Eternity Pillars of Eternity II Beta Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Prime Junta]

That is now what this complaint was about. He complained about green text that gives you more info (about lore of the world) when you mouse over it.

"Pekehu - indicates strong affirmation or agreement." Yeah.

 

[ArchAngel]

Yeah it sucks but isn't that exactly what the detractors wanted..? Make up your mind.

Well not all of them. Pretty sure even Sensuki admits that character building is inherently better in PoE. But if you do enjoy the Infinity Engine games, this can't be the factor that makes the game not fun or bad for you. And they had unlimited resting too.

I don't know anyone that wanted most abilities removed from PoE. What we did want is less abilities for all classes. We complained that it worked well enough in BG where only casters had multiple abilities called spells to manage while you could leave your non casters to do what they did best without a need for excessive micromanagement.

What PoE did is bring about Turn Based level of character abilities into a clusterfuck RTwP designed game.

 

[FreeKaner]

Yeah it sucks but isn't that exactly what the detractors wanted..? Make up your mind.

Well not all of them. Pretty sure even Sensuki admits that character building is inherently better in PoE. But if you do enjoy the Infinity Engine games, this can't be the factor that makes the game not fun or bad for you. And they had unlimited resting too.

I don't know anyone that wanted most abilities removed from PoE. What we did want is less abilities for all classes. We complained that it worked well enough in BG where only casters had multiple abilities called spells to manage while you could leave your non casters to do what they did best without a need for excessive micromanagement.

What PoE did is bring about Turn Based level of character abilities into a clusterfuck RTwP designed game.

TL;DR: only mages should be playable

 

[Grunker]

The whole hyperlink thing tells me they didn't listen to a word of the criticism leveled against the last game's writing. The problem wasn't incomprehensibility - it was lore dumping and unnatural characters. That problem is made severely worse with the new system and focus on even more made up language, not better.

 

[Infinitron]

The whole hyperlink thing tells me they didn't listen to a word of the criticism leveled against the last game's writing.

They have. PoE2 writers have mentioned on Twitter and elsewhere a few times that they're trying to cut down on "loredumping". Whether or not they succeeded is a different matter.

The problem wasn't incomprehensibility - it was lore dumping and unnatural characters.

But hyperlinks aren't just a solution for "incomprehensibility". They're also a place to offload lore so they can reduce loredumping.

 

[Delterius]

On not caring about which spell to use; in a good magic system the situation should dictate which spell is best to cast. If you will always want to cast the same spell then yes, having limits per rest spells adds some strategic element. But if a magic system (and encounter design) is well done then this per rest element shouldn't be needed to make strategic choices emerge.

You're confusing some things here.

Without attrition or long term concerns of any kind, then there are no strategic concerns. At most, there are tactical concerns.

Furthermore, limited resources is a fundamental aspect of any good magic system. Without limitations, magic can't be very powerful. It quickly devolves into a series of colored arrows. After all, the wizards can cast as often as the fighters can swing their swords. One can't make the other obsolete. In AD&D a first level mage is essentially a civilian who can do one party trick once a day. Even so, they are an important member of the party. A well placed Sleep or Blindness spell is a major contribution and can turn the tide of the hardest battle of the session. More importantly, they aren't just more damage. They are a different move in kind.

So far, all attempts to re-tweak magic to bring it in line with martials in lieu of strategic concerns have failed. Be it Mana or Cast times, those eventually force the hand of the developer the other way. To nerf individual spells to make them as useful as ordinary weapons. PoE2 is going the way of castimes. This is a road well travelled and the destination is rather shitty.

EDIT: for reference, the history of RTwP CRPGs.

 

[Infinitron]

PoE2 is going the way of castimes. This is a road well travelled

Is it?

 

[Delterius]

PoE2 is going the way of castimes. This is a road well travelled

Is it?

Yes.

Just play any action based RPG.

All attempts to use cast times to balance magic leads to a combination of nerfs and situational shortcuts to turn the Super Powerful Fireball of death into an more ordinary bigger than average Fireball.

But of course, PoE2 is going to be more ordinary than it appears. Empowers are Mana in different clothes.

 

[Infinitron]

Just play any action based RPG.

All attempts to use cast times to balance magic leads to a combination of nerfs and situational shortcuts to turn the Super Powerful Fireball of death into an more ordinary bigger than average Fireball.

Can you explain how that's happened in more detail? I'm not sure I follow.

 

[Grunker]

The whole hyperlink thing tells me they didn't listen to a word of the criticism leveled against the last game's writing.

They have. PoE2 writers have mentioned on Twitter and elsewhere a few times that they're trying to cut down on "loredumping". Whether or not they succeeded is a different matter.

The problem wasn't incomprehensibility - it was lore dumping and unnatural characters.

But hyperlinks aren't just a solution for "incomprehensibility". They're also a place to offload lore so they can reduce loredumping.

Listening ≠ hearing. Listening implies they actually do something about it. Filling conversations with made-up words and big lore pop-ups is the reverse. They're not reducing lore-dumping by putting it in a hyperlink. Stuff that shit in a Codex if you absolutely have to. It means they're not making a chance to the core principals of writing but are trying to the exact same thing in a different way.

 

[ArchAngel]

Yeah it sucks but isn't that exactly what the detractors wanted..? Make up your mind.

Well not all of them. Pretty sure even Sensuki admits that character building is inherently better in PoE. But if you do enjoy the Infinity Engine games, this can't be the factor that makes the game not fun or bad for you. And they had unlimited resting too.

I don't know anyone that wanted most abilities removed from PoE. What we did want is less abilities for all classes. We complained that it worked well enough in BG where only casters had multiple abilities called spells to manage while you could leave your non casters to do what they did best without a need for excessive micromanagement.

What PoE did is bring about Turn Based level of character abilities into a clusterfuck RTwP designed game.

TL;DR: only mages should be playable

You might have mistaken PoE for a single character Skyrim like game. Maybe you are in a wrong topic?

Also in BG1 and Bg2 you could solo those games with fighters, paladins or rangers.

 

[Infinitron]

Listening ≠ hearing. Listening implies they actually do something about it. Filling conversations with made-up words and big lore pop-ups is the reverse. They're not reducing lore-dumping by putting it in a hyperlink. Stuff that shit in a Codex if you absolutely have to. It means they're not making a chance to the core principals of writing but are trying to the exact same thing in a different way.

Putting the loredumps in a hyperlink means you can choose not to read them.

But yeah, I see what you mean - any hardcore RPGer worth his salt will read everything he's presented with (backer NPCs say hi), so the loredumping experience remains.

There still is an advantage, though. Writers will often be compelled to repeat a certain piece of lore several times. It's not guaranteed that the player met that one NPC explaining elf lore early in the game, so if later he meets another elf, the lore might need to be repeated. Putting it in a hyperlink ensures you only read it once.

 

[Grunker]

Listening ≠ hearing. Listening implies they actually do something about it. Filling conversations with made-up words and big lore pop-ups is the reverse. They're not reducing lore-dumping by putting it in a hyperlink. Stuff that shit in a Codex if you absolutely have to. It means they're not making a chance to the core principals of writing but are trying to the exact same thing in a different way.

Putting the loredumps in a hyperlink means you can choose not to read them.

Did you read my criticism of the greyed out text?

 

[Delterius]

PoE2 is going the way of castimes. This is a road well travelled

Is it?

Yes.

Just play any action based RPG.

All attempts to use cast times to balance magic leads to a combination of nerfs and situational shortcuts to turn the Super Powerful Fireball of death into an more ordinary bigger than average Fireball.

But of course, PoE2 is going to be more ordinary than it appears. Empowers are Mana in different clothes.

Can you explain how that happens in more detail? I'm not sure I follow.

It is rather simple, really. Balancing isn't about tweaking isolated numbers. You push and pull in every direction with every change you make.

The original PoE has a limited rest system. In theory, that should force the player to mind their resources better. In turn this allows the devs to make individual spells and abilities much more relevant.

In the early levels of PoE, a single well placed spell from the Wizard can decide an encounter. Meaning that with one single rest you can clear a whole floor of a dungeon. Over time this evolves to two and then three spells of a much larger repertoire. However, the only reason why this is possible is because spells are individually powerful enough to matter and because the encounter placement mostly accounts for this playstyle. There won't be so many mooks that the vancian casters become disadvantaged when compared to the cooldown managers or resource builders.

Case in point, the AD&D games sometimes felt balanced for minimal rest runs. Sometimes not. The ruleset supports it. The casters are vancian and the individual spells are very powerful but the encounter design isn't always cooperative. Especially Siege of Dragonspear feels like campaign made up of PoE's one big exception: the Temple of Skaen.

Now, in PoE2 the casters aren't Vancian. They use empowers and have long cast times. These lead to some questions. Are normal powered fire balls, explosions and lightning bolts only good enough to fry the weakest enemies? Are the cast times subject to haste spells? The empowers can just amount to a veiled form of vancian spellcasting. I wouldn't mind that. Or they could just be a formality. The unnecessary coup de grace. That would leave us only with cast times. Are cast times really so long that the best abilities can change a whole encounter themselves? This can lead to a spell becoming impractical. I can't even pre-cast spells in PoE2, can I? It therefore becomes easier to weaken them. Instead of a 7 second Finger of Death, you get a 3.5 second Flame Arrow.

In short, if the stars don't align then magic users in PoE2 are what DraQ used to call archers who spam colored missiles.

 

[Inf0mercial]

I don't know, in some places the Hyperlinks work, like at the start of a game say Tyranny for example when they all start throwing about historical events, it helps the average person who does not follow the development of the game or someone who as soon as they pick up a lore book crack it open and read the entire thing keep up.

It also stops your character seeming like they were born into the world yesterday when they can simply skip asking obvious questions like who the current ruler is or what the massive war that engulfed the country 15 years ago was about.

Really it seems like when i hover over a hyperlink and it gives me 2 paragraphs of info they could not find a way to put it naturally in or ensure all the players would read the encyclopedia or lore books around, and its kind of need to know information. It also seems like an answer to the criticism that they keep lore dumping everywhere in random places.

 

[Lacrymas]

What PoE1 needed was even more general talents, not have them removed entirely! What are they thinking? They had to find a way to differentiate the playstyles of the classes, since they were all rather same-y depending on their archetype, but that had nothing to do with the general talents. The "every class had too many abilities" criticism wasn't aimed at general talents, it felt they had too many because of the ridiculously fast and undisciplined combat, exacerbated by the fact that some of them were immeasurably more useful than others. Fuck me. I'm not gonna comment on the writing, I know it's going to be shit and repeating things that have been said many times (like trying to organically weave the lore into the writing) is inane.

 

[Infinitron]

Now, in PoE2 the casters aren't Vancian. They use empowers and have long cast times. These lead to some questions. Are normal powered fire balls, explosions and lightning bolts only good enough to fry the weakest enemies? Are the cast times subject to haste spells? The empowers can just amount to a veiled form of vancian spellcasting. I wouldn't mind that. Or they could just be a formality. The unnecessary coup de grace. That would leave us only with cast times. Are cast times really so long that the best abilities can change a whole encounter themselves? This can lead to a spell becoming impractical. I can't even pre-cast spells in PoE2, can I? It therefore becomes easier to weaken them. Instead of a 7 second Finger of Death, you get a 3.5 second Flame Arrow.

Who weakens them? Are you saying that the designers, seeing that their idea of a time-based casting system is impractical for the most powerful spells, inevitably end up removing them and leaving only more spammable weaker spells?

 

[Delterius]

Now, in PoE2 the casters aren't Vancian. They use empowers and have long cast times. These lead to some questions. Are normal powered fire balls, explosions and lightning bolts only good enough to fry the weakest enemies? Are the cast times subject to haste spells? The empowers can just amount to a veiled form of vancian spellcasting. I wouldn't mind that. Or they could just be a formality. The unnecessary coup de grace. That would leave us only with cast times. Are cast times really so long that the best abilities can change a whole encounter themselves? This can lead to a spell becoming impractical. I can't even pre-cast spells in PoE2, can I? It therefore becomes easier to weaken them. Instead of a 7 second Finger of Death, you get a 3.5 second Flame Arrow.

Who weakens them? Are you saying that the designers, seeing that their idea of a time-based casting system is impractical for the most powerful spells, inevitably end up removing them and leaving only more spammable weaker spells?

Yes, that's the spirit of it. Pillars is one of the few games I know of that went through a patching process that is comparable to something like what Paradox or MMOs do. From my experience, ameliorating and nerfing the resource management is one strong possibility for PoE2's future. Streamlining and control is the logical conclusion of all balancing procedures. Just look at all the features removed in between.

 

[DosBuster]

the hyperlink stuff is good, so shut the fuck up

It's the antithesis of show, don't tell. I hate it.

You're never going to get "show, don't tell" in this kind of game to be honest

All the hypertext is just lore-information, not really anything plot or character wise in there. It really helps when tons of unfamilliar terms are being thrown around and you're sitting there going "wtf are these people saying", ala the Pillars I intro.

 

[anvi]

So is it really terrible like the first one?

 

[Sensuki]

Pretty sure even Sensuki admits that character building is inherently better in PoE.

There are more choices available than in any of the IE games for sure. Character creation & progression is not a priority for me because it technically isn't gameplay. I am more concerned with the consequences or ramifications the character system has on gameplay systems, and in a hypothetical situation would gladly take a set protagonist with a linear progression table that had reactive combat where how you execute actions matters, over a game like Pillars.

 

[2house2fly]

Listening ≠ hearing. Listening implies they actually do something about it. Filling conversations with made-up words and big lore pop-ups is the reverse. They're not reducing lore-dumping by putting it in a hyperlink. Stuff that shit in a Codex if you absolutely have to. It means they're not making a chance to the core principals of writing but are trying to the exact same thing in a different way.

Putting the loredumps in a hyperlink means you can choose not to read them.

But yeah, I see what you mean - any hardcore RPGer worth his salt will read everything he's presented with (backer NPCs say hi), so the loredumping experience remains.

There still is an advantage, though. Writers will often be compelled to repeat a certain piece of lore several times. It's not guaranteed that the player met that one NPC explaining elf lore early in the game, so if later he meets another elf, the lore might need to be repeated. Putting it in a hyperlink ensures you only read it once.

This is exacerbated in a game that's as non-linear as Pillars 2 is supposed to be. You could have skipped an option in a previous conversation about the lore, skipped the conversation entirely, or never even met the NPC you could have had a conversation with. I think games like Bloodborne and Dark Souls prove players can handle not getting a lot of exposition though, and I'd rather see Obsidian assume the player knows everything for a conversation and offload lore to item/spell descriptions and the like. Hyperlinks work for the same purpose I guess, but they seem a lot less elegant.

 

[Parabalus]

But if a character gets interrupted, then whatever they were doing is lost. And that applies to enemies as well, so if an enemy is in the middle of using some ability and you Interrupt them, that thing is gone and whatever resource they had towards using it is gone. So Interrupt and Concentration are no longer derived from your base stats, they're just properties of like, an attack either has Interrupt or doesn't, and a character either has Concentration or they don't, and usually the default is not. So if you get hit by an attack that interrupts you're gonna get knocked out of whatever you're doing.

If enemies use Interrupts competently this is gonna be the source of a lot of butthurt.

Yeah it sucks but isn't that exactly what the detractors wanted..? Make up your mind.

Well not all of them. Pretty sure even Sensuki admits that character building is inherently better in PoE. But if you do enjoy the Infinity Engine games, this can't be the factor that makes the game not fun or bad for you. And they had unlimited resting too.

I don't know anyone that wanted most abilities removed from PoE. What we did want is less abilities for all classes. We complained that it worked well enough in BG where only casters had multiple abilities called spells to manage while you could leave your non casters to do what they did best without a need for excessive micromanagement.

What PoE did is bring about Turn Based level of character abilities into a clusterfuck RTwP designed game.

It's your problem you're too retarded to handle more than 3 abilities per character. The only issue with this part of PoE's system was that the keybind UI was finicky.

 

[ArchAngel]

Yeah it sucks but isn't that exactly what the detractors wanted..? Make up your mind.

Well not all of them. Pretty sure even Sensuki admits that character building is inherently better in PoE. But if you do enjoy the Infinity Engine games, this can't be the factor that makes the game not fun or bad for you. And they had unlimited resting too.

I don't know anyone that wanted most abilities removed from PoE. What we did want is less abilities for all classes. We complained that it worked well enough in BG where only casters had multiple abilities called spells to manage while you could leave your non casters to do what they did best without a need for excessive micromanagement.

What PoE did is bring about Turn Based level of character abilities into a clusterfuck RTwP designed game.

It's your problem you're too retarded to handle more than 3 abilities per character. The only issue with this part of PoE's system was that the keybind UI was finicky.

Ok you enjoy clusterfuck combat and I don't. We can agree to disagree. But it will not stop me from shitting on that design.

 

[Urthor]

What I'd really love to see is a review of the crowd control. That was Pillar's weakest element the first time around, and if they can fix the tank and spank combat, even the half decent tank and spank of 3.x patches, it'll go a long way to making combat meaningfully tactical.