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

[Lacrymas]

I guess it makes sense if your awakened soul can transfer specific knowledge to you. That's ripe for plot holes and narrative exploitation, though. Souls will become like the Force in Star Wars, all-purpose plot insulation.

 

[pomenitul]

Alternately, his second class type could hinge on whether he further repressed that part of his being or not.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Hm so if the backer beta goes out tomorrow, ETA is around the 6/2018?

 

[Ulfhednar]

There's no need for every companion to have 3 combinations. It has to make sense for them, Aloth can't be anything else than a Wizard, he doesn't have the training or background. Unless you find him in some oonga-boonga village and he's training to be a Barbarian or something.

It doesn't have to - you would prefer that it does. Personally, I'm much more interested in playing with the game mechanics on the companions than I am in whether or not the narrative arc for the character exactly matches the stats that are on my character sheet. I really liked their initial proposal of restricting the companions to one or two core classes and then letting the player throw in anything else they want.

... and also makes hired adventurers not pointless.

I really don't like that these are the only options you get to play around with new character ideas, or that they are the only characters that you can min-max with. From what I recall, initially they were supposed to be characters that you created to get past a certain task that your team wasn't up to - traps, priest immunity spell for a tough fight, etc. After playing through the game a few times, eventually the mercs were all that was ever in my party because I couldn't build the companion characters the way I wanted to.

I felt their initial pitch for multiclassing companions was much better because I wouldn't have to choose between innovative mechanics and the story. And you can still play Eder as a straight fighter or Aloth as a Wizard if you want continuity. But I could also decide I want to play Aloth as a Wizard/Cipher as the head of the Leaden Key, or even as a Barb/Wizard for the hell of it, oonga-boonga drums and all. If Josh's philosophy really is "Let the player decide how they want to play," I really think they should stick to their first idea regarding companion multiclassing.

 

[Lacrymas]

What RPG in the history of ever allowed you to spec the companions however you wish? D:OS 2 doesn't count since it's a classless system. Did you feel limited by the fact you can't make Imoen into a fighter/mage? Or that Eder couldn't be changed from fighter? I guess the answer to that is yes, but story companions need some mechanical concreteness to give weight to their life choices, otherwise they are just puppets that spout random words which have nothing to do with them. It's inelegant and a bit amateurish to disassociate story and mechanics in such a way. You have the adventurers as a loophole.

 

[Ulfhednar]

What RPG in the history of ever allowed you to spec the companions however you wish? D:OS 2 doesn't count since it's a classless system. Did you feel limited by the fact you can't make Imoen into a fighter/mage? Or that Eder couldn't be changed from fighter? I guess the answer to that is yes, but story companions need some mechanical concreteness to give weight to their life choices, otherwise they are just puppets that spout random words which have nothing to do with them.

Yes, after playing through all the story characters in BG2, my playthroughs after that usually involved porting over pregenerated companions from a multiplayer save because I wanted to try different things. There's a much bigger incentive to play with character stats in PoE's system than there ever was in AD&D, and it seems like quite a waste to have built a fluid multiclassing mechanic and then not be able to use it with either the story companions or the sidekicks. Inevitably, on multiple playthroughs I run into the same problem I had with the first game - do I explore the mechanics or do I explore the story, because it seems difficult to do both of those at the same time.

It's inelegant and a bit amateurish to disassociate story and mechanics in such a way. You have the adventurers as a loophole.

It's just different priorities - It's a long game, and I will play it many times. I would prefer some more choices in how the story companions can be built.

 

[Lacrymas]

The problem I see here is that you think mechanics and story are two separate things. They are not. I know devs have treated them as having nothing to do with each other, but that's like treating music and text as separate things in an opera or even a song. It can be done, but it's dilettantish and even pointless, if you want something else out of your music choose another text.