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

[fantadomat]

As a whole the shiny words are good idea,the problem could be the execution. They represent the knowledge people that exist in the world have. For example most people in the real world will know what nuclear plan or a car is,wouldn't but it woudn't know all the shit,people from different regions and professions would know different specialised things. So the best implementation will be if there is some grey words that you wouldn't know until learned. Also race and profession should know about different things. IT is ridiculous if some barbarian from some mountain 3000 kilometres away knows about Unga-Bunga the goddess of limpdicks in some tribal island.

 

[Quillon]

Speaking of spells, there's this very weird thing about the leveling up. Not sure if it's a bug or what, but you can distribute the ability points when you level up in whichever class you want and you get extra points every few levels if you are multiclassed. Soooo, it turns out you get more abilities as a multiclass in a single class tree than a single-classed character if you want to. At least I think so, I'm not 100% sure.

That makes no sense.

 

[Lacrymas]

I think it's a bug. From what I can gather, when you get the extra point when you are multi-classed, it's supposed to let you put the 2 points in the two classes, not allow you to put both in the same class. There's a bunch of other bugs like that, though, like a Ghost Lodge Ranger losing the pet bonuses from the passive ability tree, but also gobbling up the point you put in it, so you can't use it anywhere else unless you retrain.

Speaking of classes, Druids and Priests really lack options when leveling up, Priest especially. They don't get any passive abilities at all and you can only pick spells when leveling up (i.e. no more Aggrandizing Radiance and similar). Druids still only get the Wildstrike passives, but I think they added some passive +Defenses bonuses, like Bull's Will or Snake Reflexes. They really need more options. The Spiritshifts still feel like a damage cooldown rather than a class-defining feature.

 

[Infinitron]

Same guys that interviewed Larian the other day:



As many as 150 hours if you do all content, Katrina says. Possibly bigger than Skyrim. Told ya.

EDIT: Uh, something like that.

 

[Starwars]

Time estimates, always meaningless.

Still on for Spring 2018 Wonder if that will hold.

 

[Cross]

As many as 150 hours if you do all content, Katrina says. Possibly bigger than Skyrim. Told ya.

That's a lot of trash mobs.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

As many as 150 hours if you do all content, Katrina says. Possibly bigger than Skyrim. Told ya.

That's a lot of trash mobs.

Yeah, that's incredibly worrying statement if anything. The previous game was 60 hours and it already badly lacked focus and pacing. And new one will be at least twice as big? Give me a break.

 

[Infinitron]

She also says doing just the main path could be as short as 25 hours long, so maybe Eric Fenstermaker does get some of what he wanted

 

[fantadomat]

Nothing is bigger than Skyrim,the game have around 400 hours if you want to do almost all the contend.

 

[Lacrymas]

150 hours if you do all content seems like a lot. My playthrough of PoE1 with both expansions was 100 hours and that's because I have a tendency to alt-tab and keep games running for extended periods of time without actually playing them.

 

[Abu Antar]

I take completion times quoted by devs with a pinch of salt. I'm betting that it will take me approximately 100 hours to complete. And I'm a very slow player.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

It doesn't sound like a lot, it sounds like too much. Again, the biggest remaining problem the game has after 3.0 is the inconsistent quality of levels and quests. It starts well, then it goess limpdick when you reach Defiance Bay, then it picks up at Dyrwood, then it goes limpdick again in act 3, and the cycle continues throughout the entire playthrough. I'll grant them that expansion was much tighter and rarely wasted player time with boring stuff, but that's goes with a territory of a 25h expansion. 150 hours sounds incredibly excessive.

 

[GrainWetski]

Nothing is bigger than Skyrim,the game have around 400 hours if you want to do almost all the contend.

I'm sure it does.

 

[Infinitron]

It doesn't sound like a lot, it sounds like too much. Again, the biggest remaining problem the game has after 3.0 is the inconsistent quality of levels and quests. It starts well, then it goess limpdick when you reach Defiance Bay, then it picks up at Dyrwood, then it goes limpdick again in act 3, and the cycle continues throughout the entire playthrough. I'll grant them that expansion was much tighter and rarely wasted player time with boring stuff, but that's goes with a territory of a 25h expansion. 150 hours sounds incredibly excessive.

Katrina also says a typical playthrough is 60-70 hours. I would suggest that this game's more open world structure means that concerns about pacing on a linear path may not be as relevant here.

(Personally I played PoE without expansions for 300+ hours but I'm weird like that)

 

[Sentinel]

Same guys that interviewed Larian the other day:



As many as 150 hours if you do all content, Katrina says. Possibly bigger than Skyrim. Told ya.

Gametime is the most worthless metric there is. It's right up there with "map size". It's marketing tactics 101. Only total retard fanboys fall for it (ie our very own illustrious infinitron)

 

[Tigranes]

Yep. And given some people take 20 to do what others take 80..

 

[Jenkem]

where is the 150 hours of content in POE? lmao

 

[santino27]

Of course you do, I'm not arguing about that, only on how it will affect the writing.

Looking over the beta, it appears to be both a good and bad thing. Good because they can cut down on the superfluous exposition, bad because now they are almost compelled to shoehorn them in at every opportunity in order to make the player who maybe missed them - hover over the hyperlink again.

One thing that occurred to me is that, because this game is supposed to be fairly broad and non-linear, there are a lot of concepts they have no way of knowing if the player is familiar with yet. (i.e. maybe they explained it in a nice, coherent, non-lore-dumpy way on island A, but you went to island B first.) Obviously, there are ways around that problem, but I'd wager the hyperlinks are by far the solution that takes the least work on their part, and efficiency matters.

If they weren''t hitting you with 15 links a conversation, I think people would be bothered less. As it is, the implementation in the beta is not good.

 

[Infinitron]

Gametime is the most worthless metric there is. It's right up there with "map size". It's marketing tactics 101. Only total retard fanboys fall for it (ie our very own illustrious infinitron)

Not really. I was mostly just looking to prove my earlier point that Obsidian weren't looking to make a short game (despite what Eric said in our interview with him back in 2016). The exact number of hours is probably bullshit. It'll certainly be bullshit for me.

 

[Sentinel]

Gametime is the most worthless metric there is. It's right up there with "map size". It's marketing tactics 101. Only total retard fanboys fall for it (ie our very own illustrious infinitron)

Not really. I was mostly just looking to prove my earlier point that Obsidian weren't looking to make a short game (despite what Eric said in our interview with him back in 2016). The exact number of hours is probably bullshit. It'll certainly be bullshit for me.

There's no need to prove anything, Eric doesn't work there & he was giving his own opinion, not a look at the direction the studio was considering in the future.

 

[santino27]

Speaking of spells, there's this very weird thing about the leveling up. Not sure if it's a bug or what, but you can distribute the ability points when you level up in whichever class you want and you get extra points every few levels if you are multiclassed. Soooo, it turns out you get more abilities as a multiclass in a single class tree than a single-classed character if you want to. At least I think so, I'm not 100% sure.

Some of that is the way JES explained it would work; you get one point every level up that can be distributed to either of your classes (so you choose between), and then when you get a new power level, you get two points. However, you're supposed to have to split those two points between classes. As a result, you never get to put more points into a single class than a proper single class character could... (and your power level is way lower).

I could swear it was like that when the beta first launched too, so maybe it's a bug that has been introduced since.

 

[Jenkem]

I am now envisioning Infinitron meticulously reading every backer NPC's stories multiple times...

 

[Infinitron]

I am now envisioning Infinitron meticulously reading every backer NPC's stories multiple times...

It's probably a combination of reading a bit slowly, deliberating a lot over character building decisions and dialogue responses, frequently save-scumming to explore alternate dialogue options, and sometimes spending an hour or more trying to get through certain battles without getting a knockout or being damaged too much.

 

[Lacrymas]

One thing that occurred to me is that, because this game is supposed to be fairly broad and non-linear, there are a lot of concepts they have no way of knowing if the player is familiar with yet. (i.e. maybe they explained it in a nice, coherent, non-lore-dumpy way on island A, but you went to island B first.)

That's why you don't have lore dumps every second NPC. The lore should be apparent from the way you interact with the world and how that world is set up, not by telling you what's what. It's the mark of an amateur writer to flesh out his world to the tiniest detail (even though it's still elves and dwarves), but don't actually do anything with that and fill pages upon pages with only descriptions about how the world operates. For example, let's take that koiki fruit quest in the beta, why are you telling me you have festivals where you eat the fruit for some reason instead of showing me that festival and let me partake in the fruit eating? Tell me to go get the fruit for the festival and show me that it's the last fruit from a dying tree that is the last of its kind on the island. We really don't have a reason to care about any of this if we aren't personally involved. Hell, most people in the real world don't care that African children are starving because they aren't directly involved, let alone care about that stuff in a fictional world. Then you ask me to choose which character has to die? Dumb. I don't believe for a second that these people have the food shortage they claim to have and I also don't believe they have goods that will be of interest to Vailian traders for the chief to put his faith entirely on that. Then they ask you to make a choice about that as well. It's impotent and very unnatural.

 

[polo]

Now that we know this game is huge, i think we can confirm a good rpg cannot be short.


This post was sponsored by Blaine.