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

[Kem0sabe]

At least the unity console mod is fucking awesome, so much shit you can do with it.

 

[Maculo]

With all the mobility abilities and items, engagement is kind of superfluous. Which is better than how it worked in poe1.
Sensuki was right. #RemoveHisCuckTag #SensukiDidNothingWrong #NotMyRtwp

I thought his cuck tag was due to how he flipped out and leaked a review from Prime Junta, because he thought he was fighting shilling and/or gatekeeper the honor IE games against Sawyer.

Oh yeah.
You guys are taking my post too seriously.
He asked MCA what he thinks of engagement a few days ago, who oh surprise let us know that - like any sane person - he doesn't give a shit.
He's not over it

I missed that that post in the MCA thread. Oh lord.

It's been a while since the review leak thread, and I curious how well I remembered it.

 

[AwesomeButton]

PoE's RTWP is not any more or less popamole than IE, in fact it's more complex. The fact is this is a shit derivative system and turn-based is better.

I've realized that. The truth is that much micromanagement can be popamole just as little micromanagement can be popamole. And either of the two could also be intelligent. Depends on the design. Neither of the two is inherently good or bad. It comes down to what kind of challenge and combat flow you prefer. I prefer something farther towards the IE combat flow, although not exactly that, I suppose.



If there is any conclusion to be drawn from the years-long IE games vs PoE debate, I think that's it.

Re: "turn based is better": again, not inherently better. Look at D:OS2.

 

[MajorMace]

Hyperbole.

Engagement is also nothing compared to the drollness of per-encounter ability spam, dialled up to 11 in the sequel for your enjoyment

This is a fair point, but how many party based RPGs you know that did a complete systemic win over rest spam and did good resource management at the same time? All while being open world.

You don't get it. Sensuki doesn't rest spam.
So the problem doesn't concern him.

Of course I could tell him that my fighter only has one active ability, being the knock down, and that the rest is passives while my ranger has a root and an interrupt only (which gives him the anti caster role) but it's not really the same you can pick ten actives so it's shit.

 

[FreeKaner]

I am not saying more micromanagement is less popamole. I am saying these two are games of same kind with divergences in quantity and quality. It's really fucking retarded to say PoE1-2 is popamole when gameplay is literally the same except one is more of a clusterfuck. The fact is game should have been turn-based but we had IE nostalgiafags wanting another baldur's gate. Well guess what world could have done without another baldur's gate. Obsidian is shit for going for IE gameplay especially when Sawyer himself said he doesn't like either RTWP or class-based systems.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I am not saying more micromanagement is less popamole. I am saying these two are games of same kind with divergences in quantity and quality. It's really fucking retarded to say PoE1-2 is popamole when gameplay is literally the same except one is more of a clusterfuck. The fact is game should have been turn-based but we had IE nostalgiafags wanting another baldur's gate. Well guess what world could have done without another baldur's gate. Obsidian is shit for going for IE gameplay especially when Sawyer himself said he doesn't like either RTWP or class-based systems.

I don't agree combat gameplay is nearly close, much less "the same".

Yes, but those IE nostalgiafags funded the game in the end, so they order the music.

 

[Shadenuat]

let me make a list:

Wat

Some of these games are neither open world, and many don't even have any sort of similar freedom, or amount of abilities a D&D game has with magic. And I don't remember much trouble with resting in ToEE or anywhere else. Krondor had fairly simple combat if I remember it right as Antara.

Arkania is the only I haven't played though due do it never working on any rig I had for years for some reason.

Now, Expeditions Conquistador has lots of similarities to PoE2 (or rather, PoE2 has them). It doesn't have abilities but if we apply crew wound system to companions in PoE2, it would be more like Expeditions. Which would be great, although I have little idea how to fix the disparity in abilities between 2 games. Expeditions doesn't have so many, simple as that.

Now that already would have been awesome, but we know that 99% of players would not appreciate Expeditions wound system and resources, just as they won't appreciate weapon degrading from Krondor etc.

 

[FreeKaner]

RTwP is a really specific genre, and the combat is only different enough when you are nitpicking in that niche. The gameplay is same, PoE is a lot more bloated and clusterfucky but that's not a difference in kind.

 

[Riddler]

Hyperbole.

Engagement is also nothing compared to the drollness of per-encounter ability spam, dialled up to 11 in the sequel for your enjoyment

This is a fair point, but how many party based RPGs you know that did a complete systemic win over rest spam and did good resource management at the same time? All while being open world.

You don't get it. Sensuki doesn't rest spam.
So the problem doesn't concern him.

Of course I could tell him that my fighter only has one active ability, being the knock down, and that the rest is passives while my ranger has a root and an interrupt only (which gives him the anti caster role) but it's not really the same you can pick ten actives so it's shit.

Thing is that your fighter has 8 knock-downs per encounter and your ranger has 8 root and interrupts per encounter. Then you of course have empower giving you even more charges.

I never ran out of active abilities on my non caster throughout Deadfire after the first levels which you blitz through in the matter of a few hours.

 

[fantadomat]

Did anyone joined with the undead faction? Curious what is the ending.

 

[Riddler]

I am not saying more micromanagement is less popamole. I am saying these two are games of same kind with divergences in quantity and quality. It's really fucking retarded to say PoE1-2 is popamole when gameplay is literally the same except one is more of a clusterfuck. The fact is game should have been turn-based but we had IE nostalgiafags wanting another baldur's gate. Well guess what world could have done without another baldur's gate. Obsidian is shit for going for IE gameplay especially when Sawyer himself said he doesn't like either RTWP or class-based systems.

And neither of the groups got what they wanted! Wooo!

 

[frajaq]

I only want a challenging turn-based game with the same level of flavorful RPG feedback that PoE 2 has

Is that too much to ask???

 

[FreeKaner]

Apparently it is.

 

[MajorMace]

Hyperbole.

Engagement is also nothing compared to the drollness of per-encounter ability spam, dialled up to 11 in the sequel for your enjoyment

This is a fair point, but how many party based RPGs you know that did a complete systemic win over rest spam and did good resource management at the same time? All while being open world.

You don't get it. Sensuki doesn't rest spam.
So the problem doesn't concern him.

Of course I could tell him that my fighter only has one active ability, being the knock down, and that the rest is passives while my ranger has a root and an interrupt only (which gives him the anti caster role) but it's not really the same you can pick ten actives so it's shit.

Thing is that your fighter has 8 knock-downs per encounter and your ranger has 8 root and interrupts per encounter. Then you of course have empower giving you even more charges.

I never ran out of active abilities on my non caster throughout Deadfire after the first levels which you blitz through in the matter of a few hours.

At end game yes.
Even then, the argument remains.
There's something idiotic in saying "I don't mind this because I don't use it/play that way" for one game but not the other.
You don't rest spam in IE games, great. What about someone who doesn't prebuff ? Cool beans.
Just mod deadfire and make all abilities cost 100% pool, or don't use them more than once.
How is it that you can suit yourself with one and not the other. It's a blatant double standard.

I mean, it becomes stupid when you carry a judgement based on this inconsistency.

Ps. Pretty sure the root costs 3. Like all upgraded and high tier stuff.
It's not even as bad as what's suggested.
However the tuning being completely fucked, it matters fuckall.

 

[AwesomeButton]

RTwP is a really specific genre, and the combat is only different enough when you are nitpicking in that niche. The gameplay is same, PoE is a lot more bloated and clusterfucky but that's not a difference in kind.

You could say the same about turn based RPGs. You can't put Underrail and D:OS side by side and say that we should consider the gameplay the same

 

[fantadomat]

Riddler i am serious,you can chose the vampires from the undead island. I just killed the boss because i was annoyed at their charm ability .

 

[Shadenuat]

Yeah, party has too many power points, that's I think a no brainer; adding Empower to this is just breaking the combat since now the whole idea of "defeat this encounter using only your 4 pp" just breaks apart.

Moving goalposts.IN ToEE if you rest you have to choose areas based on safety. Or else, you are attacked.

I never moved any goalposts, the problem was always - how to banalce vancian like abilities (thus keeping strategic layer) in a game where you have freedom to always rest anywhere or even backtrack and rest at specific places like in ToEE or KotC. For Sawyer you also have to add "and not turn off 99% player base away because casuls".

My idea would probably be something like expensive reagents for spells, the rarer the more powerful spells are, but that already does not qualify with the last problem. So Sawyer just went with D&D5 or whatever.

Still failed to balance it. But I understand why he just removed all strategy which, honestly was always an illusion in IE games. From all the classic D&D, only KotC gave me the real feels when locked me in some dungeons away of my cozy fireplace.

 

[FreeKaner]

You could say the same about turn based RPGs. You can't put Underrail and D:OS side by side and say that we should consider the gameplay the same

Turn-based is a lot more varied in genre than isometric party-based RTwP. Especially when the latter is being compared when one is blatantly trying to emulate the other. Regardless this is not the point, Sensuki is butthurt and delusional because of how much he loves IE combat and how poe disappointed him after he spent 300 hours betatesting the game. Now he is calling Deadfire a popamole because you use more abilities than IE games, is that fair to you?

There is nothing hardcore about vancian casting when you can rest whenever, it's essentially flavour from D&D for IE games. Not that there is anything wrong with having flavour.

 

[MajorMace]

Delterius
I don't think the crit path being tuned for mid-level will ever be fixed.
To put it this way: problem comes from the design there. Ashen's Maw is purposefully inhabited by things tagged level 10 or so in the bestiary. And it's canon that in deadfire, dragons represent less of a challenge than vampires or even a pack of kobolds (what the actual fuck).
The kraken is weaker than steel mobs, liches are weaker than vampires (again, wtf).

It's mind-numbingly stupid, and I would really like to know how they ended up in this absurd predicament. Did they even take a look at the complete bestiary and feel like "yup it's alright" ?
It feels like several games worth of bestiary. Like, you know, athkatla bandits being way more powerful than stuff in bg1.
Except that it makes sense in the case of BG2. Here it's completely nonsensical.

 

[Riddler]

Hyperbole.

Engagement is also nothing compared to the drollness of per-encounter ability spam, dialled up to 11 in the sequel for your enjoyment

This is a fair point, but how many party based RPGs you know that did a complete systemic win over rest spam and did good resource management at the same time? All while being open world.

You don't get it. Sensuki doesn't rest spam.
So the problem doesn't concern him.

Of course I could tell him that my fighter only has one active ability, being the knock down, and that the rest is passives while my ranger has a root and an interrupt only (which gives him the anti caster role) but it's not really the same you can pick ten actives so it's shit.

Thing is that your fighter has 8 knock-downs per encounter and your ranger has 8 root and interrupts per encounter. Then you of course have empower giving you even more charges.

I never ran out of active abilities on my non caster throughout Deadfire after the first levels which you blitz through in the matter of a few hours.

At end game yes.
Even then, the argument remains.
There's something idiotic in saying "I don't mind this because I don't use it/play that way" for one game but not the other.
You don't rest spam in IE games, great. What about someone who doesn't prebuff ? Cool beans.
Just mod deadfire and make all abilities cost 100% pool, or don't use them more than once.
How is it that you can suit yourself with one and not the other. It's a blatant double standard.

I mean, it becomes stupid when you carry a judgement based on this inconsistency.

Ps. Pretty sure the root costs 3. Like all upgraded and high tier stuff.
It's not even as bad as what's suggested.
However the tuning being completely fucked, it matters fuckall.

What are you talking about? At lvl 7 you have 6 power points, the majority of skills consume 1(knockdown, lightning strikes, flames of devotion etc) and empower restores half of those so you have 9 available per encounter.

That is the first half of the game and early too. I got to level 7 by doing the starter island + Deadlight. Thats not even near the midpoint of the game and it's just when combat difficult ramps up from literally nonexistent.

The issue here is that the core design is geared around essentially selecting an attack for each character every "round" in a real time game. That one needs to use mods or program the AI to get around this is fucking stupid.

 

[Reinhardt]

PoE xaurips should invade Deadfire and slaughter everyone. Also much better hook than Eothas.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I wonder if this freeLC coming out just a week after the release doesn't signal an attempt to bump sales a bit.

You wouldn't expect a company would release a game only to add freeLC one week later. A freeLC has a meaning as a measure to boost hype, create postive news coverage, and the first week after release is a period when you'd think the hype would still be raging, and such measures as freeLC would not be needed. Right?

 

[Perkel]

I never moved any goalposts, the problem was always - how to banalce vancian like abilities (thus keeping strategic layer) in a game where you have freedom to always rest anywhere or even backtrack and rest at specific places like in ToEE or KotC. For Sawyer you also have to add "and not turn off 99% player base away because casuls".

My idea would probably be something like expensive reagents for spells, the rarer the more powerful spells are, but that already does not qualify with the last problem. So Sawyer just went with D&D5 or whatever.

Still failed to balance it. But I understand why he just removed all strategy which, honestly was always an illusion in IE games. From all the classic D&D, only KotC gave me the real feels when locked me in some dungeons away of my cozy fireplace.

With HP amount enemies and characters in PoE2 there is no reason to make most of abilities or even spells per rest because none of them are very hard hitting to begin with unlike in IE games.
Per rest system works well when you have actual abilities that really change combat on head.

Secondly for per rest mechanic works in DnD because you have game master who says sorry mate you can't go back because there is now fucking dragon god outside and he will inta kill you just so happens flown there right after you went into dungeon.

ToEE kind of tried to fight with it forcing tavern use but nothing stopped player just retreating and resting in inn adding shitty boring hours of "gameplay" because people are retarded and will do that.

 

[2house2fly]

but more important than the stupidity of some codexers is why an obsidian rpg has an option for level scaling. they are openly admitting with audacity that encounters were not handcrafted and balanced.

P2 is an open game with a ton of side content. If you balance it for completionists, casuals will scream bloody murder as the endgame will be too hard for them. If you balance it for the average player, completionists will scream bloody murder as they'll outlevel the content, unless they really enjoy cruising through the latter part of the game because they feel it's a worthy reward for their hard work.

Optional level scaling that you can even set to "only scale upwards" solves this pretty well, except for the occasional retarded edgelord who thinks it means the game "isn't handcrafted and balanced," but I think we can safely ignore them, don't you?

The easier solution here would be difficulty settings. Casuals will play on Normal and not find the end boss too hard no matter how much side content they do, while the hardcore will play on Path Of The Damned and, well, by all accounts they won't find the end boss too hard either right now. I'm neutral on level scaling but less options to have to go through at the beginning of a playthrough seems better than more

 

[MajorMace]

What are you talking about? At lvl 7 you have 6 power points, the majority of skills consume 1(knockdown, lightning strikes, flames of devotion etc) and empower restores half of those so you have 9 available per encounter.

That is the first half of the game.

The issue here is that the core design is geared around essentially selecting an attack for each character every "round" in a real time game. That one needs to use mods or program the AI to get around this is fucking stupid.

I was merely saying that ability costs go up as their power level rank go up, with some costing 4.
I'm at max level, an empower would only give me 1 use of gambit or flurry strikes for my rogue. Given high level passive improve awesome button use, you might even build around that and not refill.
Isn't it a fact ?

If you mean to say that it's too powerful, or imba, then damn thanks for your contribution it's totally not what everybody's saying in the last hundred pages.

Tl,dr you want to spam ten KD in a row, fine. Some people want to rest after every fight and prebuff before any as well. You're free my dude. Just don't pretend you have to for one and not the other.