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

Parabalus

Arcane
Joined
Mar 23, 2015
Messages
17,432
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'.

If you try never resting in Deadfire it would be pretty tough.
You can make wound removal cost 10k gold with the console, or make wounds permanent with a limit on recruitable party members - if you 'LARP' you can still impose anything on yourself, kinda how we LARP-ed the IE games into not being rest spam fests.
 

Pizzashoes

Scholar
Joined
Oct 31, 2017
Messages
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The wound system has the potential to be the equivalent of D&D death magic. I know one fight that gibbed Pallegina because I let her stack too many wounds.
Concelhaut

Otherwise, yeah getting a wound just triggers the Pavlovian response to immediately rest.
 

FreeKaner

Prophet of the Dumpsterfire
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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.

I find that in Expeditions:Conquistador deathspiralling is part of the feature. After all you are a band of colonists trying to survive and conquer a new world. So whenever I deathspiralled it felt very satisfying, both to try to get out of it and just wither away in a different world. However I am a big fan of Spanish and Spanish colonial history so I might be biased.

Similarly, in Deadfire you are supposed to be in a hostile environment, at the frontier and odds. The "annoyance" of having to deal with various happenings while traveling the world map is absolutely delightful for me, it makes the world come together. If I could just go wherever and do whatever without "annoyances" then this feeling would be completely lost.
 

FreeKaner

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The wound system has the potential to be the equivalent of D&D death magic. I know one fight that gibbed Pallegina because I let her stack too many wounds.
Concelhaut

Otherwise, yeah getting a wound just triggers the Pavlovian response to immediately rest.

There should be more cases, perhaps unique encounters and unique abilities that makes you receive wounds. Maybe add to POTD that critical hits with some debilitating effects from powerful spells and abilities wound you? So your characters can die in combat instead of just being downed. That would be so much fun.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
10,350
Let's make it clear. I don't need the game to 'acknowledge' anything, and I don't need the game systems to very aggressively force 'steadfastness' either.

I just wish that the game systems were robust enough that it would support a more attrition and resource management based gameplay without having to jump through contorted hoops. Which POE1 did.

Arguments like 'oh but you can larp anything' is a bit pointless, I mean we could always just have no health or death either and you can just larp by quitting the game if you take enough hits?

FreeKaner is absolutely right. Right now the ship resource management stuff is a joke; it's all just pointless larping when there are no stakes involved. It would be nice if you were in situations where debilitating wounds on your characters force you to sail back to Neketaka or a friendly port, trying to dodge hostile ships on the way, while trying not to run out of food.

Now, I accept that POE will never be a franchise based around that kind of strategic scarcity. IE games weren't either. These were always about having a veneer of attrition while throwing a million resources at you. But it would be nice to retain options for more attrition-based play, rather than removing them.
 

Lacrymas

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Sep 23, 2015
Messages
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Pathfinder: Wrath
Those wishy-washy middle-of-the-road states are pointless outside of some personal distortion you enjoy. The difficulties should be the ones governing the resting systems and PotD should severely limit resting (with per-rest abilities). You might impose whatever larping you want and the game could provide that (like PoE1's semi-but-not-really limited resting), that doesn't mean the game is designed well or the systems in it make sense.
 

FreeKaner

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In a game where time is limitless and shops have infinite camping supplies, all per-rest abilities are larp and self-limitation.

Adding enemies, encounters, map challenges and scripted interactions that can kill you and your party, on the other hand, are real challenge. Which you need to approached with caution and planning, where you might die or lose party member first time and have to reload.
 

Parabalus

Arcane
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Mar 23, 2015
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Those wishy-washy middle-of-the-road states are pointless outside of some personal distortion you enjoy. The difficulties should be the ones governing the resting systems and PotD should severely limit resting (with per-rest abilities). You might impose whatever larping you want and the game could provide that (like PoE1's semi-but-not-really limited resting), that doesn't mean the game is designed well or the systems in it make sense.

So what restrictions would you put on resting on PotD?

You'd need to up background costs (ship+crew) by at least a factor of 100ish to make resting relevant as a time drain. Adding rest restrictions to dungeons, with Deadfire's open sailing, is just modifying the above number, with added annoyance of moving to a city and back.
I'm not sure I'd enjoy such gameplay in an open world RPG, I play Xcom or BB for that, the tuning has to be brutal to be more than an annoyance.

There are really no dungeons long enough to justify "safe" rooms with rest bans, ie. making resource scarcity an occasional local challenge (like going through Od Nua in one go), instead of global like the above.

Better IMO to kill per rest entirely and balance the game around that state.
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
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lmao at this quest breakage

deleo asks me to find a conch at some git's house

instead i went dicking around the old city

i find the conch's twin

then i kill the shai-hulud and find the mosaic

suddenly it's mission accomplished and deleo acts as if i brought him everything etc

lol
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
10,350
Those wishy-washy middle-of-the-road states are pointless outside of some personal distortion you enjoy. The difficulties should be the ones governing the resting systems and PotD should severely limit resting (with per-rest abilities). You might impose whatever larping you want and the game could provide that (like PoE1's semi-but-not-really limited resting), that doesn't mean the game is designed well or the systems in it make sense.

I'm not sure what you think I'm arguing for, and it sounds like you're looking at it from a different angle. But, well, the stuff you recommend is exactly what I'm arguing for? Restricted resting I would be very happy with.

I simply don't prioritise very much tightening those systems to forbid workarounds, e.g. finding ways to stop people running back to inns to circumvent. I just care about having the systems in place that demand attrition/resource management from the player if he is playing on POTD & does not actively look to cheese past them.
 

Parabalus

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Mar 23, 2015
Messages
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lmao at this quest breakage

deleo asks me to find a conch at some git's house

instead i went dicking around the old city

i find the conch's twin

then i kill the shai-hulud and find the mosaic

suddenly it's mission accomplished and deleo acts as if i brought him everything etc

lol

Happened to me, the resolution "makes sense" but it feels as if some lines are missing.

I didn't even it kill it, just opened the door with the one you find there (was lvl 5 or sth, got rekt), that counted as having done everything :M.
 

veevoir

Klytus, I'm bored
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Shadorwun: Hong Kong BattleTech
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!

:abyssgazer:


You are not at fault here. Stop larping, i.e. in this case playing to weaken yourself. The game allows you to rest, so rest. If it were a really innovative game it would actually have something the sort of spirit meter.

Actually they did something interesting and innovative about that - there are items that give quite interesting bonuses *if* the character has at least one wound.
 

TT1

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Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
Ekera

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Q3yuAFd.jpg
 

Kaivokz

Arcane
Joined
Feb 10, 2015
Messages
1,499
I just wonder why they didn't Ydwin a full-fledged companion. She is more interesting than all real companions.
I was actually about to write this; she’s more interesting in her opening dialogue than the others have been over 15 hours of gameplay. She has a nice voice actress, too. I have to admit, part of why I don’t like Xoti is that her southern accent totally throws me out of the game. I don’t know, Texan and Fantasy World just don’t mesh in my head.
 

FreeKaner

Prophet of the Dumpsterfire
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Roguey why do you think Sawyer has gone senile?

This is the best system sawyer designed so far. Intricate and reasonable, with a lot of depth and breath. It allows for both extreme combinations and simple approach, while making former potent and latter viable. The only lacking thing at the moment is enemy tuning, which is mostly a matter of numbers.
 

Jezal_k23

Guest
I liked Ydwin too. The one left as a stretch goal should have been Tekehu or Maia or whatever. I like Serafen though.
 

fobia

Guest
Roguey why do you think Sawyer has gone senile?

This is the best system sawyer designed so far. Intricate and reasonable, with a lot of depth and breath. It allows for both extreme combinations and simple approach, while making former potent and latter viable. The only lacking thing at the moment is enemy tuning, which is mostly a matter of numbers.

So wizards aren't as lackluster as in the beta?
 

Jezal_k23

Guest
Roguey why do you think Sawyer has gone senile?

This is the best system sawyer designed so far. Intricate and reasonable, with a lot of depth and breath. It allows for both extreme combinations and simple approach, while making former potent and latter viable. The only lacking thing at the moment is enemy tuning, which is mostly a matter of numbers.

But does Deadfire finally exist?
 

Jezal_k23

Guest
Roguey why do you think Sawyer has gone senile?

This is the best system sawyer designed so far. Intricate and reasonable, with a lot of depth and breath. It allows for both extreme combinations and simple approach, while making former potent and latter viable. The only lacking thing at the moment is enemy tuning, which is mostly a matter of numbers.

So wizards aren't as lackluster as in the beta?
No. They are rapey. Some empowered spells are hilariously powerful.
 
Joined
Jan 18, 2018
Messages
1,301
Grab the Codex by the pussy
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.
So much this. I think the same criticism applies to BG2. There are so many items, spells and interesting options, but the overleveling and RTwP ruin it completely. I know, most people criticising PoE2 think that BG2 is good, but the criticism is similar.
 

duanth123

Arcane
Joined
Mar 22, 2008
Messages
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Location
This island earth
Let's make it clear. I don't need the game to 'acknowledge' anything, and I don't need the game systems to very aggressively force 'steadfastness' either.

I just wish that the game systems were robust enough that it would support a more attrition and resource management based gameplay without having to jump through contorted hoops. Which POE1 did.
You dont even know what you dont even want...

You dont need the game systems to aggressively force rest resources but you wish those game systems were there and did...

I want to larp but not too much, uncle Sawyer!

Encounter design is downstream of the game systems.

Because resting/wounds system is generous, we don't have a multitude of quests and/or dungeons that for thematic reasons, for interesting and exciting reasons that might be memorable years from now, test your capacity for resource conservation.

Even an indie dev like Jeff Vogel was capable of designing dungeons and encounters where you were trapped say in a catacomb or infiltrating an enemy base, or caught in hostile territory, underresourced, and you actually had to plan out the next 5-6 combat encounters. And it was memorable, there was a logic to it.

LARPing is not our job as consumers and even if it were, the game would still be worse off for it.
 

FreeKaner

Prophet of the Dumpsterfire
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Devlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿErdogānīye
Roguey why do you think Sawyer has gone senile?

This is the best system sawyer designed so far. Intricate and reasonable, with a lot of depth and breath. It allows for both extreme combinations and simple approach, while making former potent and latter viable. The only lacking thing at the moment is enemy tuning, which is mostly a matter of numbers.

So wizards aren't as lackluster as in the beta?

The single class balance is slightly off at times but no wizards aren't lacklustre at all, they are a bit weaker early on than martial classes but as people described here things like evoker can destroy encounters alone. Go check few pages back.

Foundation of systems are robust, the balance and difficulty issues are mainly in terms of numbers.
 

Parabalus

Arcane
Joined
Mar 23, 2015
Messages
17,432
Roguey why do you think Sawyer has gone senile?

This is the best system sawyer designed so far. Intricate and reasonable, with a lot of depth and breath. It allows for both extreme combinations and simple approach, while making former potent and latter viable. The only lacking thing at the moment is enemy tuning, which is mostly a matter of numbers.

So wizards aren't as lackluster as in the beta?

Easily best pure class, don't know about monks though.

High level spells are extremely broken and you have 3x9 spells for every encounter, just spam everything into submission.

Likely worth as a x/wizard for many classes since wizards have the best self buffs (no recovery while e.g. ciphers have 4 seconds), liked Maia as ranger/wiz a lot.
 

tripedal

Savant
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Feb 22, 2015
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Ultima Thule
In the sanctum at Ori O Koiki there's a bunch of hidden stones you can press. I can't figure out what they actually do though...I found 3, do I need to pass a higher perception check perhaps?
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,124
I normally advocate for self-restriction to keep unbalanced gameplay systems in check, but we're talking permadeath of a character here. So I don't see how rest-avoiding is a sensible solution. You're just going to load a save and go again, which for all practical purposes is no different than resting.
 
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