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

[Infinitron]

A conversation with Maia Rua, presumably. >_>

 

[Lacrymas]

If we can really say that I'll be sooooo happy.

 

[Quillon]

'cept tis clearly a pillows 1 game state question for custom save, not a conversation.

--
meanwhile, interesting discussion over at https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/92515-josh-sawyers-tweets-and-teasers/page-64#entry1959979 :D

 

[Lacrymas]

It never fails to amuse when people talk about the 'Dex.

 

[CptMace]

Do you guys think it would be [stoic], [cruel], [clever], [honest], or [passionate] ?

 

[Immortal]

Do you guys think it would be [stoic], [cruel], [clever], [honest], or [passionate] ?

[passionate] I dunno.

 

[Quillon]

Would have been either Stoic or Cruel, depending on the question...maybe honest too. Deffo not passionate tho :D

 

[Ulfhednar]

[Diplomatic]

 

[Quillon]

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3807509&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=354

mitochondritom posted:
Man I hope the bounties will return in Poe2.

They do.
The ship duels can also get insane.

Entropy238 posted:
Can you give us any more info on what a ship duel might be like from a mechanical perspective?
We're probably going to do a large update on them in the near future.

Compared to the stronghold system in Pillars 1, much more time and effort has gone into the ship, crew, and ship duel systems.

Without going into too much before we can show everything in detail, I can say that you should not expect a real-time or RTwP system where you're moving around little ships on a stretch of ocean. A not-quite-accurate approximation would be something like a turn-based FTL.

Of course, if you close to board, you will get the deck-to-deck combats that we've shown before in videos. Any damage you've done to the enemy ship's crew (or they to yours) gets carried over into the deck-to-deck fight.

frajaq posted:
Not gonna lie I hope a lot of the ship stuff is really optional, don't want to learn nautical stuff to progress the story.

The easiest way to avoid ship duels is to fly false colors. If you do get into a duel, the quickest way to end it quickly is either to flee or to head toward the enemy ship as quickly as possible to board.

Iretep posted:
Personally i hope i can take the opposing captains heads as trophies and collect them. Or hats are fine too.

Defeating an enemy ship gives you a unique triumph (a small flag) that corresponds to the captain.

frajaq posted:
wait so there will always be a way to "brute force" to turn the ship duel into a straight tactical fight with my characters, I don't have to engage in cannon duels/ship maneuvers? I'm down with that

Well, if you can reach the ship, yes. If you send the Defiant headlong at a Rauataian junk broadsiding you, you may not make it.

Meyers-Briggs Testicle posted:
I hope you can see boats moving around the seas in the full game. The beta ocean feels so empty graphically, if I saw trader / enemy ships moving around that would be awesome

That is something we're working on right now.

Wizard Styles posted:
The enemy AI can actually deal with facing an army of 36 and still prioritizes targets fairly well. What it can't deal with is 12 skeletons that can engage and get Disengagement Attacks when enemies try to run past them. Disengagement attacks don't feel powerful individually but when it's a horde of summons getting them it adds up and the AI's way of deciding whether or not to take Disengagement Attacks seems fairly simple and unable to factor in other enemies (that are capable of Engagement) close enough to intercept them on their way to whoever they're trying to get to. At least that's what it looked like when I drowned the world in skeletons, which admittedly is a pretty extreme thing to subject the AI to.

Skeleton summons were very OP in the backer beta release. They will be tuned down significantly in the next patch.

Duels sound neat but I still can't picture it.. What's FTL like? And I remember thev've said that there weren't gonna be TB ship battles... :/

 

[Trashos]

Wizard Styles posted:
The enemy AI can actually deal with facing an army of 36 and still prioritizes targets fairly well. What it can't deal with is 12 skeletons that can engage and get Disengagement Attacks when enemies try to run past them. Disengagement attacks don't feel powerful individually but when it's a horde of summons getting them it adds up and the AI's way of deciding whether or not to take Disengagement Attacks seems fairly simple and unable to factor in other enemies (that are capable of Engagement) close enough to intercept them on their way to whoever they're trying to get to. At least that's what it looked like when I drowned the world in skeletons, which admittedly is a pretty extreme thing to subject the AI to.

Skeleton summons were very OP in the backer beta release. They will be tuned down significantly in the next patch.

Er... are there battles with 36 people on one side in the beta? How many enemies are usually in a fight?

 

[DeepOcean]

Do you guys think it would be [stoic], [cruel], [clever], [honest], or [passionate] ?

[merciful]

 

[Quillon]

 

[Sentinel]

god i fucking hate ozzy, what a hack

 

[Reinhardt]

Do you guys think it would be [stoic], [cruel], [clever], [honest], or [passionate] ?

[merciful]

[benevolent]

 

[Colour Spray]

Boo! To the hells with graze.
I guess this is the smite evil problem, which I admit was always a bit of a downer. I remember playing Shadows of Udrentide co-op and going to my friend, alright, I've had enough of these goddamn snakes, watch this... Smite Evil *miss*

I'd rather they just added a desirable item which dramatically increases your accuracy when using special abilities, but not spells; rather than take this approach, which makes aoe crowd control kinda loopy. Maybe something like, 'When these bracers are equipped, this characters special abilities will graze for half effect instead of miss.'

Also, I second the motion for fast cast conjure weapons, albeit I haven't played the backer beta. 6 seconds to create a weapon sounds a little brutal. Don't make my wizard lower themselves to puny steel.

 

[Ent]

They are doing this specifically to make casters more powerful they are kinda bad in the current version of the beta.

 

[Colour Spray]

They are doing this specifically to make casters more powerful they are kinda bad in the current version of the beta.

Ah, that does make sense then, yeah. I hadn't considered it from that perspective.
Woops. Carry on.

 

[Ent]

I wasn't actually expecting them to bring graze back like that . I thought the problem was with how slow some of the casting actually was along with the penetration values of some of the spells. This along with the mysterious "tiered penetration" system he mentioned in the stream is probably going to shake a bunch of things up.

 

[Iznaliu]

I'd rather they just added a desirable item which dramatically increases your accuracy when using special abilities, but not spells; rather than take this approach, which makes aoe crowd control kinda loopy. Maybe something like, 'When these bracers are equipped, this characters special abilities will graze for half effect instead of miss.'

That would ruin itemisation; you might as well incorporate that ability into every character if every character will want it.

 

[Urthor]

They are doing this specifically to make casters more powerful they are kinda bad in the current version of the beta.

I mean, the attributes have not much impact on the overall power level of characters, they designed that in deliberately. It's not like BG2 where a +1 to your roll is yuge

 

[Colour Spray]

That would ruin itemisation; you might as well incorporate that ability into every character if every character will want it.

I disagree. But, either way, I was mistook the reason for the change. So it doesn't really bear arguing over.

Spoiler

Although, I admit the wording was inept. I had activated abilities in mind; otherwise the item would just become the de facto carnage barbarian item.

I think they just have to be careful that adding a global decrease to evasion doesn't create a smaller window for casters to do anything meaningful. I figure they wouldn't overlook something like that, however.

 

[aweigh]

Activated abilities do gain a hidden bonus to accuracy, and if they are a full-attack then also one to "recovery".

Yet more undocumented stuff from PoE engine which was only found out by forum users, lol.

 

[Haplo]

I'd rather they just added a desirable item which dramatically increases your accuracy when using special abilities, but not spells; rather than take this approach, which makes aoe crowd control kinda loopy. Maybe something like, 'When these bracers are equipped, this characters special abilities will graze for half effect instead of miss.'

That would ruin itemisation; you might as well incorporate that ability into every character if every character will want it.

If you focus on Accuracy and Perception, you may hit/crit all the time anyway (unless you get hit with strong debuffs). Then if there are strong competing alternatives, you may still choose to use them. Plus such items could be very limited in number.

I'm also not too happy about the return of status effect grazes by the way. Indeed, once you've made a "breach" with a graze status effect in enemy defences you can beat most enemies. Kind of a snowball effect. I'd prefer powerful individual spells.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[FreeKaner]

Maybe graze shouldn't pen, you know, it would make sense and make spell casting grazes more powerful in comparison.