Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire + DLC Thread - now with turn-based combat!

[Feyd Rautha]

How do you maneuver your ship so that you can get a broadside on the enemy's aft? I want to kill the enemy's sails and then put my own ship in safety behind him and then just keep bombarding him.

So how do you get to that position? Describe the exact steps please.

You believe this mini game is subtle and requires strategy. That is an illusion. Either hang back and fire > jibe > fire or close distance like a madman to board.

This particular ship will rip me to shreds if I do that. Can only afford to take a few hits. The crew is super strong so I can't board them either. But it appears you people don't know the first thing about sailing. Sad

 

[FreeKaner]

Dumpsterfire is the ultimate manifestation of the passive compromise that's actually a yield to status quo which possesses no personality that dominates American mind.

 

[2house2fly]

I really wonder what the game would look like if you took out everything that was only put in because "maybe people will like this" or put in everything that was only taken out because "maybe people won't like this"

 

[Haplo]

It seems like the sail combat minigame was expanded recently. I get many more "events" I need to react to then before. Otherwise I loose crewmembers and/or take extra damage/loose resources.

Of course closing to board ASAP remains a valid strategy.

 

[AwesomeButton]

You play on PotD without a fully optimized party and never have to use it? If so, you're better than me! Admitted I only use it a few times and mostly on casters.

In the longer combat encounters, with increased numbers of enemies, wizards and priests will just run out of spells. I don't think I've ever used empower on an ability, only on refilling ability uses.

Would have worked better with that Witcher 3-style "If you buy a potion/scroll/whatever you get to use it forever for x times per rest" that Josh ultimately dismissed because he felt it would have angered the grognards

Yeah, but at the same time, everything being per encounter won't anger them too much. Right, Josh. The biggest joke is the justification that this is being done because of the players. It's being done because of the encounter design, because this way you can be sure the party is approaching every encounter at full resources.

Hopefully we'll get a challenge which makes abilities per rest, yet then all the encounters will still be expecting a party at full resources, and when you add that challenges automatically set your difficulty to PotD/scale only upwards, maybe modding it is the better solution.

Dumpsterfire is the ultimate manifestation of the passive compromise that's actually a yield to status quo which possesses no personality that dominates American mind.

It's the manifestation of "we have to meet the (extended) budget and please the focus groups, AND fulfill my creative vision, while making equal compromise between those three irreconcilable opposites".

 

[Grunker]

I don't think I've ever used empower on an ability, only on refilling ability uses.

Same, and that really tells you something about the system. If lethality was as high as in PoE1, there are many instances where a big effect NOW would matter. However due to the more grindy nature, "hard" fights typically mean longer fights, which means casting all your spells twice is hilariously more efficient than x1.5 effect or whatever to a single spell.

In TCG terms, card advantage > tempo in Deadfire.

There's still a lot of great encounters, but the lack of lethality (on the opposition's side, obviously) is my biggest problem with the difficulty. Beast of Winter is the extreme example, but most fights post Level 12 have followed this blueprint, more or less. There were early fights that did not - beating Cave Grub fight underleveled meant having to empower a Puppet Master, for instance, because the encounter actually was an immediate threat if I didn't manage it right away.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I sometimes dread a 6-7 minutes combat to be honest, but on the other hand, no one is making me play on PotD. Enemies wearing you down is ok as a strategy, but in the good games this used to happen throughout the course of the whole dungeon, not in the span of single combat encounter. Only in Deadfire you can't really be "worn down throughout the course of a dungeon", not counting injuries/empower uses, exactly because of everything being per encounter, because Mr Genius Infinity Engine Designer Legend has deemed that rest spamming is worse than drugs.

So, yeah...

 

[Parabalus]

I don't think I've ever used empower on an ability, only on refilling ability uses.

Same, and that really tells you something about the system. If lethality was as high as in PoE1, there are many instances where a big effect NOW would matter. However due to the more grindy nature, "hard" fights typically mean longer fights, which means casting all your spells twice is hilariously more efficient than x1.5 effect or whatever to a single spell.

In TCG terms, card advantage > tempo in Deadfire.

There's still a lot of great encounters, but the lack of lethality (on the opposition's side, obviously) is my biggest problem with the difficulty. Beast of Winter is the extreme example, but most fights post Level 12 have followed this blueprint, more or less. There were early fights that did not - beating Cave Grub fight underleveled meant having to empower a Puppet Master, for instance, because the encounter actually was an immediate threat if I didn't manage it right away.

It's +5 PL, sometimes it's worth it, particularly on AoE CC. It's added to base damage and can get ridiculous fast, wizards are the worst offenders (of course).

Whoever came up with self-casting empower should be fired though, horrible idea.

I sometimes dread a 6-7 minutes combat to be honest, but on the other hand, no one is making me play on PotD. Enemies wearing you down is ok as a strategy, but in the good games this used to happen throughout the course of the whole dungeon, not in the span of single combat encounter. Only in Deadfire you can't really be "worn down throughout the course of a dungeon", not counting injuries/empower uses, exactly because of everything being per encounter, because Mr Genius Infinity Engine Designer Legend has deemed that rest spamming is worse than drugs.

So, yeah...

Injuries are supposed to be the source of "being worn down", it not happening means the difficulty isn't sufficient or rest spamming is happening.

If you could only rest on the world map/inns you'd have your attrition that way.

 

[AwesomeButton]

It's +5 PL, sometimes it's worth it, particularly on AoE CC. It's added to base damage and can get ridiculous fast, wizards are the worst offenders (of course).

Whoever came up with self-casting empower should be fired though, horrible idea.

I have been watching a guy's LP where he uses empowered CC spells in nearly every encounter. He just rests them back up when he runs out

What a glorious victory for Josh's "no degenerates allowed" design.

 

[Parabalus]

It's +5 PL, sometimes it's worth it, particularly on AoE CC. It's added to base damage and can get ridiculous fast, wizards are the worst offenders (of course).

Whoever came up with self-casting empower should be fired though, horrible idea.

I have been watching a guy's LP where he uses empowered CC spells in nearly every encounter. He just rests them back up when he runs out

What a glorious victory for Josh's "no degenerates allowed" design.

Poor degenerate, as if he's playing IE games.

 

[Grunker]

I sometimes dread a 6-7 minutes combat to be honest, but on the other hand, no one is making me play on PotD. Enemies wearing you down is ok as a strategy, but in the good games this used to happen throughout the course of the whole dungeon, not in the span of single combat encounter. Only in Deadfire you can't really be "worn down throughout the course of a dungeon", not counting injuries/empower uses, exactly because of everything being per encounter, because Mr Genius Infinity Engine Designer Legend has deemed that rest spamming is worse than drugs.

So, yeah...

I don't mind grindy combat at all, I just wish there were at least some fights that tested lethality or whatever you want to call it too

 

[AwesomeButton]

I don't mind grindy combat at all, I just wish there were at least some fights that tested lethality or whatever you want to call it too

I don't know what you mean by lethality, but if it's something like "ability to survive the nuking at combat start", which I've experienced a few times when being underleveled, I don't really like this either.

Poor degenerate, as if he's playing IE games.

This brings me to a mod idea - amputate empower out of the game, make the majority of spells and abilities recharge on rest, and warn people that if they play this on PotD they will probably have to rest spam. A player who knows the game's rules should be fine on Hard difficulty with such a mod.

 

[Parabalus]

Poor degenerate, as if he's playing IE games.

This brings me to a mod idea - amputate empower out of the game, make the majority of spells and abilities recharge on rest, and warn people that if they play this on PotD they will probably have to rest spam. A player who knows the game's rules should be fine on Hard difficulty with such a mod.

How is spamming rest to recharge per rest abilities different than them being per encounter?

Just more clicks, unless you run the Eothas challenge.

 

[AwesomeButton]

How is spamming rest to recharge per rest abilities different than them being per encounter?

Hence the warning - "Playing this on PotD may require you to rest spam". The encounters can't be magically fixed. Well, instead of fixing them, the mod could increase the number of uses of spells and abilities across the board.

The difference that this change would bring to gameplay is that it will actually be possible to attempt to go through Poko Kohara with your spells number of uses diminishing, instead of being fully charged at the beginning of each combat.

The bottom line - resting should be a choice. When everything is per encounter, this is the same as "obligatory resting after combat", which in Josh's mind isn't a synonym for "rest spamming", but in the normally functioning minds of people it's one and the same.

 

[AwesomeButton]

To summarize 5 years of anti-degenerate gameplay design:

A Designer Who Will Revolutionize RtwP RPGs And Fix Everything That Was Wrong (And Right) With The IE Games:
2013: Short term health and long-term health! This will fix rest-spamming!
2015: No, Injuries! This will fix rest-spamming!
2017-present: No, no no! Endurance/Health was wrong! All abilities are now per-encounter! This will fix rest-spamming by the game automatically rest-spamming for you!

RPG players:
2013-present: Just let whoever wants to restspam do so, and whoever wants to impose a house rule about resting impose it on himself and check how far can he go without resting.

 

[FreeKaner]

Or you can do it like expeditions:conqusitador where resting has an actual impact because there is real resource management.

 

[Grunker]

I don't mind grindy combat at all, I just wish there were at least some fights that tested lethality or whatever you want to call it too

I don't know what you mean by lethality, but if it's something like "ability to survive the nuking at combat start", which I've experienced a few times when being underleveled, I don't really like this either.

No, that's not what I mean. I mean the encounter being a threat from the beginning instead of aiming to exhaust your resources. I use cave grub as an example because if you don't kill the grub spawners and manage the constantly spawning adds, you will be overwhelmed. As opposed to many of the late game encounters I've played so far.

 

[Grunker]

But yes I would also like higher damage from some mobs.

 

[Lacrymas]

RPG players:
2013-present: Actually impose rest limits for real

Seems like the best of both worlds. Given Deadfire's and WM's abysmal sales, appealing more to a mass audience wasn't the right choice in hindsight. It didn't even require any clairvoyance on anyone's part, WM's sales should've raised huge red flags about what they can expect in terms of audience with DF. We can speculate why that is forever, but it doesn't change the fact PoE1 couldn't retain 80% of its owners and they should've taken that into account instead of splurging over shit like full VA (which I'm still salty about). They killed their own business plan by not sitting down and thinking. Maybe if they had made it differently, they could've attracted more of the grognard crowd (I very much doubt it's only 200k people in the whole world), instead of being this wishy-washy middle ground which fails to fully appease anyone. And now they are probably going to be bought by Microsoft and never make another isometric RPG ever. Great end result.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Reflections on Obsidian's future aside, how would you "actually impose rest limits for real"?

 

[Lacrymas]

No resting or backtracking in dungeons for one. Time limits on certain quests. That would've required bigger dungeons, though, but they should've made the game differently in the first place.

 

[Parabalus]

Reflections on Obsidian's future aside, how would you "actually impose rest limits for real"?

1) Local rest limiting - From the world map (free rest), you enter an "area" with strictly rationed and designed resting, in essence it's part of the tactical challenge of an encounter/dungeon

2) Global resting limit - resting costs resources and is finite (time limit). Bugfinder apparently seems to do this decently, Eothas challenge is a hamfisted way of doing it


The IE games didn't have 1) or 2), outside of the rare ambush or resting disallowed places - resting is a meme in those games.

Deadfire did 1) half-assedly and doesn't do 2) at all without the challenge, with the latter being especially egregious because of the plot.

Spoiler

They should have removed all per rest stuff and resting instead of this assinine hybridization, or not touched anything from the broken IE system

 

[AwesomeButton]

Reflections on Obsidian's future aside, how would you "actually impose rest limits for real"?

1) Local rest limiting - From the world map (free rest), you enter an "area" with strictly rationed and designed resting, in essence it's part of the tactical challenge of an encounter/dungeon

2) Global resting limit - resting costs resources and is finite (time limit). Bugfinder apparently seems to do this decently, Eothas challenge is a hamfisted way of doing it


The IE games didn't have 1) or 2), outside of the rare ambush or resting disallowed places - resting is a meme in those games.

Deadfire did 1) half-assedly and doesn't do 2) at all without the challenge, with the latter being especially egregious because of the plot.

Spoiler

They should have removed all per rest stuff and resting instead of this assinine hybridization, or not touched anything from the broken IE system

No resting or backtracking in dungeons for one. Time limits on certain quests. That would've required bigger dungeons, though, but they should've made the game differently in the first place.

All I read is "teach the player to be paranoid about saving his game".

 

[Lacrymas]

I've found that that doesn't matter in practice. The last RPGs which have imposed resting limitations (KotC and Swordflight, maybe Expeditions too) were incredibly successful at that and I didn't feel the need to save constantly and didn't think it's a problem.

 

[BEvers]

Darkest Dungeon did okay too.