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

[Infinitron]

 

[Parabalus]

The lack of special abilities for non-spellcaster classes is a huge negative when comparing Baldurs Gate to Deadfire. Playing a melee class is so boring in Baldurs Gate, whereas there's actually something to make it interesting in Deadfire.

No this is a negative change. This is a design choice that fits turnbased combat, not RTwP. The key fact here is that you don't play a melee character, you play a party of characters of different skillsets, that some characters don't have active abilities is a feature, not a bug. Are zerglings in StarCraft a bad unit because they don't have active abilities? No, to even suggest that is fucking retarded.

If the game actually was designed to play turnbased or solo like in Fallout then this would be a excellent design choice but this is a party based game. Reducing the number of characters from 6 to 5 shows that they understand that there are issues here but it is a poor band aid to a problem that requires some more extensive redesign.

Making classes more samey with tons of active abilities is not an improvement and honestly makes combat more tedious and MMO-like. They should have gone the other way and diverged classes further in how they work.

Thing is you want your PC to feel awesome - Dumpsterfire does this much better than Bg2 where in the latter you might not have anything to do with him beyond clicking to attack.

I'd wager most players only intensively micro their PC, a few buffs from the spellcasters, and let the AI handle the "popamole" martial abilities - but the fact that I can actively choose how to use them in tougher encounters on a fighter or rogue is , compared to not having anything at all.

 

[Reinhardt]

You can just build your fighter completely with passive abilities and only take stances if that's what you want.

Did exactly this with my crusader and Eder and it works much better than with all stupid things you need to press.

 

[Riddler]

You can just build your fighter completely with passive abilities and only take stances if that's what you want. They are good like that as frontliners anyhow.

That is shit though.

One thing you can do however is automating this through AI which in the end is a roundabout solution for what it should have been in the first place.

 

[Safav Hamon]

Your argument makes no sense to me. I'd much rather have my melee characters use abilities in combat than idly pointing and clicking enemies like Diablo.

If you want to have a boring hack and slash character than just take all passives at level up, and let people that enjoy doing something in combat have their special abilities.

 

[FreeKaner]

You can just build your fighter completely with passive abilities and only take stances if that's what you want. They are good like that as frontliners anyhow.

That is shit though.

One thing you can do however is automating this through AI which in the end is a roundabout solution for what it should have been in the first place.

Why is that shit, exactly? You have the capacity to have your martial classes completely without any active abilities and only modals and occasionally self-buffs. They work just fine then as blockers/meatshields/dps. In fact, this was an option in PoE1 too. I would even say in both PoE1 and now in Deadfire that's the optimal build.

It does seem to me that some people are against martial classes having any abilities on principle, even when they have option to not have them. When I was playing PoE1 (On potd) the fighter and the monk didn't have almost any active abilities except self-buffs that I might or might not activate depending on the encounter, is that too much?

 

[Riddler]

The lack of special abilities for non-spellcaster classes is a huge negative when comparing Baldurs Gate to Deadfire. Playing a melee class is so boring in Baldurs Gate, whereas there's actually something to make it interesting in Deadfire.

No this is a negative change. This is a design choice that fits turnbased combat, not RTwP. The key fact here is that you don't play a melee character, you play a party of characters of different skillsets, that some characters don't have active abilities is a feature, not a bug. Are zerglings in StarCraft a bad unit because they don't have active abilities? No, to even suggest that is fucking retarded.

If the game actually was designed to play turnbased or solo like in Fallout then this would be a excellent design choice but this is a party based game. Reducing the number of characters from 6 to 5 shows that they understand that there are issues here but it is a poor band aid to a problem that requires some more extensive redesign.

Making classes more samey with tons of active abilities is not an improvement and honestly makes combat more tedious and MMO-like. They should have gone the other way and diverged classes further in how they work.

Thing is you want your PC to feel awesome - Dumpsterfire does this much better than Bg2 where in the latter you might not have anything to do with him beyond clicking to attack.

Agreed but there are other ways to make PCs feel awesome than active abilities.

Having your fighter cleave through enemies like butter because they are well built, equipped and positioned is plenty satisfying.

Not having many active abilities does not prevent the majority of players from wanting to play right-click carrys in MOBAs.

 

[Reinhardt]

Compared to empowered meteors anything your fighter can do is still useless clicking.

 

[Perkel]

Your argument makes no sense to me. I much prefer having my melee characters being able to use special abilities in combat. It beats idly pointing and clicking like in Baldurs Gate.

If you want to have a boring hack and slash character than just take all passives at level up, and let people that enjoy doing something in combat have their special abilities.

I think issue here is that in BG games (and ADnD in general) generally speaking everything hit hard. So good fighter could render mage dead in basically 2-3 seconds with some good luck. So you had to actively manage fighter because he would kill very quickly targets and you had to manage them well because spells and abilities didn't care for friendlies.

In PoE most of enemies and player characters have a lot of HP so fighter effectively needs active skills to do something more to be interesting or he will be near some enemy and will spend a lot of time on him. And a lot of spells care for allies.

edit:

to someone who disagreed. How is it not ? Mage starts at lvl 1 with barely 6-10hp. That is literally one hit from weapon and if you are lucky you can INSTANTLY kill him. This can't literally happen in PoE games.

 

[Ruzen]

With news you lose.

lose what? :D

Your dignity.

O..Ok?! You... got me? Yea-

 

[Parabalus]

The lack of special abilities for non-spellcaster classes is a huge negative when comparing Baldurs Gate to Deadfire. Playing a melee class is so boring in Baldurs Gate, whereas there's actually something to make it interesting in Deadfire.

No this is a negative change. This is a design choice that fits turnbased combat, not RTwP. The key fact here is that you don't play a melee character, you play a party of characters of different skillsets, that some characters don't have active abilities is a feature, not a bug. Are zerglings in StarCraft a bad unit because they don't have active abilities? No, to even suggest that is fucking retarded.

If the game actually was designed to play turnbased or solo like in Fallout then this would be a excellent design choice but this is a party based game. Reducing the number of characters from 6 to 5 shows that they understand that there are issues here but it is a poor band aid to a problem that requires some more extensive redesign.

Making classes more samey with tons of active abilities is not an improvement and honestly makes combat more tedious and MMO-like. They should have gone the other way and diverged classes further in how they work.

Thing is you want your PC to feel awesome - Dumpsterfire does this much better than Bg2 where in the latter you might not have anything to do with him beyond clicking to attack.

Agreed but there are other ways to make PCs feel awesome than active abilities.

Having your fighter cleave through enemies like butter because they are well built, equipped and positioned is plenty satisfying.

Not having many active abilities does not prevent the majority of players from wanting to play right-click carrys in MOBAs.

That would imply that "well built etc." means fighters/martials scale better than casters in PoE, which is NOT the case. As a carry you farm and then right click to victory, you can't do that in Deadfire since the supports (casters) still beat you at high levels.

I'm not up to date on DotA, but right click carries had a lot of skill expression in the few abilities they had, disjointing/cleaning stuff with MS, BkB timings and generally playing with a huge target on their back - that isn't really the case in single player games (though the rogue abilities with untargetable let you immune/disjoint attacks ).

Besides, in MOBAs you are dunking on another human being, the easier you can do it the better it feels.

Your argument makes no sense to me. I much prefer having my melee characters being able to use special abilities in combat. It beats idly pointing and clicking like in Baldurs Gate.

If you want to have a boring hack and slash character than just take all passives at level up, and let people that enjoy doing something in combat have their special abilities.

I think issue here is that in BG games (and ADnD in general) generally speaking everything hit hard. So good fighter could render mage dead in basically 2-3 seconds with some good luck. So you had to actively manage fighter because he would kill very quickly targets and you had to manage them well because spells and abilities didn't care for friendlies.

In PoE most of enemies and player characters have a lot of HP so fighter effectively needs active skills to do something more to be interesting or he will be near some enemy and will spend a lot of time on him. And a lot of spells care for allies.

You can def. get oneshot in Dumpsterfire by enemy alpha strikes, and you can easily oneshot enemies - if anything HP could be higher across the board, a rogue will kill a mage in 1-2 hits easily.

 

[FreeKaner]

Agreed but there are other ways to make PCs feel awesome than active abilities.

Having your fighter cleave through enemies like butter because they are well built, equipped and positioned is plenty satisfying.

Not having many active abilities does not prevent the majority of players from wanting to play right-click carrys in MOBAs.

Pick only passives, stances and self-buffs with your fighter in Deadfire. You'll have your moba auto-attacker that trashes anything in melee and needs to be babysit occasionally by casters with heals/buffs.

Unless you are against them having even the option of picking active abilities on principle.

 

[Riddler]

The lack of special abilities for non-spellcaster classes is a huge negative when comparing Baldurs Gate to Deadfire. Playing a melee class is so boring in Baldurs Gate, whereas there's actually something to make it interesting in Deadfire.

No this is a negative change. This is a design choice that fits turnbased combat, not RTwP. The key fact here is that you don't play a melee character, you play a party of characters of different skillsets, that some characters don't have active abilities is a feature, not a bug. Are zerglings in StarCraft a bad unit because they don't have active abilities? No, to even suggest that is fucking retarded.

If the game actually was designed to play turnbased or solo like in Fallout then this would be a excellent design choice but this is a party based game. Reducing the number of characters from 6 to 5 shows that they understand that there are issues here but it is a poor band aid to a problem that requires some more extensive redesign.

Making classes more samey with tons of active abilities is not an improvement and honestly makes combat more tedious and MMO-like. They should have gone the other way and diverged classes further in how they work.

Thing is you want your PC to feel awesome - Dumpsterfire does this much better than Bg2 where in the latter you might not have anything to do with him beyond clicking to attack.

Agreed but there are other ways to make PCs feel awesome than active abilities.

Having your fighter cleave through enemies like butter because they are well built, equipped and positioned is plenty satisfying.

Not having many active abilities does not prevent the majority of players from wanting to play right-click carrys in MOBAs.

That would imply that "well built etc." means fighters/martials scale better than casters in PoE, which is NOT the case. As a carry you farm and then right click to victory, you can't do that in Deadfire since the supports (casters) still beat you at high levels.

I'm not up to date on DotA, but right click carries had a lot of skill expression in the few abilities they had, disjointing/cleaning stuff with MS, BkB timings and generally playing with a huge target on their back - that isn't really the case in single player games (though the rogue abilities with untargetable let you immune/disjoint attacks ).

Besides, in MOBAs you are dunking on another human being, the easier you can do it the better it feels.

They do not have to scale better they can just scale differently.

My point with the Dota comparison was not a 1-1 comparison, in Dota you play 1 character for instance, but that people seem to enjoy less active characters just as much or more than more active ones. What people want is impact, not meaningless mechanical activity.

 

[Frusciante]

It's best to wait for several balance patches. Once Sawyer announces his departure from Obsidian it's safe to play. There will also be a few mods then too I assume for optimal experience.

Sawyer is the only one keeping Obsidian afloat and is mainly responsible for producing two good rpgs in a genre that was completely dead. I would say Deafire can be a great RPG when combat difficulty has been adjusted. Combat and mechanics are absolutely great imho in this game. Narrative and writing could be better but that's not Sawyer's fault.

And that's apart from being a cool guy who (in a very honest and open way) engages with the community unlike any other developer.

 

[FreeKaner]

Riddler you are arguing for something you can not only already do but is the optimal way.

 

[Riddler]

Agreed but there are other ways to make PCs feel awesome than active abilities.

Having your fighter cleave through enemies like butter because they are well built, equipped and positioned is plenty satisfying.

Not having many active abilities does not prevent the majority of players from wanting to play right-click carrys in MOBAs.

Pick only passives, stances and self-buffs with your fighter in Deadfire. You'll have your moba auto-attacker that trashes anything in melee and needs to be babysit occasionally by casters with heals/buffs.

Unless you are against them having even the option of picking active abilities on principle.

I'm against making a game that wants to be turnbased RtwP rather than having a focused design in either direction that people actually enjoy.

That more choices is better is an illusion, it's like saying that multiple difficulties or scaling are a good things even though the end result invariably is shit balancing. There is a reason people enjoy dark souls.

Resources come from somewhere (which should be painfully obvious in obsidian games) and catering to multiple masters almost always results in a worse product.

Let Sawyer make his Dark Lands game rather than have him producing this half-baked mess of a system.

This is not to say that the combat is completly unenjoyable however, only that there are fundamental design issues restricting the game from becoming really good in this area.

 

[Safav Hamon]

This is an absurd debate. There is nothing wrong with having cool and fun abilities for martial classes. I enjoy dashing around the battlefield throwing smokebombs as a rogue. There was nothing cool like that for a thief in Baldurs Gate.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

Let Sawyer make his Dark Lands game rather than have him producing this half-baked mess.

I have always found this assertion funny. What makes you people think that Sawyer is competent enough to design a dark lands like game or a good TB system? As far as I know, he has shown no understanding of either an engrossing setting or good game design.

 

[Trashos]

Spoiler

 

[Parabalus]

They do not have to scale better they can just scale differently.

My point with the Dota comparison was not a 1-1 comparison, in Dota you play 1 character for instance, but that people seem to enjoy less active characters just as much or more than more active ones. What people want is impact, not meaningless mechanical activity.

What does scale differently mean? Complicated scaling curves where 11 classes intermingle in a way each has their moment to shine?

They enjoy the less active characters because they completely take over the game after being a target dummy for the first part of the game. They specifically have MORE "meaningless" mechanical activity because they interact with creeps the whole time (which does take skill) instead of other players, so I'm not sure what you meant.

Again, MOBA carries are still far more involved that IE game fighters. In Dumpsterfire and PoE, casters are also STILL more involved than the martials, but at least the latter has something to do.

 

[Riddler]

They do not have to scale better they can just scale differently.

My point with the Dota comparison was not a 1-1 comparison, in Dota you play 1 character for instance, but that people seem to enjoy less active characters just as much or more than more active ones. What people want is impact, not meaningless mechanical activity.

What does scale differently mean? Complicated scaling curves where 11 classes intermingle in a way each has their moment to shine?

Yes, something like that. Alternatively that they are effective against different types of enemies.

 

[ArchAngel]

This is an absurd debate. There is nothing wrong with having cool and fun abilities for martial classes. I enjoy dashing around the battlefield throwing smokebombs as a rogue. There was nothing cool like that for a thief in Baldurs Gate.

I one shot Sarevok with my Thief in last fight in BG1.. nothing cool my ass.

 

[FreeKaner]

I'm against making a game that wants to be turnbased RtwP rather than having a focused design in either direction that people actually enjoy.

That more choices is better is an illusion, it's like saying that multiple difficulties or scaling are a good things even though the end result invariably is shit balancing. There is a reason people enjoy dark souls.

Resources come from somewhere (which should be painfully obvious in obsidian games) and catering to multiple masters almost always results in a worse product.

Let Sawyer make his Dark Lands game rather than have him producing this half-baked mess.

This is not to say that the combat is completly unenjoyable however, only that there are fundamental design issues restricting the game from becoming really good in this area.

More choices is not necessarily better, that much is true. You are not necessarily saying in this post anything I disagree, in fact I have argued for a similar case before that having too many abilities in a class-based system tends to end up making classes more similar to each other than anything else.

However this is not a valid criticism for either PoE1 or PoE2, martial classes have way less active abilities and the active abilities they have are much limited in scope. Moreover, martial classes have their niche which both their active abilities and passive abilities drive them towards to. Unlike say a MMO where every class is made equally capable due the fact people only play one character and over a long time (dota example is unfitting). On top of all of this, what you said initially about martial classes having as much abilities as casters is false and the martial classes already are at their best when they are specialised as auto-attackers or blockers.

You are not saying and defending anything wrong in principle, but you are way too overzealous about it that you are claiming martial classes having options for some active abilities by design invalidates the system of RTWP or asymmetric balance. It does not, tone it down a bit.

 

[Riddler]

On top of all of this, what you said initially about martial classes having as much abilities as casters is false

I did not say this.

You are not saying and defending anything wrong in principle, but you are way too overzealous about it that you are claiming martial classes having options for some active abilities by design invalidates the system of RTWP or asymmetric balance.

Each to their own I suppose but I feel that these types of design choices are symptomatic for the missunderstanding of what kind of combat system they are making which hurts the game. That people aren't enjoying it by large seems like an uncontroversial claim, it wasn't something that was praised in the original game and many people stopped playing in disgust for that reason. That there are many in this thread are happy with the combat is unsurprising since many of the detractors have self-ejected from following PoE as players.

Anyway, you obviously think I'm exaggerating and I think you are underplaying the issues with the design, direction, reasoning and their consequences. I don't see us coming to an understanding here so let's agree to disagree.

 

[Safav Hamon]

So apparently the game is shit because rogues can use smoke bombs in combat....