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

[Eisenheinrich]

Wh ... what if it flops but the codex will actually like the game?

 

[Alienman]

Looks like it's time to abandon thread while I still like POE2....

Okay fine, here's something I like: the new rogue and fighter mechanics. With the new stealth system with vision cones as such, backstabbing is much more viable, and with engagement now being a fighter thing, the two melee classes are much better differentiated. And you can make one that does both pretty competently although not quite as competently with a swashbuckler. So good job with that Josh

Can the rogue remain in stealth while the fighters and others fight?

 

[Prime Junta]

Can the rogue remain in stealth while the fighters and others fight?

Yes, but then that was the case already in P1 2.0+.

 

[Daedalos]

To the people finding the game too easy, turn your game up to POTD, and upscale the level content. That should fix that. And stop cheesing

 

[Alienman]

Okay, I didn't use rogues or stealth at all in Pillars. I just lined everyone up with rifles. Hoping to use more tactics this time around

 

[Mazisky]

Today i'm continuing where i left yesterday but it is downloading 1.8 gb of stuff. New patch?

 

[Alienman]

To the people finding the game too easy, turn your game up to POTD, and upscale the level content. That should fix that. And stop cheesing

I can't decide to play with it on or not. At least upscaling. It kinda feels wrong, but monsters and such so far seem to be on the easy side.

 

[Parabalus]

I played a few hours and got to the main big city. Thoughts:

• Loading times better almost by an order of magnitutde
• Much less filler descriptive text for writing, hwrpa derp is reigned in + Tyranny tooltip (+knowledge from PoE1)
• I like the story, delivery falls a bit flat/cringey at "dramatic" moments
• Class tree/mechanics much better than PoE1, lots of hard choices for multi especially
• Met 3 new companions, all interesting - relationship system looks promising
• VO great so far, narrator might be polarizing
• If you didn't outright loathe PoE1 you'll love this - it's an improvement in every way

I'm playing on PotD and finding it harder then the start of PoE1.0, mostly because the enemies correctly beeline/instagib my squishy (3 CON/RES) PC now.
I'd advise everyone to play on PotD and skip the lower difficulties.
It'll get easier when I hit lvl 7 and finally get Devotions for a +ACC buff, have none so far.

 

[Jimmious]

For the clicking bug, I read that disabling the Steam overlay helps - didn't try it yet, if anyone can feel free

This works btw

 

[Alienman]

For the clicking bug, I read that disabling the Steam overlay helps - didn't try it yet, if anyone can feel free

This works btw

Then you will miss my Steam shitposting

 

[HoboForEternity]

How are encounter design, enemies placement etc? Is it still dozens of xaurips that charge mindlessly to you , or actually varied and foe AI work and form strategy?

 

[Prime Junta]

About that opening. I don't want to harp on it as it's like five minutes of a hundred-hour game but still. Very mild spoilers follow, so continue at your own risk.

So it starts with a narrated expository text, then an animation where Eothas breaks loose and wrecks Caed Nua, then a sequence in an afterlife where you wade through some memories and are given a mission from God, then you wake up in your cabin on a boat with Edér and the Steward, then you fight some very wimpy pirates, then there's a CYOA and you're shipwrecked and wake up on a beach again.

Okay, so, most of that should have been cut. Just keep the Eothas animation, the afterlife scene, and then wake up on the beach, and let you just interrogate Edér and the Steward about WTF happened if you have to, and do the combat tutorial fighting boars on the beach. It would've been much more focused. This way it's just a muddle with a barrel of expository bridge and DM glue.

How are encounter design, enemies placement etc? Is it still dozens of xaurips that charge mindlessly to you , or actually varied and foe AI work and form strategy?

Encounter density, design, and tactics are all noticeably better, even in the very easy early-game fights. Difficulty needs a bump though, but that'll be taken care of in The Balancing I'm sure.

 

[dragonul09]

Wh ... what if it flops but the codex will acutaly like the game?

Well, the writing is already much more bearable than PoE 1 without the garbage descriptive text and the combat being slower and more fluid, which means you can actually see what the hell is going on in fights. So yhea, PoE 2 is already far better than PoE in terms of everything, the main problem is still the tedious lore that just doesn't interest me at all.

 

[Jimmious]

The main thing that improves the game considerably from its first iteration imo, is the leveling up system which is much more interesting and involved than previously

 

[Eisenheinrich]

I will only play it for that sweet ship combat and skip the rest.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

I will only play it for that sweet ship combat and skip the rest.

Don't forget about fishing minigame!

 

[unfairlight]

Not that I care about this all that much, but I think that number is affected by the new Steam privacy policy that has rendered Steamspy useless at the moment. Not sure though. I feel like someone like LESS T_T or Infinitron might know more about this.

That's not how it works. Valve publishes these numbers themselves and they stayed the same after the changes. If this change affected player count numbers with games it would have dropped the number of players on Steamcharts for all games to like less than 20% of what they were, but if you look back at the date at which these changes were made, this is clearly not the case.

 

[Kruno]

I love it. A massive improvement over The Witcher 3! The writing is also much better than MCA's writing. It shows in the descriptions of people. The balance is perfect. I walk from one end of the map to the other and enemies die on their own, as my very presence overpowers them. Definitely the best sequel to Planescape Torment.

 

[Shadenuat]

I play PoTD with everything level scaled up, it feels ok, like old poe Hard or like IE games classic. I have 40 hp and skellington can hit for 20 unless I wear good armor. I cleared first cave, died once I think to double skeleton pistol shot. It's not Heart of Fury of course, not even close.

I'm nature godborn Beastmaster Shapeshifter/Ghost ranger, 18/18 Dex/Accuracy, 16 INT, STR 10 else 8. No armor. I casted Nature's mark for extra accuracy + ranger's mark, then flanked enemies using my shift form and spirit bear. The druid forms having 8-10 armor is nice, and since I have ONE SPELL, the only one doesn't working during my shift form, the penalty for not casting spells in shift means nothing lol.

I made this char in 10 mins and he turned out ok. Although I was thinking Shifter/Bear Asassin first since it seemed like an obvious synergy, or some other damaging fighter or barbarian kit.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

My verdict: SOZZY!

R00fles!

 

[Iskramor]

Steam delivering uncomfortable truths already, or devious seditionist who knows a bit of grognard lingo? YOU decide!

Start the game, begin campaign. Completely inappropriate narrator explains to me all the worst parts of the previous game. 3 years of ruminating over all the things I didn't like about the first one flood back into me in one moment. I remember the reviews describe the things in the first game that were already bad (such as the narrative) are even worse in this game. And I know other things that were bad (like companions) will be even worse since they don't even have Avellone contributing to them anymore. [Editor's note: ] I'm still listening to the narrator, wondering why it bothers me so much.

Then it hits me.

This game is trying to be SERIOUS. It's a fantasy game about dragons and wizards and litearlly a giant ♥♥♥♥ing god stomping around crushing people with his massive statue feet and it's trying to be solemn and serious and realistic. Images of playing the game flash before my mind. More obnoxious worldbuilding, with sentences filled with irrelevant proper nouns for people and places I don't give a ♥♥♥♥ about and that have nothing to do with the story. More idiotic preschool-level philosophy for morons about the nature of the gods (another area, incidentally, where Avellone's input is sorely missed: Guy isn't the next Hume or Kierkegaard or whoever but he knows how to tell these simple pop-philosophy stories well, unlike the current rabble of idiots writing for Obsidian, who apparently don't even realize that you can't prove a negative, e.g. that there are no gods). More terrible, badly-overwritten "quirky" companions so obviously insane that you wouldn't willingly get within 30 feet of one without your weapon drawn never mind keep them around in your party (or so uninteeresting and forgettable you'd rather recruit a merc so you can at least decide their stats), the only saving grace of which is the double-edged sword that there are hardly any of them to begin with; a double-edged sword in that if there were 20+ of them then most of them being ♥♥♥♥ wouldn't be the problem it becomes when you don't even have half of that.

But I was like, ah whatever. I can still just play through the game as a paladin, recruiting only mercenaries, and - and then it hit me, again. The game doesn't even have paladins. It doesn't even have ♥♥♥♥ing gods, we learn at the end of the first one. It just has ♥♥♥♥♥♥, dispassionate warrior-philosophers (*named* paladins so they can say they have them even though any moron recognizes that these aren't paladins at all) who feel so shoehorned in I'm confident saying that they are only there in order to tick the box of "classes nerds expect to be able to play as because they're in every other game".

Then I remembered no vancian casting and other stupid decisions they've proudly made in order to turn the game more into an MMO (why?) and make all the magic (the part that should feel most exciting and powerful) feel like boring, underpowered crap.

"Why am I playing this game", I asked myself, when 15 minutes in I was already sick of it?

And I realized I already didn't want to anymore.

The EDGE is over 9000 god forbid he trried to imerse himself just for second.Hand me over everything on plate im lazy mentality. Must be from heavy immigration country lol

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

I love it. A massive improvement over The Witcher 3! The writing is also much better than MCA's writing. It shows in the descriptions of people. The balance is perfect. I walk from one end of the map to the other and enemies die on their own, as my very presence overpowers them. Definitely the best sequel to Planescape Torment.

 

[Wolfe]

How can you open the ability tree menu aside from when you're leveling up?

Also, I'm worried that you get too much experience for everything, I'm already level 5 after finishing the starter island. Hopefully I won't reach max level after two thirds of the game like in PoE 1.

 

[AwesomeButton]

How can you open the ability tree menu aside from when you're leveling up?

Also, I'm worried that you get too much experience for everything, I'm already level 5 after finishing the starter island. Hopefully I won't reach max level after two thirds of the game like in PoE 1.

Is the level progression scheme the same? Then no, you won't. You would finish Act I in PoE around level 5, or almost 5. The progression is 1000, 3000, 6000, 10000, 15000, 21000 etc.

 

[MajorMace]

Pickpocketing enemies and stealing their health potions before the fight starts.

New combat with much better pacing, drinking potions is an option at last.

Unique items are actually unique. And have their own unique enchantments which are now limited to them.

Merchants may have some of their stock available to theft next to them.

Being able to ambush a caravan of poor fucks with no other agenda than fucking them up and robbing their goods.

Expert mode doesn't hide aoe circles and combat meta informations. This is strongly - strongly recommended.



Eder is said to despise anti eothasians, yet tags along to murder a caravan of such fellows and doesn't even bat an eye.

Stealing only causes a loss of reputation...

Hyper developped combat AI coupled with super easy combat is an explosive cocktail. Not only the game plays itself, you'll find yourself prefering this option as it lets you check your mail while your dudes destroy everything with ruthless efficiency. I'm fairly certain you can beat potd without playing at the moment.
This is a massive fail here. Like, of amazing proportions.



Game's alright so far.