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

[Lacrymas]

Well, yeah, I've been arguing Eora is basically Arbitrariness: The Setting forever.

 

[Quillon]

That it's retarded to be able to substract the VIPs and the Gods and everything basically works the same way.

I think its a good idea to let watcher & the gods and deep soul stuff be backdrops in a PoE game, maybe Deadfire shoulda been that way; leaving the said things in dyrwood and focusing on archipelago setting's strengths.

Maybe Lacrymas was right all along asking for a new protag that ain't the watcher :D

 

[Terra]

Foreword (and I'm late to the party on this one), I haven't played much of PoE2 due to waiting on the dlcs, but I don't think in general there's anything wrong with retaining the protagonist across multiple rpgs. The BG series is very memorable for me specifically because of the rising stakes, returning PC and companion characters I grew attached too. Similarly in recent years, if the stars had aligned and we'd got a proper Dragon Age sequel with the warden PC that continued their story with select returning characters, I'd have been a happy camper.

But as has seemingly been brought up in recent Pillars threads (only scanned them, they've been moving at quite a pace) one of the core issues I had from the onset of Pillars 2 is even though I was getting many of the things I'd want in a BG/DA "proper" sequel, PoE1 was simply... mundane, boring in many aspects. It was very clear to me that it was produced by remnants of the Icewind Dale crew who were trying to emulate elements of BG to varying degrees of success. But succintly put, after PoE, I had very little attachment to any of the cast; Eder a little, maybe, but by and large, they were just supremely unmemorable.

I'm not sure a new PC would have fixed that and to be fair there was fuck all character development of the BG1 companions past their initial introduction and a 1-2 line complaint if you didn't go where they wanted within a set timeframe; all development came in BG2. So in that regard, Pillars 1 was on better footing than BG1, but it only ever felt like a BG1.5 to me. The game just has this inherent flaw of me just not caring about anything that's transpiring, and in the interim we'd had Dragonfall & D:OS2 which caught and retained my interest throughout. Pillars just lacks... something and I don't know how you could fix it (even though I actually find the world and background lore in Pillars more interesting than some of the other games I've cited, the first game was just... eh).

*All that said I did start a replay with IEMod and disabled all the Gold-Backer NPC shit and the pacing improved dramatically, so the plethora of inconsequential backer content probably contributed to my disconnect with the game. Carry on!

 

[santino27]

The game just has this inherent flaw of me just not caring about anything that's transpiring

Yes.

and in the interim we'd had ... D:OS2 which caught and retained my interest throughout.

FFS.

 

[Perkel]

Did anyone share this already?

classic sawyer, shovels shit to crpg player while keeping pnp player good:

"The Pillars TTRPG campaign I’m running has nothing to do with reincarnation or the gods. It’s about agents of Minoletta running around and investigating rogue wizards. I think the players would agree it still feels like Pillars."

 

[entr0py]

The game just has this inherent flaw of me just not caring about anything that's transpiring, and in the interim we'd had Dragonfall & D:OS2 which caught and retained my interest throughout. Pillars just lacks... something and I don't know how you could fix it (even though I actually find the world and background lore in Pillars more interesting than some of the other games I've cited, the first game was just... eh).

I have felt pretty much the same way. While PoE ruleset in both iterations is definitely the strong suit of the franchise, they lack a LOT in stroytelling, character development and most disappointingly I felt almost no attachment towards any of the characters* and especially nothing towards the protagonist him/herself.

(* I found Eder to be a correct dude, bit shallow characterization in the game itself but still kind of liked him. There were two characters I actually felt attachment with: the Grieving Mother and Durance. GM I felt connected with right away, shrouded in mystery, cloaked by pain and sorrow, some masterful writing and ideas right there, she was truly unique. Durance when I met him I hated him right away, but I still let him tag along, because I needed a cleric. Then as we traveled together and his backstory was pieced together slowly I first started to understand then pity him, and became an indispensable friend with traumas of the highest order. And I have to tell you guys, its NOT Avellone fanboyism, I only found out after finishing the game that he wrote the two actually memorable characters in the whole franchise)

I would say while mechanically PoE is the superior game compared to the BGs, very ironically it lacks something that was so much present in BG1/2, something very special, it lacks its SOUL, its an empty carcass of rules perfected to ridiculousness, it's all bones without marrow, its a hollowborn...

 

[2house2fly]

I don't get this idea of feeling attachment to the player character. You play as the player character, what do you need attachment for. Did you feel attachment to the Vault Dweller?

 

[Delterius]

Did you feel attachment to the Vault Dweller?

Yes. Vault Dweller

 

[Reinhardt]

So did they adjusted exp gain or increased level cap? Or you still reach max level in the middle of the game?

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

Do y'all know if it's possible to disable the new ship respawn "feature"?
Please say it is!

 

[Infinitron]

 

[AwesomeButton]

If the only thing he designed in this update have been the gods' challenges, as has been advertised numerous times, then it really seems he is done with Deadfire.

 

[santino27]

I don't get this idea of feeling attachment to the player character. You play as the player character, what do you need attachment for. Did you feel attachment to the Vault Dweller?

I think it's less a concern of not being attached to the MC specifically as it is about not caring about the situation you find yourself in as the MC.

 

[yes plz]

Weren't they supposed to be redesigning the ship battle mechanics or did they quietly give up on that?

 

[Reinhardt]

Weren't they supposed to be redesigning the ship battle mechanics or did they quietly give up on that?

Respawning ships on the world map - The ships of the Deadfire will no longer be gone forever once defeated. They'll now respawn, giving you the ability to attack, loot, and take down again.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I hope they won't be unlocking subclasses that are unique to companions, that would be silly.

 

[santino27]

Weren't they supposed to be redesigning the ship battle mechanics or did they quietly give up on that?

Respawning ships on the world map - The ships of the Deadfire will no longer be gone forever once defeated. They'll now respawn, giving you the ability to attack, loot, and take down again.

They had talked about redesigning the way ship combat worked to make it more fun. Having ships respawn eventually is not a change to ship battle mechanics.

I hope they won't be unlocking subclasses that are unique to companions, that would be silly.

Plus, there's already a mod for that.

 

[Haplo]

So did they adjusted exp gain or increased level cap? Or you still reach max level in the middle of the game?

Never seemed to be the case for me. It's not PoE1 (where it was more like 2/3 into the game, rather then 1/2, but still). Maybe if you're very thorough. I reached end game at level 17.

 

[Jarpie]

I don't get this idea of feeling attachment to the player character. You play as the player character, what do you need attachment for. Did you feel attachment to the Vault Dweller?

It's this:

 

[Safav Hamon]

I hope they won't be unlocking subclasses that are unique to companions, that would be silly.

Have it be a beraths blessing

 

[Perkel]

I hope they won't be unlocking subclasses that are unique to companions, that would be silly.

And why is that ? I mean companions are meh part of poe2.

 

[santino27]

I hope they won't be unlocking subclasses that are unique to companions, that would be silly.

And why is that ? I mean companions are meh part of poe2.

I assume because he'd rather something new be added instead of unlocking subclasses that were given to companions for lore-specific reasons.

And again... there's already a mod that unlocks those subclasses, so it would mean we weren't actually getting anything.

 

[2house2fly]

If they were going to add companion subclasses, that would still leave Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue and Wizard that would be getting new ones. Josh Sawyer mentioned that all the new subclasses were designed by some guy I've never heard of, which at least implies they'll all be new.

 

[Lacrymas]

Priests are getting Woedica and Paladins are getting Steel Garrote, so they'll have new subclasses as well. You could unlock them with a mod, but still.

 

[Roguey]

If they were going to add companion subclasses, that would still leave Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue and Wizard that would be getting new ones. Josh Sawyer mentioned that all the new subclasses were designed by some guy I've never heard of, which at least implies they'll all be new.

Carver's been around for a while https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...-expansion-thread.100006/page-54#post-4106395