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

[AwesomeButton]

Keep in mind that the encounters atm are "balanced" for only being able to Empower a single spell, not all of them.

Lacrymas reminds me - what happens to encounter design and balance after changes like that get suddenly implemented? Is there a pilot on this plane?

 

[Infinitron]

The way it's implemented you can have both proc, crit by ACC and empower by RES. Prepare your prayers to RNGesus.

Don't forget the possible deterministic Overpenetration damage bonus. Itz powergaming heavan!

 

[FreeKaner]

10 seconds would be way too long, make it just combat only.

 

[Lacrymas]

The beta encounters aren't balanced at all due to the ridiculous power divide between classes, especially on PotD because that difficulty hasn't been internally tested at all. A melee-heavy party will breeze through everything on PotD with only auto-attacks, caster-heavy parties will eat shit and die.

 

[AwesomeButton]

10 seconds would be way too long, make it just combat only.

You have 10 seconds to finish this encounter, after which the RNG empowers will finish it for you. Prepare for Resolve-measurement contest!

 

[Parabalus]

The beta encounters aren't balanced at all due to the ridiculous power divide between classes. A melee-heavy party will breeze through everything on PotD with only auto-attacks, caster-heavy parties will eat shit and die.

Well, now nobody can claim Sawyer didn't deal with mage quadratic scaling decisively.

 

[CptMace]

Keep in mind that the encounters atm are "balanced" for only being able to Empower a single spell, not all of them.

That's my primary concern at the moment. I'm an advocate of encounter design as the foundation of the systems, in that regard such a change raises the question : does giving the same empower chances to enemies fix the problem ? I guess that's what Sawyer and pals are thinking about for that matter.

Is there a pilot on this plane?

Oh there is. Question is : does he know where he's going ? Because he's running out of kerosene and there are thousands of grognards on board.
Maybe he's counting on crashing the plane so hard, he'd kill enough gorgnards not to have to deal wih them.
Maybe... maybe he REALLY is trying to kill fun.

 

[fantadomat]

Nothing wrong with being emotional and passionate about RPGs ,far better than to be empty and logical.

Passion leads to fear, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to suffering.

Far better than emptiness. And we are talking about RPGs not politics or real life changes. Codex as a whole is very passionate place. Everyone here have a buggy game that will defend with all the vile in the world .

 

[Lacrymas]

I'm also curious how they design encounters when they still don't know what attributes do, let alone entire classes. Do they just go on ahead and put out random ideas that sound cool without a care in the world?

 

[AwesomeButton]

I'm also curious how they design encounters when they still don't know what attributes do, let alone entire classes. Do they just go on ahead and put out random ideas that sound cool without a care in the world?

See PoE's encounters for reference on the how To be fair, they did nerf the trash mobs in the summer of 2015 I think.

 

[Infinitron]

The power levels and abilities of enemies matter a lot more than their stats. "Encounter design without a finished character system" isn't ideal but probably more feasible than you might think.

 

[Lacrymas]

Except it's not the enemy that is the problem, it's the player. They've already given out more abilities like candy and changed Might to Strength, presumably after having finished the majority of encounters. The combat can't be thought of as outside of the encounters, that's nonsensical, so it does hinge on them. Basically, I predict that the balance and combat are going to be a complete mess on release and I'm especially certain of that having played the beta, so I might actually wait a few months for the patches to hit before I play it for the first time. I might be accused of many things, but impatience isn't one of them, I still haven't played D:OS2, patiently waiting for mods to fix it.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Didn't Josh write the Fallout PnP ruleset? Pumping resolve to 20 in order to get 30% chance of random empower would be like pumping luck to 10 and taking the finesse trait in Fallout to get 20% base critical chance, then you could easily get it to 30% with aimed shots before taking any perks. I usually treat luck as a dump stat and I'm not sure it has any place in PoE, but as long as the enemies get the same bonus, I think this is actually the kind of thing Sawyer knows how to balance. Or he could in theory if he had any time. Whether they should be aiming for that kind of RNG heavy combat is another question.

Also, isn't this random empower thing contingent on bringing back might? Maybe I'm wrong, but resolve controlling spell damage and giving you random empowers seems like it would be way too OP for Sawyer's tastes. Presumably it wouldn't be that hard to rebalance encounters for the old might/resolve system.

The way it's implemented you can have both proc, crit by ACC and empower by RES. Prepare your prayers to RNGesus.

Don't forget the possible deterministic Overpenetration damage bonus. Itz powergaming heavan!

Didn't he just say that they're raising penetration for lower pen weapons/spells, or did I read the latest update wrong?

"* Weapons have been unified into two major categories: Average Penetration and High Penetration. Damaging spells have largely been moved up into Average Penetration values if they weren’t already. “Best of” weapons have 1 point lower Penetration than single damage type weapons, e.g. a sabre at 7 Slash and a sword at 6/6 Slash/Pierce. Damage values on weapons have generally come down a bit, especially on weapons that were previously in the Low Pen category."

 

[AwesomeButton]

At attributes yes... Ac and thac0 are just delusional degenerate bullshit.

Attributes, AC and THAC0 are DnD not Infinity Engine concepts, and PoE's attributes at least aim to all be equally important to every class. Whether they are equally important or equally unimportant though, is a different matter.

 

[Immortal]

The way I see it, Sawyer has decided to move from slower action/recovery times to faster action/recovery times because of player complaints. MaxQuest's mod just saves him time because it's already playtested that change. Even if it didn't exist, it's nothing he couldn't have done on his own. Maybe it would have been delayed until after the game's release.

So even when someone else does it, he still gets praise and accolades - because he "could of did it" if he wanted to.

(Likely over the course of 80 patches from now until eternity .. or when Roguey finally plays the game - whichever comes last)

The power levels and abilities of enemies matter a lot more than their stats. "Encounter design without a finished character system" isn't ideal but probably more feasible than you might think.

"Not ideal" is an understatement.
If these changes are radical enough, they may have to do another pass over encounters to make them harder or have them scale differently across difficulties, or at the bare minimum retest encounters that already had the "Stamp of Balance"

It's not the end of the world, just a waste of time and very poor management.

 

[AwesomeButton]

It's shaping up to be just as bad a mess as D:OS2, especially if he goes with that crazy "random chance to empower attack" idea. I don't know who in their right mind would even mention such an idea publically.

 

[Immortal]

It's shaping up to be just as bad a mess as D:OS2, especially if he goes with that crazy "random chance to empower attack" idea. I don't know who in their right mind would even mention such an idea publically.

Wasn't DOS:2 trying to go more deterministic with that Armor / Shield mechanic?
The only RNG in that game is crits / miss basically?

I forgot already.

 

[AwesomeButton]

It's shaping up to be just as bad a mess as D:OS2, especially if he goes with that crazy "random chance to empower attack" idea. I don't know who in their right mind would even mention such an idea publically.

Wasn't DOS:2 trying to go more deterministic with that Armor / Shield mechanic?
The only RNG in that game is crits / miss basically?

I forgot already.

I don't know what it tried but the end result was:
- Magic/Physical armor, dumbed down combat.
- Insane hitpoints and armor values bloat - it had become the major source of artificial "difficulty" of encounters
- Enemies practically cheating with a huge amount of AP compared to the player characters
- Clusterfuck of fire/magic fire/elecricity/blood/shit mixed with vomit, etc.
- Enemies teleporting next to you out of nowhere once an encounter starts, and all other kinds of messy design, aimed at the designer having an easier time instead of the player getting a well-concieved challenge.

It's a funny thing you say you forgot, because my wife played 230 hours of this crap, just motivated to get to the end, and when I asked her just now, she couldn't remember a thing. These are the things that come to my mind

 

[CptMace]

So even when someone else does it, he still gets praise and accolades

Must be a matter of perception then, from my standpoint he gets shat on regularly, more or less rightfully so.
If we check the last few pages, I'm fairly certain the negative comments on sawyer outnumber the positive ones. Even by considering positive the stuff you've quoted.

 

[Iskramor]

So even when someone else does it, he still gets praise and accolades

Must be a matter of perception then, from my standpoint he gets shat on regularly, more or less rightfully so.
If we check the last few pages, I'm fairly certain the negative comments on sawyer outnumber the positive ones. Even by considering positive the stuff you've quoted.

https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/968565922775486465

https://twitter.com/keightdee

Kate dollarhyde more like kate antifahyde.... Why feargus is hiring hipsters is beyond me.

 

[Roguey]

Kate dollarhyde more like kate antifahyde.... Why feargus is hiring hipsters is beyond me.

He can only hire who applies and this is now the only type of person who applies for narrative designer jobs in southern California.

 

[Sherry]

Hi.

why is this broken record back playing here again when @Infinitronic already cleared this up okay and it was cleared like last year okay? How many times??? it is enough already because evern on the boxchat they said I am not a Bubble or an alternative or Josh or whoever who visited before but do not visit now but you still want them visiting b/c you miss them but ethy are not okay and I said I was sorry okay Santino I sent you a message in private. You do not have to join in saying these things okay because they would have said something to everyone like to some others who post"oh hi Bubbles" or "oh hi Josh" or that already!! Okay so can we just talk about the game now? thank-you.

okay. Okay! Sailing depends on where in the Dyrwood it is so there will be at least some lead up to it and not right away. On the away into the Archipelago there has to be a scripted ship to ship encounter for a bottleneck battle to get your feet wet and learn the system right because it is very unlikely we will be able to sail directly to the next location without that so we can be taught what it takes to be a true captain and ebcause a ship needs a crew so then of course it will be a port. I think it would be better not to have it in Defiance Bay because we have already been there and would be considered a recycled area so probably Road's End which is a lot smaller and of the Manhem family and where the dragon from under your first stronghold sails out of Road's End if you set Falanroed free because of the family heraldry "Party per chevron sable and gules, a dragon rampant sinister counter-charged".

That is what I think anyhow so thanks for reading and this salturday will be one month until DEADFIRE!

Thanks,
Sherry

 

[frajaq]

Context is people talking about what to do with Resolve and talks about Constitution being an "uninteresting" stat

 

[Lacrymas]

If the goal was to make all the attributes valuable in different and realistic circumstances, then I feel they are alright atm, RES is no longer a dump stat outside of very specific gimmick builds. If the goal was to make them valuable in ALL circumstances, then lol, dream on.

 

[CptMace]

Why would that be the goal for any designer ? All stats valuable at all time, with equal importance, why bother having stats ?