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

FreeKaner

Prophet of the Dumpsterfire
Joined
Mar 28, 2015
Messages
6,908
Location
Devlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿErdogānīye
People get upset when they feel like their power is taken away, even when the result might be functionally same.

Yeah, which is why this approach is especially hated in a single player game. In something competitive online, you have to nerf, but here JES could have buffed all enemies instead of nerfing players - it's not even about OP outliers, since he systematically nerfed items.

The fact he had to do that shows how little thought went into the system.

The numbers were completely off I think. While in beta most people were barely surviving also.
 

Brancaleone

Liturgist
Joined
Apr 28, 2015
Messages
1,004
Location
Norcia
People get upset when they feel like their power is taken away, even when the result might be functionally same.
Blanket nerfing tends to flatten the differences between the available options, making the choice between them less significant. It's not just about the final result.
 

Lhynn

Arcane
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
9,825
People get upset when they feel like their power is taken away, even when the result might be functionally same.
Itemization gets praised for being interesting and making a difference.
Sawyer halves all the values on items making them all samey and make about 50% less difference.

Thats banalce for you.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
blah blah balance blah blah, i'll play the game and see if it actually makes the game more difficult

did they fix the ridiculous +5 per skill level bonus items? getting +30 deflection from armour because you have 6 intimidate or something is fucking idiotic, cutting that in half isn't a nerf, it's a bug fix
 

Lhynn

Arcane
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
9,825
You seem confused, or retarded. Why try to defend a blanket nerf that sends itemization to crap with an extreme case?
 

Prime Junta

Guest
You seem confused, or retarded. Why try to defend a blanket nerf that sends itemization to crap with an extreme case?

Stacking, Lhynn. The nerf wasn't from +2 to +1, it was from +6 to +3 or even +8 to +4. The items themselves may not have been OP but the stacks were.

They could have eliminated stacking and kept the +2s of course, but that would've been a systemic change and I think they're wise to avoid those until the item balance is reasonably sane.
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
I mean, why nerf things like boots of speed to +15 from +25 against attacks of opportunity. Engagement is already not as big of a thing. Instead, why not make it so there is only 1 item like this in the game, so you build 1 character around this ability. Maybe even give it a better story and make it usable by specific classes.

Also, I can't say that on PoTD stacking really protects from everything. Only on higher levels and against badly scaling mobs. Even if you have 120+ in all defences, high level enemies still pen you quite reliably with attacks and effects, provided these are indeed HIGH LEVEL, reasonable enemies, 17+ / final boss type, not underleveled garbage that populates 90% of the world.

Again, shit like frost bow. Make a boss out of one of the builds posted by players with this bow to get that bow. Make things more symmetric like this, make player work for strong items, instead of them being everywhere.

Some items can change your tactic in this game, but I guess after good Sawyer spring cleaning things will return to normal.
 
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Self-Ejected

aweigh

Self-Ejected
Joined
Aug 23, 2005
Messages
17,978
Location
Florida
I'm not a fan of items or classes or abilities that are too obviously good, like making a Frostbow + Swift Flurry char. Nerf both things and be done with it. Nerfing items across the board instead of changing how stacking works was also the correct move: can you imagine the butthurt over changing stacking rules again?

Also for the average normie-tier player it is much less 'fun' to have to keep track of what stacks and what doesn't, whereas an item being +10 instead of +20 will be immediately understood and processed.
 

Cowboy Moment

Arcane
Joined
Feb 8, 2011
Messages
4,407
After finding PoE1 to be largely mediocre, I listened to you fuckers against my better judgement and bought the second game.

Thus far (just levelled past 10) I'm fairly satisfied. The sequel is a major improvement in a lot of ways that I find critical as a BG2/IWD fan - dungeons, encounter design and variety, exploration, and loot. It also does a much better job of evoking the spirit of adventure the IE games excelled at, though it still suffers from a disappointingly limp-dicked main plot disconnected from anything interesting going on in the setting. And it is a fun and well-realized setting, writing quality aside. I'm not even especially bothered by said writing being relatively bad by Obsidian standards. It would be nice if companions were more colourful (Serafen is the only one who actually feels alive, much like Durance did in the first game), and if they stopped asking me for relationship advice, but whatever, doesn't matter that much.

My main problem with it continues to be the combat. Part of it is that I still feel the core philosophy of having each class have a comparable amount of active abilities is stupid as hell in a game where you control the whole party simultaneously, and leads to lots of pointless busywork and skills with no impact. And I don't know whether this is because of the underlying "unified" combat resolution system or due to bad enemy and ability design, but I find myself not caring about most of what enemies do. To be fair, in PoE1 I only cared about Charm/Dominate, and PoE2 added healing reductions to that, so there is an improvement. But in IE games, I cared about practically every status effect, and having to actively remove them in combat and prepare for the truly nasty ones like level drain made the combat pleasantly interactive. In PoE2, I'm playing on PotD with upscaling, not really powergaming or optimizing my builds, and I don't give a shit about poison, or the plethora of short-duration CC effects that I can't do anything about even if I wanted to.

Plus, visually it's just a clusterfuck, and something about the pathfinding makes it really difficult to position your party the way you want to.

But, overall the game is a pleasant surprise, and while I still prefer DOS2, it's much closer than I'd have expected. Kind of a pity it seems to not be selling that well.
 

TT1

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Nov 25, 2016
Messages
1,479
Location
Krakow
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.
1DfFMWB.jpg
 

Ulfhednar

Savant
Joined
Apr 29, 2017
Messages
809
Location
Valhalla
And I can't understand munchkins who are butthurt when OP stuff gets nerfed. I guess that makes us even.
But how do you know what is legitimately OP if the game is too easy as it is - some stuff like monk's lightning strikes is obvious. Nerfing 30 items is pointless autism though - I played the first half of the game with starter equipment and about half of my slots were empty.

If you're trying to balance chess and black starts the game without his rooks, the solution is to give him his rooks back and then evaluate how strong of an advantage initiative is... not say, "Oh fuck, castling is OP as shit. Change the rules." You'd just lose a nice feature and the game is still a mess.

They need to get Veteran and POTD in a good place before they start tinkering with things.
 

Parabalus

Arcane
Joined
Mar 23, 2015
Messages
17,432
You seem confused, or retarded. Why try to defend a blanket nerf that sends itemization to crap with an extreme case?

Stacking, Lhynn. The nerf wasn't from +2 to +1, it was from +6 to +3 or even +8 to +4. The items themselves may not have been OP but the stacks were.

They could have eliminated stacking and kept the +2s of course, but that would've been a systemic change and I think they're wise to avoid those until the item balance is reasonably sane.

What is blanket nerfing every item by 50% if not a systemic change?

Like the nerfs, hate the nerfs, this is how Josh rolls. And he isn't going to stop, just like he didn't stop in the first game.

It was hard to care about itemisation in PoE1 since it was bland(er) [pre WM] and JES mostly touched up classes.
In Dumpsterfire the unique items are some of the best/coolest across all cRPGs so hitting them hurts.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
It doesn't matter whether they nerf the party or buff the enemy, the relative values are the same. The advantage of nerfing the party is removal of excess big number bloat, which I'm all for. It allows for more comfortable number crunching and calculations.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
If a weapon was +16 and they cut it to +8, as opposed to starting at +8 and cutting to +4, would you mind? "Nerf vs buff" is not really a sensible yardstick. I'm all for munchkinism, but there are so many killer gear combos in POE2 that many will survive this broad cut. Far too many items were overbuffed to begin with.

Just solo'd the opening cave as an 8 CON Rogue/Cipher and, well, it was pretty brutal. That's mostly because I killed Eder and the PC is fragile, though. But even if it happened accidentally, having some challenge in the area really makes everything better: the atmosphere, the pacing... if only they got this halfway right from the start. We'll see if they're going to ever get it right.
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,124
If there's one thing Josh has proven, it's that he will polish a turd until it's a shiny beacon of hope.

Although that doesn't make it any better to once again be screwed for playing the game on day 1. If only these games were coming out more often. It's hard to exercise some gamer patience when you only get to play oldschool-style RPG once a year if you're lucky.
 

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