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

[Ulfhednar]

Did they change the duration of shapeshifting? Cat form lasts only 15 seconds in the first game. The damage output is hilarious though. After that it's back to casting spells.

Shifter subclass gives you access to all of the forms, each one can be used once per encounter.

 

[aweigh]

jeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus they did the impossible: they made the action and recovery systes even more convoluted.

also DEX kind of got nerfed. i think the only thing it ill be good for now is for reloads.

btw, do ailments still strike even on grazes> thas really the one thing i most want fixed. its dumb as hell. and annoyig.

 

[aweigh]

Dr. Hieronymous Alloy, on 30 Jan 2018 - 4:54 PM, said:

SO what does that mean for guns vs bows? This is the only thing I care about.

Basically if you use guns, wear armor?

Seems so. Armor only hinders recovery, so if you mainly use guns (and let's say rarely toss a few spells with fast recovery), you can basically wear the heaviest armor without repercussions.

I would especially keep an eye on crossbows. Now that they have 0.7 attack duration, 0 recovery and 3.0s reloading, they are really good at 17-22 base damage, 7 pen and 12 range.

List of all weapons for reference: link

SaruNi, on 30 Jan 2018 - 6:39 PM, said:



MaxQuest, on 30 Jan 2018 - 07:49 AM, said:

Notes:
- it looks like reload duration was decided to be left unafected by the armor type.

Before iirc you linked to a quote from Josh which suggested that armor will eventually affect reload duration. Did they change their minds, or have they just not implemented it yet?....


Yeah. Here's the excerpt:
Spoiler

Quote

Q: Speed enchant is considered by Pillars 1 equally good for all weapons while being much less powerful for weapons with reload animations. Is Deadfire going to address this issue?
JS: Yes. We're trying to make weapons with reloads—meaning Crossbows, Arbalests, and the various guns—integrate a little bit better into the whole speed economy, so that things that speed up attacks and Recovery are also going to speed up reloads, in general.
That's something we've been looking at more recently to make it flow naturally. Making Recovery the things that — instead of having a recovery buffer that goes into the reload, having the reload itself be affected by the Recovery value. Heavy armor makes reloading take longer; light armor makes it go by faster. Stuff like that. We're trying to make it seem like it works like the other mechanics.

Link to transcript. Link to source.

Probably they have changed their minds regarding armor.
But stuff like Frenzy, Swift Strikes, and +/-% Action Speed stuff does affect reloading now.


SaruNi, on 30 Jan 2018 - 6:39 PM, said:

Wonder how available potions or crafting materials will be in the game, at various stages. Will probably be able to farm consistently by some point in the game.

Good point. Availability of crafting materials coupled with alchemy vendors will have a big influence on how will alchemy integrate into the game.

Madscientist, on 31 Jan 2018 - 12:59 AM, said:

so what do we have now:
- Like the new damage formula, nobody can calculate the new attack speed without a calculator ( double inversion). OK, while the old damage formula was very simple, I am not a power gamer and I did not calculate attack speed in PoE1, I just used things that make me faster when I found them. No Idea if I reached zero recovery.

- The current formula is easy to write down and explain, but yeap, once there is a single malus, you can't calculate nothing without a calculator.
- The PoE1 was harder to explain and lay down on paper, not to mention that you had to know which coefficients are going to be aggregated in multiplicative and which in additive manner. But it was easier to compute stuff in mind.
- There was kinda another possible approach, that could combine the best of two worlds: divide [the sum of bonuses] by [sum of maluses]. E.g. you are affected by two bonuses that increase your speed by 20% and 30%; and one malus that decreases your speed by 50%: coef = (1 + 0.2 + 0.3) / (1 + 0.5) = 1. Voila. No negative numbers; easy to calculate and implement.
But perhaps they indeed wanted such behaviour.

Madscientist, on 31 Jan 2018 - 12:59 AM, said:

some questions:
- What of these things stack and did this change from PoE1?
- Since everyone wants a heavy armor because of the AR/pen system and not everyone is a fighter, how many bonusses do you need to compensate the heavy armor?
- Some people said a blast rod + rangers driving flight + monks ability that crits cause another attack (name forgotten, sorry) is OP. Is this still true in heavy armor compared to just dual wielding something without modal in heavy armor? (OK, we already discussed that dual wielding seems to be too powerful now.)
- So you calculate recovery time and dual wielding halves this number. What does the +20% from the fighter talent do? Does it reduce recovery by 70% (50% dual wielding + 20% talent)?

1. +x% Action Speed effects do not stack. Only the highest apply. This includes: Frenzy, Swift Strike, Potion of Deftness, Potion of Relentless Strikes (if I remember right how it's called). It's pretty similar to PoE1 in terms of stacking.
2. because of double inversion, I would say: a variable amount of bonuses, as it changes depending on all related effects that affect you.
3. it should be true for being in heavy armor as well. It's just a chain of procs. If you crit, you get an extra instant free attack. If it crits, you get an extra one again, and so on. The primary factor here is the chance to crit.
4. No no. It's not that you calculate recovery and AFTER that dual-wielding halves it. DW bonus is taken into account DURING recovery calculation.
As for stacking Two-Weapon Style with DW, it goes like this:
- Dual Wielding gives you +100% recovery speed
- Two-Weapon Style gives you +20% recovery speed
So:
- step_sum = (2 - 1) + (1.2 -1) = 1.2
- speed_coef = 1.2 + 1 = 2.2
- recovery = base_recovery / 2.2

Madscientist, on 31 Jan 2018 - 12:59 AM, said:

OK, at least now I understand why dual wielding is so OP.

Imagine two characters:
- A: wields a single sabre. @10DEX: 0.7s attack + 3.0s recovery = 3.7s
- B: dual-wields them. @10DEX: 0.7s attack + 1.5s recovery = 2.2s (or x1.68 faster)

Q: How much DEX would A need, in order to deliver a blow every 2.2s?
A: 66 DEX

- From auto-attacking perspective, it's like A is getting +12 PER bonus for attacking with a single weapon; while B is getting +56 DEX for dual-wielding) (ofc these numbers change a bit if you are affected by additional bonuses and maluses; but without them that is)
- And now there are also FullAttack abilities. Basically you hit not every 2.2s, but every: 0.7s, 2.2s, 0.7s, 2.2s, and so on, because mainhand recovery is skipped. That's 1.45s on average. So if we had A and B both being paladins, B would effectively deliver his attacks x2.55 (3.7/1.45) faster than A color=#888888](up from x1.68, while he has FoD charges)[/color]

IndiraLightfoot, on 31 Jan 2018 - 01:19 AM, said:

MaxQuest also wrote that even one malus hampers this badly, but how bad does it get if there are more of them?

One malus has a greater effect than one would expect. But many maluses is suddenly not that. It's like the system heavily smooths the edge cases, when we have many bonuses, or many maluses.
Let's take that warbow again:
Spoiler


IndiraLightfoot, on 31 Jan 2018 - 01:19 AM, said:

Which maluses are the worst offenders in this case?

As MadScientist already mentioned:
+100% recovery from modals, disoriented and blind
+55% from heavy armor

plus
-50% action speed from some other modals, which also answers his question: if there are any attack phase related maluses.

real talk about poe2 machinations is over in obs form

 

[aweigh]

"a simple heuristic to compare the relative value of resources"

(Lewl)

a 100 hours into the beta, and even after the patch, I remain pretty annoyed by the gross misbalancing of ability and ressource. I know it's only closed beta, but this is the famed sequel of a game which managed to reach great after its many patches and feedback from community, so our level of expectation is much higher.



i feel that high priority shall be given in the next patch in fixing the gross misbalancing of some activty equipment and weapon modals so that we can actually test them ( spells with a decent cast time wouldn't hurt either as it looks like we all shun them).



Here is quick heuristic focused on DPS ( and it's reverse survivability), comparing the impact of various ressource and their trade off. This is only approximative as the time element is not taken into account at this stage, but it shall already help in spotting the main incoherences and imbalances. Feel free to complete / comment. i put in bracket if the impact is multiplcative or additive





1 penetration (x) ~ 25% dps ~ 8 might (x) ~ 12 perception (+/x) ~ 12 accuracy (+/x) ~ 8 dexterity (x)



~ single weapon wielding (+/x) ~ 31 % of dualweapon wielding dps (x) ~ 4 power level for spells(x) ~ 8 class level if single class



~ 12 class level (x) if multiclass ~ 4 levels (+/x) ~ 0.5 x backstabb (+) ~ 0.62 x brutal whip (+)



~ 0.5 x 1 weapon quality level (+/x) ( acc,damage +pen) ~ 2 druid class level for claws ( 1 quality level / 4lvl)



~ 1 power level for monk fist (+/x) so 2 or 3 monk levels ~ 80% of potd difficulty ( +/x)



~ -20% dps through penetration modals for longbows, sabres, warhammers, stilettos (x)



~ 0.5 x marked for the hunt/ sworn ennemy (+/x) ~ 0.3 x lightning fist (x) ~ 0.25 x FOD (+/x)







1 armor (x) ~ 25% survivability ~ 5 constitution (x) ~ 12 deflection (+/x) ~ 12 resolve (+/x) ~ 3 x weapon and shield ( +/x)



~ -7% dps (x) ( through common armor) ~ - 4 % dps (x) if dual wielding ~ - 22% dps (x) through medium shield modal



~ -60% dps (x) dagger modal ~ 33% of paladin defense with deep faith (+/x) ~ -22% dps (+/x) through quarterstaff modal



~ 80% of potd difficulty (+/x) ~ 1 level (x, +/x) between level 1-5 ( hitpoint +def) ~ 2 levels (x, +/x) between level 6-20



~ 4 shapeshifting druid level (x) ~ 12 x 1 shield quality level (+/x) ~ 1 armor quality level (x)



~ 2 x weapon and shield (+/x) warrior ability ~ 0.4 x mirror image spell (+/x) ~ 0.3 berserker rage (x)







it becomes pretty clear, that armor shall be stacked to the max ( plate for everyone) rather than go for any of the other mitigant and that everybody shall dual wield. wearing a shield is particlarly bad unless you are an unbroken but why bother, be a paladin you get 9 times more delection and the same armor with the aura and can dual wield.



it makes very little sense to try to limit the stacking of attribute buff, accuracy or deflection when the smallest unit of armor or deflection represent such a major gap in survivability even after the patch. we can see that one unit of armor/pen almost offsets potd difficulty and it is going to be extremely difficult to balance the concept with levels increasing. 5 pens is equivalent to the gap between level 1 and 20. It's even worse when one considers that pen doesn't go below 5 nor armor below 6 ( wearing no armor is a death warrant).



Armor and pen need at least to be discretized further with increments that are of a magnitude 2 levels or 12.5 dps at the very least, so armor and penetration need to be doubled and on a much larger scale. it is also necessary to allow player to equip weapons that are in the bag during the fight otherwise it's forcing save scumming when armor have finally been uncovered.



Personally, i find that the damage system is over determined with this new pen/armor system and that poe1 system was much better. for high armor/low pen the system worked just fine, it was for late game high damage that it somewhat broke. The reason it didn't scale late game was notablity because weapon quality increased at faster rate. if armor had scaled with level of the character by a multiplcative factor or that constition or resolve had applied a multiplcative factor that armor would have scaled just fine.



If dev absolutely want to stick to that new system, then i suggest that armor qualiy level shall have a stackable bonus to deflection on top of the armor system, and that shields shall at the very least add to armor. higher quality of shields shall also have increments in armor and deflection ( +4 not +1 per quality level.







Power is a new currency that looks totally necessary given the introduction of multiclassing. It look pretty obvious that penetration of spell shall at the very least increase twice as rapidly by power level ( having to wait 12 level if multiclassed to do one more pen is ludicrous), i would suggest 1 penetration per power level if penetration is more discretized or 0.5 pen per level in the current system). i also find that classes bonus are very front loaded with very large bonuses at inception or early tiers. it would make more sense to have those toned down and then scale with power or with level.





Modals are just catastrophically balanced whether the defensive one which are all more punitive than armor in dps, or the penetrative one which in the best case scenario ( ennemy armor is 2 points higher than current pen) increase dps by 10%!!!!. one is much better off having accuracy and wait for a crit.







The heuristics doesn't take into account time so probably overvalues constitution ( as healing is not in this picture) , defense and dps through recovery.

it looks to me that either hitpoints need to be massively boosted or base damage toned down as combat is hardly lasting more than 5 to 6 rounds ( assume a round is 3s). In poe1 armor always reduced based damage and armor piercing modals only added back 5 damage, not a whopping 25 to 75% of multiplied damage, so damage look much bigger in poe2. We need combat to last much longer and not by overinflating recovery.

 

[TT1]

Stop using cocaine, aweigh

 

[aweigh]

i enjoy more reading poe formulas than playing it, as it should be.

 

[Lacrymas]

It's obvious there is something fishy and wrong with Pen even without going into the nitty-gritty of it, it seems even more fucked up when the actual numbers are shown I see.

 

[Maculo]

it looks to me that either hitpoints need to be massively boosted or base damage toned down as combat is hardly lasting more than 5 to 6 rounds ( assume a round is 3s). In poe1 armor always reduced based damage and armor piercing modals only added back 5 damage, not a whopping 25 to 75% of multiplied damage, so damage look much bigger in poe2. We need combat to last much longer and not by overinflating recovery.

Yikes, that makes a big difference.

The full penetration buff of 30% is overkill on top of overkill it seems.

 

[AwesomeButton]

TL;DR

 

[badler]

Not really. My hands are tied until we do official announcements of everything.

Thanks! So, I have either misread or remember wrong that I read somewhere about expansions being post-game.

If you link me to where you read/heard it, I might be able to apply more context.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Not really. My hands are tied until we do official announcements of everything.

Thanks! So, I have either misread or remember wrong that I read somewhere about expansions being post-game.

If you link me to where you read/heard it, I might be able to apply more context.

Upon more tenacious searching, here is what I found:

Didn't Sawyer also say he wasn't gonna direct any of the post-release DLC & future PoE titles?

Yes.

Here's what the GOG preorder page says about the DLCs:

DLC Content Packs #1-3: Robust content expansions to the base game that will add new areas, new experiences, new items, and expand the world of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. (post-launch content, a $30 value)

Apparently post-launch doesn't mean post-game.

There is also this though:

https://www.reddit.com/r/projectete..._of_eternity_ii_deadfire_launch_date/dt8lrac/

We are aware that players didn't like the White March story being in the middle when it was released so long after Pillars I came out. We're taking that into account for our DLC plan for Pillars II.

Which is not definitive of course.

 

[Nano]

Even with mid-story DLC, one way to handle it would be letting people start a game that only contains the expansion content through the main menu. That's how it was with Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter. I wonder if there were technical limitations or something that prevented them from doing that with The White March.

 

[Sensuki]

It's obvious there is something fishy and wrong with Pen even without going into the nitty-gritty of it, it seems even more fucked up when the actual numbers are shown I see.

It seems like a failure of a mechanic in the context of their system and it actually makes calculating damage MORE convoluted and unpredictable than PoE1

 

[Lacrymas]

It's a solution to a problem that didn't exist and a symptom of democratized development. If it isn't changed somehow, I predict it's going to be like armor in D:OS2, something that ruins the entire experience, even if it won't be as dramatic and immediate, depending on the armor scaling of mobs and the availability of buffs/debuffs. Either way, the whole game is going to revolve around dealing with it in one way or another.

 

[AwesomeButton]

... it actually makes calculating damage MORE convoluted and unpredictable than PoE1

Which is scary to even try to imagine. My wife who is a newly converted IE games fan asked a simple question - What was wrong with the Infinity Engine, where there were three speeds - you are either slowed, hasted, or working at normal speed?

She doesn't know about speed factors, yet does know what "number of attacks" is, but anyway.

All these variations of recovery times, which I think have been a bit evened out for Deadfire, were making it very difficult to gauge what setup of equipment will give you better results. This time around it will be calculating Accuracy vs Penetration. For God's sakes, why?

 

[FreeKaner]

I was against penetration but now I am completely sold on the depth. Needs proper balancing though, shave off that 30% bonus for over-penetration for starters.

 

[Infinitron]

I seem to recall Sensuki asking for percentage-based damage reduction at one point during PoE1's development, which is what the Penetration mechanic does...

 

[Lacrymas]

Where do you find depth? It's literally the system with the least amount of depth because it's a binary, you either penetrate or you don't (which is the usual result, especially for casters). It also doesn't rely on a roll, so you can't say it's like AC in D&D.

 

[Maculo]

It's obvious there is something fishy and wrong with Pen even without going into the nitty-gritty of it, it seems even more fucked up when the actual numbers are shown I see.

It seems like a failure of a mechanic in the context of their system and it actually makes calculating damage MORE convoluted and unpredictable than PoE1

I wouldn't call it a failure just yet. I think the 30% bonus for "excess" penetration rating turns into something entirely though. I understand armor rating and armor penetration with respect to the need to change weapons, provided the weapon system is balanced around penetration rating vs. actual damage on weapons (i.e., how estocs vs. greatswords seem to show this intent).

Where do you find depth? It's literally the system with the least amount of depth because it's a binary, you either penetrate or you don't (which is the usual result, especially for casters). It also doesn't rely on a roll, so you can't say it's like AC in D&D.

I wouldn't call it binary, because there are varying degrees of damage (25%, 50%, 75%, 100% and..130%). Where the potential depth lies, in my opinion, is the weapon system. If you ignore the 130% damage hit, you have a system that pushes a player to change weapons and spells. A high pen weapon/spell would not be the go-to choice in all situations (if you ignore the 130% hit, which wrecks it in my opinion).

My main example (broken record inbound) is estoc versus greatsword. Estoc has 10 pen and 18-26 damage, whereas a greatsword has 6 pen and 26-32 damage. There would be a reason to switch weapons depending on the armor of the foe. An estoc would pull ahead in a high armor situation, and a greatsword would pull ahead in a low armor situation, if not for the 30% damage buff from full penetration strikes.

 

[CptMace]

It also doesn't rely on a roll, so you can't say it's like AC in D&D.

Obviously, accuracy vs deflection/fort/will/reflex is where the AC system from DnD is at. It's still there afaik.

As for Pen and armor rating, it's just DR and DR bypass, except that it has more potential. Time will tell if it's correctly supported through game design, spell design, itemization etc.

it actually makes calculating damage MORE convoluted and unpredictable than PoE1

Understandable concerns for an autist. I too would like to be able to calculate, on paper, the damage my bow would make against a given enemy before I take the necessary 3 seconds to actually shoot it and have the answer detailed in the log right away.

 

[Lacrymas]

You guys are focusing on the wrong problem, overpenetration on PotD is something almost unheard of. I couldn't overpenetrate with my Priest/Devoted (focusing on stilettos, one of the most penetrating weapons) on PotD and neither could I with my Berserker/Paladin, at least I'm fairly certain of that. Even if that was the problem, the issue still remains - you'll stack Penetration and the whole game will revolve around dealing with that.

 

[Infinitron]

I predict it's going to be like armor in D:OS2, something that ruins the entire experience

Are you daft, a mechanic that turns enemies into damage sponges that are outright immune to everything until you spend a bunch of combat rounds blasting them is like a granular damage reduction that only requires you to switch weapons or apply some buff to bypass it?

I still haven't heard a convincing explanation from you for why making sure your party has access to some high penetration attacks in PoE2 is so much worse than making sure your party has access to high damage attacks in PoE2. It's like you're thinking of a PoE1 where all the enemies are ogres.

 

[Lacrymas]

Oh my god, Infinitron, I have explained time and again what the problems are. Aweigh has supplied numbers and more explanations, the Obsidian forum is also full of discussions on the matter. It's not my fault you refuse to read, if you read you are unable to understand and if you are able to understand you willfully ignore everything.

 

[Infinitron]

Oh my god, Infinitron, I have explained time and again what the problems are. Aweigh has supplied numbers and more explanations, the Obsidian forum is also full of discussions on the matter. It's not my fault you refuse to read, if you read you are unable to understand and if you are able to understand you willfully ignore everything.

Aweigh has posted a bunch of quibbling about the relative balance of Penetration, Accuracy, etc. There's nothing about Penetration being inherently unfun or tactically inferior to what came before it.

I know why Penetration bothers you, it's because it's deterministic. Whereas with PoE1's Damage vs DR the damage value is random so it doesn't make you feel like the game is "gating" you.

 

[Lacrymas]

DR isn't random in PoE1......... No, you don't know why it bothers me, that much is perfectly clear. If you carefully read what aweigh (and everyone else) has posted, maybe you won't appear so ignorant.