Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pre-DLC Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Grampy_Bone]

The armor system is weird. I don't recall Pillars 1 being like this. This is basically the thickness system from Darklands.

-Penetration less than thickness = -25% per point, max -75% damage reduction.
-Penetration equal or exceed thickness = normal damage
-Penetration double thickness = +30% damage

Light armor has 3-5 thickness, medium 7, I assume heavy has 9 but I haven't seen it.

Longsword has 6 penetration. Sabers have 7 penetration. Most other weapons seem to be 7s, hammers and maces are 8. I haven't seen any 2 handers yet but I assume they'll be higher.

Unless these numbers scale upwards I'm not seeing the point of most armor. With light 3 you'll take extra damage from everything so why bother with the recovery penalty. With light 5 vs medium 7 there is no benefit to medium, except medium gives you slight reduction to longsword damage. Everything else has penetration of 7 or higher, so the higher thickness of medium armor is moot. Only heavy makes any difference. There are sub modifiers on armor such as blunt vs piercing but unless you plan to switch armor sets between combats (who does this?) it's a wash.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

The game seems to not gather any attention at all, even after 2 days it barely scraped 18k players online and compared with D:OS 2 at the same time, which had almost 90k, this one is a complete fucking disaster.

Let's look at some other releases from the past couple of weeks.

Battletech- 35k players online day one, released on fucking Monday
Frostpunk-28k day one, monday release as well

Don't come at me with the ''wait for the weekend'' bullshit, as a promising sequel, this game is a fucking failure of epic proportions and let's remember that they even went over the budget with VO, I don't even want to think what PowerTrip Feargus is going to do about this, but it ain't gonna be pretty seeing that fat little freak abusing his employers.

Yup and remember this was funded on Fig so they have to cut investors into profits.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I was under the impression the full VO thing was a late addition to the whole ordeal. They might've cut a lot of fluff so VO won't be as expensive. Such a waste of resources...

When the "owner level" says it's in, it goes in

 

[damager]

Game always crashes at random times in character creation... which is nice considering the godawful 5 min intro.

 

[Infinitron]

Inaccurate Nu-Steamspy has bumped up PoE2 to the 50-100k tier: http://steamspy.com/app/560130

We'll see how much further it goes.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

I'm curious why is it so hard to live up to the soundtracks of the Infinity Engine games. Even the weaker ones are much better than the soundtracks in POE1, and appearantly POE2. I won't go as far as saying that the POE soundtracks are shit, because there are songs I like in them, but overall they don't come close to Michael Hoenig's tracks in BG, or Jeremy Soule in IWD. I guess this new generation of composers are trying too hard to sound epic and different.

If you remember, the tracks in the IE games were kind of simplistic (not in a bad way). They were not huge orchestrated performances, most of the times they featured only a few instruments and had a great melody. But many of the new ones are just meh, because they try to be bombastic.

Yeah this bothers me too. Music and ambient work have gone the same way as writing style and artwork: Moar is better. Instead of simple but believeable tunes we get these ridiculously overwrought and epic scores that sound just like WoW armour looks.

There was a timeperiod with some truly great soundtracks. BG and IWD like you mentioned, but also Mark Morgan's insanely good tracks for Fallout 1&2 (1997, 1998), Matt Uelmen's Diablo 2 (2000, same year as IWD) and Jeremy Soule's Morrowind (2002). If you want an extreme example, compare Starcraft 1 (1998) and SC2 (2010). I know it's not an rpg but it shows the change in style at Blizzard.

I mean, listen to this stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6qt_70iGk4

You forgot warcraft 2 and ufo defense ost, those are the finest soundtracks of 90's pc gaming

That's quite a claim.

 

[2house2fly]

I'm curious why is it so hard to live up to the soundtracks of the Infinity Engine games. Even the weaker ones are much better than the soundtracks in POE1, and appearantly POE2. I won't go as far as saying that the POE soundtracks are shit, because there are songs I like in them, but overall they don't come close to Michael Hoenig's tracks in BG, or Jeremy Soule in IWD. I guess this new generation of composers are trying too hard to sound epic and different.

If you remember, the tracks in the IE games were kind of simplistic (not in a bad way). They were not huge orchestrated performances, most of the times they featured only a few instruments and had a great melody. But many of the new ones are just meh, because they try to be bombastic.

Yeah this bothers me too. Music and ambient work have gone the same way as writing style and artwork: Moar is better. Instead of simple but believeable tunes we get these ridiculously overwrought and epic scores that sound just like WoW armour looks.

There was a timeperiod with some truly great soundtracks. BG and IWD like you mentioned, but also Mark Morgan's insanely good tracks for Fallout 1&2 (1997, 1998), Matt Uelmen's Diablo 2 (2000, same year as IWD) and Jeremy Soule's Morrowind (2002). If you want an extreme example, compare Starcraft 1 (1998) and SC2 (2010). I know it's not an rpg but it shows the change in style at Blizzard.

I mean, listen to this stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6qt_70iGk4

I think you mean Aphex Twin's insanely good tracks for fallout 1 and 2

 

[Elex]

The game seems to not gather any attention at all, even after 2 days it barely scraped 18k players online and compared with D:OS 2 at the same time, which had almost 90k, this one is a complete fucking disaster.

Let's look at some other releases from the past couple of weeks.

Battletech- 35k players online day one, released on fucking Monday
Frostpunk-28k day one, monday release as well

Don't come at me with the ''wait for the weekend'' bullshit, as a promising sequel, this game is a fucking failure of epic proportions and let's remember that they even went over the budget with VO, I don't even want to think what PowerTrip Feargus is going to do about this, but it ain't gonna be pretty seeing that fat little freak abusing his employers.

yes numbers feel low, i expected to see stuff comparable to frostpunk/battletech.

 

[Infinitron]

Worth pointing out this is a $50 game, BattleTech is $40 and Frostpunk is $30

 

[BrotherFrank]

Shame, from what I'm hearing, PoE II isnt horribad and might have redeeming qualities whereas battletech is painfully average at best and doesnt deserve its success. And PoE 1 sold like hotcakes despite being shit ffs.

Between this and being butthurt over how badly Spellforce 3 sold, or how Age of Decadence got ignored, I truly feel the decline.

 

[Frusciante]

I'm on holidays in Spain so have not been able to play yet, but this seems like a correct summary;

- Game is received more positively than expected by the Codex though still with flaws, opinions will improve further when combat and bugs are patched.
- Especially character building, writing, C&C, art and exploration are good. Combat will be deemed reasonably good when difficulty is adjusted.
- Critic reviews are good overall but especially mainstream reviewers (IGN, Gamespot) seem not overly impressed/excited.
- the large bulk of modern gamers are in the same boat as Gamespot and find it all a bit too overwhelming and too much work. Sales do not reach PoE 1 levels.
- Obsidian leadership (and other developers) will conclude that these ''old-school'' crpgs where succesful as a one-off thing driven by nostalgia but provide no viable template for business continuity. PoE 3 wil have more colorful, flashy, 3D graphics with heavily streamlined character building and combat, inspired by DoS2 though still RTWP.

 

[Valtiel]

"The game failed to load the level and exited to the main menu for preventing save data corruption"

 

[AwesomeButton]

- Critic reviews are good overall but especially mainstream reviewers (IGN, Gamespot) seem not overly impressed/excited.

What makes you think that? It seems to be getting very good reception, if we only look at the scores.

 

[Frusciante]

- Critic reviews are good overall but especially mainstream reviewers (IGN, Gamespot) seem not overly impressed/excited.

What makes you think that? It seems to be getting very good reception, if we only look at the scores.

Maybe not so much the score but more the actual text of the reviews. Also these mainstream reviewers give 9's and 10's pretty easily normally.

 

[AwesomeButton]

PoE 3 wil have more colorful, flashy, 3D graphics with heavily streamlined character building and combat, inspired by DoS2 though still RTWP.

PoE 3 will be a Skyrim clone, headed by Tim Cain & Boyarski, and getting released just in time for Skyrim's 10th anniversary. Skyrim fans will buy it for the feels, it will make millions in sales, and Feargus will buy a new yacht.

 

[Anthedon]

Heads up. I've installed the new Nvidia driver (397.64, released for PoEII specifically) and the game started crashing almost immediately. I rolled back to an older driver (390.65) and all is well again.

 

[Belegarsson]

I feel like the marketing for the game is quite underwhelming, perhaps because the hype for the first game was greater due to the first wave of modern CRPG, and once people found out PoE1 was only okay at best so the buzz for PoE2 got lowered.
Comparing it to DOS2 is just unfair though. What non-AAA game aside from Kingdom Come Deliverance surpassed DOS2 in terms of peak player count? That game was destined to be a huge success with mass audience (thanks to having co-op), while PoE2 remains well known in the community only.
Still sad to see the low number count though. I'm only 4 hours into the game so far so I can't talk much about it, but I don't think it deserves to be a flop even when Feargus is now known to be a huge asshole.

 

[Projas]

It's a shame because so far PoE2 seems to be a better game than DOS2. But I guess it's inevitable that the finanical success of a game is in a large part shaped by the quality of its predecessor.

 

[Parabalus]

I feel like the marketing for the game is quite underwhelming, perhaps because the hype for the first game was greater due to the first wave of modern CRPG, and once people found out PoE1 was only okay at best so the buzz for PoE2 got lowered.
Comparing it to DOS2 is just unfair though. What non-AAA game aside from Kingdom Come Deliverance surpassed DOS2 in terms of peak player count? That game was destined to be a huge success with mass audience (thanks to having co-op), while PoE2 remains well known in the community only.

D:OS2 felt more like GTA than an RPG to me, in that it's just fun to dick around, especially with a buddy.
PoE doesn't have that to hook the majority, most people playing PoE have prior investment into isometric RPGs, I doubt that's the case for DOS.

 

[Infinitron]

Eh don't shit your pants yet. Torment was a "disaster". Tyranny did better and was merely a "disappointment". Before its first weekend this game already has more concurrent players than Tyranny ever had.

If it does somewhat worse than the first game then eh, so be it. Baldur's Gate 2 never got a sequel either, maybe it was meant to be.

 

[Reinhardt]

Dwarf paladin Josh Sawyer is perfectly reasonable and balanced person.

 

[Ramnozack]

So, are spellcasters in this game shit? I was planning on making a Wizard/Soul blade cipher when I start playing and was wondering if this is somewhat okay to play (even though this game is apparently easy as fuck and I guess it doesn't matter really)

 

[Darth Roxor]

ok i've just gone through the engwithan digsite and actually i must say this is kinda funny

the mechanics are ridonk dumbed down

the only good thing i can say about the writing is that there's less of it

the interface is not very gud

and yet

for some bizarre reason it feels much more compelling than the first game so far

 

[2house2fly]

I think Roxor's post might not have been entirely serious tbh

That all might be the problem, but it is not the whole problem. Justin did a decent job in the first game, but here the audio is just half-assed. Between the shanties and the variations on PoE1 teams, it feels like there's barely any new material. Like, I walk into a tavern and they play a bit to bit copy of PoE1 tavern theme, except with different instruments.

Remember the kinda meh D:OS 1 soundtrack? Seems gamedev studios are reluctant to replace their in-house audio guy even when he's too busy to do the work (thankfully Justin was busy having a baby instead of dying of illness)

Not sure how many posters would agree with you on that "thankfully"

 

[J_C]

People are claiming PoE2 selling badly despite having fucking no idea about the actual sales. Just another typical day on the Codex.