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

Can you imagine your PhD being on class balance in PoE? Talk about reaching for topics.

 

Lacrymas , suggest 4 pieces or parts of classical music compositions which could take the place of the combat music themes. No Sabre Dance though

 

Didn't they say there won't be loading screens in every little house you enter? All the maps are so small and I feel like I look at loading screens more than actually playing.

 

Just listen to Carl Nielsen's 5th Symphony on repeat:

 

Or the 'Peaux' movement from Iannis Xenakis's Pléiades:

 

Just the Augurs of Spring

some parts of this

I am certainly betraying my bias towards 20th century music. Keep in mind that "classical" musics are meant to be listened to, so they won't be background-y enough for a video game.

 

All great picks. Make sure you hear the Takács Quartet for the Bartók, Boulez and Gergiev for alternate yet complementary approaches to the Stravinsky, and the Borodin or Beethoven Quartets for the Shostakovich. Karajan's take on the 10th Symphony is quite good.

 

There certainly could be more "folklore-inspired" percussion pieces for Deadfire specifically to fit the theme better, but the idea is to be savage and make your heart race with adrenaline. You are in a fight after all. I was entertaining the idea for a bit more subdued, even funereal, music for the fight scenes in a game with a bit of introspection, as you are taking lives at the end of the day. I was thinking of having either alternative combat tracks in Demiurgos for that reason, or maybe the first ever time you get into combat to play a special piece as a symbol for lost innocence, I was thinking of naming it "Ballad of the Bloodied Doves". Too bad their kickstarter failed and we couldn't get anywhere.

 

As a side note, Nielsen's 5th features a passage wherein the snare drummer must improvise 'as if to stop the orchestra's progress at all costs'. Metal as fuck.

 

This is how I imagine my next sneaking on the adra giant :

 

One more for those who wish to go all out:

 

Not enough Rachmaninov here :


Or this :

 

Sure, there are exceptions. Many slow movements are ideal for this, but generally they are attention-grabbing in an undesirable way in such contexts. At least undesirable according to publishers and lead creative designers.

 

For pre-patch combat the only fitting battle music is this.

 

I appreciate the prestigious suggestions, but this is the only relevant combat music:

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

 

The drake + boar fight wasn't a problem for my 3-man "optimized" party. One-shot it even without using drugs and bombs.

 

Of course it doesn't solve the underlying problem, congrats, everybody figured that out already. The point is that it's a quick and easy houserule available for players.

Choosing not to level up until you feel you have to is effectively the same kind of houserule, just like when you beat IWD with level 1 characters.

 

Well, no longer
Was clearly too fun

Well, actually that sword, as well as one unique whirlwind pollaxe (with similarly impressive damage) were the only way I'm aware of to propagate special attacks/on-hit/on-crit effects to multiple enemies at once. Imagine affecting 3-5 enemies with Rising Torment (plus all enemies behind them). Or hitting 5 enemies with Arterial Strike, running away and having them bleed to death as they try to follow. Or well, Soul Annihilate 5 enemies at once (no longer works, apprently). The effect cone could also grow pretty big with extreme Intelligence.

 

I explored 25% of the map, I'm level 15 and most things die to left click or single empowered spell. Only some of main quest got buffed, much of side content, mini dungeons, factions, bounties were not.

Now waiting for most of content to get improved and XP gain sliced by 50%.

Bye bye 1.1 playthrough.

The beginning was very Tyranny though.

P.S. Don't play less than 5 people, having less characters will make you gain xp even quicker I think (together with extra xp from PoTD mobs and absurd quest rewards "visit Neketaka 1st time, get 5000 just by stepping into docks").

 

50% XP nurf will be too much,20% or 30% will be ok. The problem is not that you get to level 20,but that the enemy don't. There is no high level monsters in the game. I would rather be level 20 and fighting three dragons at once than be level 10 and fighting giants.

 

It should be something like
levels 1-8 as is
levels 9-12 xp cut but 20%
levels 13+ xp cut by extra 20-30%

it should also work like this with accuracy & saving throws, so leveling from 1 to 12 is big, but from 12 to 20 is more flat.

Basically something like plateau for some classes in AD&D like Druid but more average around power milestones.

But yes sure there are not enough high level monsters and dangerous far away lands too.

But there should be some sort of plateau where things calm the fuck down with their accuracy and defences so average goons which populate 70% of the game do not explode by clicking on them due to your rogue/ranger dual wielding bunch of superb/legendary sabres critting them with a single click on his 1 point cost uber ability.

 

I don't mind spending some time at max level if the challenge doesn't disappear (or ideally even increase) - from what you're saying they haven't nailed upscaling properly yet.

 

Bleh, stopping my 1.1 playthrough then, no point wasting time if it's gonna end up the same.

This was to be expected though, starter island and surrounding areas weren't actually that bad difficulty wise, even pre-patch. It's only after level 10 that things would go to shit.

 

Cleared the entire ruins, no problems at all, the Pala/Barb and my Skaen/Devoted (Battle Axe) do insane damage while the Druid is throwing around debuffs like crazy. It very much depends on what spells you pick up, some are overwhelmingly more useful than others. Funnily enough, the good ones aren't different than PoE1.

 

Shadenuat is correct - and fundamentally, what they needed to do was get away from levels increasing accuracy & defences. It confounds me that given the million different ways they revisited POE1 and thought hard about how to improve systems (with varying results), they chose not to change this whatsoever, causing the same pacing problem they had in POE1.

I don't know how open POE2 is to modding but a general encounter redesign mod with plenty of higher level enemies and custom immunities/etc would be cool.