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

Yeah. If only there was some way to channel all that diamond-hard bitterness into something productive. Class war, for example.

 

I agree. Other then the wizard/cleric magic, I find PoE's ruleset vastly superior.

Not to mention new unique classes, like the Cipher.

Personally I vastly prefer PoE combat to IE combat. Outside mage duels, obviously.
That said, my favorite RTwP combat engine to date might be NWN.
Perhaps PoE2 will change that with improved combat clarity and feedback.

In fact I prefer the itemization of PoE after WM. I find the range of effects much richer and more interesting. Regardless of limited number of hard immunities.

Very true. No contest here.

Also true. Some encounters, particularly in TWM, are very good though.

 

We must seize the means of game production

 

Good parties are retarded (sometimes literally in the case of Minsc) in both BGs (Aerie lol), that's why I only played with one once. However, the writing in BG1 is better than PoE. If we leave out the inconsistency of alternating between ye olde Englishe and modern one, for such a long game it's much more compact (the only lengthy bit of text is Sarevok's diary) and manages to set up the situation and the stakes quite well. The tone and motivations of the party and the framing of the adventure even changes depending on what companions and what rep you have. The side quests are given to you in just a few sentences, no lengthy lectures about the countryside and how we hate elves and did I mention this ring I want you to give to someone? All this causes BG to be much more playable as a result, it's just a joy to go through it. PoE is long because you stand there reading text, BG1 is long because it has stuff to do (although the move speed is kinda slow and content from some maps can be fused together).

Encounter design and AI in both BG1 and 2 with SCS is miles above what PoE can muster (haven't played TWM yet, but I have a feeling it won't be as good). The AI rips you to shreds in some battles even with the overpowered evil companions and only within the rules of the game. Waiting for SCS-like mod for PoE. I somehow want to comment on character building, but since I haven't played PoE since 1.0 my info is outdated. Character building in the IE games stop at multi/dual-classing potential and choice of proficiencies, so PoE was "better" in that regard even in 1.0, but PoE was never meant to take AD&D as a template, but 3E, so if we compare it to 3E D&D leaves it in the dust again.

 

3E DnD character building only leaves PoE in the dust if you factor in multi-classing and Prestige Classes. If you look at base classes, PoE stands firm. Of course it all depends how much expansion material you want to include and which feats. DnD did have a bit of a headstart in system building.

 

The writing in BG1 is serviceable and effective, but it never really rises to the levels of good. On the other hand - it's also never really bad. It takes a tried and true, simple premise and runs with it, taking care not to go overboard.

PoE has some really good writing, but it also has a lot of terrible, overwritten descriptions and lengthy, unedited dialogue.

Agreed, though you really should play it with TWM sometime - to see how they've improved.

PoE also has better attributes (if we disregard the entire "Mighty Wizard" thing) than the IE games.

But 3E always got on my nerves because it was so gamey - talking levels of random classes willy-nilly, not because of any RP reasons, but strictly because of overall power levels.

 

Durlag's Tower is good. It shows the aftermath of lifelong adventuring, how it puts a target on Durlag and his family, their eventual clandestine killing and replacement with doppelgangers and his descent into madness and obsession with safety, and how, in the end, he blames himself for all of it. Which is reflected in the design of the dungeon. The only bad part is how half of the last adventuring party to go through is still there and even managed to get to the demon knight, all the while the traps and puzzles are still operational.

Eh, I guess it's a bit gamey, but it's not like going Fighter/Mage/Thief, Berserker/Mage or Kensai/Mage isn't.

 

I'll have to replay ToTSC one of these days, I've only played through it once, a long time ago.

Yeah, but you know what I mean. A Kensai/Mage may be played just for the sake of it being OP, but it still makes more RP sense than a, say, Paladin 10/Bard 5/Ranger 3/Swashbuckler 2 combo (not to mention all the Prestige Classes requirements that people end up taking just so they can make a deliberately OP char.).

I have no problem with this in theory, but it bugs me when, for example, you have a Lawful Good character with high Charisma, and not taking two Paladin levels for the huge bonuses to saving throws is just intentionally gimping yourself.

 

3E D&D prestige classes stink. They're colour-inside-the-lines hacks used to paper over the flaws in the base D&D character system.

Longer version:

The problem with D&D3 classes is that even though the feats system made them a little less on-rails than AD&D, there's still rather little variety to them. You can kinda sorta make a high-Int/high-Dex fighter work (Combat Expertise, Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack etc), but it'll still kinda sorta stink compared to a classic STR/CON based brute who Power Attacks his way through everything.

D&D3's solution is prestige classes. These are templates that are very carefully crafted to support quirky concepts that you just can't do effectively in the base system -- gishy Eldritch Knights, blurry Shadowdancers, Cyrano-esque Duelists, and so on.

The problem is that the templates are so rigid, with such detailed stat, feat, and skill requirements, that there's almost no player agency left. All you get to do is pick your target prestige class and then colour carefully inside the lines to meet the requirements. That's great for kids who love colouring books, but kinda pointless for people who actually like to use their intelligence and creativity to find novel ways to make use of the system.

The Pillars character system is far superior. People like Boeroer on the Obsidian forums have found many ways to make completely off-the-wall wacky character builds that are not just viable but very powerful, while being certainly not something the designers intended. It rewards intelligence, creativity, and finding ways to bend and break the rules -- entirely unlike D&D3 which gives you a pat on the head for being a good little boy or girl and colouring all the way inside the lines, with none of the red Crayola outside them.

Of course, prestige classes are a fantastic ways to sell more books to players lacking an imagination. Total coincidence I'm sure.

 

Are you aware what you are asking of me? Do you know where you are posting?

 

Except most of those could have out of combat utility if there were quests in BG2 that allowed you to solve shit in multiple ways, but the game usually forces combat on your ass. If those spells were in PoE2 or in Fallout New Vegas, they'd be extremely good for going about completing quests/navigating maps in a different manner.

 

Yeah its great. You can finish the game with almost any armor/weapon. And carry the same gear until the end of the game. Fantastic itemization

 

I've never thought of it like that, Prime Junta, you are right that prestige classes reward rigid adherence to arbitrary rules set by the devs. I don't entirely agree that base classes have no variety though, but they do generally follow an archetype. When I finish my current BG playthrough I'll try to force myself to start PoE again, I have a Priest of Skaen build that I want to try.

 

So what you're saying is that you will continue your hardest to bridge the gap between retarded RPG Watcher and edgy newfag RPG Codexer in an attempt to become the ultimate shit poster?

Well, then, by all means - carry on

 

They don't have no variety exactly -- there is some flexibility to them, certainly more than in AD&D and enough for pen-and-paper which is what it was built for. But overall it's still pretty rigid, with a limited number of viable paths to choose from, rather than a genuinely flexible system where you can mix and match stuff for interesting synergies and cool combinations.

 

The truth is a bitter pill to swallow.

 

It's not about percentages you dumb jew You can have percentages, why not

It's not subjective, you Cucksidian shill. Why this ruleset/system sucks balls is very objective,

• Endurance adds a tedious and pointless layer to combat in the name of accessibility for peasants who never played an RPG, just so you wouldn't need to rest after every fight (retarded). This leads to your party members mostly mages/priests getting KO'd in nearly every fight and in ways to cannot predict or prevent.
• stats grant too small of an improvement for the player to gauge, Might gives +3% dmg per point and Con gives +3% max HP per point. This isn't Diablo II where max level is 99 so that's OBJECTIVELY a BAD design
• "per encounter" idiocy takes away the tactical element of preparation and trivializes combat. Just as MMO crap like cooldowns
• too many conditions with too many effects not even devs can memorize. conditions should be clear and precise
• class/race balance was incredibly shit at release, ironically enough. You could have solo'd the game with a Fire godlike cipher, whereas there was no motivation to play something like a dwarf rogue or elf monk.

Suma sumarum, ease of access for noobs + autistic devotion to perfect balance butchered the fun this game could have had

 

I would like to know when, where, and why you got your brain surgically removed.

Small differences can make or break things; plus IE stat differences weren't that large and some stats were useless outside certain builds.

In IE games you can just spam rests, and per-rest abilities are only on a few classes.

Gasp! You might have to think!

Sawyer cares more about balance than your average RPG player, but he isn't some obsessive. The release was also rushed.

 

Again, probably pointless and all that, but:

The IE games' system of "rest everywhere, after every fight" was so much better

Every fight?

You're not very good at this game, are you?

And yet, for all its faults - it's still a better-designed system than IE's "Playing a fighter? Pump STR, CON, DEX, ignore INT, WIS."

IE games were perfect tactical simulators where you had to carefully consider every fight, and not at all cheese-ridden, full of OP items, spells and class combinations.

Please remove those nostalgia goggles.

Agreed.

Or it just proves that you need time and player feedback to balance a completely new game made on a completely new ruleset

 

No they cant. +/- 3% doesn't make any difference whatsoever

They admitted it was a bad choice, you lowly cretin

No, it was an obsessive pursuit of balance & accessibility at all costs. Sawyer is a good designer but he should never be a lead

 

Yeah. IE games might as well not have had stats. You just roll until you get 18 18 18 3 3 3 and then assign them to the correct stats for your class. So depth, such complex.

(Okay sure, the BGs had companions with shit stats which you had to work around with items, but that's it.)

---> tangent

The D&D/AD&D stat system only really makes sense if used as originally specified: roll once, then pick the best-fit class for whatever you came up with, and deal with it. You might end up with a genuinely handicapped character, and then it's up to you and the DM to make it work in a campaign. No casualisation like redistributing the stats. You want to play a magic-user but rolled shitty INT? Too bad, you'll be a thief and fucking like it.

Edit: This is how I started playing D&D. Characters tended not to live very long, and we did mostly one-shot dungeon crawls. It was fun, but very different from how PnP role-playing is done nowadays, with every character a speshul snowflake carefully crafted to the Gary Stu requirements of the player's ego.

 

And yet you proceed to list a bunch of subjective shit produced by your deranged excuse of a brain.

• Endurance is there so you don't have to waste time casting CLW or installing an autocast script. It's also there to reduce dependency on clerics. It's a success on every front. It's the absolute opposite of tedious, it has nothing to do with accessibility or resting, wtf.
• PoE stats grant more of a improvement per point than AD&D, with strength<=>might being the ONLY reasonable contender for melee. It's also a huge improvement because all stats are relevant for all classes, unlike e.g. fighters where you ignore 3/6.
• I bet you consider Underrail shit too, just because it has "cooldowns". Degenerates like you should be hanged
• How can you complain PoE is too complicated when you are comparing it to fucking DnD, where every spell is its own effect? PoE just grouped most sensible stuff together.
• You are high on drugs. PoE on release was not nearly as bad as Bg2 is today.

So, your grievance is that PoE has decent non-combat uses of it's combat spells, but somehow, that is worse than the non-existent non-combat uses of non-combat spells in Bg?

 

I wouldn't take untermenschen companions with shit stats, let alone give them items to compensate. All companions in PoE deserve to be eaten by the blood pool for their stat spread.

 

It was. Because you actually had to plan your moves , pre-buff etc. "Now ill use magic missile and save fireball for later" instead of this tunnel vision garbage for hipsters and newly-baked RPG peasants

The game was piss easy once you understand how shit works. Nice try. Im sad I ever wasted time on it.

Min-maxing is more fun than the exhilaration you feel when you raise Might by 1 point only to get + 0.03% damage increase.

and btw you needed 13 INT for Improved Knockdown and Improved Disarm which are both cool for fighters, dumbass

Sure , when you remove those pink modernism glasses

You should never prioritize balance and accessibility over fun, or you'll get banal/bland shite like PoE no one will remember in 10-15 years