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

[2house2fly]

It was obvious balancing wasn't their priority. Makes you wonder what the point of the beta was when they just buffed the party excessively at release anyway and are just now trying to figure this shit out.

I'd guess they were anticipating more time to work on balance but the bugs were just too big and too numerous. JES must have been sweating bullets when he only got the release delayed to May

 

[Merlkir]

The absence of tools for modding 2D assets is also a factor. We could have been swimming in UI mods, Item icon packs, etc. One guy even asked me on the Obsidian forums, how hard it is to import some godlike heads he has been making.

I take it the graphics assets are not stored in any kind of accessible format?

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Couldn't delay it any longer. Always a bad idea to launch near E3.

 

[Parabalus]

Does the possibility of equipping Bloodlust make Wizardry 8 a bad game for you?

fabulously optimistic of you to assume these folks know what you're talking about

Bloodlust is one of the first things hit by the Wiz8 difficulty mods.

 

[Lacrymas]

I tried to play a blobber once, and I couldn't bear the graphics.

Oh, I might've wandered into the Trigger the Codex thread by mistake. This has indeed triggered me, excellent job, very good.

 

[Shadenuat]

trap and a grenade to soften them up

lel. their defences are simply too high for traps. these things matter pretty little.

It was a good fight

Idk if I would call just stacking overleveled supah one-shotting mobs without any idea/loot a particularly great approach. Although I guess PotD is PotD.

For me the key to winning was dumb AI and it's glitchy pathfinding and target priority.

still,
a) needed potions
b) enemies had mixed defences, bows with piercing damage were the key

so point goes to the heartoffury.

Man Aloth scepter is worthless shit now.

 

[2house2fly]

ITT people who believe that you can make a single player game better by taking the most powerful tools available to the player and making them not powerful.

Codex 2009: Dragon Age: Origins is terrible because you can just use (OP ability) on everything
Nearly 10 years later: wtf why would you nerf op abilities

They aren't nerfing OP abilities, they're nerfing all abilities. There was some necklace I got that gave a party-wide 5% damage bonus, and I never bothered equipping it because who cares about a measly 5% damage? Well Obsidian did, and they've nerfed it. There's a unique greatsword that is now strictly worse than a non-unique greatsword, which itself is strictly worse than dual-wielding

 

[Roguey]

They aren't nerfing OP abilities, they're nerfing all abilities. There was some necklace I got that gave a party-wide 5% damage bonus, and I never bothered equipping it because who cares about a measly 5% damage?

If I was playing D&D and I found something that gave +1 damage to every character in my party, you better believe I'd equip it.

 

[Lacrymas]

They aren't nerfing OP abilities, they're nerfing all abilities. There was some necklace I got that gave a party-wide 5% damage bonus, and I never bothered equipping it because who cares about a measly 5% damage? Well Obsidian did, and they've nerfed it. There's a unique greatsword that is now strictly worse than a non-unique greatsword, which itself is strictly worse than dual-wielding

5% damage to the entire party is like 25% for a single character. That's quite a lot.

Bonerbill, you missed a post of mine to rate shit.

 

[Parabalus]

They aren't nerfing OP abilities, they're nerfing all abilities. There was some necklace I got that gave a party-wide 5% damage bonus, and I never bothered equipping it because who cares about a measly 5% damage?

If I was playing D&D and I found something that gave +1 damage to every character in my party, you better believe I'd equip it.

I can't believe people diss that necklace, it's absolutely huge.

The better version is Xoti's lantern when upgraded, which goes over +20% per party member either damage or resists with religion scaling, and that's getting absolutely gutted, so you better believe it's good.

 

[Shadenuat]

They aren't nerfing OP abilities, they're nerfing all abilities. There was some necklace I got that gave a party-wide 5% damage bonus, and I never bothered equipping it because who cares about a measly 5% damage?

If I was playing D&D and I found something that gave +1 damage to every character in my party, you better believe I'd equip it.

D&D progression is completely different. In PoE2 3d level characters have 70 hp with 10 con.

There are reasons why something like +1d3 fire damage can be very powerful in D&D encounters. For example, modules with multiple weak enemies, armies on armies, calculations how to kill 15 level character with 20 1st level archers with bless&+d3 damage etc.
And just low level adventures of course.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I take it the graphics assets are not stored in any kind of accessible format?

A cracked Unity will probably be able to unpack/pack them, but who wants to go through the trouble.

If I was playing D&D and I found something that gave +1 damage to every character in my party, you better believe I'd equip it.

What about +1 accuracy from the seagull pet?

 

[Shadenuat]

Accuracy is pretty much the most viable thing in the game, so stacking it makes sense. That's why they nerfed Priest's spell - +20/-20 meant engaging mobs way higher level/going through any defences possible.

Although they did not touch drugs

 

[2house2fly]

Couldn't delay it any longer. Always a bad idea to launch near E3.

It's also a bad idea to hype up your game's reactivity with quests, companions and save imports, and release the game with them broken. Obsidian's reputation is "iffy games with good stories" and i think save imports being fatally broken (still having issues two patches deep?!) and the various issues with companions jumping your bones minutes after meeting you has hurt sales a lot more than the combat being too easy

 

[Lacrymas]

Obsidian have shown they don't really understand or know who their audience are. It seems like they were trying to go for the Bioware crowd, but that's absurd, most of them won't play such a thing, the first red flag for them being that it's isometric.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Couldn't delay it any longer. Always a bad idea to launch near E3.

It's also a bad idea to hype up your game's reactivity with quests, companions and save imports, and release the game with them broken. Obsidian's reputation is "iffy games with good stories" and i think save imports being fatally broken (still having issues two patches deep?!) and the various issues with companions jumping your bones minutes after meeting you has hurt sales a lot more than the combat being too easy

Don't be silly. If they delayed and fixed those, there would just be some other bugs hurting the sales instead. Non-linear RPG is mathematically guaranteed to be extremely buggy on launch, and it always will be, regardless how long you delay. Unless maybe if you delay like 12 months and spend that time doing QA.

At some point you just need to release it and hope for the best, and you might just do that in a convenient launch window where you're not competing with anybody.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Obsidian have shown they don't really understand or know who their audience are. It seems like they were trying to go for the Bioware crowd, but that's absurd, most of them won't play such a thing, the first red flag for them being that it's isometric.

My impression is that Feargus lives with ideas about what audience he should be after which are outdated by at least ten years. This leads to his customary meddling in development (sex them up!) to cause inconstitency in the tone of the game. Meanwhile, Josh has his very different ideas about how Deadfire should be written. It's enough to see what kind of stage he sets in the guidebook - a lot more mature and serious, and taking itself seriously, than the game's writing suggests.

From Chris Avellone's revelations, Feargus has long since lost his appetite and is just looking to sell the company to the highest bidder.

BTW, I wanted to say I really like Serafen as a character and voice acting.

 

[Tigranes]

Accuracy is pretty much the most viable thing in the game, so stacking it makes sense. That's why they nerfed Priest's spell - +20/-20 meant engaging mobs way higher level/going through any defences possible.

Although they did not touch drugs

Yep. The problem is that having drugs, consumables, pets, resting bonuses, means you can stack shit up way high before gear and skills come into play. The real answer would be to get rid of resting bonuses (I mean what the fuck why would you have these), pet bonuses, then work in more interesting drug maluses because nobody worries about the drug crash when you can rest all the time.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Accuracy is pretty much the most viable thing in the game, so stacking it makes sense. That's why they nerfed Priest's spell - +20/-20 meant engaging mobs way higher level/going through any defences possible.

Although they did not touch drugs

Yep. The problem is that having drugs, consumables, pets, resting bonuses, means you can stack shit up way high before gear and skills come into play. The real answer would be to get rid of resting bonuses (I mean what the fuck why would you have these), pet bonuses, then work in more interesting drug maluses because nobody worries about the drug crash when you can rest all the time.

Problem? Why are you calling it a problem? If crushing PoTD actually required clever use of consumables, I'd love that.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

300 pages in less than a month and the last 10 pages were made today. Can I conclude that the Codex loves this game?

Also:

 

[AwesomeButton]

Sorry for rating you "Old", it's Infinitron's fault.

 

[FreeKaner]

Codex doesn't love this game, just few people use the thread as a chatroom which Infinitron then splits away for no reason.

 

[Shadenuat]

might want to armor up on potd

Spoiler

6 is basic sword, +2 potd +1 level scaling, meaning with normal weapons mobs pen/overpen you regardless of what you wear, except maybe full plate armor. But when you get one they'll probably have higher tier weapons and still overpen u. Not sure how I feel about dis. Accuracy bonus seems already enough to me.

Also that warrior constantly switched stances. I don't know why lol.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Just disable degeneracy that is level scaling and it should be okay.

 

[Shadenuat]

If one is to degenerate then one must degenerate completely