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Eternity Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Pre-Release Thread [BETA RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

Prime Junta

Guest
It exists to balance multiclassing, basically. So multiclassed characters won't be as strong as pure ones because they'll lack the source to use spells as much and power to have them as strong as a pure class character.
this is a good thing why?

Because if they were, then it would be dumb to play a single-class character.
 

hivemind

Guest
and that's wrong why?

in real life if you are a lawyer and a surgeon you are better off than if you just were just a lawyer and spent your free time lazying about
 

FreeKaner

Prophet of the Dumpsterfire
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and that's wrong why?

in real life if you are a lawyer and a surgeon you are better off than if you just were just a lawyer and spent your free time lazying about

The problem, friend, is that a person who is a lawyer and surgeon has to spend combined effort of both. In games usually multiclassing means getting half in both, usually until power spikes or enablers, basically becomes a way to min-max, a way better than alternatives. Perhaps in an MMO the professions could work the way you described, in fact they often do, in a finite single-player RPG however that's not possible.
 

Sentinel

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Dunno why you're butthurt about spells and abilities scaling with character level, that's extremely (A)D&D, and with P1 lots of people bitched about wimpy fireballs and such.
yeah but in D&D with each spell level you got more creative spells that weren't all focused on dealing damage (most of them were utilities). In PoE the only thing that increasing spell level does is give you Fireball VI - now with Triangular AoE & 50% more damage Edition, so there was no need for any damage scaling at all since every single spell in the game was meant to blow up people.
 

hivemind

Guest
The problem, friend, is that a person who is a lawyer and surgeon has to spend combined effort of both. In games usually multiclassing means getting half in both, usually until power spikes or enablers, basically becomes a way to min-max, a way better than alternatives. Perhaps in an MMO the professions could work the way you described, in fact they often do, in a finite single-player RPG however that's not possible.
I see, that makes sense

thanks
 

Parabalus

Arcane
Joined
Mar 23, 2015
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So, basically every class has a mana-like resource? :decline:

I think they will be sufficiently different to be engaging. In PoE there is focus, wounds and phrases, they added zeal/rage/(rogue)/(ranger)/(fighter). They only have to differentiate them a little bit with supporting talents/abilities for the classes to feel unique.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
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Pathfinder: Wrath
It's not about whether they are differentiated enough or not, it's about mana as a resource in general. It's very MMO-y and later Bioware-y, it's more action in the sense that you can spam whatever spells you want up to a point, so it's about maximizing your DPS and rotation rather than worrying about resources. Yeah, sure, it runs out, but the only depth in that kind of system is worrying about how not to run out until the end of the battle.
 

FreeKaner

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It's not about whether they are differentiated enough or not, it's about mana as a resource in general. It's very MMO-y and later Bioware-y, it's more action in the sense that you can spam whatever spells you want up to a point, so it's about maximizing your DPS and rotation rather than worrying about resources. Yeah, sure, it runs out, but the only depth in that kind of system is worrying about how not to run out until the end of the battle.

The problem depends on whether the spells are varied enough so the resource management is about opportunity cost rather than as you said a MMOesque rotation. Considering also spellcasters have per-encounter limit by spell levels, as long as the other classes have varied spells, costs are adjusted (I don't think 1 cost knockdown while Eder has 6 power resource is) then the problem you described won't come into play. Similarly, even without mana, if the spells aren't varied, optimised and thought of it leads to optimal rotations. There are plenty of druid spells that are not worth the time to cast them for example and wizards tend to have rotations later in the game in PoE due ample amount of per encounter spells.

Per rest, per encounter and mana are entirely all resource management, it depends on how these individual systems fit into cost/reward balance of the design in place.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
yeah but in D&D with each spell level you got more creative spells that weren't all focused on dealing damage (most of them were utilities). In PoE the only thing that increasing spell level does is give you Fireball VI - now with Triangular AoE & 50% more damage Edition, so there was no need for any damage scaling at all since every single spell in the game was meant to blow up people.

wut?

It still has new spells per level. It's just that fireball's damage scales with level power source so it'll do more damage if you're higher level when you cast it.

I don't know if there will be utility spells, and to what extent. It's been a big and common complaint about P1 though, and they did introduce some somewhat cool ones with the WM expansion -- Pull of Eora and those tentacles for example.
 

FreeKaner

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yeah but in D&D with each spell level you got more creative spells that weren't all focused on dealing damage (most of them were utilities). In PoE the only thing that increasing spell level does is give you Fireball VI - now with Triangular AoE & 50% more damage Edition, so there was no need for any damage scaling at all since every single spell in the game was meant to blow up people.

wut?

It still has new spells per level. It's just that fireball's damage scales with level power source so it'll do more damage if you're higher level when you cast it.

I don't know if there will be utility spells, and to what extent. It's been a big and common complaint about P1 though, and they did introduce some somewhat cool ones with the WM expansion -- Pull of Eora and those tentacles for example.

Don't forget form of helpless beast, which is fantastic with blunderbusses since it reduces DR to zero. So if you have a Paladin with a blunderbuss and flames of devotion, Paladin can deal over 250 burst to a target wizard uses that on, often resulting in instant kills even with scaled up content.
 

Fry

Arcane
Joined
Aug 29, 2013
Messages
1,922
* Lots of QoL improvements, e.g. FX fade to translucency when pausing the game, so you ought to be able to see what's going on better.

Also worth noting their claim that data streaming will cut down on level transition load time considerably.
 

Quillon

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https://www.fig.co/campaigns/deadfire?update=402#updates

Update #36 - Deep Diving Into the E3 Video
POSTED: 06/27/2017
Greetings, everyone! First up, some great news: Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire has won the Best PC Game at E3 2017 from HardcoreGamer.com. This adds to the RPGFan.com Best of Show award we received at E3 a couple of weeks back.

https%3A%2F%2Fplayfig.s3.amazonaws.com%2FCampaignBodyImage%2Fimage%2Fdata%2Fb3086df0da6758d6%2Fc57b880c0f8136d6%2F98fad5c1054c273d%2Fba56db94a1a8b3e0


Contratulations to the entire Deadfire team! Now on to the update. Last week, we said that we'd be back one more time with the E3 video to provide a deeper dive, and that's what we're doing. To help us with that, we're joined by Pillars II Executive Producer, Adam Brennecke! Adam is going narrate the video and point out some of the updated systems in play, as well as flag some key information you may have missed when he and Josh were talking to IGN. Without further ado, let's pass it over to Deadfire Producer, Katrina Garsten, to tell us more.



That was a lot of great information! As Katrina said, we'll return in just a few more weeks to take a deeper look into the mysterious and always enrapturing videos that Game Director, Josh Sawyer, has been putting up on his social media feeds.

Let us know below what you thought of the features we discussed in the E3 video and what you'd like to see us discuss in future videos. We also want you to keep July 12th marked on your callendars as we'll be doing a Q&A stream over on our Twitch channel at 4:00PM PST/1:00AM CEST with Josh Sawyer and Lead Character Artist, Dimitri Berman. Until next time, everyone!

Be sure to join in on the conversation over at on our forums.
 

Sentinel

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Looks pretty neat.
Those deep sand walking animations look ridiculous though.

Also guns don't produce fat loads of smoke when they fire. Decline.

PS: Spells don't show AoE while being re-targeted?
 
Last edited:

FreeKaner

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Yes, more smoke for guns is absolutely necessary. I tolerated the small amount of smoke because of overall lack of special effects in first game but when you have fireballs of that quality the smoke from the guns must be also similar.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
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Pathfinder: Wrath
PS: Spells don't show AoE while being re-targeted?

it seems like they do, it's just very translucent, at least I can see the vague red outline.

Anyway, I couldn't see where the power sources are displayed. I think it's the thing on the left when Aloth is choosing spells, but I'm not sure. Empower is clear. I like how the UI is not obscuring the action anymore. Also, "the Beyond" lolololol.
 

FreeKaner

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PS: Spells don't show AoE while being re-targeted?

it seems like they do, it's just very translucent, at least I can see the vague red outline.

Anyway, I couldn't see where the power sources are displayed. I think it's the thing on the left when Aloth is choosing spells, but I'm not sure. Empower is clear. I like how the UI is not obscuring the action anymore. Also, "the Beyond" lolololol.

Sources are to the left of the ability bar but only non-spellcasters seem to have them, Eder and Pallegina does.

This system looks like it will require really well designed encounters to squeeze out as much of resource management as possible. Also if the encounters end too fast the long casting animations could mean it's just better to have bunch of passive loaded auto-attackers too.
 

Sannom

Augur
Joined
Apr 11, 2010
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Anyway, I couldn't see where the power sources are displayed. I think it's the thing on the left when Aloth is choosing spells, but I'm not sure.
Wizards don't have a power source, they've got the usual "number of casts per spell-level" thing.
 

Quillon

Arcane
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And the target died from getting bashed by 3 men, a bird and an arquebus shot before the bouncing spell could hit it.
 

Sentinel

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Yeah probably because these videos were captured using Story Time-equivalent difficulty.
 

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