, Sensuki can talk in more detail than I could off the top of my head.

Regarding combat feel, as I've said myself, it's my opinion, because this is a more subjective topic. I think PoE combat is objectively harder to read than IE combat, but if someone claims the opposite, I can't really do anything to dissuade them.

I'm playing through IWD at the moment on core rules. It is so easy that it's boring. I recently played through BG2 and the difference in the quality of encounters in the two games is huge. In IWD, so far, almost all of the encounters boil down to fighting large groups of enemies of the same type. PoE at release had more variety, and I also found combat more challenging for at least the first half of the game.

Admittedly, when I played PoE I had little experience with RTwP games (I had finished PS:T, BG1 and played around 30 hours of BG2), which could explain why I found it more challenging than I am finding IWD.

I seem to recall at least a few posters mentioning that they believe PoE's encounter design is better than IWD's, so I am clearly not the only one to think so.

 

[ArchAngel]

IMO, if there is an area where PoE is undoubtedly shit compared to the IE games, it's the combat. And I don't care about excuses in the lines of "they were learning the technology as they were developing the game", or "D&D has years of development behind it". Shit is shit, and for me it was evident from the first time I fired up the backer beta, that this is bigly inferior to the IE games. I was clicking around and each time I paused/unpaused I would go "Ok, this is a beta, right, they surely can't leave this like that in the final game, can they?"

Have you played IWD or BG1 without SCS lately? PoE's encounter design at release was significantly better than what is in those games. PoE's combat feel is also fine, if not quite as good as the IE games's.

Maybe some parts of expansion have better encounters but base game... NOT EVEN CLOSE LOL!
Sarevok fight is 10x harder and more interesting than last fight in POE or Adra Dragon and just one of the random adventuring groups in BG1 are better than anything else in PoE.
Of course I am talking about first play. Once you master both games, none of the fights are even remotely challenging. That is why SCS exists, while PoE has nothing to solve it.

And IWD1 had a lot of better encounters than both POE and BG1.

 

[Harry Easter]

Sarevok fight is 10x harder and more interesting [...]

No it isn't. I love that guy, but it is enough to pull him away from his henchmen and then attack him from afar. It's kinda sad, but at least he doesn't have to suffer long, if you have Kivan in your group.

 

[ArchAngel]

Sarevok fight is 10x harder and more interesting [...]

No it isn't. I love that guy, but it is enough to pull him away from his henchmen and then attack him from afar. It's kinda sad, but at least he doesn't have to suffer long, if you have Kivan in your group.

Do you have reading problems? I am pretty sure the first time you fought him you died at least 5 times in all kind of ways. And you probably played on normal difficulty.

 

[Harry Easter]

Do you have reading problems? I am pretty sure the first time you fought him you died at least 5 times in all kind of ways. And you probably played on normal difficulty.

If I remember correctly, the first version had only one difficulty level. Did you play the EE? I thought this is considered to be dirty on the Codex? And of course I died the first time. I was thirteen and this was my first RPG. But today? Nah, run around and he goes down with ease.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I'm playing through IWD at the moment, on core rules, and it is so easy as to be boring. I recently played through BG2 and the difference in the quality of encounters between the two games is large. In IWD, so far, almost all of the encounters boil down to fighting large groups of enemies of the same type. PoE at release had more variety, and I found combat to be more challenging for at least the first-half of the game.

Admittedly, when I played PoE I had little experience with RTwP games (I had finished PS:T, BG1, and played around 30 hours of BG2) which could explain why I found it more challenging than I am finding IWD to be.

I seem to recall at least a few posters mentioning that they believe PoE's encounter design is better than what is to be found in BG1 and IWD, so I am not the only one to think so.

I'll post my party stats when I get back home today, but if IWD is easy for you on core difficulty, you are either much better at the game than me (very probable) or your party is well optimized.

PoE was very easy for me in my first incomplete playthrough on Hard, and I would say "it had its good moments", most of them concentrated in the TWM expansion, when I played it on PotD. Both times with a full party. Still, once you get into the routine of "find the weakest defense -> attack that defense to cause an affliction which would lower the rest of the defenses -> attack the lowered defenses to drain HP" there was little variance to combat. I can't find any such corresponding routine of combat in IWD, even though there is much less active abilities per party member. I find the reason for there being little variance in the fact that AI was absent, and there wasn't encounter specific scripting, so most enemies behaved very similarly - rushed the nearest party member or attacked him with a ranged weapon. TWM changed that by adding new types of enemies, especially the Lagufaeth were nice.

Bottom line is, IWD is definitely the more challenging game in my experience, I'm curious to see what characters your party is composed of.

 

[Prime Junta]

Of course I am talking about first play. Once you master both games, none of the fights are even remotely challenging. That is why SCS exists, while PoE has nothing to solve it.

I beat Sarevok on my first try in my first playthrough, core rules. By then I had learned to pull and kite and I had lots of archers.

BG1 OC didn't have any genuinely memorable combat encounters. TotSC had some. BG2 had several glorious ones.

However... I've been replaying BG2 lately, and what's striking me isn't so much the system as what they do with it. There's a huge range of encounter variety and they've been set up to use the environment really well. The system itself is no better than serviceable IMO -- moment-to-moment gameplay is great but other than that it's... pretty sparse really. The much-vaunted spell system amounts to rock-paper-scissors-I-win; there's not a whole lot of depth to it once you understand how it works, and it's exploitable AF.

Pillars' main problem – other than the encounter design which only hits its stride in WM -- is the priest: those immunity spells trivialise the fuck out of everything.

 

[undecaf]

The surprise stretch goal will be something that nobody will be expecting

The leftovers of the AW team start converting the game for turbased combat for consoles to keep them employed.

 

[Haplo]

IMO, if there is an area where PoE is undoubtedly shit compared to the IE games, it's the combat. And I don't care about excuses in the lines of "they were learning the technology as they were developing the game", or "D&D has years of development behind it". Shit is shit, and for me it was evident from the first time I fired up the backer beta, that this is bigly inferior to the IE games. I was clicking around and each time I paused/unpaused I would go "Ok, this is a beta, right, they surely can't leave this like that in the final game, can they?"

Have you played IWD or BG1 without SCS lately? PoE's encounter design at release was significantly better than what is in those games. PoE's combat feel is also fine, if not quite as good as the IE games's.

Maybe some parts of expansion have better encounters but base game... NOT EVEN CLOSE LOL!
Sarevok fight is 10x harder and more interesting than last fight in POE or Adra Dragon and just one of the random adventuring groups in BG1 are better than anything else in PoE.
Of course I am talking about first play. Once you master both games, none of the fights are even remotely challenging. That is why SCS exists, while PoE has nothing to solve it.

And IWD1 had a lot of better encounters than both POE and BG1.

I don't think I've ever died to Sarevok. I sure wiped many times on Adra Dragon (PotD).
There is really no contest between BG1 and PoE.
Now BG2 had a few memorable encounters, better then most of what PoE offers. But other then the rich Advanced DnD spell system, even the BG2 system has very little going for it. PoE is mechanically the far superior game.

 

[Zetor]

Of course I am talking about first play. Once you master both games, none of the fights are even remotely challenging. That is why SCS exists, while PoE has nothing to solve it.

I beat Sarevok on my first try in my first playthrough, core rules. By then I had learned to pull and kite and I had lots of archers.

BG1 OC didn't have any genuinely memorable combat encounters. TotSC had some. BG2 had several glorious ones.

However... I've been replaying BG2 lately, and what's striking me isn't so much the system as what they do with it. There's a huge range of encounter variety and they've been set up to use the environment really well. The system itself is no better than serviceable IMO -- moment-to-moment gameplay is great but other than that it's... pretty sparse really. The much-vaunted spell system amounts to rock-paper-scissors-I-win; there's not a whole lot of depth to it once you understand how it works, and it's exploitable AF.

Pillars' main problem – other than the encounter design which only hits its stride in WM -- is the priest: those immunity spells trivialise the fuck out of everything. (There, I said it.)

FWIW I played through POTD Pillars+WM1+WM2 with no priest. My biggest problem was the sameyness of many battles and very limited resource management -- my impression was that most battles could be easily defeated by just using my per-encounter skills ASAP (not much interesting decision-making there), and using my cipher's infinite resources to take care of any enemies that weren't trivialized by those. This left all of my spell slots and per-rest abilities available for the 1-2 tough setpiece encounters on each map.

I also said this in one of the Pillars/WM threads, but a lot of enemies stack fear/terror debuffs on you that I assume are straight-up trivialized by a priest, but actually pose something of a challenge otherwise by having to build a chanter for fear immunity chants/invocations, chaining debuff suppression abilities/items, etc. Same with paralyzing/charming/petrify spamming enemies, though I could just work around those anyway.

 

[ArchAngel]

Of course I am talking about first play. Once you master both games, none of the fights are even remotely challenging. That is why SCS exists, while PoE has nothing to solve it.

I beat Sarevok on my first try in my first playthrough, core rules. By then I had learned to pull and kite and I had lots of archers.

BG1 OC didn't have any genuinely memorable combat encounters. TotSC had some. BG2 had several glorious ones.

However... I've been replaying BG2 lately, and what's striking me isn't so much the system as what they do with it. There's a huge range of encounter variety and they've been set up to use the environment really well. The system itself is no better than serviceable IMO -- moment-to-moment gameplay is great but other than that it's... pretty sparse really. The much-vaunted spell system amounts to rock-paper-scissors-I-win; there's not a whole lot of depth to it once you understand how it works, and it's exploitable AF.

Pillars' main problem – other than the encounter design which only hits its stride in WM -- is the priest: those immunity spells trivialise the fuck out of everything.

I cannot verify if you are lying about Sarevok but considering you are also a PoEtard I can assume you are.

As for memorable encounters, Bg1 has those from the moment you step foot in Friendly Arms Inn and get your whole party Horrored by an Assassin Mage. Compare than to first real mage fight in Watcher's Keep where the guy died to first round of guns from my party without doing anything LOL. Both first playthrough.

Any enemy spellcaster or groups with spellcasters is a memorable fight in BG1. Or even if you run into the Ogre with the magic belt early and try to fight him directly only to get one shot. None of that exists in PoE in your first playthrough until much much later in some higher level fights.

 

[Reinhardt]

The surprise stretch goal will be something that nobody will be expecting

Spanish Inquisition?

 

[AwesomeButton]

Pillars' main problem – other than the encounter design which only hits its stride in WM -- is the priest: those immunity spells trivialise the fuck out of everything.

Agreed. Mid and high level combat in PoE always begins with a race between priests buffing/debuffing friends and enemies respectively with immunity protection spells. I strongly hope that pre-combat buffing is allowed in Deadfire. Drinking beer to raise my DR by 1, is just the kind of half-assed ersatz measure that irritates players. Why should shitty, negligible-effect prebuffing be allowed and real prebuffing disallowed?

Compare than to first real mage fight in Watcher's Keep where the guy died to first round of guns from my party without doing anything LOL. Both first playthrough.

Maerwald was really memorable for me... when I was playing as a solo wizard on PotD. I replayed a few times until I found a working tactic. Generally, I think solo on PotD results in many memorable fights, even some trash fights becoming difficult, but on the other hand your wizard has as many active abilities as your entire BGII party.

 

[Seaking4]

BG is almost entirely trash but you shouldn't say that it lacks any memorable combat encounters. It definitely has some good encounters in chapter 3 (Cloakwood). Even the final fight in chapter 2 is pretty good with the traps that unleash the helm horrors.

Edit: Just remembered the fight on the top floor of the Iron Throne in Baldur's Gate against the other adventuring party. That's a great one too.

Same goes for IWD. It has lots of boring fights in it but it has lots of good ones too (the massive one in the troll caves and the one with the statue near the end of the game come to mind).

 

[Turjan]

BG1 OC didn't have any genuinely memorable combat encounters. TotSC had some. BG2 had several glorious ones.

Degrodel? Maybe the Iron Throne?

It's certainly not BG2 though.

 

[Prime Junta]

As for memorable encounters, Bg1 has those from the moment you step foot in Friendly Arms Inn and get your whole party Horrored by an Assassin Mage.

I have a particular dislike for encounters that you either win or lose in the opening (and always win once you've 'solved' them). BG1 had scads of those. It's just lazy design masquerading as challenge.

 

[Prime Junta]

BG is almost entirely trash but you shouldn't say that it lacks any memorable combat encounters. It definitely has some good encounters in chapter 3 (Cloakwood). Even the final fight in chapter 2 is pretty good with the traps that unleash the helm horrors.

I don't even remember that one. I.e. it certainly wasn't memorable for me.

Edit: Just remembered the fight on the top floor of the Iron Throne in Baldur's Gate against the other adventuring party. That's a great one too.

Yep that is a pretty good one.

Same goes for IWD. It has lots of boring fights in it but it has lots of good ones too (the massive one in the troll caves and the one with the statue near the end of the game come to mind).

I disagree. IWD has lots of really good encounters and only a moderate number of trash ones.