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

No one pirated deadfire beta because of reasons i guess.

 

That's not really the problem. I mean, yeah, sure, you'll do a bit more damage, but he has such a gigantic health pool that it will only shave off 30 seconds at best. I also have a party where only 2 characters rely on gear - Skaen Priest/Devoted (in which I am disappointed), Goldpact Knight/Berserker, the mercenary Wizard (I didn't have enough money to recruit a custom one, the money console command doesn't work), Lifegiver Druid and Beckoner Chanter. I wanted to recreate my really shitty party from before to see if it will be better. I gave all the best gear I had to the Priest and Paladin, so they are decked out as much as possible. The boss penetrates plate + Gilded Enmity + Barb passive for extra armor like it's nothing, a thing I warned about happening, so wearing any kind of armor is a waste in this fight, and can two-shot my Paladin if I don't spam heals.

The defenses of enemies seem really overtuned for this level, they sometimes have double the Accuracy of the Wizard with no easy way to debuff them because the debuffs also have to land against defenses. This is especially true with the titan, where he has two to three times more defenses than we have Accuracy, so only the various Minoletta's missiles can hit him, but you only have 3 casts of those. I have to test this fight with a more melee-heavy party, but that wasn't the point, the point was to see if spellcaster-heavy parties can keep up with melee, which seems to not be the case. You can kill him, as I did it, but I had to kite around the whole map and cheese the Beckoner summons because it's almost impossible (the stars have to align) to defeat him like it was designed.

Some characters feel really limited and one-trick ponies, like Lifegiver and Beckoner, they are great at what they do, but they feel like hogging space that can be filled with better and more varied characters. What I think is that the grand, overwhelming issues haven't really been fixed and only minor quibbles have been addressed, like the Wizard doing more damage and more reliably (which is still not enough on PotD). Penetration is exactly like I warned it's going to be - either ridiculously good or pointless to wear any armor depending on the fight. Empower is still pointless in 99% of the fights, I only used it because the titan fight lasted like 15 minutes and I had to reset my abilities or Empower Minoletta's to finish him off. They've given only 1 way to increase Penetration of spells - the passive Secrets of Rime, Scion of Flame etc.

So, yeah, the big issues are still there and still as nonsensical as ever, they just addressed some issues with the micro design, like Wizards, which I still think are not good enough for PotD. Subclasses really only work with multi-classing, they are too focused at what they do, so they need the boost.

 

I remember I posted a comment in those lines then. Or was it when they first showed off Neketaka...

Sounds quite like BGII "kits" to me.

 

It's really confusing because Josh isn't monolingual either. Whom that speaks more than one language thinks randomly inserting foreign adjectives or nouns to the language you are currently speaking is actually something that happens except few slip ups here and there? Except when a community has lived long together that both sides understand both languages to a reasonable degree to use few words interchangeably.

 

I suspect these intrusive uses of foreign laguages will be mostly limited to interjections. Like the dude in the beta who'd rather say per complanca ! than please ! which is yet shorter.
So I assume their design orientation was to write stuff and then replace interjections/slurs/... by their fake counterparts.

 

That would be acceptable and reasonable, considering interjections and reactions can come in a language you are more familiar with even while speaking another. However that doesn't seem to be case, it just seems like they are inserting random words where it doesn't belong, like in the middle of sentence as an adjective and just not making it a slip up either.

 

Heh, so that's how "percentage damage reduction is good at dealing with high DPH attacks"? Wow, it was half of the reason for going for % reduction and they failed by giving enemies both high PEN and damage.
Other half is "so player can feel when his/hers PEN is under enemy armor" which, BTW, is quite unpopular, at least at Obsidian forum.

 

I don't know why just because percentage reduction exists it should apply to all high damage attacks. I think both can exists, not only that both should exist. There should be enemies that deal a lot of damage but will be countered by heavy armour and there should be enemies where armour is p. much useless against unless severely geared and buffed.

 

Fucking ugly photos and not because of different ethnicity. It is because they look exactly like the kind of young people whom you could find hanging out in a university Starbucks or Costa Cafe (Feel totally out of place in a fantasy setting). This, coupled with quotes like "Romance a shark boy" speaks volumes about the design philosophies of PoE dev team. Dull Sawyrism sprinkled with glitters of bioware-ism. Best of both worlds!!!

 

It's not the percentage reduction that is the problem, it's the too specific margins that you need to pass, which makes armor either extremely good or pointless. For optimal usage, you have to have an armor of each value and change it on the fly to just cover the PEN of mobs. This is extremely finicky micromanagement that only adds repetitive tedium than anything else of gameplay value. This was obvious before they even implemented it, and it should've been obvious to people with 20 years+ of game development.

 

Those look like backer-likeness ordered portraits to me, there were several in PoE1 too.

 

good stats

 

Ofc they are, the elf guy looks like an average nerd.

 

The irony is that these backer portraits still look way better than the actual characters.

 

That's an Orlan, though

 

Considering how PEN vs AR works now (smthg I've finally checked out), I don't get why potd would raise enemies' PEN value. I'd either defend the idea that enemies' AR should be buffed only for their specific strengths, leaving their weaknesses at the same AR rating.

I mean, simply giving the titan more base damage is enough to make it hit harder. If you raise the PEN to the point that the PEN vs AR is nigh impossible to impact, it's not working properly.
Also, yeah, it's a multiplicative system. Its main advantage is that you specifically don't need to touch these values to boost damage, just adjust the base damage. Needless to say, it would also give more impact to buffing a character's AR for a specific type of damage, because the -5 -10... -75% gets even more interesting to reach.

By leaving the enemies' weak AR and PEN at the same level for each difficulty, it would also immensely strengthen their design consistency.
By buffing the strong AR, it'd turn the potd into a more tactical experience, where you get even more punished for trying to hit a fire blight with oxygen damage or whatever, you get my point.

edit : Btw I like how pen vs ar works now better than how it did before. I also like the fact that Overpenetration is still a fix threshold, which gives a cool incentive to build characters around it.

 

I'm extremely skeptical that a black woman would spend a large amount of money on something like this.

 

There is a black woman who has an entire let's play of PoE1 on YouTube, sooooo.

 

I agree.

They're miles better than the P1 backer portraits though, those were embarrassingly bad photo overpaints.

 

Link or youtube name of this person? I want to see this unicorn.

 

Isn't there something strange going on with their noses though? It's like the nose is in focus.

Perhaps an artifact due to the photos being selfies taken with smartphones?

 

She's named Prosperpina, very Codexian ;D

 

indeed.