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

[Sannom]

Place your 5... 4 non-vancian lol mages in a row, out of sight of the enemy.
Start casting 4 longest baddest MMO spells.
Trigger enemy with Eder.
Retargeted AOE Hell.

Now you dont even need to calculate and hope and pray.
Its hard to make PoE combat worse but this is a good start!

Are you the hidden son/daughter of The Phantom Blot and Heinz Doofenshmirtz? Why so complicated when you could just cast those AoE spells while in stealth?

Fucking no-brains bashers and their idiocy!

 

[lili]

'Out of sight' implies the moronic PoE mechanic of enemies having shorter LOS even without stealth, what a garbage game.
But that wasnt the point you idiotic blind fanboy. THE POINT is that it doesnt cancel casting time on retarget and that its AOE perencounter spam. Its already designed for trash combat, so so much of it that you need all your spells per-encounter.

 

[FreeKaner]

I would like if the casters didn't turn around instantly during pause though so there is a bit of more finesse to it than just starting casting and pausing in last moment to retarget. Anyone want to ask about that in twitter?

Lel, it doesnt look like he cancels the casting time. PoE2 confirmed worse than PoE1, if thats even possible...

Place your 5... 4 non-vancian lol mages in a row, out of sight of the enemy.
Start casting 4 longest baddest MMO spells.
Trigger enemy with Eder.
Retargeted AOE Hell.

Now you dont even need to calculate and hope and pray.
Its hard to make PoE combat worse but this is a good start!

Are you legitimately retarded? Pre-casting and pulling enemy into aoe was a thing you already did in PoE, this changes nothing about that. What this changes is adding long casting times without making them unusuable, which is incline.

Also is that a fucking turban I see on that faggot party member? Guess I know who I'm immediately executing.

Didn't they say some of the cultures would be inspired by Indians, what's surprising about turbans in that case?

 

[HollyhockGod]

Didn't they say some of the cultures would be inspired by Indians, what's surprising about turbans in that case?

Nothing. Racists are just easily triggered I guess. Whatever.
Turbans are fucking cool and this basically confirms turbans as hats, so I'm happy.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Didn't they say some of the cultures would be inspired by Indians, what's surprising about turbans in that case?

Nothing. Racists are just easily triggered I guess. Whatever.
Turbans are fucking cool and this basically confirms turbans as hats, so I'm happy.

agree

 

[AwesomeButton]

 

[Morblot]

Re: turbans

Kana has one in PoE, can't remember that causing any butthurt...

 

[Mazisky]

Am i wrong to say that Graphics and FXs are absolutely incline?

 

[mildTea]

I have been following the Deadfire campaing for quite a bit, but I haven't seen anywhere an explanation on how exactly the extra money is going to be spent in order to make the stretch goals a reality.

F. Urquhart said that they planned the campaign better this time and the production timeline they planned before launching the campaign takes the SGs into account. So are they going to:
a) hire more people,
b) pay more overtime,
c) keep the team members for a longer time on Deadfire before moving them to another project?

Has anyone noticed any information about this?

I'm a bit worried that with more money they can always pay more man-hours for creating the assets or programming, but I am not sure whether that is easy for including more writers or designers. For example, when one of the stretch goals is an extra companion, will they put an extra writer on the team or will they have one of the current writers do more work? If so, won't the current writer be missing on writing some core content?

 

[TT1]

http://www.redbull.com/en/games/stories/1331849111609/pillars-of-eternity-2-interview-red-bull-games

Sand and sorcery in Pillars of Eternity 2
Obsidian Entertainment chief Feargus Urquhart talks taking Tolkien tropical in the new RPG.


Do you ever look around a new a place and get that feeling that something's just the tiniest bit off? You'll take the place, but still, there's that niggling sense that something isn't quite right.

Crunch. A massive stone fist punches up from under the basement, destroys the whole block and kills your neighbours. With one foot on your new car and another somewhere around where the guy next door had been trimming the hedges, a mighty and terrible rock golem stands before you, the furious visage of an ancient god wrought in stone peering down. Then the statue strides off into the sea, leaving you with nought but memories and a desire to one day hit it really hard in the face with a magical hammer.

This is, more or less, how things kick off in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. Without spoiling anything, by the end of the first instalment, which Obsidian Kickstarted to the tune of $4,000,000 and released in 2015, you've settled into some pretty cushy digs: the stronghold of Caed Nua, which you've rid of subterranean beasties and done up as a base of operations. Then the giant god statue that's been secretly lurking underneath the castle wakes up, bursts out of the ground, and sets off towards the Deadfire Archipelago: a string of tropical islands somewhere to the south of the first game's realm of Dyrwood.

It’s Obsidian's answer to that perpetually tricky question of the RPG sequel that allows you to carry over your character from the first game: how is this game going to challenge me now that I'm basically king and can obliterate any who opposes me without getting out of my chair?

"We came up with this idea that the statue that was under your stronghold, Caed Nua, basically comes to life and bursts out," says Feargus Urquhart, Obsidian's CEO. "And as it bursts out, it's basically sucking the soul energy from everybody around. Now, you're more powerful [after the events of Pillars I] so it doesn't kill you, but for all intents and purposes it takes the power that you built up over all of Eternity I, and sucks you back down to level one. Then the statue marches off into the sea, and that's the start of the game, so you now have to follow the statue to get your power back."

As part of the school of RPGs that's filled with murky choice and consequence, there were several different ways that the first Pillars could end – some less happily than others. One of the challenges with Deadfire was how those choices – and more importantly, your character's reputation as a shining pillar of light or someone who feeds grandmas to dragons – would carry over into the game's sequel.

Urquhart won't go into details of how this will play out in practice (though he gives an example that, if your original character had a background story in which he or she hailed from the Deadfire Archipelago, it's the kind of thing an NPC might comment on), but if you want to carry your character over, you can expect some of your renown to have crossed the sea along with the giant stomping statue.

Alternatively, if you feel like ditching your past, you can always start Deadfire afresh, making up your own legend through a series of conversation trees with characters that'll flesh out the story of what you did (or rather, didn't) do during the events of the first game. This is the default starting point for players new to Pillars. But it's also there for veterans looking for a blank slate, or to try a new class.



"We know that some players may feel that they want to change what they did in the game, or they didn't play Pillars, or they played Pillars but the want to start with a new character," says Urquhart. "So you're basically going to go through, as subtly as we can make it, this sort of questioning in dialogues about what happened, and that's where you can change what you did or build what you did in Pillars if you didn't play it."

Whether you played the first Pillars or not, the most jarring change might come from the scenery. Pillars of Eternity introduced new races and lore, but still fit into the mold of the 'fantasy RPG'. It was Tolkienesque: medieval European-ish towns and races and classes that, if you didn't want to jump in horns-or-ears-first as a Godlike or an Orlan, at least looked at home in Pillars' forests, dungeons and villages. Deadfire and its archipelago, meanwhile are as Urquhart describes it, "Polynesian" – quite a jump and paddle from what a fantasy audience might expect.

"I don't think we would have done this tropical, Polynesian setting for Pillars I, because what we needed to do first was establish Pillars as a traditional, conceptualisation of medieval times in Europe, but obviously with dragons and magical swords," Urquhart says. "That's what people associate Pillars with, because that's what Pillars I was. So, it's always this thing of, how much can you make new in a sequel to keep things interesting? And not just to keep things interesting for players, but to keep things interesting for the team as well.

"There are different kinds of settings you can do: you can do an island chain, you can do ice (which we did with White March for Icewind Dale back at Black Isle Studios), you can do the desert, you can do jungles, you can do tundra. There's a lot of different things you can do. But I think the important thing we did was establish Pillars as a medieval fantasy RPG, so even though we're going somewhere else for the sequel, it already has those trappings and that feeling for people.

"On the flipside, we're very aware that we can't just go to the Deadfire and have everything just be huts and everybodybe tattooed, tanned and with loin cloths. That can start to feel weird. That was one of the first big conversations we had about Deadfire, where we said, 'Yes, it's cool if we can go to this string of islands, and yes, we should represent the culture of those islands, but we need to also represent that this is also a somewhat colonised string of islands."



Palm trees or not, though, Pillars II is still a fantasy RPG. But like Wasteland 2, it's in an interesting place for a crowdfunded franchise. Wasteland 2 brought the CRPG to Kickstarter in 2012, with all the post-apocalyptic trappings that an old-school Wasteland or Fallout fan could want: deserts, raiders, mutant rabbits and so on. Pillars did the same for fantasy. But for their sequels, both Pillars and Wasteland are moving away from what we've been trained to expect.

But when you're relying on a core fanbase to stump up the cash for you to build one of these worlds, how out-there can you get with your ideas before your backers start backing away? How many successfully crowdfunded games does it take before your fans will fund your epic accountancy RPG just because it's your studio that's making it?

"I think the question there is, are people fans of Pillars, or are they fans of Obsidian?" says Urquhart. "I think the answer is that they're both. There are certain people that enjoy the style of RPG we make no matter the setting: they enjoy how we approach companions and how we approach moral questions and how approach world-building. There are other people that love being in that Tolkienesque world. It's their getaway, their escape.

"So, ultimately the question for us is, do we do something completely different – not to go all Monty Python – but do we do something so completely different that, while people understand it's still going to be an Obsidian RPG, but, you know, it's the story of a one-celled amoeba or a plankton. Some people will get behind that. But what we also have to look at [the fact that], for our fans of Pillars or our fans of a Tolkienesque world, they may not be interested in that. They enjoy the comfortable nature of elves and dwarves.

"That's the ongoing debate: should there be elves and dwarves in every medieval fantasy RPG? And something that we've debated many, many times. Some people feel that elves and dwarves are trite. Other people love the concept of elves and dwarves so when we're looking at this – and this is going to sound really strange – if one of our jobs is entertainment and part of that entertainment is escape, and part of that escape is going to a world with elves and dwarves, then why wouldn't I create a world with elves and dwarves?

"That's not to say that every RPG should be like that. I have this weird idea for a film noir RPG. I don't know if it would work, but I can kind of picture it. We could use the Eternity engine and make this black and white, shades grey, and use the way people talk, and music. It may never work, and I also know that if we were to make that, everybody that bought Pillars would not be on the ride for that. And that's OK. But that doesn't mean we should completely turn away from Pillars, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't look into doing other stuff as well, just to try things."

 

[Lacrymas]

Just the first sentence puts me off - "talks taking Tolkien tropical in the new RPG.", ugh *shiver*. But just like from the beginning, if they pull off a very good exploration of Colonialism it's going to be great. So much potential.

 

[GloomFrost]

Lel, it doesnt look like he cancels the casting time. PoE2 confirmed worse than PoE1, if thats even possible...

Place your 5... 4 non-vancian lol mages in a row, out of sight of the enemy.
Start casting 4 longest baddest MMO spells.
Trigger enemy with Eder.
Retargeted AOE Hell.

Now you dont even need to calculate and hope and pray.
Its hard to make PoE combat worse but this is a good start!

God stop whining, casting spells when your mages are out of enemy sight and then using tanks to protect them was a thing since the first BD and IWD and people didnt seam to mind too much and suddenly when POE does it, its the crime of the century.

 

[Lacrymas]

They won't, play Expeditions: Conquistador for that

Expeditions is actually sitting on my backlog, should go around to playing it soon.

 

[AN4RCHID]

Conquistador is pretty cool but it's not exactly a sober exploration of colonialism. That's the game with strong wombyn soldiers in the 17th Century and most of the characters are modern egalitarian universalists. I could see Sawyer doing a better job what with his obsession with grimdark history and making conflicting sides relateable.

 

[Sentinel]

Also is that a fucking turban I see on that faggot party member? Guess I know who I'm immediately executing.

You got a problem against people protecting their head from the sun? What are you, a lobbyist for some sort of heat-stroke "miracle cure"? Get the fuck out, you chaotic evil, Mike Oldfied-worshiping idiot!

Funny that no non-muslim character needed protection from the sun in PoE1.
Kill yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Horse

 

[Shadenuat]

Was hoping nuking would be a harder strategy to pull off this time, not easier.

 

[Lacrymas]

AoE is always a bitch to get right. It either feels too weak or too strong. Friendly fire is kind of a band-aid fix, but it doesn't prevent you from just mowing down scores of enemies with AoE attacks by just lining them up properly with a single char.

 

[lili]

Are you legitimately retarded? Pre-casting and pulling enemy into aoe was a thing you already did in PoE, this changes nothing about that. What this changes is adding long casting times without making them unusuable, which is incline.

I love retarded Obshitians. Only them defend crap design decisions of Master-Autist Sawyer.

Precasting was never a thing in PoE. It would make no sense because you could not retarget! You'd hit half the spell at best if you abused stealth. What you did was bottleneck a horde on Eder and nuke em fully but you had to wait.

Now in his infinite autism Sawyer decided to make spells per-encounter. But to omfglol balance this retarded MMO decision, he made them take longer to cast. But to now omfglol balance that crutch, he made them re-targetable! ALL IN THE NAME OF BALANCE!

What his autistic self seemingly cant see are the obvious fucking exploits, the degenerate gameplay that grows straight from his fucking """balanced""" design. The man is an autist, straight up.

And the people who enjoy Pillars of Shit are larpers.

God stop whining, casting spells when your mages are out of enemy sight and then using tanks to protect them was a thing since the first BD and IWD

Cloud spells out of AI LOS is an AI exploit. It was never good.
Making slow casting spells retargetable makes an already broken game casual friendly.
And... well... I guess Obshitian IS casual... Cant wait for the couch, PS4 version of PoS2.

 

[Sentinel]

idk what you're on about friend I enjoyed PoE1 even tho it's a subpar game by Obsidian standards
I'm hyped for PoE2 even though the per-encounter spells are fucking retarded and it's just gonna revolve around endless spam and hurt the combat a lot like in Tranny. At least Tranny had cooldowns.

 

[Lacrymas]

It really depends on how many "spell slots" we have per spell level (or maybe even total?), if they give you like 3 global spell slots per encounter, it won't devolve into spam. Quite the contrary, it will make you think what spells to use when, depending on difficulty.

 

[TT1]

I'm 300% hyped to POE2.

Obsidian seems really worried about solving problems and improving the mechanics for POE2

 

[Sentinel]

too bad the most important thing in an RPG is the writing, not the gameplay mechanics.

There's a reason Mask of the Betrayer, KotOR2 and New Vegas are classics even though the gameplay is shit on all of them (less so for NV, admittedly).

 

[Morblot]

stuff

Joined: Feb 26, 2017

 

[oldmanpaco]

stuff

Joined: Feb 26, 2017

Yeah lili has been with us a lot longer than that.

 

[Sacred82]

I think the ring you get in Pillars was a backer item, and you need to sell it to be able to make your own party right from the start. Pretty bad form. Have they said if they are going to do the same in Pillars 2?