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Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire + DLC Thread - now with turn-based combat!

Ulfhednar

Savant
Joined
Apr 29, 2017
Messages
809
Location
Valhalla
I was really against multiclasses at the start, because it just seems like a tacked on feature. The classes are as is very non-restrictive about how you play them. You can use any kind of gear, you have some damage, tanking, cc, support, abilites... Plus the subclasses are usually pretty cool. However during gameplay I've noticed that I enjoy playing multiclass characters more. They just seem handier and more fun to build. You find some interesting synergy and you stick with that. For single clases I often end up feelin like I'm wasting half the skill points for stuff I'm never gonna use... It's funny cause you'd think sinle classes would be very specialised and muticlassing would mitigate that, but it's kinda the other way around.
Sawyer got rid of the general talents from the first game, which makes several of the classes far too shallow particularly in the early tiers. Single class characters from the first game are far more flexible than they are in the second game.
 

Ulfhednar

Savant
Joined
Apr 29, 2017
Messages
809
Location
Valhalla
He sprinkled them back in at various tiers, and not all classes get access to all the general talents from the first game. Maybe it's just a "feels" thing, but first tier talent selection from first game was something like 40 talents... second game is usually 4-8 for single class characters.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
They weren't 40, more like 20. And a lot of those are the weapon foci. It also depended on how many class abilities you had access to. Not to mention that a lot of them were incredibly specific and limited in their usage, only worth picking up when you have nothing else. However, they were indeed more in that specific level range, but eh, it seems trivial when you get a lot more on even the first power level increase in DF.
 

Ulfhednar

Savant
Joined
Apr 29, 2017
Messages
809
Location
Valhalla
They weren't 40, more like 20. And a lot of those are the weapon foci. It also depended on how many class abilities you had access to. Not to mention that a lot of them were incredibly specific and limited in their usage, only worth picking up when you have nothing else. However, they were indeed more in that specific level range, but eh, it seems trivial when you get a lot more on even the first power level increase in DF.
Thinking back a little harder, I think the "multiclass" talents from the first game actually added a lot of flexibility that you can only get in DF by actually multiclassing. Baby sneak attack or barb fury were really nice touches that you could build around. Anyway, not really wanting to stir this shit again.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
Some cross-class abilities were basically mandatory for most builds, though. There is literally no reason not to pick up baby sneak attack, barb fury and the like if you are a physical damage dealer. You also had no reason to pick up the Chanter, Druid or Priest (maybe even Fighter) cross-class abilities. This was a major problem in general in PoE1, where the useful talents are few and far between, making a lot of different builds play and be structured the same. I raised my eyebrow at this when my Priest, Cipher, Ranger and Barb picked up almost the exact same talents each level up, the only respite coming from special class talents.
 

Ulfhednar

Savant
Joined
Apr 29, 2017
Messages
809
Location
Valhalla
Some cross-class abilities were basically mandatory for most builds, though. There is literally no reason not to pick up baby sneak attack, barb fury and the like if you are a physical damage dealer. You also had no reason to pick up the Chanter, Druid or Priest (maybe even Fighter) cross-class abilities. This was a major problem in general in PoE1, where the useful talents are few and far between, making a lot of different builds play and be structured the same. I raised my eyebrow at this when my Priest, Cipher, Ranger and Barb picked up almost the exact same talents each level up, the only respite coming from special class talents.
I feel much the same about single class characters in the second game, where I would pick almost the same talents for every tree each time. It's weird because MC characters feel like a virtual playground of ideas while SC are more siloed than PoE1.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
I thought POE1 was better off without the later addition of the baby's multiclass talents - they just diluted the class differentials without enabling true flexibility.

POE2's multiclassing is one of the big positives for me; it's really fun to play around with it. The obvious con is that single classes were somewhat fucked over, but on the whole I am glad they went for it.

If only talent design was better across the board, it would help a lot with both kinds of systems.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
Meh, if the classes are diluted by giving a single ability to others, there is something wrong with the class design. The bigger problem is that by adding these talents you can finally (always) pick up some useful talents. Only a few were useful, though.
 

Sizzle

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2012
Messages
2,471
It depended on the ability.

For example, there was absolutely no reason not to pick the Rogue cross-class talent (the Apprentice's Sneak Attack) - it was a handy boost in damage that any class could benefit from.
 
Self-Ejected

aweigh

Self-Ejected
Joined
Aug 23, 2005
Messages
17,978
Location
Florida
i would often forego the cross-class talents in favor of being able to take the 3 status-effect resisting ones (body control, mind control, the third one, etc).
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
i would often forego the cross-class talents in favor of being able to take the 3 status-effect resisting ones (body control, mind control, the third one, etc).

There is no need for that when defense buffs are commonplace and ridiculously overpowered if you have a Priest in your party.
 

Drowed

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2011
Messages
1,676
Location
Core City
I'm not inclined to read 66 pages to find out if we've already talked about this, but WTF with the plot of this game? So you follow Godzilla Eothas around, and when you finnaly get to talk to him:
He tells you that he has decided to travel the world to reveal to everyone "the real nature of the gods". So far so good I guess, raging green-atheist-statue may be having its teenage crisis. But beyond that, he will destroy the magical mcguffin of reincarnation, because it's by using this that the gods can maintain their powers using the delicious soul juice. This implies through dialogue that people will simply no longer reincarnate, and souls will get stuck in that limbo thing/place. (Or maybe they'll get destroyed or dissipated? Who knows.)

Isn't that basically the apocalypse, and all life will end sooner or later? Knowing that the gods are creations from the past (POE1), the obvious question to ask would be "but how things worked before," or maybe "but how doing this will help," or even "this will not essentially cause the end of the motherfucking world," but you simply don't have this option? All your options for dialogue about other tangential and irrelevant things? What the fuck is with this retarded story? It would be (kind of) okay if you asked Eothas and he refused to respond because whatever, but not having the option to ask sounds stupid.

I was already kinda disinterested in the game at that point, but I wanted to at least see how the story ended. After this event I lost all interest in the game. Am I missing something? Is there a more complete explanation offered later? I don't think I will have enough willpower to continue playing this thing.
 
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fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,087
Location
Bulgaria
I'm not inclined to read 66 pages to find out if we've already talked about this, but WTF with the plot of this game? So you follow Godzilla Eothas around, and when you finnaly get to talk to him:
He tells you that he has decided to travel the world to reveal to everyone "the real nature of the gods". So far so good I guess, raging green-atheist-statue may be having its teenage crisis. But beyond that, he will destroy the magical mcguffin of reincarnation, because it's by using this that the gods can maintain their powers using the delicious soul juice. This implies through dialogue that people will simply no longer reincarnate, and souls will get stuck in that limbo thing/place. (Or maybe they'll get destroyed or dissipated? Who knows.)

Isn't that basically the apocalypse, and all life will end sooner or later? Knowing that the gods are creations from the past (POE1), the obvious question to ask would be "but how things worked before," or maybe "but how doing this will help," or even "this will not essentially cause the end of the motherfucking world," but you simply don't have this option? All your options for dialogue about other tangential and irrelevant things? What the fuck is with this retarded story? It would be (kind of) okay if you asked Eothas and he refused to respond because whatever, but not having the option to ask sounds stupid.

I was already kinda disinterested in the game at that point, but I wanted to at least see how the story ended. After this event I lost all interest in the game. Am I missing something? Is there a more complete explanation offered later? I don't think I will have enough willpower to continue playing this thing.
Yes,there is an explanation. Josh and the other writers are pretentious retards that are of average intelligence! There is no hidden meaning or some deep revelation about humanity and its nature,just retarded writing.
 

Yosharian

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2018
Messages
9,428
Location
Grand Chien
I'm not inclined to read 66 pages to find out if we've already talked about this, but WTF with the plot of this game? So you follow Godzilla Eothas around, and when you finnaly get to talk to him:
He tells you that he has decided to travel the world to reveal to everyone "the real nature of the gods". So far so good I guess, raging green-atheist-statue may be having its teenage crisis. But beyond that, he will destroy the magical mcguffin of reincarnation, because it's by using this that the gods can maintain their powers using the delicious soul juice. This implies through dialogue that people will simply no longer reincarnate, and souls will get stuck in that limbo thing/place. (Or maybe they'll get destroyed or dissipated? Who knows.)

Isn't that basically the apocalypse, and all life will end sooner or later? Knowing that the gods are creations from the past (POE1), the obvious question to ask would be "but how things worked before," or maybe "but how doing this will help," or even "this will not essentially cause the end of the motherfucking world," but you simply don't have this option? All your options for dialogue about other tangential and irrelevant things? What the fuck is with this retarded story? It would be (kind of) okay if you asked Eothas and he refused to respond because whatever, but not having the option to ask sounds stupid.

I was already kinda disinterested in the game at that point, but I wanted to at least see how the story ended. After this event I lost all interest in the game. Am I missing something? Is there a more complete explanation offered later? I don't think I will have enough willpower to continue playing this thing.
It's incredibly dumb. The only thing that would be interesting about this entire event would be what followed directly after, and that's where the game fricking ends.

Honestly the statue thing mostly just seems to be a plot device that exists to make you go places. What it's actually about is irrelevant. He stole your shit! Chase him! Don't ask questions!

I used to be a big Obsidian fan but this is two games in a row (3 if you count Tyranny) that they showed that they now cannot write to save their fucking lives (or their company, lmao), this relationship is over, I'm moving out.
 

Drowed

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2011
Messages
1,676
Location
Core City
What baffles me is that the first question, the most immediate, most obvious and most important question is the one that your character doesn't ask. It's shocking that no one has read the dialogue of that scene and asked, "but why the PC doesn't ask this?" A single question would make all the difference in this scene, even if in the end you were left without any explanation. I didn't even ragequit after this, I borequited.

Maybe if in the future expansions they add something in that scene, or maybe something that expands those questions a bit, I may come back to finish the game. Now I just can't be bothered.
 

Parabalus

Arcane
Joined
Mar 23, 2015
Messages
17,432
What baffles me is that the first question, the most immediate, most obvious and most important question is the one that your character doesn't ask. It's shocking that no one has read the dialogue of that scene and asked, "but why the PC doesn't ask this?" A single question would make all the difference in this scene, even if in the end you were left without any explanation. I didn't even ragequit after this, I borequited.

Maybe if in the future expansions they add something in that scene, or maybe something that expands those questions a bit, I may come back to finish the game. Now I just can't be bothered.

The obvious is that the world somehow functioned before the
Engwithans built the soul machine
, with some hints here and there that it was "chaotic", IIRC.

Trying to rebuild afterwards will come with the inevitable PoE3.
 

Drowed

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2011
Messages
1,676
Location
Core City
The obvious is that the world somehow functioned before the
Engwithans built the soul machine
, with some hints here and there that it was "chaotic", IIRC.

Yeah, I mean, the world exists. So it's obvious that somehow it worked before, but the problem isn't this, but again, the fact that this question isn't raised at a time when it is most relevant to the story. It isn't the fact that it's not answered (the answer could come in the supposed 3rd game), but the fact that you don't even have the option to talk about it that is stupid.

It's one more example of how the POE2 dialogues often make no sense. As already mentioned, we have several situations where the POE1 events would allow the Watcher to respond very differently because of what he already knows about the gods, but sometimes it simply seems that he had amnesia or something. Which, by the way, would be a cliché, but this could be justified by the fact that he loses part of the soul at the beginning of the game. From the dialogues we see during it, it surprises me that they didn't use this explanation to justify several moments in the story. It wouldn't be anything groundbreaking or new for sure, but at least it would make sense.

But at least in my experience, all those little flaws in the plot/dialogues end up culminating in that moment. It's when it all breaks, or at least it did for me. It's such an obvious, glaring and unjustifiable omission that I simply gave up. Worst of all is that recently I discovered that supposedly (at least if what Sawyer said below is true), the dialogue actually explored this issue, but they decided to cut it:
sw.png

I mean, what the fuck is wrong with you? Of all the things that you cut there, you cut this? I can't even say how stupid this is.
 
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Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,656
"This word count is out of control! Cut it down!"

*cuts critical information, keeps purple prose descriptions*
 

Cross

Arcane
Joined
Oct 14, 2017
Messages
2,983
These sequences felt like they disrupted the pacing of the conversations
Yes, God forbid a revelation about the true workings of the universe disrupts the pacing of the conversation. We wouldn't want any drama or intrigue in our story-driven game, now would we?

I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that Sawyer's approach to narrative is the same as his approach to gameplay. He is so obsessed with ensuring the player has as smooth a ride as possible that he tosses out anything that might cause the player to feel the mildest discomfort or mixed feelings, resulting in an utterly bland experience.
 
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