Eternity Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Pre-Release Thread [BETA RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

Yeah, like "the vault dweller"

 

Jaesun should become a companion in PoE 2.

 

I expect to see this in the backers documentary for Pillars 2. Carrie Patel furiously copy/pasting text back and forth between the Obsidian writing tool and Google Translate.

 

Bobby Null hinted that we can expect that in some form.

I disagree, I'd rate only the 6th level, the one with the 3 sigil door and filled with basic skeletons, as bad, all the others have something going for them and are quite memorable imo. Maybe the 4th one too, it's a bit bland, but you usually enter it from behind which is cute enough for me.

I actually found all the "thrash" mob fights very enjoyable because I find the combat in Pillars fun on a basic level. If I have a rogue, barbarian, monk or cipher I have to constantly reposition or reangle them to use their abilities optimally, usually the less of those classes I have the more I find thrash a chore because the others aren't as involving in rote encounters.

Wouldn't mind seeing an arena in PoE2, if they reduce combat density across the board that's a cheap way to satisfy bloodthirsty players.

 

So can we change the class of the watcher if we import PoE save?

I mean jes is justfying lvl1 in PE2 as ethos taking a tasty bite of watcher's soul so the mc can reset his class i hope.

Also empower seems underwhelming to me. jes said in goon central that empower will only make the ability act as if it had 3 more power points. thats like 1 level worth of power. How powerful will an empower be on say a knockdown bethween 18 power source/6 level and 21 power source/7 level. Underwhelming thats what.

So combat is basically guaranteed to be hp bloat fight with neutered abilities and castrated empowers.

 

You can change class if I remember correctly.

 

This makes proficiency more or less flavour. I wonder if they're still retaining the fighter's specialisation/mastery abilities? If not, what are they replacing them with?

...

I'll ask.

 

Is there a system/mechanic they are not messing around with? One would think the first game did everything wrong.

 

Except maybe a few little tweaks caused by changes to some other system. Check Josh's SA thread.

(I.e., no. They are making changes to, quite literally, everything. Some major, some minor. The attribute changes will likely be minor.)

 

It's a sufficient reply because it is honest, but I also think that in being that he kindda-sorta recognizes my point, i.e. "yes, you're right about your criticism of proficiences but people value them for simulationist and/or customization reasons anyway so they're.". Which means he defends them on not entirely legitimate grounds. The part about modals being trade-offs and therefore "not vital" is correct, but also a bit weak: it's a good bet the strongest characters will rely on these modals.

In the end, I am still against proficiency as a game mechanic but I am glad Deadfire will attempt "soften" the adverse effects at least somewhat. Proficiencies were arguably the most important talents for just about any character in PoE.

EDIT: by the way Infinitron I just used "progressive" to mean the opposite of grognard, i.e. "non-traditionalist." Is there a Codex-consensus word for it?

What about the talent-system and it being the central source for build diversity? Isn't that more or less intact?

 

Ehm, no? Just a random example pulled out of my ass: in M&MVII, your party decides to participate in a competition for the ownership of lands. They win, you get a castle, and the responsibilities of the lordship ends up with you having to save the world. It's a banal-ass story but the point is: you aren't chosen. Your actions just logically progress towards your saviour-status. Anyone with abilities and agency could theoretically have done your job. The "chosen" trope means that events outside of your control make your character the only one with the ability to solve the plot.

This is true for a number of RPGs. The fact that it isn't true for the majority is a good example of how rooted the trope of the "chosen one" is. So is the fact that you think every RPG fits the criteria because of lack of character agency.

The game is shit, but DA2's premise is actually a fantastic example of how to make an RPG story premise that isn't about the character being chosen nor about saving the world. Everything Hawke does in the game revolves around the character's efforts to make something of themselves and their society. You resolve conflicts due to the status that your actions bestows upon you - you are not gifted with these abilities by coincidence or mystical entities.

 

Mm, not really. It does help early in the game but later on there are many ways to make up for it. I played a long way into it on PotD without using it, and it worked fine. You don't need to stack ACC to the absolute max, just enough not to whiff all the time, and giving every character a weapon focus carries a pretty major opportunity cost.

 

This is the same argument as when people reply to "this deck is optimal" in MTG with "my home-brew works fine." Not the issue - weapon prof talents are optimal for many characters is my point. If you agree that proficiency has inherent design problems and therefore wish their influence minimized, their strength in PoE is an obvious problem. If you don't agree with that premise you obviosuly have no grounds to criticize that. But I do.

I disagree. Even on many characters who seldom use their weapons there will come a point where talent-choices are so minor, a flat accuracy bonus will clearly be the best choice.

 

Sure, eventually. I've tended to pick a weapon focus somewhere around level 8-10, unless I'm going specifically for a weapon DPS build. That's a long way from "arguably the most important talent" though.

 

No, it just goes to show how few good talents there are. Hopefully combining the weapon proficiencies with the Modal Abilities will pave the way for some difficult choices to be made for most builds.

Edit: While they're at it, weapons should be granted bonus damage to certain enemy types to get rid of those superfluous talents that gave +25% damage to an enemy type that nobody ever took. Maces to Skeletons, Spears to lesser beasts, etc.

 

The fact that proficiency talents are so good also reflects a strength of PoE's system btw: the fact that using weapons is at least part of nearly every character class. I really like this. Even oldschool grognard fantasy has wizards using their weapons most of the time, not throwing fireballs all over the place constantly. Sure, there are one or two classes in PoE that almost never use weapons, but most rely on them to a certain extent.

Fair enough - that's mostly semantics IMO. The point was that they range from "very important" to "the best choice at some point", thus incentivizing the pigeonholing I asked Josh about

 

The MC in any RPG is de-facto the only one with the ability to solve the plot because he's the protagonist. And the MC is the protagonist because the developers made it so which was totally outside the MC's control. If we want the chosen/not chosen dichotomy to be meaningful we need a criteria that doesn't involve the MC: could somebody else potentially solve the plot. Like I said, any Watcher or Cipher could potentially solve the plot in PoE, ergo the Watcher is not chosen.

There's no ancient prophecy in PoE and nobody tells you "man, you're the only one who can defeat Thaos because <reasons>." What you're told is that you're the only one who has a reason to really care about defeating Thaos. Not the same thing.

 

If certain modals are restricted to certain weapontypes only, doesn't make it even more likely that some weapontypes will be objectively subpar? Let's say spears only get +deflectoon and no option for +dmg or +atkspeed. There would be no reason to ever pick them over eg. sabres or battle axes for a damage character. Sawyer's probably thought of that but it strikes me as odd nevertheless.

 

No, you are missing the point. Of course the protagonist would have some ability to resolve the plot (although there are plots out there that the protagonist's of can't solve, and that's fine as well). HOW they gain that ability is important, if it's by coincidence or mystical means - chosen one, if not not chosen one. Simple. It doesn't matter how many others have the same ability by the same coincidences. That makes it even worse, because the protagonist is arbitrarily chosen to resolve the conflict.

About the proficiencies - you can respec them, sooo it's whatever.

 

That's complete nonsense, sorry. I am talking about something within the fiction; i.e. is the character's role in events the result of agency that any character could have in theory or is it the result of mystical powers or coincidence that makes him the only one with the ability

What you're talking about is outside the fiction itself. No one is obviously challenging the fact that the protagonist is central to the events of a story.

 

A coincidence is just a coincidence. Coincidences don't choose anyone, they just happen.

 

No, they are written like that by the writer.