Eternity Pillars of Eternity II Beta Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Infinitron]

Here's two pages from that: https://shop.gamestar.de/$WS/webedi...ar/einzelausgaben/2018/G2D1803_Leseprobe1.pdf

 

[Lacrymas]

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/96138-gimme-your-best-and-gimme-your-worst/
So Cdiaz at Obsidian asked for feedback on best and worst features of Deadfire...
Virtually every response mentioned spellcasting under the bad/worst category. I don't think ANY of the responses mentioned spell cancellation as a significant issue (Edit: there is at least one that put's it in their neutral mentions). Common concerns were the switch to per-encounter, spell selection at level up, casting speed and damage of spells, and the lack of long term strategy. Several of the responders were long active forum participants some of which have thousands of hours in game for PoE 1.

I don't know what else to say.

Wow, they are really digging in there. It's also great how many people are noticing the ship combat being dull and repetitive, but I doubt they'll change that significantly, it will remain a pointless mini-game. I told you (general you) that the issues are plain to see since so many people have noticed them, it's not some hyperfocused nitpicking or obfuscated and manipulative under-the-hood issue that only the most dedicated and experienced of grognards can see. But, I don't think 3.0 is a pinnacle of combat design like the narrative at the Obs forum seems to suggest and I think this combat system has much more potential to be structured and to make sense. It needs extensive tweaking and changes; the Empower system needs to be looked at or removed, it won't work like it is now currently, it will always create some kind of unnecessary gulf between spellcasters and melee; Penetration needs to be changed, as it stands now it will either create a necessity to stack it in builds and rote automatic tactics that will see spellcasters always unloading their Pen buffs at the start of combat OR it will be a non-issue and pointless if they lower the enemies' AR across the board. I might post this on their forum.

 

[FreeKaner]

As it stands the ship combat is very bland and repetitive but it doesn't have to be that way, not because of its text-based nature at least.

 

[existential_vacuum]

Can i have 20 cats on my ship?

Of course you can!

On board of HYPE SHIP™ everything is possible! 30 cats? Done. 40? Ask and we'll deliver.
Look at you on top of this magnificent beast, look how happy you are. Order HYPE SHIP™ OBSIDIAN EDITION ULTIMATE PACK* and receive a bunch of DOGS and PIGS to place wherever you want!


*Important notice: Ultimate Pack includes HYPE SHIP™, user manual, 2 hour guarantee card and a bucket of "Hope and Expectations"™**. Cats are sold separately. Shipping fees are not included. HYPE SHIP™ is in no way affiliated with Obsidian Entertainment, Inc. and therefore is in no way responsible for under-delivering on the promised product.
**"Hope and Expectations"™ contents vary depending on your overall enjoyment of PoE OC, WM and PoE2 Fig campaign.

EDIT: fixed image hosting fuckery

 

[Infinitron]

I might post this on their forum.

lol "Christliar" https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/96138-gimme-your-best-and-gimme-your-worst/?p=1979129

 

[Grunker]

So he's struggling with everything I warned him about and he told me "nah it's no issue" [/sensuki]

Just cut fucking weapon specialization from your games, devs. If you differentiate your weapon types what's the point in undermining your own work by pidgeonholing people to stick to one type of weapon through passives?

 

[Lacrymas]

lol "Christliar" https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/96138-gimme-your-best-and-gimme-your-worst/?p=1979129

Sue me.

 

[FreeKaner]

I think they should just literally flat out remove penetration from spells, or at least make it so that it's not a general stat but depends on the spells themselves. So for example you can have a spell that deals a lot of damage in a large area but has low penetration, which can be good against low armour targets and targets that have been debuffed, you can cast it on top of your own frontline if they have good armour etc., or you can have extremely high penetration single target nukes and what not, it would be good asymmetric balance.

 

[Lacrymas]

Penetration is bad across the board, the difference between casters and melee in this context is that melee have higher Penetration and can buff it and debuff armor much more easily and accessibly. We are in this whole mess because the mechanics aren't consistent between spellcasters and martials, I don't think they need more ways for the mechanics to discriminate between them. There is also another thing, Infinitron, Penetration forces every build that wants to do damage to stack Penetration as high as the highest AR enemy in the game, making every build the same in this regard and leaving very few opportunities to deviate, and automatically shooting subclasses with free access to Pen (like Devoted) up. There is no such thing with dealing damage. It also uses up the very few spells per encounter casters have on buffing Pen or debuffing armor. If there is some spell or mechanic that you have to automatically use in every encounter, it should be removed or baked into the spells/abilities.

 

[FreeKaner]

Penetration is bad across the board, the difference between casters and melee in this context is that melee have higher Penetration and can buff it and debuff armor much more easily and accessibly. We are in this whole mess because the mechanics aren't consistent between spellcasters and martials, I don't think they need more ways for the mechanics to discriminate between them.

It's not about mechanics discriminating, it's about mechanics corresponding properly to reality of the situation. A melee character uses a weapon and will depend consistently on its penetration, with buffing their own penetration across the board or for specific weapons to get through some of the higher armour targets. Similarly, a spellcaster uses spells, which are supposed to be asymmetric in their effects and impact against various targets in various situations. This way your bolt of whatever that has medium single-target damage and high penetration can reasonably deal with a heavily armoured target, while your ball of whatever that has high damage and low penetration will be able to respond to crowded situations, even on top of your own targets.

These are two basic examples of how much design space spell-specific penetration opens up for asymmetric reaction to situations and encounters. Which was also what PoE1 was lacking in terms of diversity and tactical depth.

 

[Maculo]

I made my meager suggestions in that thread. With respect to weapon modals, I either just ignore them or never turn them off. I barely have a suggestion for what to change, but I just hate the toggle on/toggle off mechanic.

 

[Lacrymas]

It's not about mechanics discriminating, it's about mechanics corresponding properly to reality of the situation. A melee character uses a weapon and will depend consistently on its penetration, with buffing their own penetration across the board or for specific weapons to get through some of the higher armour targets. Similarly, a spellcaster uses spells, which are supposed to be asymmetric in their effects and impact against various targets in various situations. This way your bolt of whatever that has medium single-target damage and high penetration can reasonably deal with a heavily armoured target, while your ball of whatever that has high damage and low penetration will be able to respond to crowded situations, even on top of your own targets.

These are two basic examples of how much design space spell-specific penetration opens up for asymmetric reaction to situations and encounters. Which was also what PoE1 was lacking in terms of diversity and tactical depth.

You aren't taking Accuracy into consideration. We are already choosing what spells to use depending on the defenses of the enemies, so adding another thing on top will create situations like a spell having high Penetration and targets Reflex, but the enemy has high armor and very high Reflex defenses. You'd have to debuff the Reflex first (if you can) and then use the spell. You might say we have 10 spell levels' worth of different kinds of spells to circumvent whatever defenses they have, but we have very limited spell selection and using them up on all kinds of Pen and defense targeting spells won't be very diverse; we don't have access to all the spells from the beginning, so this only applies to high-level play, i.e. the last 20% of the game; AND, the most important thing, it relegates the spellcasting to a puzzle-like state in which you are fitting very specific spells to very specific circumstances, forcing you to figure out what spells the developers intended for you to use in any given battle, instead of creating your own tactics.

 

[Infinitron]

There is also another thing, Infinitron, Penetration forces every build that wants to do damage to stack Penetration as high as the highest AR enemy in the game, making every build the same in this regard and leaving very few opportunities to deviate, and automatically shooting subclasses with free access to Pen (like Devoted) up. There is no such thing with dealing damage. It also uses up the very few spells per encounter casters have on buffing Pen or debuffing armor. If there is some spell or mechanic that you have to automatically use in every encounter, it should be removed or baked into the spells/abilities.

I don't know, I feel like you're probably frustrated with Penetration like I was with some armored enemies in PoE1 who forced me to switch from my rapier to a slow-ass arbalest to be able to make a dent. DT in New Vegas could be even worse. Sometimes it felt like those games were forcing me to be something, but ultimately it was all right.

Is the Penetration threshold more punishing? Then change it. But I think they've already done that. I agree that Penetration should generally be something that you slowly grow over the course of the game starting from a particular baseline, rather than something that you can awesome-button up at will. I think a good low-level Penetration buff would be one that adds a one-time Penetration bonus to your next attack, rather than one that ups your Penetration for a duration of time.

 

[FreeKaner]

You aren't taking Accuracy into consideration. We are already choosing what spells to use depending on the defenses of the enemies, so adding another thing on top will create situations like a spell having high Penetration and targets Reflex, but the enemy has high armor and very high Reflex defenses. You'd have to debuff the Reflex first (if you can) and then use the spell. You might say we have 10 spell levels' worth of different kinds of spells to circumvent whatever defenses they have, but we have very limited spell selection and using them up on all kinds of Pen and defense targeting spells won't be very diverse; we don't have access to all the spells from the beginning, so this only applies to high-level play, i.e. the last 20% of the game; AND, the most important thing, it relegates the spellcasting to a puzzle-like state in which you are fitting very specific spells to very specific circumstances, forcing you to figure out what spells the developers intended for you to use in any given battle, instead of creating your own tactics.

Didn't Sawyer say they will literally double the amount of available spells? In either case I agree that perhaps having two layers of abstraction in terms of defences might be too limiting, although I stand behind that perhaps SOME spells at least could have specific penetration stats, ones that are meant for specific situations. This would increase tactical depth of the game and improve the asymmetric balance between melees and casters.

 

[Lacrymas]

I don't know, I feel like you're probably frustrated with Penetration like I was with some armored enemies in PoE1 who forced me to switch from my rapier to a slow-ass arbalest to be able to make a dent. DT in New Vegas could be even worse. Sometimes it felt like those games were forcing me to be something, but ultimately it was all right.

Is the Penetration threshold more punishing? Then change it. But I think they've already done that. I agree that Penetration should generally be something that you slowly grow over the course of the game starting from a particular baseline, rather than something that you can awesome-button up at will. I think a good low-level Penetration buff would be one that adds a one-time Penetration bonus to your next attack, rather than one that ups your Penetration for a duration of time.

If you can pass Penetration as a baseline, why have it at all? There isn't a single thing that is making Pen bad, there are a myriad of interconnected issues. Lack of Pen buffs and elemental armor debuffs, necessity to revolve builds around it, encouragement of rote and automatic tactics, using up precious per-encounter spell slots every time, unbalancing certain subclasses, etc.

Didn't Sawyer say they will literally double the amount of available spells? In either case I agree that perhaps having two layers of abstraction in terms of defences might be too limiting, although I stand behind that perhaps SOME spells at least could have specific penetration stats, ones that are meant for specific situations. This would increase tactical depth of the game and improve the asymmetric balance between melees and casters.

They already did that AFAIK, not doubled, but gave another one. Such asymmetrical balance sounds good on paper, but I don't think it will work well in practice, given the current state of combat and casters.

 

[Maculo]

I do not dislike Penetration as a stat per se, but it should clear when it is needed and what weapons or spells offer it. My issue with the system is that whatever weapon or spell offers the most penetration often becomes the best weapon or spell to use in all situations.

Strangely, I am thinking of Total Warhammer, where units have armor, melee defense (think deflection), melee attack (think accuracy),weapon strength (think damage), and armor piercing (amount of damage that ignores armor). There are units that have high armor piercing, but lower overall weapon strength, meaning a unit that trades well against a high armored targets, will not necessary perform as well against a low armored targets. In my mind, that would be the ideal behind penetration and the weapon system, but instead it has become just as general as accuracy and deflection.

 

[Lacrymas]

The UI is pretty clear when you don't have enough Pen and the spell descriptions state how much Pen they have. I don't see why they changed DR, though, I think it worked fine for what it tried to achieve.

 

[Infinitron]

Strangely, I am thinking of Total Warhammer, where units have armor, melee defense (think deflection), melee attack (think accuracy),weapon strength (think damage), and armor piercing (amount of damage that ignores armor). There are units that have high armor piercing, but lower overall weapon strength, meaning a unit that trades well against a high armored targets, will not necessary perform as well against a low armored targets.

I would think that a similar hierarchy exists in PoE2, where the weapons that have high Penetration might also tend to have lower damage or lower speed and so on. If somebody posts all the game's basic weapon stats we could put all the numbers in a table and graph the correlation.

 

[Maculo]

The UI is pretty clear when you don't have enough Pen and the spell descriptions state how much Pen they have. I don't see why they changed DR, though, I think it worked fine for what it tried to achieve.

To clarify, I had hoped the system would make Pen more situational and not as general as deflection or accuracy. I just do not see a downside to Pen at the moment.

I would think that a similar hierarchy exists in PoE2, where the weapons that have high Penetration might also tend to have lower damage or lower speed and so on. If somebody posts all the game's basic weapon stats we could put all the numbers in a table and graph the correlation.

I did not seem much of one in my playthroughs. I will load the beta in a bit and write down some stats.

 

[FreeKaner]

Maybe the solution is actually the opposite? Where total penetration and over-penetration are very hard to get? So to achieve them you would have diminishing returns where you have to sacrifice damage and utility instead of having total penetration being a no-brainer. This would also make total penetration and overpenetration a specialist attribute instead of a general one.

 

[Lacrymas]

That's essentially the same as DR and has been proposed before. I think Sawyer said they don't want to do that because DR felt "mushy". Or you mean characters are expected to do only 30% damage and HP is calculated based on that? It will still make Pen even more lucrative because it will be a 333% increase of damage while HP is designed around not doing that.

 

[Maculo]

I loaded up the beta and higher pen weapons do appear to do lower actual damage.

Here are the two-handed weapons.

Spoiler

Great Sword: 6 Pen, 26-32 damage.

Spoiler

Estoc: 10 Pen, 18-26 damage

Spoiler

Morning Star: Pen 8, 18-26 damage.

Spoiler

Pollaxe: 8 Pen, 18-26 damage.

Spoiler

Quarter Staff: 6 Pen, 24-30 damage.

Spoiler

There are other factors, such as damage types and speed. The tooltips make the distinction between slash, pierce, and crush. At this point, I need to sit down and reread what the armor and damages do again.

Edit: Here are the one-handers:

Spoiler

Stiletto: 8 Pen, 11-15 damage.

Spoiler

Dagger: Pen 6, 13-18 damage.

Spoiler

Hatchet: 6 Pen, 13-18 damage

Spoiler

Rapier: 6 Pen, 13-18 damage.

Spoiler

Sword: 6 Pen, 18-24 damage.

Spoiler

Club: 6 Pen, 13-18 damage

Spoiler

Mace: 8 Pen, 12-17 damage.

Spoiler

Flail: 6 Pen, 12-15 damage.

Spoiler

I think I appeased the Austism god for today.

 

[Anthedon]

Is there a manual or an overview of what changes were made to the combat system?

 

[FreeKaner]

The problem is baseline of penetration I think, as I said it could do better to actually lower the penetration across the board.

 

[Maculo]

I am reading the wiki information, and I think what screws it all up is that if your pen rating is twice the target's armor rating, you receive an additional 30% damage. That 30% increase can outweigh or cancel out the benefit of a weapon with low pen, but higher actual damage.

Based on the wiki entry:

Full Penetration (+30% Damage) - Penetration is twice the target's Armor Rating or more.

Penetration (Listed Damage) - Penetration meets or exceeds the target's Armor Rating.

No Penetration (-70% Damage) - Penetration is less than the target's Armor Rating.

Here is my bad math.

Spoiler

In addition, we have slash, crush, and pierce damage types, and certain armor types do better or worse against it. For example, Plate Armor has 10 armor, 6 crush, and 6 shock rating, whereas Scale Armor as 8 armor, 6 pierce, and 6 corrode rating. Cloth is 3 armor.

An estoc is pierce, with 10 Pen and 18-26 actual damage. Against Plate armor, an estoc would do full damage (10 armor rating minus 10 penetration for 0). Against Scale Armor, an estoc would first reduce it to 6 armor (pierce damage) and then by an additional 10 pen, for a excess of 4 penetration for normal damage. Against cloth, estoc would have twice the normal penetration and do an extra 30% damage.

A great sword is pierce and slash, with 6 pen and 26-32 damage. Against, plate armor it would have no penetration (-70% damage, because 10 armor rating less 6 pen). Against scale armor, a greatsword would do normal damage. Against cloth, it would do normal damage.

Therefore, the estoc has the opportunity to do an additional 30% damage and avoids the 70% damage penalty. In contrast, the greatsword never reached full penetration and receive the 70% debuff against plate.

Provided my math is right (likely riddled with errors), I do not see a downside to stacking pen, because you better avoid the 70% penalty and have the chance to receive 30% damage. If Obsidian took away the Full Penetration distinction (30% damage), I think it would even the field.