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

[Rinslin Merwind]

sea monsters

They exist, but in static text based encouter, just stat check. And not all types from "Monsters of Deadfire" book. Although I think that there should be more and real battle, not text based.

make food and supplies not so abundant/ not infinite

I shall remind you that game took place in lush and green tropical archipelago,not Arctic wasteland. When rich port which exports shitload food is not allowed to sell food to you, it's illogical.

random ships from outside deadfire lore

What do you mean "outside deadfire lore"? You mean ships should come from outer ocean and go out of deadfire, not just sailing between islands?

 

[Sentinel]

After all the work the team poured into something that was to be a sideshow, suddenly all reviewers treat it working under the assumption that it was concieved as a core gameplay feature.

My grandpa used to say that if something isn't worth doing well, it's better not to do it at all.

If anyone cared about that saying no RPGs would get made, ever.

 

[TT1]

sea monsters

They exist, but in static text based encouter, just stat check. And not all types from "Monsters of Deadfire" book. Although I think that there should be more and real battle, not text based.

Not enough and not fun enough. I want real monster battles, like the one with Kraken, but with the ship.

make food and supplies not so abundant/ not infinite

I shall remind you that game took place in lush and green tropical archipelago,not Arctic wasteland. When rich port which exports shitload food is not allowed to sell food to you, it's illogical.

Its a fantasy game, it doesnt need to be logical, just more fun for the players. And after I destroyed the entire fleet, who is transporting food, anyway?

random ships from outside deadfire lore

What do you mean "outside deadfire lore"? You mean ships should come and go from outer ocean, not just sailing between islands?

Yes, from other part of the world. Redceras, Dyrwood, whatever. There is just Deadfire ships and the Defiant?

 

[Sizzle]

Probably my biggest gripe - they promised that the ship would be like an advanced version of the Stronghold, with more to do.

But the ship is basically just a means of transportation, you have a few paltry upgrades, a couple of different models, and some (admittedly cool) CYOA segments, but it still feels underwhelming. Especially since it was touted as such an integral part of the game.

Add some more ship-related content, make it more important to the plot (for example, the Stronghold quest chain they added to PoE1 in v3 fleshed out Caed Nua's position and importance quite well), and then we'll have something.

 

[AwesomeButton]

> include potentially really exciting feature that hasn't really been done in the genre before
> half-ass it
> people are disappointed by it

who'd have guessed

Nah, it's all down to managing people's expectations.

I see helicopters in GTAV's trailer, but I don't expect a perfect helicopter simulation. I don't expect more than arcade driving simulation either.

What I find annoying is when a developer adds a feature that gets bad reception, and then backs out - "we added an option that allows you to skip this mechanic entirely". Read: I admit my failure and wasting the time and efforts of the team, I give up trying to explain this mechanic or tie it with the rest of the mechanics.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Not enough and not fun enough. I want real monster battles, like the one with Kraken, but with the ship.
Its a fantasy game, it doesnt need to be logical, just more fun for the players. And after I destroyed the entire fleet, who is transporting food, anyway?
Yes, from other part of the world. Redceras, Dyrwood, whatever. There is just Deadfire ships and the Defiant?

As I said, I am in agreement with you about ships outside Archipelago and monsters, but being fantasy game it doesn't mean that there should be no logic at all. And many islands does not even need to import food, since they have square kilometers of plantations according to lore (hell, Port Maje have rice farm as place where you can buy food).

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Well, for starters, you could make it more realistic - all those faction flags you pick up, you could use them to fool enemies (just like real-world pirates did).

Besides the opening Pirate quest, those flags aren't used anywhere else.

You can use the flag in Fort Deadlight.

edit: nevermind, that's what you mean by opening pirate quest.

 

[jaydee2k]

Still no nude pics of Xoti?

 

[Tigranes]

I'd say there are a lot of potentially very good encounters in the game, but again it's a question of devs putting in enough difficulty so that the player can actually experience it

There is one fundamental problem with how increasing difficulty works in PoE, and that's that it leads to longer battles and in the end, to safe rotation routines. The amount of monsters increases, their hp pool (already extra large, in hundreds) increases, and their defences increase to the point that penetrating them requires many abilities, and at the same time, their defences against decreasing defences increase. Best example is trying to lower fighters' armor with lower resistances spell, which targets fortitude, when their fortitude is at ~120sh levels, which gives debuff err about 0% to 3% chance to land.

Strangely enough I pointed this, what looked an odd design to me, during PoE1 beta (spells that decrease defences often grazing/failing against defences they have to decrease) but it doesn't seem like folk are as confused by this design as I am.

By finely micromanaging abilities and/or exploiting AI (because the AI is very stupid), you will eventually beat any encounter and outlast the enemy, but the principle will, generally, remain the same on any difficulty, it's your time which will suffer the most. Consumables, yes, maybe, but so far (level 10), I've yet to encounter anything that can't be beaten by same tactics as PoE1.

You find some narrow space, you try and CC/distract with summons the extra PoTD mobs, put as many debuffs on enemy as possible and gang up on a single dude, because they're so tough mano-o-mano and "builds" matter way less (single one-handed weapons with higher penetration preferable here for beginning of the game). And thus you proceed from 2-3skull/redskulls dude after dude until it is over.

IE games difficulty only increased damage you receive, in battles that would increase the gap for a mistake and make you lose more, but they did not waste extra time of yours.

Thankfully you can pace the fighting how you want it, as game lacks the required population levels of lion prides to make you literally go mad. Otherwise, I can easily see maximum difficulty, well, just becoming tedious quickly. At least fighting just human armored dudes for me already became tedious after (insert number) valera 3 skull halbedier with autoheals/x pirate pistoleers teleporting around for AI lulz.

I think POE's system works best when you find yourself targeting Fortitude in order to land debuffs that reduce Will defences, and so on. I always thought that players and enemies need to have far stronger asymmetries in defences, meaning that you're literally building your own characters as "Reflex Attackers" and seeing enemies as that as well.

One important change there would be, again, dramatically scaling down the bonuses you get to defences from level - it should instead be far more strongly tied to attributes and gear. You can still get, say, 130 fort and 80 ref in POE1/2, but enemies often tend to show up with 70/80/80.

I think increasing Armour & Penetration on POTD is not a bad thing, and I don't expect too much of the AI (given this is how 99% of games are). What I expect is that 1.1 should have been 1.0, and there are other system-related tweaks that could be done without demanding a SCS.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

I have noticed only now that IHaveHugeNick is not a Obsidian developer anymore. This makes you think...

 

[frajaq]

Add some more ship-related content, make it more important to the plot (for example, the Stronghold quest chain they added to PoE1 in v3 fleshed out Caed Nua's position and importance quite well), and then we'll have something.

yeah now that I think of, a lot of quests in the game could be improved with an "I'll bombard this place with my ship" option

 

[Sizzle]

Add some more ship-related content, make it more important to the plot (for example, the Stronghold quest chain they added to PoE1 in v3 fleshed out Caed Nua's position and importance quite well), and then we'll have something.

yeah now that I think of, a lot of quests in the game could be improved with an "I'll bombard this place with my ship" option

Or using it as a bargaining chip: "You see that 8 cannon galleon? Yeah, that's mine."

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Or using it as a bargaining chip: "You see that 8 cannon galleon? Yeah, that's mine."

8 cannon galleon

IRL Galleons had minimum 30 cannons, depends of specialization. Sounds more impressive than 8.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

TT1 Calm down, it was a joke.

Spoiler

I don't know if you noticed or not. But our fellow "IhaveHugeNick" had "Obsidian developer" badge for sake of joke and added to his avatar "AND FOUNDER"

 

[Parabalus]

I like the proficiency modals TBH, much better than in Bg2-like having to preplan/metagame fighters since they can only use weapons with 5 pips.

Not sure I agree there.

I usually equip the Warhammer +1; +4 vs giants on my Kensai or other best melee character who does not have any Warhammer proficiency. I found that's one of the better ways to deal with Golems who can mostly only be killed with magical crushing damage. The Fighter THAC0, AC and HP is still often better than a cNPC tanking it.

So you take a niche use of a single item as a precedent that the system is good? Makes no sense. Though with WHs you might as well mention CF in the OH for stats or MH for golem slaying.

In the Dumpsterfire system you are even encouraged to switch to situational weapons because there are no penalties.

 

[jf8350143]

Things I want about the ship sailing system:

more random event happen during the sailing, right now it feels like only two things occurs all the time: throwing fish away and playing games with the crew.

Also more encounter on the sea, more ghost ship, sea monsters and other things.

When you goes back to the ship, let the companions interact with each other on it. Don't just let them stand there 24/7 and do nothing, just some extra banter will do.

More people you can bring on the ship, not just crew members, vendors, craftsmen or simply just some NPC.

You should to be able to rest on your ship and having some bonus.

 

[Parabalus]

Well, for starters, you could make it more realistic - all those faction flags you pick up, you could use them to fool enemies (just like real-world pirates did).

Besides the opening Pirate quest, those flags aren't used anywhere else.

Pretty sure you won't be attacked by someone waving the same flag/faction.

 

[Shadenuat]

THIS IS THE ENEMY_POSTER_JPG

Pygra slime & automat walk into the bar

'k I'm already empty

What's even the idea here? How do these enemies make encounter more difficult? just fighter/caster/....slime?

yesss I've made it into encounter

There are some "enhanced" encounters outside:

- The grubs and elementals are the same
- There are x2 sand elementals north, which means x2 aoe blinds
- There are x2 drakes: 1 small drake, 1 red drake, 1 pygra I think and 6 drakes and some other shit. Of course 1 drake has 3 fire resistance, another has 13 fire resistance. You miss 1, it happens. Overwhelming, unless you can focus mobs on something else but party and hit them with some aoe.
- I don't believe titan changed much. He is a pushover because just attacks 1 character so you just heal 1 guy. On the other hand, jrpg gotcha mobs are not so you focus 90% of the fight on them. Why? Well, there are 2 ranger/rogue whatever skellingtons who can one-shot your characters even through like 14 piercing resistance. Which shows that rogues are more powerful than any boss
It's quite disappointing because shows that boss himself is very banal, only adds make fight difficult.

I feel more and more that Sawyer approach is:
- slice player abilities x2
- increase amount of monsters x2
= perfection

the power of doors compels sawyer though. doorways are undeniable. best build is corridor build. (seriously, for new PoTD I would probably recommend only party of fighters with aoe stance, barbarians, evokers and a single support - if you can only hit 1 enemy you're simply not effective, because there are always at least 2 extra dudes next to you in waiting)

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Alright, how in your opinion they should balance this encounter in small corridor? Just interesting in your view about how they should balance this encounter with poor slime (which have immunity to Intellect Afllictions btw).

 

[Shadenuat]

Dunno

Spoiler

How do you balance some 12 dudes including dudes 2-shotting your characters from really really far awayz? CC'ing from afar/2 shotting them is not much of an option on highest difficulty for example. PoE is a strange system to balance.

(one of those 82/92/90 resist types btw Tigranes really likes)

I just want to figure out what to developers think the idea behind highest difficulty of their game is, i.e. what do they believe mastery over their game looks like and requires; what are the encounters about (like, some of the extra skeletons don't even know their friends are getting fucked by maces and warhammers half a screen away).

 

[abnaxus]

How did they put a ^ on a w.

 

[Supermedo]

I should have waited for the game to be patched out.
How disposition works, I'm playing goody two shoes and yet I got 2 points in shady and everything related to crookspur is bugged, I cleared the area from slavers before talking to the wahaki and it locked me out from Aloth quest and the queen quest.

I'm an idioit for buying obesdian game before waiting a couple of months to iron this shit out

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Dunno

Spoiler

How do you balance some 12 dudes including dudes 2-shotting your characters from really really far awayz? CC'ing from afar/2 shotting them is not much of an option on highest difficulty for example. PoE is a strange system to balance.

(one of those 82/92/90 resist types btw Tigranes really likes)

Stop butthurting, I was genuinely asking. And these " 2 shotting dudes" can be charmed, if they doesn't have resistance to Intellect afflictions. Or dominated. And why the hell your party consists from 4 char and as far I can tell nobody cipher (If I understand chaos on screenshot correctly)? Alright, maybe you don't like ciphers, but why no one ranged with scepters? So many questions, so small amount of answers.

 

[Shadenuat]

I was genuinely answering.

Josh said I can finish gaem with any party

Lol scepters, what about them? (Chanter actually has pistol+scepter)



I am not butthurting about the difficulty; I am discussing what the difficulty is about.

 

[Tigranes]

I don't have an answer, but I can say one thing, rogue enemies are fucking brutal and that's pr. cool

Level 9? at the Old City pool fight, the Skeleton rogues fuck you up because first the entire mob's alpha strikes get someone's health down, and then they use Finishing Blow for insane damage. I actually love this, because that's exactly the kind of thing the player does to enemy mobs. Add to that the three casters from further away, and you can't just sit there in one spot, buckle up, and then grind it out; you have to take Disengagement attacks, or get your Rogue to teleport to their backline, or use the mage position swap spell, etc.

Anything where the enemies' skills dismantle the player's position and force the player to respond is good in my book, though obviously this doesn't solve all the problems & you can go too far.

I'm also running 4, and my Serafen is hardly using cipher abilities, so it's essentially 3 melee dudes + Aloth the wizard.

Something like that battle above, it's a pretty terrible position if the enemy has superior ranged power so I would try and pull people back if you can? Going by HP numbers you're also either pr. low level or pr. fragile party with lots of CON dumpers. Hard to say. This playthrough I've come to love Miasma way above Chill Fog or whatever, it seems to be pretty much the most versatile 'first debuff' to let you then land everything else.