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

[Prime Junta]

I hope you guys are reporting these script bugs etc. that you're finding, the address is support@obsidian.net

 

[duanth123]

I would love to hear more of the sea shanties. The music is dismal, although I did find Neketaka's theme soothing.

The best, most atmospheric track in the game, aka one of the tavern music ones, is a straight up rip off of the Smoldering Corpse Bar theme. Rest of the music is meh.

 

[Raghar]

Classic === Easy. Until The Balancing anyway.

Triple equals. Now even more equal than double equals.

Just so that you know what you don't even know, == means "If equal, then". It does not mean equal. Stop being an ignorant asshole.

a = b is assignment.
a == b tests if a equals b, or it's a statement.
=== is double line separator.

 

[2house2fly]

Ultimately the biggest problem with the combat is the health/wound system which basically amounts to Dragon Age style. The old health/endurance was superior in every way. At least you had to manage *some* resources, use your spells conservatively. If you didn't backtrack like a retard after every fight (they know who they are), it was inevitable that you would you occasionally land into a no-win situation.

I've had some 2-3 fights where I barely managed to avoid a full party wipe, but it just amounts to nothing because for the next one I automatically have full HP and all of the resources I could possibly want.

They should either keep the old health/endurance system or just ditch the possibility of permadeath altogether, make every battle tough, and injuries on being downed affect your stats and stack infinitely. This uncomfortable compromise of "three injuries and you're out" doesn't do anything for me

 

[Parabalus]

I hope they really polish the different bypass and interconnection between factions. I really like what they did there.

The game had an almost Age of Decadence-y vibe for me at points with the faction stuff, same events different viewpoints. Doesn't go as far obv. but I thought it was really nice.

Yeah free resting would have to go too.

Josh is too scared of that, rightfully IMO because limited resources is pretty stressful for casual play. It'd need to be a toggle in the options.

Deadfire is still better than IE games in this regard, both are rest spammers with no resource drain, but at least Deadfire doesn't waste your time watching healing spells cast.

 

[duanth123]

stack infinitely

Yeah Sawyer's never going to do that. It would drive the casual insane. An interesting concept though. Maybe make wounds less debilitating but with an extremely high cost to remove, say from that surgeon character in neketaka.

With some wounds, like a lost eye, being permanent.

So if someone effectively gibs you, you get a permanent

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Yeah free resting would have to go too.

Resting and its frequency is up to the player's feeling of what's fun.

Yeah, once you get a wound though I find the urge to rest it away irresistible. I need someone to discipline my blatant rest-whoring!

Baking it into the difficulty levels would make more sense to me, or having a fully adjustable custom difficulty setting that lets you toggle individual aspects.

Though overall I've found the game quite easy. Every fight so far I've done nothing other than select my rogue's melee or ranged weapons. Even on these ***THREE SKULL*** fights I just start with a sneak attack and let it play itself.

Josh is too scared of that, rightfully IMO because that is pretty stressful for casual play

I actually thought Pillars 1's system of reserve HP + camping supplies to be okay. The only thing I would have done is limited resting to specific rooms.

 

[Orma]

On another note, I've been thinking this game is really stingy on gold this whole time. I finally sold out my stash and got a fat 10,000 deadfire bucks so I finally had some spending money. Nope, 5 minutes later all my money is wiped out. smdh.

Also every time I level up, the third weapon slot gets reset to unarmed.

Besides this, I'm not finding it a very buggy game.

Wanted to trade some of the crap I've been hoarding for a Junk(biggest ship) towards the end of the game.

Ended up making like 150K on top of getting the ship.

 

[Ziggy]

am i the only one who actually likes naval combat? it's barebones but if they fix it the same way they improved stronghold in poe1 over time, mostly hoping for a quest line specifically about naval combat, it could be great

 

[Lacrymas]

FreeKaner said he'll probably enjoy the ship combat. Let's ask him. Also, is anyone else having trouble with posting in Firefox? I can't click on the posting window at all, but it works fine in IE.

 

[MajorMace]

Naval combat can be extended upon in a variety of cool ways yes.
But there's that, and there's its current state right now. And its current state isn't very compelling. I shoot-jibe-shoot during all of them, it never fails.
The AI also seems lacking. They usually try to get away by going full sail ahead. Problem is full sail ahead doesn't do shit if you're showing port or starboard to the player (and vice versa)...

Btw, I don't remember who I was asking about Xoti's lantern

Spoiler

I got as many souls as I could
Went to an adra pillar and told her to keep the souls
She started going a bit insane at how good it feels to own souls or somthg
Then I get this bark

Btw, I also told serafen not to tell her about what he saw in her mind/soul/smthg.
edit 2: gives a whole new meaning to Concelhaut's bark "I see great potentiel in you, Xoti"

 

[FreeKaner]

FreeKaner said he'll probably enjoy the ship combat. Let's ask him. Also, is anyone else having trouble with posting in Firefox? I can't click on the posting window at all, but it works fine in IE.

As it is, it's way too basic. Which is questionable because it shouldn't be too hard to add some more features into it because it's entirely text-based, especially after they made a separate boarding action for those who want to skip it entirely. It also stands at stark contrast to a very complex and intricate combat system, there could be more to it at least in terms of ship customisation, crew orders, fire orders and what not.

Now, that's me trying to be objective. I fucking love sailing ships so I enjoy even barebones stuff just for the larp of being a captain.

 

[AN4RCHID]

I try to escape everytime. There's a few too many of these random encounters for my tastes, including ship combat and the CYOA dilemmas. Getting flashbacks to deathspiraling in the jungle in Expeditions Cobquistadors.

 

[dragonul09]

Can someone tell me what items does the Blessing of Berath vendor has? I'm starting to itch for unique weapons here and having that mysterious vendor locked behind some stupid points irks me the wrong way.

 

[FreeKaner]

I try to escape everytime. There's a few too many of these random encounters for my tastes, including ship combat and the CYOA dilemmas. Getting flashbacks to deathspiraling in the jungle in Expeditions Cobquistadors.

Deathspiralling in expeditions: conquistador is one of the strengths of that game. Also there could be more random encounters in this game, so far every random encounter and CYOA sequence in the game has made the game better for me. It expands the gameworld and engagement in the world in a very cost effective way, like a good DM in a PNP session which colours your connection to the campaign.

 

[Ziggy]

Can someone tell me what items does the Blessing of Berath vendor has? I'm starting to itch for unique weapons here and having that mysterious vendor locked behind some stupid points irks me the wrong way.

nothing unique to the vendor, just stuff you wouldn't normally get that early
most notably +2 evocation power level gloves. don't remember if there's weapons

 

[2house2fly]

am i the only one who actually likes naval combat? it's barebones but if they fix it the same way they improved stronghold in poe1 over time, mostly hoping for a quest line specifically about naval combat, it could be great

There's no way there'll be anything like the 3.0 patch again. Pillars 1 sold better than expected, so they could justify setting some expansion budget aside to address a major criticism of the base game. Deadfire is underperforming, and sales certainly won't be bumped by adding in another fully-voiced quest

 

[Tigranes]

Early thought is that POE2 seems to often take systems that were flawed but decent and often fun in the first game, throw it all out & rebuild it, and end up with something that's just as flawed and not necessarily any better.

One is the streamlined per-enc abilitieis. The other is going from health/endu + camping supplies, to regen health + wounds + free rest.

I'm sure that if you played IE by resting every 3 steps you are happier with the change, but (1) wounds have never been as significant as the lowered ceiling of health or the running out of per-rest abilities; you can barely notice the little blood drips on the UI, your character on the main screen looks fine, and it restrains him passively whereas running out of abilities restrains his active behaviour. (2) the combination of these features mean that you play like a restwhore every battle, using all your abilities without care, and then when you get so many wounds that your character is a walking wreck, you rest without consequence.

i.e. we have gone from a system that encourages attrition-based gameplay (with some costin convenience/annoyance), to a system that seems to encourage restwhore gungho. That's a big decline in my book.

 

[Prime Junta]

i.e. we have gone from a system that encourages attrition-based gameplay (with some costin convenience/annoyance), to a system that seems to encourage restwhore gungho. That's a big decline in my book.

I agree with you in theory. In practice the impact on how I play it and my enjoyment of it is much smaller than I expected.

 

[Jezal_k23]

That's true, they made big changes and those need to be balanced.

I think what they did right is having built a very large game, lots of maps, lots of quests, lots of exploration. So there is much hope for Deadfire going forward imo, if it goes through the same process as POE1.

 

[Lacrymas]

The impact in practice isn't as dramatic as in theory because PoE1 wasn't actually all that strategic, even with per-rest abilities. You might've tried to push on however long you can, but it's for its own sake, you can always rest whenever, so there is no actual challenge and the game doesn't reward you for playing well. The psychological state of being able to rest whenever is different than when you are limited in that.

 

[AN4RCHID]

I try to escape everytime. There's a few too many of these random encounters for my tastes, including ship combat and the CYOA dilemmas. Getting flashbacks to deathspiraling in the jungle in Expeditions Cobquistadors.

Deathspiralling in expeditions: conquistador is one of the strengths of that game. Also there could be more random encounters in this game, so far every random encounter and CYOA sequence in the game has made the game better for me. It expands the gameworld and engagement in the world in a very cost effective way, like a good DM in a PNP session which colours your connection to the campaign.

I like it in theory, but in practice when I'm trying to travel go somewhere and do something it's an annoyance. If the stakes were higher and you had to prep more for long voyages, then I would go out planning for these things and probably would enjoy them more.

 

[Tigranes]

i.e. we have gone from a system that encourages attrition-based gameplay (with some costin convenience/annoyance), to a system that seems to encourage restwhore gungho. That's a big decline in my book.

I agree with you in theory. In practice the impact on how I play it and my enjoyment of it is much smaller than I expected.

Perhaps you have always been a rest whore, CUNTA

uh... ahem.

I need to play more to see how they pan out, especially at higher levels. My primary disappointment is that all my characters now behave in such a standardised way that everybody is rinsing and repeating the same routine of abilities, whereas in POE1 you had to keep track of a variety of different kinds of resource management - which might have been confusing for the casual, but who gives a fuck.

Lacrymas None of these force a player to do anything; we know that some morons liked to walk back to an inn 8 times to clear a single tiny dungeon, wasting an hour of their life in the process. All I ask is that the game support my effort to introduce attrition and challenge to the game. I can still houserule my own resting, for example, but a lot of the resource management aspect is now simply taken away instead of being 'optional'.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

The depressing thing is that all everything about the combat is a massive improvement over the first game, except for the actual combat.

Itemization is fucking amazing. Consumables are well done. Encounter design has improved significantly. Multi-classing adds a lot of depth. But all of that amount to nothing because braindead difficulty simply doesn't push you to explore any of these improvements.

 

[Jezal_k23]

The depressing thing is that all everything about the combat is a massive improvement over the first game, except for the actual combat.

Itemization is fucking amazing. Consumables are well done. Encounter design has improved significantly. Multi-classing adds a lot of depth. But all of that amount to nothing because braindead difficulty simply doesn't push you to explore any of these improvements.

Long term, it could be a lot better than POE1.