Eternity Pillars of Eternity II Beta Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Lacrymas]

I had 3 RES on my Skaen Priest and could still pacify the Alpine Dragon and reposition myself. Not sure if I extensively talked with it before that. I vaguely remember that it tells you to leave at first, you can agree and it won't attack you, giving you the opportunity to reposition. I think you need high RES (20?) to threaten it.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I think the only talk check you specifically need resolve is vs the Alpine Dragon, so he doesn't attack immediately and you can reposition. Pmuch all my chars had RES 3 and didn't really miss it, Lore+INT + MIG + reps does the trick.

there were a number of resolve checks; I remember because I like to pass speech checks and these always fucked me.

 

[Wulfris]

Where in hell did they dredge up the idea that their ship combat system is fun? Just watching the video makes me want to take a nap.

Lets have all your actions in the form of dialogue choices on a book. So a single misclick can screw you. Wait, you know all of those naval combat games? Lets just ignore 'em. Sid Meier's Pirates! is fun, but lets instead do combat in the most boring way possible. Lastly, lets make boarding use the tactical combat so that it can be pretty much the same every single time. Because players don't play CRPG's for the epic locations or cool dungeons, nah, lets restrict player movement on a ship deck, and repeat ad naseum.

One of you guys must be involved in EA, prove me wrong. Please. I want the game to be worth my money.... but when you add in a half-assed major system. I gotta take pause. Especially this late in development.

 

[fantadomat]

Res is good for checks there are a lot of them,but mostly to give you different text on the screen. Most of them were useless. The most useful check in the game is in the opening area,after that they are mainly useless. The worst one is the burning house in the WM,it is the only place where you have to be able to use magic and only magic to succeed fully.

 

[CptMace]

Lets have all your actions in the form of dialogue choices on a book. So a single misclick can screw you.

Would have preferred a full blown real time naval combat system too, actually pretty much everybody (not Lacrymas, he's not into fun) would have. But I'm afraid - and despite what people rabidly suggested in former posts - that they actually spent most of their time and resources on the actual gameplay and not on the naval stuff.
T'is a shame, since the underrated advantage of the awesome button is that you definitely can't misclick. I see it's your main concern here.

Wait, you know all of those naval combat games? Lets just ignore 'em. Sid Meier's Pirates! is fun, but lets instead do combat in the most boring way possible. Lastly, lets make boarding use the tactical combat so that it can be pretty much the same every single time. Because players don't play CRPG's for the epic locations or cool dungeons, nah, lets restrict player movement on a ship deck, and repeat ad naseum.

I'm fairly certain - although indulge me for this speculation - that you won't have to engage into several naval encounters if you don't actually seek to do so.

One of you guys must be involved in EA, prove me wrong. Please. I want the game to be worth my money.... but when you add in a half-assed major system. I gotta take pause. Especially this late in development.

I would be way more concerned about the actual content when it comes to judging if the game is worth its price or not. Especialy writing, encounters, exploration and - more generally - the capacity of the game to really surprise the player. First game had little to surprise the player (well the Skaen's blood pool was cool). After POE3.0, these are the necessary improvements I expect, as I was among those who generously acknowledged poe as bg1 : I expect no less from poe2 but bg2 in terms of jump in quality.

ps: why are people so negative.

 

[Lacrymas]

but when you add in a half-assed major system.

Does it look like a major system to you? It's a throwaway mini-game at best, like Pazaak or the racing in KotOR. They weren't this boring, though. The difference is the obsessive marketing and Josh's ultradefensive attitude towards his pet project.

as I was among those who generously acknowledged poe as bg1 : I expect no less from poe2 but bg2 in terms of jump in quality.

BG1 is amazing and different than BG2. I can't say that one or the other is better. You can't compare classics in such a way. PoE1 is not on the same level as BG1, not even close.

 

[Lacrymas]

PoE1's issues in terms of combat, narrative, exploration, lore and even music have been discussed very deeply. It's not simply a case of too many trash mobs or not enough cheese tactics, that's only true if you haven't read any post more than 2 sentences long about it. If that was actually the case, PoE would've been regarded as one of the best games ever and up there with the classics, everyone would excuse the amount of trash mobs (that can possibly be modded out) or lack of obvious cheese (which is actually a plus).

 

[CptMace]

BG1 is amazing and different than BG2. I can't say that one or the other is better. You can't compare classics in such a way. PoE1 is not on the same level as BG1, not even close.

I actually enjoy BG1 more than BG2. This has to do with a variety of reasons, mostly free roaming at low levels is a great DnD experience in my book.
But you get what I meant : they worked a lot on character interactions and npcs, added several qol improvements etc.
It wasn't a comment on general design.

I don't compare poe and bg on any other ground that the fact they're both games that formed their respective developers to new engines/tools etc. POE is even more in this "experimental" category, with its systems designed from scratch.

edit : so to extend on my original post. I expect poe2 to go a step further in main quest design (BG1 had very simple milestones [Fight - Letters] to advance the plot while BG2 delved into modest branching for instance) or companions (little exchanges here and there for specific combinations in BG1 into banters/romances/involvement in the quest in BG2).This kind of stuff.
There was no comment on general design or quality, sorry for the poor formulation.

You can't compare classics in such a way.

Although I didn't, I could. Very much so, thank god.

 

[Parabalus]

I think the only talk check you specifically need resolve is vs the Alpine Dragon, so he doesn't attack immediately and you can reposition. Pmuch all my chars had RES 3 and didn't really miss it, Lore+INT + MIG + reps does the trick.

there were a number of resolve checks; I remember because I like to pass speech checks and these always fucked me.

I meant that, even thought Resolve is the most used speech check, every check has 2-3 ways to get it done, so you don't need to put points into RES. I too like to pass speech checks almost obsessively and the RES check could always be sidestepped.

as I was among those who generously acknowledged poe as bg1 : I expect no less from poe2 but bg2 in terms of jump in quality.

BG1 is amazing and different than BG2. I can't say that one or the other is better. You can't compare classics in such a way. PoE1 is not on the same level as BG1, not even close.

Even thinking about playing unmodded Bg1 makes me nauseous - the crawling movement speed to eraser 30 woodland maps to find the 1-2 points of interest on them combined with the garbage that is low level DnD combat.

 

[Lacrymas]

You can't compare classics in such a way.

Although I didn't, I could. Very much so, thank god.

No, you can't. It's like comparing Dr. Faustus with The Glass Bead Game. It's mental and shows a lack of class. BG1 and 2 obviously aren't as high as those novels, but you get what I mean.

Even thinking about playing unmodded Bg1 makes me nauseous - the crawling movement speed to eraser 30 woodland maps to find the 1-2 points of interest on them combined with the garbage that is low level DnD combat.

Good thing there's the existence of modded BG1. While there is no such thing with PoE1 and never will be. I can be much harsher with P1 or anyone who vaguely compares it positively with BG1 (or anyone who brofists obviously retarded posts), trust me, but I've chosen not to be before I see what they've done with P2. Lilura is right in her crusade against degenerate and revisionist narratives like those.

 

[Mazisky]

Tbh Bg1 had better settings and mood than Bg2.

I liked more the classic medieval fantasy of Bg1 than the weirdness of Bg2. In many points it seemed i was playing a sci-fi game

 

[Cross]

as I was among those who generously acknowledged poe as bg1 : I expect no less from poe2 but bg2 in terms of jump in quality.

Not going to happen. Even setting aside the level of (in)competence of the people involved, BG2 had the advantage of being built on the foundation of BG1, whereas Deadfire is redoing things from scratch in pursuit of Sawyer's eternal quest for perfect balance.

Look at how character import is handled: in BG2 you started at the level you ended BG1 with, which meant the designers could make higher level content different from BG1's low-level AD&D adventure. In Deadfire you're starting at level 1, just like in PoE.

Or look at the mechanics. BG2 kept BG1's systems (with some minor adjustments) and simply expanded them, with almost triple the amount of spells there were in BG1 and lots of new abilities for non-spellcasters as well. Deadfire is replacing PoE's systems with new, arguably inferior ones and looks to have even less spell/ability variety than PoE's anemic selection.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I have yet to meet someone who, when you get deep down into it, is just giga-fucking enraged the game doesn't have easy cheese tactics and throws up a smokescreen of "unga bunga muh trashmobs, muh infodumps" when they say they don't like it.

You have yet to open your ears. The combat in PoE started out as complete shit, and in 3.0 was as little shit as possible, given the compromises made in the early stages of development, in order to fit the time constraints and overcome technical difficulties that inevitably come up when you are studying a new technology as you go (as was the case with the Unity engine). What all the patching in the world can't fix though is the fact that the spiritual succesor's combat plays nothing like an IE game's combat. The problem is that it plays much worse.

PoE doesn't have easy cheese tactics? What? Locking down doorways was standard practice up until TWM1 when the AI improvements were made.

Infodumps, maybe a valid gipe for other people, but as I've said numerous times, I don't start playing a fantasy RPG expecting Alexander Dumas, Victor Hugo, or O. Henry levels of plot twists and engaging dialogue. Even if we account for this though, we have the lead writer on record saying all text in the game is essentially first draft, not passed editing. Because no time.

Are you seriously going to try to compare the exploration of BG to the exploration in PoE? As much as I would like it to be otherwise, PoE feels too thin when we start talking about exploration, due to both encounter variety, lack of development time to insert BG-style peculiarities to wilderness areas, and technical difficulties necessitating smaller size of areas compared to those in BG.

That's all at first glance. Now go on and be ridiculous.

 

[AwesomeButton]

ow PoEII....we'll see. Many of the improvements look like they're going to get us that BGII style jump in quality. But...I have a sneaking suspiscion that Sawyer's doubling down on this dumb shit naval combat shit is gonna hurt the game.

Mm, from all I've seen and from the direction that Deadfire's design and innovations seem to be taking, I'd say we'd be lucky if in PoEII we have a good counterpart to the first BG, not the second. The first PoE remains a cheap Chinese replica of an abstract "Infinity Engine game", at least until you get to the White March. Then it shows some of its own unique character, with better variety of encounters, better location/dungeon design, better atmosphere, and better masking of the AI shortcomings.

 

[Efe]

problem wasnt the existence of info dumps, it was that almost every npc did it.
they all act like the kind of person you just turn your back and leave them b while they keep talking

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

but when you add in a half-assed major system.

Does it look like a major system to you? It's a throwaway mini-game at best, like Pazaak or the racing in KotOR. They weren't this boring, though. The difference is the obsessive marketing and Josh's ultradefensive attitude towards his pet project.

The storybook ship combat aside, the ship exploration seems like a major improvement, at least theoretically. IMO definitely preferable to clicking on the next location icon and insta-traveling for eight hours. If you can play every ship battle as a boarding action, then they're really just random encounters (albeit with the same recycled scenery unless there's a lot of enemy ship variety). I wonder how long it would take them to animate all of the ship combat stuff even in a half-assed fashion, without changing the turn based system. While it wouldn't change anything important, it would certainly be more marketable. I'm sure someone has mentioned this before, but the naval marketing blitz must be because D:OS2 has a ship, right?

Even thinking about playing unmodded Bg1 makes me nauseous - the crawling movement speed to eraser 30 woodland maps to find the 1-2 points of interest on them combined with the garbage that is low level DnD combat.

I also prefer BG2, but you're nuts about the low level combat in BG being garbage. One of the best things about BG (or any other D&D campaign where you start at level 1) is the progression from low level weakling to level 7-9 ass-kicker.

No, you can't. It's like comparing Dr. Faustus with The Glass Bead Game. It's mental and shows a lack of class. BG1 and 2 obviously aren't as high as those novels, but you get what I mean.

What could be more natural than comparing a game with its sequel? More like Lotte in Weimar vs The Sorrows of Young Werther, or the Forsyte Saga vs Buddenbrooks. Or fuji apples vs pink ladies; certainly not the apples and oranges comparison that is Mann vs Hesse.

 

[CptMace]

Not going to happen. Even setting aside the level of (in)competence of the people involved, BG2 had the advantage of being built on the foundation of BG1, whereas Deadfire is redoing things from scratch in pursuit of Sawyer's eternal quest for perfect balance.

ps: why are people so negative.

Look at how character import is handled: in BG2 you started at the level you ended BG1 with, which meant the designers could make higher level content different from BG1's low-level AD&D adventure. In Deadfire you're starting at level 1, just like in PoE.

I don't get your point.

Or look at the mechanics. BG2 kept BG1's systems (with some minor adjustments) and simply expanded them, with almost triple the amount of spells there were in BG1 and lots of new abilities for non-spellcasters as well. Deadfire is replacing PoE's systems with new, arguably inferior ones and looks to have even less spell/ability variety than PoE's anemic selection.

Arguably is the key word here.
Are you going to take into consideration that BG adapted AD&D at some point ? I would rather consider the first game to be flawed in that regard (a D&D game with no beholder, no dragon, no troll, no lich etc) than anything. But it's arguable of course.

It's mental and shows a lack of class.

I'd rather lack class and prestige and accept that it's possible to compare two rtwp party-based hack n slashers. I'd do it with no remorse, really.

 

[Infinitron]

PoE2 and D:OS 2 both came up with the idea of having a ship independently. Swen even remarked upon it at the time, before they even officially announced that D:OS 2 had a ship.

 

[Lacrymas]

What could be more natural than comparing a game with its sequel? More like Lotte in Weimar vs The Sorrows of Young Werther, or the Forsyte Saga vs Buddenbrooks. Or fuji apples vs pink ladies; certainly not the apples and oranges comparison that is Mann vs Hesse.

I meant in terms of what is "better". They are different and great in their own right and are both classics. Another example - Richard Strauss' Death and Transfiguration and Also sprach Zarathustra. Both tone poems by the same composer, yet you can't say which is "better". If BG2 was a remake of BG1, like PoE2 is a remake of PoE1, sure, but it's not. They are different enough to be thought of as different, rather than relying on plebeian and vapid comparisons like that.

About the ship thing - I obviously meant the combat, not the exploration.

 

[CptMace]

PoE2 is a remake of PoE1

Damn that "back to level 1" business really piss people off it seems.

Look at how character import is handled: in BG2 you started at the level you ended BG1 with, which meant the designers could make higher level content different from BG1's low-level AD&D adventure. In Deadfire you're starting at level 1, just like in PoE.

I don't get your point.

I get your point now.

Funny how BG's legacy turns out to be way, way heavier than we could have imagined. Back to level 1 doesn't trouble a single person in any other game that imports saves, but here it makes the sequel a mere remake.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

PoE2 and D:OS 2 both came up with the idea of having a ship independently. Swen even remarked upon it at the time, before he even announced that D:OS 2 had a ship.

I didn't mean to suggest Josh stole the idea, just that the maritime marketing blitz makes more sense in light of the success of D:OS2.

What could be more natural than comparing a game with its sequel? More like Lotte in Weimar vs The Sorrows of Young Werther, or the Forsyte Saga vs Buddenbrooks. Or fuji apples vs pink ladies; certainly not the apples and oranges comparison that is Mann vs Hesse.

I meant in terms of what is "better". They are different and great in their own right and are both classics. Another example - Richard Strauss' Death and Transfiguration and Also Sprach Zarathustra. Both tone poems by the same composer, yet you can't say which is "better". If BG2 was a remake of BG1, like PoE2 is a remake of PoE1, sure, but it's not.

As much as I hate to give the plebeian answer, Zarathustra is better, at least in my opinion. Maybe this is simply a difference in mindset. You are a person of capacious mind, as the Chinese would say, whereas I am a serial monogamist who can't help but compare like with like in search of "better."

About the ship thing - I obviously meant the combat, not the exploration.

I didn't intend the ship stuff as an argument--you've been crystal clear about what you dislike.

 

[AwesomeButton]

PoE2 and D:OS 2 both came up with the idea of having a ship independently. Swen even remarked upon it at the time, before they even officially announced that D:OS 2 had a ship.

Deadfire's increased exposure coud well be an attempt to catch the attention of the DOS2 crowd. God forbid it succeeds to capture them in swathes. I have to grant it to Deadfire that unlike in DOS2, the ship stronghold is a ship and a stronghold more than superficially.

 

[Lacrymas]

PoE2 is a remake of PoE1

Damn that "back to level 1" business really piss people off it seems.

Look at how character import is handled: in BG2 you started at the level you ended BG1 with, which meant the designers could make higher level content different from BG1's low-level AD&D adventure. In Deadfire you're starting at level 1, just like in PoE.

I don't get your point.

I get your point now.

Funny how BG's legacy turns out to be way, way heavier than we could have imagined. Back to level 1 doesn't trouble a single person in any other game that imports saves, but here it makes the sequel a mere remake.

It's not because it starts off at level 1, even if that's one of the big parts. It's an obvious attempt to (democratically) remake the combat system, the stronghold, the exploration and probably an edited narrative that doesn't rely on empty lore to fill space. While gluing extraneous and vestigial bits on, like the ship combat. BG2 wasn't designed democratically AFAIK, they just saw what the fans resonated with in BG1 and concentrated on those things to make something different.

 

[CptMace]

Fair enough, I see what you mean, and it actually makes sense in that regard. There is a dimension in deadfire development of "take 2" indeed. Which kind of echoes to what I said about the "experimental" aspect of bg1/poe1.
But I dispute the idea that it's somewhat necessary, or even helping, to have the same systems and level continuity to make a proper sequel.

 

[Mazisky]

They should have made an entirely new storyline and characters for PoE2 but someone cried about keeping saves and Bg1 to bg2 bullshit so we have an half sequel.