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

[Sizzle]

Do you disagree that a larger range of numbers is harder to balance than a smaller range of numbers?

Do you disagree that the opinion of a person who hasn't played a game since it went through significant iterations shouldn't be considered valid anymore?

 

[Sensuki]

I've actually played the Pillars 2 beta!

 

[Lacrymas]

Not quite. The main difference here is the difference between the attack resolution systems. I never said that +5 accuracy is useless either. The simplier d20 system with smaller bonuses is a lot easier to manage/balance than the Pillars system with it's miss/graze/hit/crit thresholds and how that is calculated.

That doesn't matter, though. The only thing you need to worry about is pumping Accuracy. Even if the addition of grazes make it "more complicated", it really doesn't matter. You gain nothing by thinking too much about these things or about the attack resolution, or anything like that. You know your Acc and you know the target's defenses, that's it, then you either debuff the defenses or buff your Acc, or both, or neither. Hell, on expert mode, you have to go into the bestiary to check the mobs' defenses, yet I'm in the middle of an Ironman run and have only checked that info once (about spirits). Even though it becomes a bit of a routine fighting against mages in BG1 (with SCS), they are practically invulnerable before you purge their invisibility and Spell Thrust their other buffs, nothing like this happens in PoE1 and you don't need to think about it.

 

[fantadomat]

I haven't played Pillars 2 beta,but i know everything about it.

 

[CptMace]

I've actually played the Pillars 2 beta!

Sensuki casts Liberating Exhortation on Self : Critical (+3.1s. duration).

 

[frajaq]

I wish someone would leak the beta already

 

[Sensuki]

That doesn't matter, though. The only thing you need to worry about is pumping Accuracy.

As a player. For the designer it's a lot more work to balance than the AD&D d20 system.

 

[Iznaliu]

I didn't mean to suggest Josh stole the idea, just that the maritime marketing blitz makes more sense in light of the success of D:OS2.

Nobody cares that D:OS2 had a ship; I doubt Obsidian is dumb enough to not be aware of this. Additionally, the whole naval element is a key part of the game, so it would have had to be prioritised fairly early on, before D:OS2's release.

 

[Jenkem]

You guys can bicker all you want but bottom line is that POE 2 will be Codex GOTY 2018.

 

[frajaq]

Josh talking about changes here

Various Deadfire Changes

We’ve had a lot of good feedback from the Backer Beta, both in terms of online anecdotes/experiences on the Obsidian forums and myriad offsites as well as the telemetric data we’ve been collecting from players.

There’s been a lot of feedback about spellcasting times, especially for characters like ciphers, the dominance of certain martial characters (especially multiclass combos), penetration, etc.

Here are some general changes we’ve made that will appear sometime in a future Backer Beta update:

* Canceling an action no longer consumes the resource for that action (including item use). This includes moving, switching actions, or simply canceling. Resources are now consumed on the launch frame or when actively Interrupted. Yes, you can actively early cancel to avoid an Interrupt if you are a pinball wizard with high APMs.

* Cipher Focus gain per point of damage has been doubled.

* Following feedback on MaxQuest’s cast/recovery speed mod, the cast times of many cipher spells have been reduced, the Long Cast and Recovery times have been lowered, and most weapon summons have been moved from Long to Average cast (I’ll say this is against my better judgment, because those weapons are ludicrously powerful IME).

* Weapons have been unified into two major categories: Average Penetration and High Penetration. Damaging spells have largely been moved up into Average Penetration values if they weren’t already. “Best of” weapons have 1 point lower Penetration than single damage type weapons, e.g. a sabre at 7 Slash and a sword at 6/6 Slash/Pierce. Damage values on weapons have generally come down a bit, especially on weapons that were previously in the Low Pen category.

* We are implementing a combat speed slider on the main HUD to adjust your combat speed to slower or faster speeds as your heart desires.

Here are some future/speculative things in the works:

* Rogues are in a weird place. Our telemetrics data shows them as being fairly modest in DPS terms when single-classed, but often among the most powerful characters when multiclassed. There are many possible reasons for this: 1) combining with other martial classes increases durability and/or stacks passive damage bonuses 2) combining with other martial classes makes players more likely to put them in heavier armor, which also increases their survivability 3) some particularly crazy combination of abilities. We’re examining the telemetrics data further to gain more insight.

* There are certainly some goofball combinations floating around, notably monk/wizard when console hacked to higher levels (probably a combination of Swift Strikes, Citzal’s Spirit Lance, and other goodies).

* We continue to talk regularly about Might/Strength and Resolve. As always, there are difficult problems to solve here. The easiest path would be to revert to the way Pillars I Might and Resolve worked, which seemingly would make more players happier and result in less weirdness when building certain character classes. We had high hopes (or I did, anyway) for the Concentration gain idea, but there were logistical problems and practical balance problems with that approach. We also discussed a passive Power Level gain derived from Resolve, but that also ran into problems. We don’t have much time left to mess around with base attributes, so we’re discussing one final idea, which focuses on adding a random chance to Empower (or Depower, with low Resolve) any active ability when used after a short time has elapsed in combat. If this design does not pan out, we are likely to revert to Pillars I Might/Resolve.

There are myriad other minor and not-so-minor bugfixes and adjustments in the works, but these are the ones that seem of greatest interest to the community at large. Thanks for reading.

 

[fantadomat]

You guys can bicker all you want but bottom line is that POE 2 will be Codex GOTY 2018.

Bethesda could always release a new Fallout/Elder scroll game around Christmas.

 

[Nael]

You guys can bicker all you want but bottom line is that POE 2 will be Codex GOTY 2018.

Bethesda could always release a new Fallout/Elder scroll game around Christmas.

I wonder if they'll get Skyrim for Android OS released in time?

 

[AwesomeButton]

Do you disagree that the opinion of a person who hasn't played a game since it went through significant iterations shouldn't be considered valid anymore?

I was going to say the same things as him, and I've played an obscene amount of hours, plus have observed other people at home play it. Attack the arguments, not the person

d100 is inflated numbers and no, it's not the same as d20 multiplied by 5, because both defense and accuracy values have to scale up 5 times... It's beyond repair.

 

[Haplo]

Heart of Fury is simply MOAR DAMAGE with extra flashiness. There is nothing interesting about it and is simply another button to automatically click when there are enough mobs on the screen, which is always. Yeah, sure, it triggers weapon abilities on Carnage crits, like every other ability and auto attack, big whoop.

Yeah, just another damage ability. It's just that no ability in IE games comes even remotely close to the JS balanced destructive potential of a properly supported Heart of Fury.
So I guess all damage abilities in IE games are far more yawn inducing?

 

[Elex]

You guys can bicker all you want but bottom line is that POE 2 will be Codex GOTY 2018.

Bethesda could always release a new Fallout/Elder scroll game around Christmas.

E3 trailer and 18:18 18/8/18 release

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

So Josh is having sleepless nights cause some multi-classed characters are too fun to play.

And no surprises on the universal hate for the neutered inclusive spell system.

 

[Mazisky]

"most weapon summons have been moved from Long to Average cast (I’ll say this is against my better judgment, because those weapons are ludicrously powerful IME)."

Lel, he is slowly changing his mind...i guess months of castle siege-like spam of butthurt was worth

 

[Lacrymas]

Yeah, just another damage ability. It's just that no ability in IE games comes even remotely close to the JS balanced destructive potential of a properly supported Heart of Fury.
So I guess all damage abilities in IE games are far more yawn inducing?

You have to take into consideration the context. By the point you get Heart of Fury, you already have a bajillion pure damage abilities on a variety of characters that you have to click regularly because lol, that's gameplay for PoE fans, I guess? Anywho, you just add more of that on top of the already enormous pile of samey-ness. If HoF was the only, or one of a very, very few, such abilities, sure, but it's not, regardless of its damage potential. It's just another button to click for pure damage along with all the other buttons to click for pure damage.

About the weapon summons - they are only ridiculously powerful in difficulties that aren't PotD. Seriously, are they never going to test that difficulty?

 

[AwesomeButton]

"We are implementing a combat speed slider on the main HUD to adjust your combat speed to slower or faster speeds as your heart desires."

FFS, is there a single thing they are going to get right in Deadfire's UI? Who needs a combat speed slider on the main HUD? If there is a feature which you set once in the options and forget about it, it is this!

In other news, Josh seems more lost than ever in his attempts to balance classes... one month before release.

 

[FreeKaner]

I am again going to say while PoE1 systems has its fair share of problems it's mainly the encounter design that diminished the experience. Especially the game's insistence of not using abilities against you that you would not have. Add in some ciphers with high level powers that they can use once, some more defensive wizards, droves of barbarians etc. You are mostly just fighting against either balanced parties or creatures that use same 1 or 2 abilities. That's why I think game is most enjoyable in WM1-2, including Concelhaut and Llengrath.

 

[Infinitron]

FFS, is there a single thing they are going to get right in Deadfire's UI? Who needs a combat speed on the main HUD? If there is a feature which you set once in the options and forget about it, it is this!

? Where'd you get that? People switch speeds depending on the state of combat all the time. You've probably never played a game where that's possible.

 

[CptMace]

An educated look at our future, deadfire at release :

- Deadfire is released. In true Obsidian's fashion, the game has several bugs, although less than usual. Reviews from professional journalists, written a week before from a build that iis already out of date, are getting published. All vary more or less in content but agree on the conclusion : Although it has some flaws, and I really couldn't play on anything but Chill mode, it's safe to say that this apparent clone of Dragon Age is a masterpiece of classic crpg.

- The codex immediatly divides in three groups. One is composed of fanboys and obsidian shills, another is composed of edgelords and angry shitposters, while the last which contains most of the users just plain doesn't really care.

- The edgelords and mad shitposters get upset. The fact that deadfire gets good reviews from people who vote Skyrim for Goty gives away the true nature of poe as the fruit of decline. Their perfect reasoning echoes with the most monstrous souls of the codex, and all launch a grand assault on the dedicated thread. Messages pop in every shape and tone :

Ahah I can't believe there are still xaurips, obsidian's creativity down the gutter I guess.

The game didn't acknowledge [insert pointless choice here]. I don't care if it actually reacted to the important choices, this game is shit and you're retarded to think otherwise.

IS IT ME OR THE PERFORMANCE IS ACTUALLY WORSE ? gfijhgfiheig

Where is Durance ?

Banal. Shit. Boring. Don't have to play to know that it's shit. 2edgy4u.

And the mandatory darth roxor comment, something witty and cool with typos made on purpose :
Oh yea, i'm sure daedfrie is way better than the fomrer game, can't wait to play it !!1
Obviously accompanied by myriad of brofists and other buttons.

- The fangays and shills will strike back, although with less numbers since the codex is a blessed forum. Their creed will be mocked and dismissed easily at first, but their main weapon is dedication. They'll stick to the thread long after the end of the grand assault, and as these weirdos from PS:T patching up the city, they'll endlessly try to repair their emotional wounds.

From a certain perspective, and during nights of full moon, the game is actually on par with BG2 !

I don't mind the loredumps hyperlinks.

The statue turning out to be Woedica, and not Eothas, was actually a cool twist guys.

When Eder decides to sacrifice himself to restore Eothas powers, now that's good writing !

Itemisation is much better. Don't pretend you didn't find the singing shield hilarious and original.

Naval stuff ain't that bad

- Sensuki will still pretend he doesn't play the game. Infinitron will still pretend he does. Roguey will have yet another crisis of faith, until deadfire 3.0 casts his doubts away and put his soul to rest.

- The first review won't come near as early as for the first game. There was a sense of urgency last time, a strong need to remind the world that the codex doesn't approve anything on the basis of nostalgia. The world replied that it really doesn't give a fuck but the honor of the dex was saved by sire darth roxor, and his review titled "Disappointment is thy name". A weird title for anyone who followed discussions before release, since darth roxor never had any faith in the game whatsoever and mocked it profusely. The fuck if I know how you can be disappointed by a game turning to be exactly what you expected.

- The game will unfortunately not break the record held by the former regarding the amount of reviews. People just don't care anymore.

- At some point, after the initial salve of shitposts, the discussions will start. Itemisation, writing, companions, reactivity. Shills and fangays will defend the fact that it's better than in POE. Edgelords will remind them than anything is better than POE, since it was a steaming pile of dogshit. Ultimately, people will come to the conclusion that the game is mediocre® like with pretty much every game in history.

- The first xpac's premise will be you and your crew castaway on some mysterious island. Because people will let obs know how much they hate the ship content. One big island of traditional rtwp shenanigans. Be sure to wait for its release before you buy the game.

- People shall meme. Meme about how they actually made a wosre gaem®. Meme about how Siege of Dragonspear was better !. Meme about Sid Meier's Pirates. Yes, indeed, people shall meme.

- The codex will eventually, at long last, reunite and rejoice as Sherry himself herself shall mend us all and put an end to the avalanche of autistic posts about recovery animation and other technical consderations of upmost importance. Praise her everlasting light of hope. May her inveterate positivity and enthusiasm never weaken. Friendly ratings must flow.


Use this post as a checklist, and try to collect all the predictable opinions listed above at release !

 

[aweigh]

Lacrymas

Great news guys

Source

Am really glad that ciphers are getting closer to their swifty playstyle like in PoE1, and are more apt at protecting party backline.

Must note that it's also an interesting remark about summoned weapons. Josh refers to these weapons as ludicrously powerful.
Probably I am missing something, or maybe ex-vancian casters are getting some really strong martial-oriented buffs in the full game. But here are a few thoughts on the current weapons:

- Opportunity cost - if we build a character around a summoned weapon it means we have to take a wizard/priest/druid class in the first place. Even if we multi-class, it cuts us from getting the passives of two martial classes, like in devout/berserker case, assassin/devout, and so on.
- Dedication cost - if a wizard/priest/druid spent time on summoning a weapon he wants to stick with auto-attacking to make the most of it; and loses part of his versatility. Especially if he also taken a few purely phys-dps passives from other class he multi-classed into. Because they would be rendered useless if he would switch to spell-casting.
- Spellusage and ability point cost.
- Druid using firebrand doesn't use spiritshift for damage, and it makes his class passives kind of moot.

And now a few weapons I have played with:
- Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff - is basically a mundane quarterstaff, but with draining. A character could multi-class in devout instead and get better dps (with a regular quarterstaff + fighter abilities) and also healing from Veteran's Recovery.
- Firebrand - also has the stats of mundane great sword; no special procs; the only difference is that it is fire/piercing instead of slash/piercing. It hardly provides a dps increase worthy of those listed costs above. Must note: I really liked (and probably am not alone at this) that Firebrand in PoE1 was unique via having a higher base damage. It allowed for creation of new, unique even if situational builds. And it's great when a few spells enable a new way to play the class.
- Spiritual Great Sword - the main attractive part of this weapon is the sweet and big lash damage attached to it. But assuming there will actually be possibility to enchant some regular weapons even with a 25% lash, Spiritual Sword is in now way overpowered because crudely speaking: 60% - costs ~= 25%. Again imagine a priest-devout with Spiritual Great Sword vs rogue-devout with a Mundane but enchanted Great Sword.
- Citzal Spirit Lance (and Kalakoth's Minor Blights) - now we talking. These are indeed powerful weapons, but when compared to the aoe spells a wizard could cast instead, their strongest part is actually their ability to affect not only the main target but also all enemies around it, from: a). focus generation point of view, b). delivery of onHit and onCrit effects (although yes, unlike with carnage this is limited only to talent passives, and is not limiting weapon design), c). and interaction with Swift Flurry and Cleave (but have to note here: the Swift Flurry recursion is dangerous from balance point of view per-se; and it's not really blast's fault)

TL.DR:
- Parasitic Staff and Firebrand might want a unique buff to justify the new 3s casting duration
- Spiritual Weapons are fine
- And Citzal/Kalakoth's Minor Blights would be fine too, if: 1). Swift Flurry is no longer recursive; and 2). Cleave is triggered only by weapon attacks (but not blast)

.......................MODDERS FIXED IT!!!!!

 

[Lacrymas]

That's fine, I'm ok with Ciphers having fast cast times to differentiate them from any other caster. Chanter's AoE debuffs are still instant, though, and I'll probably still use them over a Cipher, depending on exactly how fast Ciphers can churn the spells out.

 

[Infinitron]

CptMace getting jaded.

- Dedication cost - if a wizard/priest/druid spent time on summoning a weapon he wants to stick with auto-attacking to make the most of it; and loses part of his versatility. Especially if he also taken a few purely phys-dps passives from other class he multi-classed into. Because they would be rendered useless if he would switch to spell-casting.

That guy says pretty much what I was thinking. Players tend not to use additional spells after summoning magical weapons (even though they can), so in a sense they need to be compensated for this self-imposed limit by making the summoning faster.