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

[Safav Hamon]

No, they aren't brilliant. Writing in general is lacking and quest design is lacking in Neketaka. Which means they are just (pretty) good. Neketaka is worse than Fort Deadlight and Old City in terms of quality, so it's just good (in the context of the current gaming climate).

Archmage's Vault, Family Pride, A Glimpse Beyond, and Shadow under Neketaka are all great quests. Delvers Row, Harsh Medicine, and the Shipwrights Plight are also very good.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

No, they aren't brilliant. Writing in general is lacking and quest design is lacking in Neketaka. Which means they are just (pretty) good. Neketaka is worse than Fort Deadlight and Old City in terms of quality, so it's just good (in the context of the current gaming climate).

Writing does NOT affect design of location, it's like saying that bad script of weak comedy affects architecture of stage and whole building where goes performance. Actors can suck at performance of shitty script, but building will be still good.

Neketaka is good until the fetch quests kill your goodwill by endless loading screens

This, I disagree with Safav Hamon about Neketaka exactly because endless loading screens, why they didn't implemented fast travel from one interior to another I don't understand.

 

[Lacrymas]

Archmage's Vault, Family Pride, A Glimpse Beyond, and Shadow under Neketaka are all great quests. Delvers Row, Harsh Medicine, and the Shipwrights Plight are also very good.

Yes, and I did mention Arkemyr's and A Glimpse Beyond, but they are swamped by quests like "go talk to the guy who stole Fassina's gloves", "go fetch my bag from the bathhouse", "go talk to old woman for Serafen (pretty much all companion quests are like this)", "go steal adra crates/musical conch", "go talk to captain of ship for some poor people" etc. The small maps which force endless loading screens don't help. Quests are too simple most of the time.

 

[Safav Hamon]

You're being dishonest by calling those fetch quests. They're far more complex than that.

The bathhouse quest will trigger an event where you get ambushed and either have to talk your way out of it or fight a difficult mob. The gloves quest can be completed in a variety of ways, including buying the gloves, persuading him to give you the gloves, pickpocketing the gloves, killing him for the gloves, or having the Rauitai soldiers force him to give you the gloves. There's also an additional layer of complexity in Fassinas reaction if Bertenno dies or is taken away by the soldiers.

 

[AwesomeButton]

If the "Steal that guy's crotch" quest had been more involved it would have gone into Witcher 3 Heart of Stone territory. But wait, Witcher 3 was a game with bad writing, right

 

[Safav Hamon]

Another good example of a fetch quest that's not really a fetch quest would be Harsh medicine.

1. You can kill Ernezzo and take the medicine from the backroom
2. You can pickpocket the key from Ernezzo and sneak in at night when there are less guards
3. You can use your mechanics skill to sneak in at night and picklock the door
4. You can assassinate Spindle Man to have Ernezzo give you the medicine
5. You can hire Rust to kill Spindle Man and Ernezzo will give you the medicine
6. You can hire Rust to kill Ernezzo and then steal the medicine
7.. If you have a perception of 18 you can find the secret entrance to the backroom and steal the medicine
8. If you have a high reputation with the Delvers Row criminals I believe he'll just give you the medicine
9. Or you could just buy the medicine from Ernezzo

 

[Quillon]

Neketaka lacks side quest pacing for a big hub city. Once you complete all the side content in it, you can safely ignore it until the faction choice stuff comes up. Come to think of it whole game is disposable content, done with a map, NEXT... until its over. For a game with open-ish world we should have had reasons to go to places(at least the fucking big city) again & again, not just those 2 times for da main quest.

 

[Lacrymas]

If the "Steal that guy's crotch" quest had been more involved it would have gone into Witcher 3 Heart of Stone territory. But wait, Witcher 3 was a game with bad writing, right

Yes, Twitcher 3 is a game with not impressive writing. Stealing the conch was literally going into the house, picking the lock on the chest/finding the key upstairs and taking the conch. While there are people in the room. Same with stealing adra crates, go into mill -> stealth -> take the crates.

 

[Safav Hamon]

Neketaka lacks side quest pacing for a big hub city. Once you complete all the side content in it, you can safely ignore it until the faction choice stuff comes up. Come to think of it whole game is disposable content, done with a map, NEXT... until its over. For a game with open-ish world we should have had reasons to go to places(at least the fucking big city) again & again, not just those 2 times for da main quest.

First off, that's only a problem if you do all the sidequests at once. If you break it up and explore then the content in Neketaka should last you until the end of the game. It's an open world afterall.

Besides that, I regularly returned to Neketaka to buy supplies, sell equipment, and because many sidequests demanded that I do so. What else could they add to make it better? Minigames?

 

[Quillon]

First off, that's only a problem if you do all the sidequests at once. If you break it up and explore then the content in Neketaka should last you until the end of the game. It's an open world afterall.

I complete all the quests I could in an area before I move on in every fucking game I cared to play. They needed to pace the quests, make them appear later, tie them to how much player has progressed in main story, whatever. I shouldn't need to pace myself.

Witcher 3 does this very well, Josh should have played more than 2 hours of it.

 

[2house2fly]

Does it? I wandered around doing side quests and then when there was nothing else to do I carried on the main quest. Don't remember any more side quests coming up after finding Ciri or whatever

 

[Safav Hamon]

I complete all the quests I could in an area before I move on in every fucking game I cared to play. They needed to pace the quests, make them appear later, tie them to how much player has progressed in main story, whatever. I shouldn't need to pace myself

It's an open world game, the entire point is to pace yourself. Nobody forced you to spend 20 hours doing quests in the same location.

 

[Quillon]

I complete all the quests I could in an area before I move on in every fucking game I cared to play. They needed to pace the quests, make them appear later, tie them to how much player has progressed in main story, whatever. I shouldn't need to pace myself

It's an open world game, the entire point is to pace yourself. Nobody forced you to spend 20 hours doing quests in the same location.

I play RPGs expecting consequences for my actions down the line, the more I do when they are available the better the chances there'll be reactivity for them(I also expect reactivity if I don't do them when they are available but that's another matter). I don't treat it as ubisoft checkbox sandbox.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah Witcher 3 does excellent job spreading up the quests and keeping them relevant throughout the game.

 

[Ivan]

dude that was my exact reaction, except I knew it would be the case when the cutscene was playing. all that hype for vendor trash

 

[Lacrymas]

Devil of Caroc best sacrifice hands down. Maybe Sagani is a close second if you are ranged.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Meanwhile I never even thought about sacrifice of any companion for stat boost, I guess something wrong with me.

 

[2house2fly]

From what I've heard you DO get the armour if you sacrifice her

 

[Quillon]

Yeah if she's dead her armour appears. Tho she dies anyway in PoE 1, "if you have seen her die" then.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Btw why you all even need stat boost in game which you considered as easy? Isn't it's like "cheesing" your way?

 

[AwesomeButton]

If the "Steal that guy's crotch" quest had been more involved it would have gone into Witcher 3 Heart of Stone territory. But wait, Witcher 3 was a game with bad writing, right

Yes, Twitcher 3 is a game with not impressive writing. Stealing the conch was literally going into the house, picking the lock on the chest/finding the key upstairs and taking the conch. While there are people in the room. Same with stealing adra crates, go into mill -> stealth -> take the crates.

On the contrary, Witcher 3 is one of the few AAA games worth your time if you are an educated person, and the main reason is its writing and characters. And the Heart of Stone main quest (I see you haven't played it, but that's ok) is a shining example of why this is so.

From what I've heard you DO get the armour if you sacrifice her

I can confirm it does. I don't know if that's a bug or not.

Devil of Caroc dies (according to the PoE end slides) even if you didn't sacrifice her though, so that's to be taken into account.

 

[Efe]

is this merely about whats gained? the end result? Whats the point of playing poe when you know almost everything you get and are is taken from your by next game.

I never gave anyone to pool but i find myself caring less about what happens in first game since i know the outcome now. Its just free stats..

 

[Safav Hamon]

Well not exactly. At least one character will comment on whether you used the blood pool.

 

[Lacrymas]

I've only come across one character who comments on that -

Spoiler

Your soul has a blackened core when you get it back in Hasongo and Eothas says he sees that, but won't judge you for your "darkness"

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

I would never have hoped to see Deadfire becoming this big. Traveling system is an improvement even over Fallout 1,2 and Wasteland 2.
And that lighting and weather system, everyone has their duties and sleep time (schedule) just like in Arcanum. If I spent over 400 hours in POE1, wonder how much this time....