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

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,949
Pathfinder: Wrath
I don't care either way about Ydwin, I'd prefer them making more sidekicks.
 

Sannom

Augur
Joined
Apr 11, 2010
Messages
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The other three (or four) will probably either be somewhat neutral or have ties to potential sub-factions (like Aloth and his Leaden Key connection).
Edér and Xoti are both Eothasians from different sides of the Saint's War, so their ties to the main plot seems rather obvious.
 

Rahdulan

Omnibus
Patron
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
5,105
Wait a minute

Such things as:
- New game+ (kinda)
- relationships
- NPC portraits
- Chinese
- even sidekicks
Were funded

But managing your ship's crew (while ship is crucial part of gameplay as we got other stretch goals for it that were funded) and HUNTING FUCKING SEA MONSTER, ARE THE LAST STRETCH GOALS!?
WHAT THE FUCK OBSIDIAN, WHY DIDN'T YOU ALLOW PEOPLE TO FUND THE BEST THINGS!?
:x


Because they know people will fork out additional cash for them.
 

ushas

Savant
Joined
Jan 5, 2015
Messages
550
First good news I've seen in a while:
One of the major things is that most of our game data is now in .xml format. It makes it much more human-readable and easier to edit. Adam Brennecke can probably say more about modding overall.
If it's truly most of the game data, it should be possible to restore per-rest magic, party of 6, and tweak the mechanics in general.

Great! Thanks for finding this. I'm hoping that's the case (also creatures, weapons, etc..) Knowing next to nothing about game development, so please pardon my ignorance when I say that I would personally think about externalizing all those data among the first things. Not just because the modding. I mean imagine system designers wanting tune numbers here and there, and instead of just editing a config file on the fly (and perhaps restarting the game if there is not function to call for reset) and testing that right away, they would have to foremost wait for programmers to do a patch or even a whole new build of the game.




A few other tidbits from the AMA regarding Deadfire:
BrutalistYouth: since Pillars 2 takes place a couple years after Pillars 1 will we get to say what our Watcher was up to in the intervening years. Kind of like how we could tell Calisca why we moved to the Dyrwood?
AB: Yep, you bet.
So we will choose what we did in those 5 years, that's nice. However, I hope it will make more impact on the game this time, than Calisca's dialog. I've went through conversation files with grep and, besides a flavor text in the journal, just a small number of those special sub-backgrounds (what we said to Calisca) have been checked in very few places. Possibly added just as an afterthought. I dunno, a shear number of combinations and limited time shooting the reactivity to the foot?


logos__: Can you make the battles in PoE II feel more like Baldur's Gate/Baldur's Gate 2? The enemies in PoE felt very meaty, with combat often taking longer than it needed to. Less HP per enemy (and per player character) and more damage per attack makes for more tactical fights that are less of a slog.

JS: The new armor system results in less health/damage inflation overall and a more controlled range of damage.
Ok, So if that new armor system is what it takes to achieve this, then I'm going to champion the Penetration! :whiteknight:

Perhaps it may also help with a whole inflation, not only health/endurance, but also accuracy and defenses (I really wish not getting all those automatically on lvl up, though in not enjoying the power ride for free I'm in minority) But one can always dream...


JS: Tekēhu, the big blue guy, can start off either as a chanter or a druid.
Lacrymas, so a druid is one of the core options for this companion.


JS: Ship size can limit the sorts of sails, cannons, etc. on the vessel. Different ships also have different inherent stats, changing how you might want to approach encounters at sea. It can also limit the number of defenders on your ship if/when you do get attacked.
On a side note, i've read comments (on fig I think) about perhaps just contemplating a possibility of split parties. Not sure, if that crew aspect would play a role in there.


JS: You can use per-rest Empower resources to make a power extra-strong or to replenish your per-encounter resources in long fights.
what does he mean by "replenish your per-encounter resources"?


JS: I've studied a fair amount of medieval French history and I'm always borrowing bits and pieces for elements in the world. I've always loved the city of Carcassonne and I thought it was interesting that it slowly developed into this fortress that was so impenetrable that enemies would rather take weeks of time to circumnavigate it than attack it. Over time, it fell into disuse and when one Napoleon's (I think) surveyors went to check on it, people were raising chickens and drying laundry between the walls.

We have a sea fortress in the game inspired by that: a place that once dominated travel on common shipping lanes but which has since fallen into irrelevance and was subsequently taken over by pirates.
This one?
old-view.jpg


SirJorn: What do you think about being able to "filter" the combat log (based on party members, afflictions, etc)? At least in theory, it sounds like a way to make combat more managable and clearer to the player.
JS: I think that's a cool idea!
I hope that means they'll do it this time.


JS: Our city map also allows shortcuts, so you can travel directly to an interior if you don't want to bother with anything in the connected exterior.
nice.
 

Sizzle

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2012
Messages
2,471
JS: Tekēhu, the big blue guy, can start off either as a chanter or a druid.

Kana Rua and he probably belong to the same Amauan Chanters Guild :lol:

JS: You can use per-rest Empower resources to make a power extra-strong or to replenish your per-encounter resources in long fights.
what does he mean by "replenish your per-encounter resources"?

It sounds to me like you can probably, for example, bring back a spell you already cast using Empower.

All in all, everything you listed sounds great, definitely very incline-y :D
 
Last edited:

Sannom

Augur
Joined
Apr 11, 2010
Messages
944
what does he mean by "replenish your per-encounter resources"?
Presumably it means that you can use the Empower resource to use per-encounter abilities that you've already depleted in the current encounter. For example, if you've already used Lay on Hands twice during the encounter and are in dire need of healing, you can use Empower so that the Paladin can get his two uses of Lay on Hands back.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
That's kind of funny. Wouldn't it be better to just Empower the spell itself and cast that? I guess the costs are different and it's a tradeoff.
 

IHaveHugeNick

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Joined
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Messages
1,870,124
If it's truly most of the game data, it should be possible to restore per-rest magic, party of 6, and tweak the mechanics in general.

What possible reason would you have to raise party size to 6 in a game balanced for 5? Was story mode too hard for you?
 

Deleted member 7219

Guest
When did they talk about Randal and The Codex? The stream is 8 hours long...:M

Last 20 minutes, but Anthony Davis pops up throughout the whole stream representin' the 'Dex.

badler even makes an appearance towards the end.
 

Sizzle

Arcane
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Feb 17, 2012
Messages
2,471
That's kind of funny. Wouldn't it be better to just Empower the spell itself and cast that? I guess the costs are different and it's a tradeoff.

Maybe. But wouldn't it be better to cast a standard spell twice with Empower, instead of, say, Empowering it once for a 30% increase in damage?

I'm just speculating, we still don't know what form Empower will take, and what its limitations and possible usages will be.
 

FreeKaner

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That's kind of funny. Wouldn't it be better to just Empower the spell itself and cast that? I guess the costs are different and it's a tradeoff.

Or it could be that spells use 1 per-encounter resource and 1 empower resource to cast empowered version and if you don't have any per-encounter resource left, it instead uses the empower resource to cast the normal version. At least that's how I think would work best if you want empower to subside for per-encounter.

Moreover, the way they talk about how they tried to reduce the sluggishness of combat and readjusted health/damage ratios, it sounds to me like you wouldn't need more per-encounter spells than you already have, it will likely just be 2-3 powerful spells for crowd control and nuke then move on, like how it was in PoE late game.
 

FreeKaner

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I do not disagree with additional resource to make spells stronger but getting rid of per-rest spells and using that as the trade-off sounds forced indeed. I feel like it's going to be PoE 1.0 all over again and will require 1 years of patching for combat to be respectable. It's such an unnecessary change and seemingly only because people rested too much. When I played PoTD I rested too little I couldn't pick up all the camping supplies laying around.

I think for it to work they will need to have really limited amount of per-encounter resources per spell level and with a necessity to expand empower for encounters that take longer. If they don't do it that way they will come around to it over few patches, think of how cipher went from being able to spam spells at will to being able to only cast one or two powerful spells per encounter due upscaled focus cost and reduced starting focus.
 

ushas

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What possible reason would you have to raise party size to 6 in a game balanced for 5? Was story mode too hard for you?
Um, I think you were quoting wrong person? I was happy about externalizing data overall. However, you have a point here indeed. If just more party members are allowed without any other changes it will become too easy (not only fights, but also SIs, eg. when using sums of skills). Though are you sure they will pull out really hard PotD for 5 this time? I mean, regardless, moding can also help making the game more difficult in the way we would like. That's what I'm also hoping for.
 

Starwars

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I'm pretty fucking hyped for the game but the changes to combat, in particular the reduction of per-rest stuff, is pretty decline as far as I'm concerned. The opposite of the direction I would want them to take. Maybe the Empower deal will have a lot of oomph in the game, who knows, but it sounds exactly like the kind of system one doesn't use because the game is still easy enough for you to "forget about it" so to speak.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
IMO, the challenge of "strategical resource management" is secondary to the underlying purpose of making individual combats less spammy and repetitive. If they nerf it without making combat spammier, or even make it less spammy, I won't mind much.
 

Maculo

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Strap Yourselves In Pathfinder: Wrath
I'm pretty fucking hyped for the game but the changes to combat, in particular the reduction of per-rest stuff, is pretty decline as far as I'm concerned. The opposite of the direction I would want them to take. Maybe the Empower deal will have a lot of oomph in the game, who knows, but it sounds exactly like the kind of system one doesn't use because the game is still easy enough for you to "forget about it" so to speak.
Personally, I like the empower concept, but the encounters would need to be balanced around it, or perhaps a greater risk-reward element added to it. An example that comes to mind is the Warlock campaign from HoMMV (apples to oranges comparison inc.). You were so outnumbered and out-gunned that you needed empowered spells to survive (empowered meteor shower all day every day). The difference is that the HoMMV campaign was made with a Warlock hero in mind, and here we have multiple classes with different mileage.
 

ushas

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Or it could be that spells use 1 per-encounter resource and 1 empower resource to cast empowered version and if you don't have any per-encounter resource left, it instead uses the empower resource to cast the normal version. At least that's how I think would work best if you want empower to subside for per-encounter.
Hm, on similar note - if I'm not mistaken, aren't casters still suppose to have something like n uses for spells of the same level? (although per encounter now) So it can also work like one time +1 use for chosen spell level. And perhaps to do it for higher spell levels requires even more empower?
 

FreeKaner

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IMO, the challenge of "strategical resource management" is secondary to the underlying purpose of making individual combats less spammy and repetitive. If they nerf it without making combat spammier, or even make it less spammy, I won't mind much.

They are tied together intrinsically, if there is no strategical depth to resource management then the combat will end up being a spamfest of getting out as many powerful spells as possible.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Josh has said that all spellcasting will be slower now, with the risk of spell interruption. If a wizard is only going to get out three or four spells in every battle while also having to avoid enemy fire, that can't be called a spamfest.
 
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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Ydwin is a cipher/rogue? I thought she was a wizard and was a bit disappointed because Aloth was a wizard. Being rogue/cipher is cool and makes sense, since she studies death and knows where to strike for maximum efficiency.

EDIT: Ah, I saw the stretch goal now, Radora is the wizard, my bad. I don't think we have a druid companion, so maybe they should change their minds on that.

Boy blue is a Druid/Chanter
 

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