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

[CptMace]

I would spend money at temples for healing, and only rest at an inn if people were showing the "tired" icon.

Making temples all the more relevant is another good aspect of this, yeah.

Now there's one mystery though, in IWD first town one can buy the bless spell as a service. I never even tried to do so since nothing indicated that it would last any longer than it should. So why is it there ? I don't remember bless to be available in BG games, it made me skeptical.

 

[Prime Junta]

It's all down to player preference.

Yes and no.

Thing is, playing the IE games by rest-spamming is less fun than playing them without rest-spamming. The fact that most of them do not restrict rest-spamming in any way means that not most novices will automatically rest-spam, and many if not most will never discover the more fun way of playing it.

I.e. it's a legit problem. It's also hard to solve without (a) enraging the goon squad or (b) putting the player in some kind of straitjacket. Hence the inordinate amount of effort Josh has spent trying to square this circle.

His solution for P1 -- only two camping supplies in inventory -- wasn't perfect, but it was a major improvement, as it incentivised people not to rest-spam. The only problem was the goon squad, who reacted to that incentive by rest-spamming anyway and mindlessly trekking back to the inn to buy more. Hence P2's amputation.

I understand why he did it. It doesn't mean I have to like it.

 

[AwesomeButton]

You would hope though that expert designers would learn from mistakes made and actually iterate and improve on the design.

I'm astounded at the amount of regress ("decline") from Josh who after all designed IWD to some extent, and then lead IWD2. Maybe it had to come to him having to do everything from scratch in order to become clear how different his idea is about what made the IE games good. If he does indeed have an idea about it.

 

[CptMace]

You would hope though that expert designers would learn from mistakes made and actually iterate and improve on the design.

I wouldn't talk about expert designers when it comes to a company that always worked on sequels with existing systems. We tend to forget that poe is actually the first time they entirely designed a game system.
I'd rather say they're veterans.

 

[Tygrende]

So if I understand this correctly, in Deadfire there will only be the endurance bar that auto-regenerates and NPCs will be given a wound when knocked down. My question is, does that mean NPCs can no longer be killed permanently?

This sounds a lot like resting in Neverwinter Nights 2, which is not a good thing.

 

[AwesomeButton]

many if not most novices will automatically rest-spam, and many if not most will never discover the more fun way of playing it.

This is an assertion, not a fact.

it was a major improvement, as it incentivised people not to rest-spam

Regenerating Endurance is nothing short of "automatic restspamming".

Adding "long-term health" only postponed the "manual" restspamming.

Deadfire seems to regress further, with certain class of encounters becoming unimportant in how the player will go through them. Those are the encounters that neither require the use of per-rest resources, nor cause anyone an injury. Once such an encounter is over, it is as if you have never fought it - your health is back at maximum, your resources are intact.

 

[Immortal]

You would hope though that expert designers would learn from mistakes made and actually iterate and improve on the design.

I wouldn't talk about expert designers when it comes to a company that always worked on sequels with existing systems. We tend to forget that poe is actually the first time they entirely designed a game system.
I'd rather say they're veterans.

This isn't a very good argument. It doesn't matter what "Obsidian" has made.
It matters what the people working there have shipped.

 

[Parabalus]

When I was playing BGII for the first time ever, I thought rest-spamming is the intended way to restore health. Only later I learned about temples and healing spells.

On my next playthrough (which I started once I found out my PC is shit), I strived to advance the ingame time as little as possible, hence tried to avoid resting as much as I could. I would spend money at temples for healing, and only rest at an inn if people were showing the "tired" icon.

It's all down to player preference.

Problem with that is that you want to advance time as much as possible because a bunch of quests are gated behind time. De'Arnise Keep for instance, I have never seen the resolution of that quest because you need some ridiculous in-game time for all the plebs to come to court. Companion quests are similar.

I'm not really a rest spammer, but e.g. I just killed Firkraag, I'm not gonna spend 2 minutes healing when I can press the rest button and be on my way. Resting before entering the dungeon and never while in it is what I like best. Both PoE and IE system support that.

So if I understand this correctly, in Deadfire there will only be the endurance bar that auto-regenerates and NPCs will be given a wound when knocked down. My question is, does that mean NPCs can no longer be killed permanently?

This sounds a lot like resting in Neverwinter Nights 2, which is not a good thing.

They should be able to, with # of prior knockouts needed to die depending on difficulty. There really should be a 0 wounds needed option too.

 

[AwesomeButton]

So if I understand this correctly, in Deadfire there will only be the endurance bar that auto-regenerates and NPCs will be given a wound when knocked down. My question is, does that mean NPCs can no longer be killed permanently?

This sounds a lot like resting in Neverwinter Nights 2, which is not a good thing.

Knocking a party memeber down during combat results in an "injury" malus after combat is over. This reduces your max health by 15% until rested, and gives a variety of possible maluses to your base or derived stats. Also, if you incur 3 injuries and then suffer a 4th without having cleared them through resting, you are permanently dead. As if someone would allow it to come to this.

 

[Sacred82]

many if not most novices will automatically rest-spam, and many if not most will never discover the more fun way of playing it.

This is an assertion, not a fact.

you're a noob and the game tells you 'press magic button X to fully replenish limited (vital) resource'

pretty fucking accurate assertion

 

[AwesomeButton]

many if not most novices will automatically rest-spam, and many if not most will never discover the more fun way of playing it.

This is an assertion, not a fact.

you're a noob and the game tells you 'press magic button X to fully replenish limited (vital) resource'

pretty fucking accurate assertion

It's an assertion that provided the opportunity, everyone would rest-spam. As in, you can't know this for everyone and state it as a fact (that's something only Josh in his wisdom is allowed do, hehe).

 

[Tygrende]

They should be able to, with # of prior knockouts needed to die depending on difficulty. There really should be a 0 wounds needed option too.

Knocking a party memeber down during combat results in an "injury" malus after combat is over. This reduces your max health by 15% until rested, and gives a variety of possible maluses to your base or derived stats. Also, if you incur 3 injuries and then suffer a 4th without having cleared them through resting, you are permanently dead. As if someone would allow it to come to this.

I see. 3 injuries allowed before death certainly sounds like too much . I hope there will be an option to change this, I would be fine with 0 or 1 tops.

 

[Parabalus]

many if not most novices will automatically rest-spam, and many if not most will never discover the more fun way of playing it.

This is an assertion, not a fact.

you're a noob and the game tells you 'press magic button X to fully replenish limited (vital) resource'

pretty fucking accurate assertion

It's an assertion that provided the opportunity, everyone would rest-spam. As in, you can't know this for everyone and state it as a fact (that's something only Josh in his wisdom is allowed do, hehe).

This isn't quite correct - the rest changes started because Josh saw people/customers (he doesn't like it!) rest spamming in IE games, so he went to the PoE system. Then he saw them doing something even worse, backtracking to inns so they could rest spam (he hates it!), so he went to the PoE2 system.

He's a noble creature trying to save people from themselves.

They should be able to, with # of prior knockouts needed to die depending on difficulty. There really should be a 0 wounds needed option too.

Knocking a party memeber down during combat results in an "injury" malus after combat is over. This reduces your max health by 15% until rested, and gives a variety of possible maluses to your base or derived stats. Also, if you incur 3 injuries and then suffer a 4th without having cleared them through resting, you are permanently dead. As if someone would allow it to come to this.

I see. 3 injuries allowed before death certainly sounds like too much . I hope there will be an option to change this, I would be fine with 0 or 1 tops.

You can always RP it yourself and kill them manually if there is no ingame option.

 

[CptMace]

Considering there's no resurrecting in poe, as far as I know, a character death means instant reload. Death at 0 wound sounds extremely brutal in terms of save-scumming.

 

[Sacred82]

many if not most novices will automatically rest-spam, and many if not most will never discover the more fun way of playing it.

This is an assertion, not a fact.

you're a noob and the game tells you 'press magic button X to fully replenish limited (vital) resource'

pretty fucking accurate assertion

It's an assertion that provided the opportunity, everyone would rest-spam. As in, you can't know this for everyone and state it as a fact (that's something only Josh in his wisdom is allowed do, hehe).

noob =/= everyone

certainly it's not just true for noobs, it's just that there's only one incentive not to rest spam, and that's intrinsic, namely making the game harder for yourself.


Unless you're playing on scrub difficulty and just don't need to rest

 

[AwesomeButton]

noob =/= everyone

certainly it's not just true for noobs, it's just that there's only one incentive not to rest spam, and that's intrinsic, namely making the game harder for yourself.


Unless you're playing on scrub difficulty and just don't need to rest

You said it. For scrubs, there is Story Mode. For everyone else, there should be non-regenerating health, and rest with diligence. That's the logic I would follow.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I see. 3 injuries allowed before death certainly sounds like too much . I hope there will be an option to change this, I would be fine with 0 or 1 tops.

In theory, the Deadfire solution with injuries should offer something to both people who want the feeling of drudging on regardless of injuries, and to people who can't bear the thought of suffering -15% max health.

IMO it would have been perfect if health wasn't regenerating. But then we could end up with a situation where it's more profitable to be knocked down and regen 85% of your health than to be beaten to an inch of your life and not be knocked down (then your health would not regenerate). This whole system needs more tinkering.

 

[Immortal]

I think the perma-death mechanic is stupid.

Nobody is going to take Perma-Death as an acceptable loss except in some Iron Man type situation, which leads to more back tracking as your probably gonna be playing very conservatively in that run.
Like when Josh was giggling on that video that a character died. Wow congrats you made a mechanic nobody is going to deal with.

At least in the IE games you could resurrect a party member so you MIGHT take the loss. (Even then people save scummed)
Even Bioware knew this when they made Dragon Age Origins (trying.. badly to solve it).. and here we are again.


TL;DR
Perma-Death should be reserved for Game Over Bro.
Death should just be another substantial drain on resources - Perma killing a plot central character in a game like this is just asking for a save scum.

 

[CptMace]

IMO it would have been perfect if health wasn't regenerating. But then we could end up with a situation where it's more profitable to be knocked down and regen 85% of your health than to be beaten to an inch of your life and not be knocked down (then your health would not regenerate).

Throws us back to the original solution, Health/Endurance was alright in that regard.

 

[Prime Junta]

It's an assertion that provided the opportunity, everyone would rest-spam.

Good thing I didn't assert that, then, don't you think?

 

[Maculo]

So if I understand this correctly, in Deadfire there will only be the endurance bar that auto-regenerates and NPCs will be given a wound when knocked down. My question is, does that mean NPCs can no longer be killed permanently?

This sounds a lot like resting in Neverwinter Nights 2, which is not a good thing.

The PC and companions can be killed if they acquire a certain number of wounds. Wounds can come from knockouts, stepping on traps, or the CYOA panels (not sure what to call it).

 

[Once more unto the Codex]

I was very much against the changes to resting/health/vancian casting (basically all the strategic stuff). But, after playing the beta all the way through once, I didn’t really mind the changes as much as I thought I would.

But fuck the lagufath though. In the full game I will have to device a final solution for their species.

 

[AwesomeButton]

It's an assertion that provided the opportunity, everyone would rest-spam.

Good thing I didn't assert that, then, don't you think?

Then what is the correct meaning of "many if not most novices will automatically rest-spam, and many if not most will never discover the more fun way of playing it"

Ok, if you want read "everyone" as "many if not most novices".

 

[Prime Junta]

You write surprisingly coherently for someone who has major reading comprehension problems.

 

[AwesomeButton]

You write surprisingly coherently for someone who has major reading comprehension problems.

And you are a good stand-in for Humptee Dumptee - "when I use a word it means whatever I want it to mean".

I really thought you might have meant something else. Apparently, you are just trolling.