Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Copper]

What's beautiful is when their footsteps sync together - it was so annoying I stopped playing with sound.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Jesus Cristo, this thread is still crawling with PoE-haters complaining about every little detail (combat this time). After all this years, they can't help but post everyday.

Talk about being trapped by a game.

 

[Frusciante]

Jesus Cristo, this thread is still crawling with PoE-haters complaining about every little detail (combat this time). After all this years, they can't help but post everyday.

Talk about being trapped by a game.

I know what you mean but best thing to do is stop caring about what other people on the Codex think. I personally love the game but apparently it isnt for everyone .

 

[Irenaeus II]

I know what you mean but best thing to do is stop caring about what other people on the Codex think. I personally love the game but apparently it isnt for everyone .

Yeah, that's what I did. You can see I don't post or even check these threads anymore. Too much negativity, nit-picking and downright retarded stuff to plow through.

Oh well, at least AoD is a harder target for the low brow crowd.

On topic: Last updates sound great! Loved that immunities are back (considering they should never have been removed).

 

[GloomFrost]

On topic: Last updates sound great! Loved that immunities are back (considering they should never have been removed).

Well you know, one of the oldest tricks in the book to "improve" something. Have it, remove it then "introduce" it again. Shame, Obsidian can do so much better.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Well you know, one of the oldest tricks in the book to "improve" something. Have it, remove it then "introduce" it again. Shame, Obsidian can do so much better.

True, I do that trick in my job irl.

But doesn't the good news of increasing combat difficulty and the need for varying tactics. We'll see. With AoD, WL2DC and D:OSEE, I'll probably wait for the second part of the expansion (plus about 2 months of patches) to start new PoE playthroughs. The benefit of playing a more polished game is hard to overestimate.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I know what you mean but best thing to do is stop caring about what other people on the Codex think. I personally love the game but apparently it isnt for everyone

Yes, Irenaeus, listen to this advice.

Well you know, one of the oldest tricks in the book to "improve" something. Have it, remove it then "introduce" it again. Shame, Obsidian can do so much better.

In my view Obsidian keep trying to stitch the ugliest holes but whatever they try the game can't look finished when it needed another half year in development at least.

 

[GloomFrost]

Yes, Irenaeus, listen to this advice.


In my view Obsidian keep trying to stitch the ugliest holes but whatever they try the game can't look finished when it needed another half year in development at least.

It is not just that. Its just company that was famous for the best dialogues, plot and characters and crap at everything else couldnt really deliver the best dialogues and plot but the game was still crap at pretty much everything else (except for graphics ironically enough).

 

[Lhynn]

The truth is that at low levels the "six second pulse" thing you guys have such a hard-on for feels awkward and a lot of people would have complained about it. Go back to BG1 after playing high-level characters for a long time and you might see what I mean.

This is such a bunch of inane nonsense. You want a separation between low and high level gameplay. Half the reason high level gameplay feels so good is that there is a noticeable growth.
Sawyer with his % and level scaled shit makes the combat play by the exact same rules at any level, its garbage.

 

[Copper]

But you can spam low-level spells!

 

[Rake]

It is not just that. Its just company that was famous for the best dialogues, plot and characters and crap at everything else couldnt really deliver the best dialogues and plot but the game was still crap at pretty much everything else (except for graphics ironically enough).

100 times this. P. much sums it up

 

[Roguey]

Loved that immunities are back (considering they should never have been removed).

They were never "in" to be removed.

Huh, I thought the lack of hard immunities was a purposeful thing in PoE, but I guess I hadn't really considered the damage type immunities that were already in. Plus the high-level spells are probably just too powerful across the board without it.

It was, but the reasons for it have mostly disappeared over time. We don't have classes that are so inherently CC-focused that they can't work around immunities (cipher and wizard are closest, but they have a lot of options). We have better feedback for when you hit immunities. Bestiary entries now display abilities, which means you can look at the entry and go "oh hey". Finally, there's actually support for affliction immunities. In the base game, the code didn't support it at all.

What we were trying to avoid was the 3.X situation where your rogues and beguilers throw their hands up because they're fighting swarms of undead/constructs/elementals for hours straight and the majority of your abilities can't affect them.

I'd like to blame Feargus Urquhart and all his absurd stretch goals, taking away time from implementing important things like affliction immunities.

Given that last sentence, I take it PoE is taking the 4/5e route and making sneak attack effective against everything as it should be.

 

[Bubbles]

So now it turns out that the lack of hard counters in the base game was mostly due to code limitations and UI concerns. I hope the haters who claimed that this was somehow related to Josh's design philosophy are taking note.

 

[Infinitron]

They're still not hard counters, don't make me repeat myself.

We don't have classes that are so inherently CC-focused that they can't work around immunities

 

[Roguey]

Going by the urban dictionary definition, it is true that their immunity utterly dominates whatever spell or ability you're using that they're immune to.

 

[Infinitron]

It doesn't dominate YOU though. That's what matters, and the second example in the urban dictionary definition clarifies that, I think - if the rifleman had an AT weapon in addition to his rifle, it would no longer be a hard counter.

 

[Bubbles]

Reposting Josh's definition:

I think most people generally consider a hard counter to be a single or narrow spectrum of reactive tactics that comprehensively cancel the opponent’s tactic to such an extent that all other choices are rendered obsolete. Using that definition, I don’t think the scenarios you’re describing involve hard counters because there are a lot of other things you could do (including going heavily on offense) that could bring victory.

His choice of words is not very helpful here. If a monster is naturally immune to all damage and all CC, would that be a "hard counter", even though it doesn't constitute a "spectrum of reactive tactics"? Does BG2's AI even use "reactive tactics" at all? If a game doesn't have a reactive AI, does that mean that it has no hard counters?

And can saying "I'm immune to everything now" be described as "cancelling the opponent's tactic"? If a group formulates a boss battle strategy that's focussed on paralyzing an unknown enemy, and the enemy turns out to be naturally immune to paralysis, is that monster "cancelling its opponents' tactic"? Or do these examples not count because being naturally immune is a) not reactive, b) not a tactic, and c) not a choice?

 

[Infinitron]

His choice of words is not very helpful here. If a monster is naturally immune to all damage and all CC, would that be a "hard counter", even though it doesn't constitute a "spectrum of reactive tactics"? Does BG2's AI even use "reactive tactics" at all? If a game doesn't have a reactive AI, does that mean that it has no hard counters?

And can saying "I'm immune to everything now" really be described as "cancelling the opponent's tactic"? If a group formulates a boss battle strategy that's focussed on paralyzing an unknown enemy, and the enemy turns out to be naturally immune to paralysis, is that monster "cancelling its opponents' tactic"? Or do these examples not count because being naturally immune is a) not reactive, b) not a tactic, and c) not a choice?

Maybe it's "reactive" in the sense that when you cast the paralysis spell, the enemy reacts by shrugging it off.

Again though, I don't think this is very important. Like I kind of said in that other thread, if you want to catch Josh flip-flopping red-handedly, you don't need to go as far as hard counters. It seems likely to me that he initially didn't want* to add these simple, non-hard counter immunities to the game as well, but here they are. So you have that.

*On the other hand, I'm not sure if he ever actually said that, because people kept asking him about hard counters only.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I like it how Infinitron insists on his definition of hard counters, even though he has to explain it to people every time.

Bubbles, the lack of affliction immunities support at release doesn't necessarily mean that Josh wanted to have them but was unable to. For all we know maybe they were a "B"-priority feature and the devs never got to them. Moreover, I think there were instances where Josh was defending the lack of "hard counters", immunities included, with design-related arguments.

 

[Black]

Balance tyme

https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/656202104160186368


https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/656202301317603328


https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/656208384832634880


It's going to be great when I can finally play this in 2016.

Oh wait there's more.



Hmmm http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ead-pre-expansion.98003/page-167#post-3865276

FLIP FLOP

And this is why BALANCE UBER ALLES in single player rpgs is fucking stupid.

 

[Roguey]

And this is why BALANCE UBER ALLES in single player rpgs is fucking stupid.

I don't see how. He's making it better through balance changes.

 

[Sensuki]

immunities - UI concerns.

 

[aweigh]

I wish they'd optimize the game code instead of adding more balance passes. They can continue to optimize the MobileObjects.save file cleaning/reduction with each patch, as it still collects tons of garbage as its size increases making end-game saves horribly slow.

They could also tweak selection circles further and optimize them since they're the biggest drain on performance right now. For reference merely go into any highly populated area and watch your frame-rate fluctuate as you enable/disable selection circles on NPC's. My favorite place to do that and watch the frame-rate dip is inside the Celestial Sapling Inn in Elm's Reach. There are about 20 NPC's crammed inisde the INN and if you stand in the middle of the screen and disable/enable selection circles (for all, not just your party) you can see the framerate die as soon as they're turned on.

Another thing they could do is tweak the visual FX for spells which not only obscure fucking everything during battle but also murder the frame-rate. This is not something that would be impossible; it's entirely possible since this is just texture crap.

They could also introduce a slider for the LOD Bias (Level of Detail) and allow users on 32-bit machines with 4 GB of RAM to utilize a positive modifier on the LOD, which blurs textures and reduces the game's memory consumption by more than half. This also shortens loading times by half. Currently I do this using RadeonPro, and with the LOD Bias set at "0" (or in nVidia terms, "Clamped"), my OSD reports that 400-500 MB's of Video RAM are being utilized in Russetwoods to the west of Stalwart Village.

If I set the LOD Bias to a positive modifier of +1.0-1.5, this very noticeably blurs the textures but allows the same scene to run with only 150-200 MB's of Video RAM, and almost halves loading times.

 

[Fairfax]

Eh well if people who say "this class feels weak" change their mind because of it then's all well.

I'm going to laugh if oozes and slimes and flying creatures and such are now immune to slicken. That stuck in the craw of a few grogs. Hell, I'll laugh if that's one of the few things that don't get changed.

That's usually the case in regard to class balance, but the Fighter did become truly pointless after 2.0. The only thing it had going for it was the fact it could be a good tank, but with the major changes to mechanics and attributes, most of which were justified, there's no reason to have one.

I don't see how. He's making it better through balance changes.

He's trying to compensate, but it won't change the fact other classes are better at (and more interesting) anything a Fighter tries to do.
I'm not balancefag, so that would be alright in theory, but the Fighter barely has anything to do during combat that's exclusive to the class. It's boring and pointless.

 

[aweigh]

There is one specific build that the Fighter excels at: the "martyr" build.

Guardian Stance (emits a small aura that gives allies Deflection while decreasing his personal Accuracy)
Rapid Recovery (plus Cloak of the Tireless Defender which can be bought in Ondra's Gift / Defiance Bay)
Critical Defense (decreases chances of him being critted/hit)
Unbending (absorbs incoming damange and converts it into self-healing)
Take The Hit (absorbs damange that nearby Allies receive and makes the Fighter receive it instead)
Unbroken (when Fighter's endurance reaches zero he immediately gets back up with 100+ endurance points and a boost to his stats)

** Might affects his Constant Recovery/Rapid Recovery/Unbending/Unbroken/Take The Hit amount of healing, so he hits hard and heals... hard. lewl.

It's a really unique build that ONLY the figter can pull off. Much better than treating him as just as a Knockdown machine.