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

[Sailor Woedica]

Sailor Woedica who do we kill for this sister?

Um I don't think anyone should die over a video game.

 

[Grauken]

Sailor Woedica who do we kill for this sister?

Um I don't think anyone should die over a video game.

Please, generalizations don't help anyone, things like these should always be considered on a case-by-case basis

 

[Murk]

Is there any way to turn off the metallic hollow chime sound effect during combat? The one that sounds like someone hit a metal pipe with a hammer. I thought it was part of the combat music, but it's just there on its own even with music off.

I don't know what moron thought this was a good idea, but jesus fucking christ it's obnoxious.

 

[Quillon]

someone revise this for the obvious

 

[aweigh]

Has anyone from the mod community made some kind of Overhaul/Re-balance mod for the Turn-Based mode?

Or, while we're at it, one for the RTwP mode?

I briefly looked at the Top Files on the Nexus', at least the first 2 pages, and didn't see anything made for TB mode.

EDIT: I did notice there's a working 6th Party Member mod, looked great from the included video. Might use that if I ever come back to this game.

 

[Daidre]

Has anyone from the mod community made some kind of Overhaul/Re-balance mod for the Turn-Based mode?

Or, while we're at it, one for the RTwP mode?

I briefly looked at the Top Files on the Nexus', at least the first 2 pages, and didn't see anything made for TB mode.

EDIT: I did notice there's a working 6th Party Member mod, looked great from the included video. Might use that if I ever come back to this game.

I know that some big work was done as part of Community Patch. Not only bug-fixing, but also balancing changes in separate installation. It is mostly for RTwP though.

 

[2house2fly]

I'm trying to work on a rebalance for turn-based mode, with the main focus being reducing HP so trash fights don't take a million years.

I don't have a lot of free time so it's slow going. The difficulty modes have a global "enemy HP" modifier which can be used nice and simply to, say, halve HP on all enemies, but the only way to reduce player HP is to reduce the HP associated with each class- but this data is, so far as I can tell, also used to calculate HP of human enemies. So if I cut Barbarian HP in half then a player Barbarian has their HP halved but an enemy Barbarian has their HP halved and then halved again by the global HP modifier. So I guess the only way to fairly reduce HP across the board is to edit the HP of every single entry in the character gamedatabundle. I'm using the global modifier right now for research, to see what feels satisfying- half HP, quarter HP, etc.

The head programmer BMac was really responsive to requests, I wish I'd nagged him when I had the chance to include a "player HP" difficulty setting to go with the "enemy HP" one.

 

[Haplo]

Has anyone from the mod community made some kind of Overhaul/Re-balance mod for the Turn-Based mode?

Or, while we're at it, one for the RTwP mode?

I briefly looked at the Top Files on the Nexus', at least the first 2 pages, and didn't see anything made for TB mode.

EDIT: I did notice there's a working 6th Party Member mod, looked great from the included video. Might use that if I ever come back to this game.

I know that some big work was done as part of Community Patch. Not only bug-fixing, but also balancing changes in separate installation. It is mostly for RTwP though.

Yeah, I'd say those changes make a lot of sense and are rather uncontroversial - but also mild, on the light side. Don't change the balance a whole lot. Stuff like making Uncanny Luck (Tier 5 ability!) add 10% crit conversion, rather then measly 5% from vanilla. Or making Mental Binding last base 7 seconds instead of 6.

Probably the biggest changes involve bringing some abilities a notch closer to how they were in PoE1: for example Mind Lance is changed to Interrupt on Graze (making it useful for stunlocking), rather then on Hit.

 

[Lacrymas]

I don't think there are enough passionate fans of this game to rebalance this mess. There are just too many inconsistencies and contradictions in the classes, especially subclasses, some of them being carried over from PoE1.

 

[Orma]

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I don't think there are enough passionate fans of this game to rebalance this mess. There are just too many inconsistencies and contradictions in the classes, especially subclasses, some of them being carried over from PoE1.

Even if there were passionate fans willing to do it, community balancing patches usually suck.

99% of time these patches are made by "muh realism" nerds who think they are experts about medieval weaponry because they wear fedora and study the way of the blade by watching furry porn.

So instead balancing the gameplay, they do shit like nerfing fireball damage "because 3rd degree burns take more time to develop" or "you cant penetrate a plate armor with a dagger" and similar autistic nonsense that does nothing to improve the game.

I have spoken.

 

[Smoker]

So I'm like 13 hours into a TB campaign(not bad if you have combat at 2x) and I installed the 6th party member mod from the nexus.. I'm getting party banter more frequently now. Did this fix a damn bug? I had about 8 the whole game before this.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Haplo]

This game really has crazy good itemization. I guess the best itemization in a CRPG ever.

I'm really impressed by how certain items synergize with builds - or in some cases make or break builds.
Never before have I experienced such strong influence of items on builds and playstyles. Really makes them memorable.

I've written a lot before about Grave Calling saber, Hand Mortars, Engoliero do Espirs estoc, Lord Darryn's Voulge.

Now the Seeker's Fang rapier will join my favorite weapon club, I guess. Its quite challenging to earn and empower it, so it feels properly rewarding to wield.
In the hands of a cipher has crazy DOT abilities (one of which scales with a Cipher's Focus). Also a strong per encounter multi-hit aoe Spider's Flurry ability (that's also very helpful to apply these DOTs and/or gather a lot of Focus).

 

[Orma]

Now the Seeker's Fang rapier will join my favorite weapon club, I guess. Its quite challenging to earn and empower it, so it feels properly rewarding to wield.
In the hands of a cipher has crazy DOT abilities (one of which scales with a Cipher's Focus). Also a strong per encounter multi-hit aoe ability (that's also very helpful to apply these DOTs and/or gather a lot of Focus).

It was pretty good on ydwin, who is sub-optimal

 

[tripedal]

Thinking of getting back into this, how's the TB mode?

 

[frajaq]

Thinking of getting back into this, how's the TB mode?

Considering that the game was made with RTwP in mind you're gonna run into some issues, but its playable

Some of the issues are: a) some trash mob fights that go pretty quickly in RTwP might take some time in TB mode, testing your annoyance limit
b) things like Dexterity/Attack Speed balance dont work really well in TB, which favors hard-hitting weapons over speedy low damage ones

 

[Reinhardt]

Thinking of getting back into this, how's the TB mode?

Don't go to Undercity.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I found TB Pillars completely unplayable. I hate RtWP more than I would hate an ass tumor, but that doesn't mean any TB automatically beats any RtWP 100% of the time. PoE2 TB implementation is clearly inferior to vanilla run, the game just wasn't build for it, there's no use playing it.

 

[Tigranes]

TB was perfectly fine for me, pretty enjoyable. It's obviously a mod stuck on to a fundamentally RTWP game, just like in PKM, and that changes balance making for some oddities. But having played the game through on RTWP it was reasonably refreshing to do TB.

The key thing is that everything takes longer, and so trash mobs become more annoying, just like in PKM TB. I wouldn't use it for a completionist playthrough, more of "I've finished the game already, here's a different thing to try, but hey I'm not going to kill everything."

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I don't know how much people have actually played the tb mode, but it's obviously rather low effort. It trivializes the game a lot (not that it was a hardcore experience before, but...) and the balance (c)(tm) goes off the rails, with some abilities becoming objectively much better than their, theoretically, more advanced counterparts.

And be wary that the tb has a serious bug that makes neutral npc aggro when you initiate combat with someone, making quite a few quests in Neketaka-sraka-baka-whatever (didn't play farther with it) broken and unfinishable. This is still present in the final patch.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Tigranes Were you playing POTD?

 

[Tigranes]

Tigranes Were you playing POTD?

always.

what did you find unplayable?

 

[Haplo]

TB was perfectly fine for me, pretty enjoyable. It's obviously a mod stuck on to a fundamentally RTWP game, just like in PKM, and that changes balance making for some oddities. But having played the game through on RTWP it was reasonably refreshing to do TB.

The key thing is that everything takes longer, and so trash mobs become more annoying, just like in PKM TB. I wouldn't use it for a completionist playthrough, more of "I've finished the game already, here's a different thing to try, but hey I'm not going to kill everything."

Comparing it to PKM TB mode is a big mistake, IMO. PKM works flawlessly in TB mode. All abilities work as intended. Sure, the difficulty, mobility and class balance do shift a bit, but overall the changes are much smaller then in case of PoE2.
Deadfire was meticulously designed with minute details regarding action speed/damage/armor/effect duration. TB mode throws all of that out of the window. What's left isn't that pretty mechanics-wise. Granted, checking the remaining durations of buffs/debuffs every 2 seconds in real-time DID get old, even to me. Doesn't help that Deadfire is so heavy buff/debuff/enemy strength/weakness focused (the last 2 are actually a good thing).

Furthermore I personally never found PKM TB trash fights annoying - well, any more annoying then RTwP. Increase animation speed, use nukes/alpha strikes/aoe and they are gone before you notice. These are actually much easier to aim properly TB.

Personally once I've installed the PKM TB mod, I've never felt the urge to switch back to RTwP, even for the trash fights.

 

[Tigranes]

I mean, you're right. I wouldn't recommend TB as the default way to play for Deadfire, whereas I would for PKM. I was just thinking about the fact that in both games, TB introduced some quirks but was for me perfectly playable.

The biggest difference in PKM TB for me was that you could appreciate the impact of each individual skill more, helping it feel less like a high speed car crash with effects melding into each other and more of a system where you decide what is going to do what and then observe each attack and ability fire. That difference, for me personally, was also the case in Deadfire even as you did have to deal with more weird quirks appearing in the folds.

Trash mob tolerance varies widely for people, I think, so it's really at their own discretion.