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

[Tigranes]

Illithids are a difficulty wall that present unique challenges. So are beholders (if you missed the shield/cloak), dragons, most mages, etc. Nothing like that in PoE. Is there one type of super-dangerous enemy that relies on a single easily-missed accessory to defeat it? Nope.

I recall a friend calling me up at night asking, "How do I beat the wizard in the Planar Sphere?" I asked if he had Jaheira and told him to try Insect swarm. Did the trick. Never have that happen anymore with modern games.

Shit if you don't have +3 weapons the demons outside the sphere are unkillable. Again, nothing like this in PoE. Of course everyone here knows modern games are piss easy but relying on historical revisionism to say all games are equally easy is simply absurd.

The systematic dismantling of 'hard' status effects and counters in POE1, and seemingly continuing with POE2, also contributes to this - I maintain that it was one of the worst things they did to the system.

 

[AwesomeButton]

A Serb. I knew it, I called it first time around.

You make a poor Sherlock Holmes

 

[FreeKaner]

They added immunities later. PoE2 also has a p. good basis for it, although at the moment it's wasted on lack of difficulty and encounters.

 

[Ulfhednar]

But if you get your levels or stats drained below 0 you die even with full HP. In PoE your HP bar emptying doesn't even kill you.

But you get spell that completely counters it right from the start. It's lvl 4 cleric spell. Even Aerie knows it already iirc.

But you can't always protect everyone and you have to prepare it before battle, and it's duration is just about 30 secs.

I think he means Lesser Restoration, not Negative Plane Protection - you can remove all level drain effects from your party with a Greater or Lesser Restoration spell if you cleric still has at least one cast of these and you can rest.

 

[Reinhardt]

No, i mean protection. Time is more than enough to win vampire encounters.

 

[FreeKaner]

No, i mean protection. Time is more than enough to win vampire encounters.

That's also the case in PoE1 and PoE2 honestly. "Normally" the second raedric fight in PoE1 is fairly challenging but having a priest with its immunities and aoe fire damage makes it much easier.

A Serb. I knew it, I called it first time around.

You make a poor Sherlock Holmes

It doesn't help you are deliberately withholding information and seemingly try to avoid belying any sort of ethnic trait. What I can deduce from is rather narrow but I would say South Slav is accurate especially with knowledge of Cyrillic, although academic studies of Balkans also veils your origins because I cannot take your knowledge in the area, languages or scripts for granted. That latter consideration still makes me suspect Austrian or Czech, but I do hope former because I hate Czechs. Anyhow let's not derail the thread with same topic again.

 

[deama]

Guys, is there EXP sharing in this game? Like if I went in solo and got 500 EXP, I'd get all the 500EXP right? Or would it be distributed even if your guys weren't there?

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I don't think 100% lock&key design is required, but it's something that can be worked on. PoE1 WM PoTD had an ice dragon with absurd ice attacks. You could beat it without particular items, but dealing with him with Zahua with flaming fist abilities & using protections helped greatly. There were similar encounters there, like golems with strong acid attacks.

PoE2 instead of expanding on this, lowered the bar tremendously. I'd say game right now doesn't have even Adra Dragon level mob.

One of the main differences between old RPG and nuRPG is in the modern games you have "builds" with "choices." In Baldur's gate your cleric gets every spell. The whole list! You can't do that in a modern game because balance. Gotta have limited choices now. The result is the designer can't plan for any group to have any specific ability. In Baldur's gate, everyone will have the cleric spell list and most of the mage spells, so go nuts. If you don't have them, you can get them. In PoE, you're always going to have a subset of abilities, so the designers have to make every encounter beatable without specific abilities.

This is one of the cases where I feel modern RPGs have missed the mark. By making character progression overly limited and restricted, you limit your ability to challenge the player. In an old-school game like Wizardry, there are no problems that can't be solved by more grinding. In PoE we can't have that because combat XP is fascist or something, and quest XP is finite. They put respec options in there as an acknowledgement of this. Instead of fixing the limitations of the game, they give you a built-in cheat to circumvent them.

 

[MajorMace]

What is it that drives so many balkanites on poe boards ?
Not that I have a problem with that hey. T'is curious.

Also yeah, I'd wait for the difficulty patch to judge deadfire on that. It's not like in poe1 where monsters had nothing at all and were revised later, with twm as a conclusion to the process.
Here they have stuff, but it lacks any punch. They're fine design wise (also it's not anywhere near ad&d monster manual indd).
Add accuracy to liches and preparation becomes mandatory, make eotens actually buffed by their chants, fix the goddamn fucking dragons and put them at the top of the bestiary level range ffs.
I'm still baffled by the bestiary inconsistent design though, like making a kraken a level 10 encounter while some xaurip pack will be destined for level 15. What the hell.

 

[FreeKaner]

I don't think 100% lock&key design is required, but it's something that can be worked on. PoE1 WM PoTD had an ice dragon with absurd ice attacks. You could beat it without particular items, but dealing with him with Zahua with flaming fist abilities & using protections helped greatly. There were similar encounters there, like golems with strong acid attacks.

PoE2 instead of expanding on this, lowered the bar tremendously. I'd say game right now doesn't have even Adra Dragon level mob.

One of the main differences between old RPG and nuRPG is in the modern games you have "builds" with "choices." In Baldur's gate your cleric gets every spell. The whole list! You can't do that in a modern game because balance. Gotta have limited choices now. The result is the designer can't plan for any group to have any specific ability. In Baldur's gate, everyone will have the cleric spell list and most of the mage spells, so go nuts. If you don't have them, you can get them. In PoE, you're always going to have a subset of abilities, so the designers have to make every encounter beatable without specific abilities.

This is one of the cases where I feel modern RPGs have missed the mark. By making character progression overly limited and restricted, you limit your ability to challenge the player. In an old-school game like Wizardry, there are no problems that can't be solved by more grinding. In PoE we can't have that because combat XP is fascist or something, and quest XP is finite. They put respec options in there as an acknowledgement of this. Instead of fixing the limitations of the game, they give you a built-in cheat to circumvent them.

Except priests and druids get all of their spells in PoE1. While you do asses the problem accurately your reasoning is not true.

The more accurate thing would be that average person doesn't like puzzles and lock & key encounters even if they aren't absolute promote puzzle gameplay. Developers avoid this to not "frustrate" players, even in optional content.

 

[Prime Junta]

Guys, is there EXP sharing in this game? Like if I went in solo and got 500 EXP, I'd get all the 500EXP right? Or would it be distributed even if your guys weren't there?

If it's like P1 you do get more XP with a smaller party, but not like that. You'd hit the level cap in no time flat.

What is it that drives so many balkanites on poe boards ?

Naturally drawn to the factional feuding?

 

[Reinhardt]

What is it that drives so many balkanites on poe boards ?

Shitty eastern european computers.

 

[MajorMace]

Naturally drawn to the factional feuding?

Is this why we're here as well PJ ?

 

[Life of the Party]

RPGs are genocide simulators so we're a match made in heaven, like a remove and a kebab.

 

[Iskramor]

A Serb. I knew it, I called it first time around.

You make a poor Sherlock Holmes

Where did you get that quote i knew iit since i was 8 lol

 

[FreeKaner]

What is it that drives so many balkanites on poe boards ?

Shitty eastern european computers.

Let's not ascribe it to a lack of choices. My computer very well plays later games, the only one of that sort I played was Witcher 3 and Dishonored 2 though.

 

[Iskramor]

What is it that drives so many balkanites on poe boards ?

Shitty eastern european computers.

Eastern? Nice geo though....

 

[MajorMace]

Tl,dr shit dies so quickly at the moment in deadfire that I don't even have the time to see what encounters are supposed to be about.
The druid fight near sayuka or smthg is the best exemple of this. Only one lived long enough to shapeshift. The others died desperately trying to heal each other and being rurhlessly outdamaged by my dudes, even though they start with stoneskin and whatnot.
In poe1, late enemies didn't even have abilities before months...

 

[FreeKaner]

Game might be playable in 2019.

In that vein though I only played PoE1 like 4-5 months after launch, then replayed at 3.0.

 

[Shadenuat]

One of the main differences between old RPG and nuRPG is in the modern games you have "builds" with "choices." In Baldur's gate your cleric gets every spell

I don't think PoE2 system does not support this play.

The system of Afflictions and Inspirations has many things going for it. Not just priests, but many other classes, including physical classes, have counters to many abilities. It is not a problem to create party without a priest. And if you fail to make effective party with all the tools PoE2 gives, then it's on you. Take Smart inspiration for example, that should counter Charm effects. Cleric has it, sure, but I believe also does wizard, rogue with some skills, cipher if he takes some passives or spells, chanter also has buffs. Furthermore, game has expansive crafting system with potions and scrolls.

PoE2 has means to create this game, but it fails in execution:

- There are too many status effects and many of them fail to be important enough to make player change his tactics (me playing with -10 might for few hours). For example, there is Fear, and there is Terrify. Fear does something like -stats. Terrify, however, actually makes character circle yellow, and character begins to crawl and run away. That's excellent and even more readable than in IE games - color change + animation. But there are also a lot of -stat afflictions that, due to how weak stat system in the game is, don't do much.

- At the same time, enemies are nearly not as effective with afflictions as they should be. Vampires are the only exception. For the whole game, I never had, say, my WHOLE party terrified. Neither I had at least HALF of my party terrified. Sometimes one guy with weakest Will would turncoat but I literally ignored him and continued my basic tactic. Sometimes I get people paralyzed, but nearly not enough. The difficulty of combat is so low, and your characters are so strong, that losing one character for even 20 seconds doesn't mean much.

- The encounters, I've spoken of this. But it's same shit as above - just not enough good work there. And UI with lol scrolls of afflictions when you hover over mob.

PoE2 requires crafty people who know D&D and have experience in IE games to retouch all encounters and rebalance system. The encounters must be a labour of love and unique, just mixing some monsters together while makes it better than PoE1 in that respect, is not enough. Sawyer didn't do half bad with popamole skill trees, in a sense that there are enough abilities to create some strong encounters. But now that we know PoTD wasn't important to focus on, and that he's not doing expansions, in terms of getting that tough combat and content out of all this, I think game is p. much doomed. I don't think they're going to repeat adra dragon or llengrath fight.

 

[HanoverF]

There's nothing in PoE1/2 that can eat your brain out of your skull or perma-level drain you.

The writing.

 

[Shadenuat]

You mean like drow telling you what to be aware of when fighting mind flayers before doing quest about fighting mind flayers?


I admit though, one skill (for characters) that seems to be always under-represented in RPGs is Monstrology. Dun remember last games having it, I think Might & Magic had it and maybe older wizardries did.

 

[fantadomat]

A Serb. I knew it, I called it first time around.

You make a poor Sherlock Holmes

It doesn't help you are deliberately withholding information and seemingly try to avoid belying any sort of ethnic trait. What I can deduce from is rather narrow but I would say South Slav is accurate especially with knowledge of Cyrillic, although academic studies of Balkans also veils your origins because I cannot take for granted your knowledge in the area, languages or scripts for granted. That latter consideration still makes me suspect Austrian or Czech, but I do hope former because I hate Czechs. Anyhow let's not derail the thread with same topic again.

He is 100% a slav born in Austria,a pure Austrian i say. As a ancient Balkan tradition,we should bribe DU to tell us from which country he is login.

 

[fantadomat]

Guys, is there EXP sharing in this game? Like if I went in solo and got 500 EXP, I'd get all the 500EXP right? Or would it be distributed even if your guys weren't there?

I believe that is the same for everyone,no matter the party. Everyone even in your back roaster take the same xp. I have noticed that people that joined me later have lower level that me. Companions don't just scale to your xp.


Has anyone know why sharkboy have so little spells? In my playtrough he had only half of his spells,and most of them sucked wet balls.

 

[Molina]

18/20 for the most mainstream french website about games : http://www.jeuxvideo.com/test/84676...ire-sous-le-vent-d-un-grand-rpg-depaysant.htm