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

[AwesomeButton]

This is precisely something I've always disliked about combat in Deadfire - youcan spend 90% of the combat without taking any damage, but once you start taking damage, because some beneficial effect has worn off for example, you can be dead in a couple of seconds (in rtwp mode).

> PKM has so much better pacing in its RtwP, Sawyer throw your game dev license in the trash.

 

[Lacrymas]

The binary nature of Penetration is the problem, though. You can see that in that screenshot with Eder. 1-3 damage, but 40+ crits. How do you balance this? It forces all builds to center around Penetration, like PoE forced you to center around Accuracy. It's pretty triggering.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Flat DR systems are bad because it screws over anything that attacks fast but things that attack slow are barely impacted.
This is one of those mechanics that "seems" more realistic but just isn't fun.

How do you balance this?

% DR

 

[Tigranes]

I don't think it's as horrible as something like DOS2 armour, because you do need to think and plan around how to stack / overcome penetration, and different builds/classes have different ways to do so. So you are actually planning out how to overcome enemy defences, the defences actually matter (instead of oh there are these 80 different mechanics but whatever I can fireball everybody to death even on hardest difficulty, which is 90% of recent RPGs), and it has good differentiation across different damage types.

The problem might be when the 4 defences (deflection, will, fortitude, reflex) also got penetration on top of it and how they interact. POE had great potential for a tactical, dynamic system where you selectively target and melt down the 4 defences, but it was watered down by the silliness of tying accuracy so tightly to level, and in POTD, sometimes suffering from thousand cuts battles where everybody grazes each other. In Deadfire that's not such a problem, but instead penetration blunts the edge of a lot of these mechanics.

% DR is probably the answer, but risks running into those situations where you feel like stuff you do doesn't matter because it's just giving you 5% more damage, instead of building up to a threshold where once you hit them with that debuff or stack your own pen you're going from doing piddly damage to really hurting the creature. I would think some people would whine it's more 5% here 2% there design.

I skip all the elephant ranting but I dont know what they're going on about sabres, Scordeo is a master OP weapon you find in literally every other munchkin build.

 

[Butter]

Flat DR + faster attacks having higher THC.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The binary nature of Penetration is the problem, though. You can see that in that screenshot with Eder. 1-3 damage, but 40+ crits. How do you balance this? It forces all builds to center around Penetration, like PoE forced you to center around Accuracy. It's pretty triggering.

And get this too: sometimes whether your character makes it through the combat or not depends on the question, how much time was left for an enemy buff to wear off (conversely, a debuff to wear off) compared to how much time will your own buff (or debuff) have to last. It's just down to comparing the number of seconds and recovery times between characters.

I've had characters killed because their debuff ended literally half a second before an enemy's recovery time between attacks would run out.

What a fun system!

 

[Tigranes]

TB actually helps make all of those more discrete & manipulable calculations.

But then, couldn't exactly the same thing be said of BG2 mage battles?

 

[AwesomeButton]

RtwP was a mistake

 

[Daidre]

IMHO, designing own system instead of using D&D/PF OGL was a biggest mistake. I do not know all technicalities though, maybe it forces to use pre-existing setting or smth like this.

 

[AwesomeButton]

But all the other systems were wrong and not fun.

 

[entr0py]

The binary nature of Penetration is the problem, though. You can see that in that screenshot with Eder. 1-3 damage, but 40+ crits. How do you balance this? It forces all builds to center around Penetration, like PoE forced you to center around Accuracy. It's pretty triggering.

And get this too: sometimes whether your character makes it through the combat or not depends on the question, how much time was left for an enemy buff to wear off (conversely, a debuff to wear off) compared to how much time will your own buff (or debuff) have to last. It's just down to comparing the number of seconds and recovery times between characters.

I've had characters killed because their debuff ended literally half a second before an enemy's recovery time between attacks would run out.

What a fun system!

Salvation of Time... Literally my priest spent half of the battle just casting that one spell over and over again, so OP. Just have a cipher cast Ancestor's Memory on the priest and thats it. Especially if that cipher is an Ascendant one, so with salvation of time he can cast cipher spells constantly with zero cost

 

[entr0py]

Also I quite liked the penetration/armor system, makes you think more about builds and encounters than other RPGs. Could have been somewhat improved, so that penetration is more of a linear factor instead of a binary one, but I wouldn't get rid of it completely for sure. Also cipher PL9 skill takes care of low pen, so every funny build with generally low pen becomes suddenly viable. One thing tho, penetration does not stack, so you cannot get extra pen from spells, inspirations and consumables at the same time, only the highest applies. Don't know about modals, haven't tested that...

 

[Daidre]

But all the other systems were wrong and not fun.

And spending literal years to implement, tune and bugfix yet another one is not a best way to manage development.

 

[Haplo]

Also I quite liked the penetration/armor system, makes you think more about builds and encounters than other RPGs. Could have been somewhat improved, so that penetration is more of a linear factor instead of a binary one, but I wouldn't get rid of it completely for sure. Also cipher PL9 skill takes care of low pen, so every funny build with generally low pen becomes suddenly viable. One thing tho, penetration does not stack, so you cannot get extra pen from spells, inspirations and consumables at the same time, only the highest applies. Don't know about modals, haven't tested that...

You can stack Pen, but usual stacking rules apply.
So Pen from Might Inspiration won't stack with other sources of Might. I think modals might also have been funky with stacking. But +2 Pen food should stack. Also passive abilities, such as Devoted bonus or Cipher ability. But active abilities with Pen bonus, like Rogue Crippling Strike, also stack.

 

[Tigranes]

What would make a massive difference is if POE developed its own UI, beyond the inherited IE stuff, that was really focused on helping you calculate and stack bonuses in a clear and consistent way, and for each different effect to be legible during actual combat.

Right now, you might have an attack that targets deflection, but it targets fortitude instead because that's lower on this enemy, after which your armour's unique bonus to fortitude attacks triggers, on top of your food or whatever, all of which helps lift your attack by 25% THC or whatever and helps you land a Crit, which triggers a Swift Flurry, or something. Which is all great stuff. But unless you've read up on it all and planned it out in advance, you won't really know that's what's happening, because all you'll see is x% to hit and then dude hits and there's a bunch of red numbers flying around.

There's a simple mod that colour-codes and makes all the differently named afflictions (Shaken, Weakened, etc) really easy to track, and that helps the player realise why their Terror spell didn't make the enemy run in fear but only gives them a minor affliction. But that's just the start of what the game should have shipped with. There's some tools like the tooltip to see where your accuracy bonuses are coming from, but the different rules on which bonuses stack with what are unclear. And the itemisation in POE2 is great with so many unusual properties, but that makes it even more confusing to figure out which thing is triggering because you have an injury or you have high Sleight of Hand to help you do what during combat itself.

 

[Elephantman]

Wow, its actually you people who havent played the game. Even entr0py, breh...

Pen is not binary, its literally linear in 3 steps. In fact, its some kind of a weird "multiplier" to something so that you can partially offset it with Might or other additives. You can plink with -2 Pen and 50% dmg! And the enemies can as well.

Also, my screenshot was to make an argument. Its not how you should be able to play the game (you probably can, economy-wise but you shouldnt).
It shows that you cannot make Eder immortal by just ARing up.
It used to be in POE1 that deflection stacking saved you from crits and DT saved you from the rest, leaving Eder standing around. And only something like dragons went past DT due to very high base dmg.
Now, even lowly rogues can crit you so you better be fucking killing them.

Also, whats the point of talking about high tier abilities? We know they are prolly broken.

I dont understand the buff duration complaints either. You know the clock.
I mean, my cipher has 50% chance to Charm. He hits trice. I win eez. He misses 3 times and I get stomped.
Also this for example, she is a battlemage. I can isntagib her - unfair. So I tried tanking out all of her abilities timers! It worked without chugging HP potions. You dont just suddenly take dmg after buffs run out, you know they run out.

The very best moments of POE2 come from edge cases.
Like for me
I. the Gucci street fight, I was thinking about it, it was planned out, its not random. But still, Eder drinks a potion too late and falls - we be dead. Xotis Harvest doesnt land - we prolly dead. All worked out but it was tense as hell.
II. Titan fight, bugged hit out of range on rogue kills her and probably forces the kiting out of the last 100hp he has. The kiting is not safe - it was not planned! He is faster than my dudes. Super tense. If my rogue lives, thats a lot of dmg and irp that would have put him down eez.
IIb. Engwithian priest - finding ways to focus the fucker down!
III. Hasongo shamans and totems - I'll maybe post later a little AAR. Fun. Required planning.
IV. Skellington ambsuh under Neketaka - I fought that one like the german army in winter 1943!
V. Random battlemage on some island - I'll maybe post later a little AAR. Great fun. Unprepared, unexpected shit.

POE2 is about 3xPOE1 even with BINARY afflictions.

 

[entr0py]

IV. Skellington ambsuh under Neketaka - I fought that one like the german army in winter 1943!

Lol, that was so surprisingly hard when I ran into it at low level, similar situation with the whole Berath's temple area.

 

[AwesomeButton]

You dont just suddenly take dmg after buffs run out, you know they run out.

It can feel pretty "just suddenly" if you are not monitoring and keeping in your mind at least the more important buff timers that you and your enemies have.

What I want to point out is that a system where tenths of a second is the measurement unit is impractical and overflows the player with information, and a system where characters are each on a reasnoably long personal round is easier to follow. I have 6 characters in PKM and I never have trouble telling "what just happened" and "who hits next".

Josh had to reduce the party size to 5, "because it makes combat easier to follow/everyone has many active abilities". Well, yes, combat is difficult to follow, and it wasn't me who stuffed every character class with samey actives, was it? It was him. In other words "someone has overengineered my combat system, what a bummer we have to drop the party size".

 

[Tigranes]

I don't even know if I agree with Elephant dude or not, it's like the combination of random slang, jumps of consciousness and image spam is carefully designed to ward off functioning brains.

Still going through my TB playthrough, and it's ironic how that seems to solve a lot of problems just with discrete blocks of time, even as the fact that the game wasn't originally built for TB causes other problems. You wonder how it would have been if POE as a franchise was TB from the beginning.

On another note, how do people feel about the DLCs? So far, unlike the White March, these feel a lot more in line with the rest of the game. Beast of Winter had too much "wander around dreamy realm listen to memories" shit (nothing good ever happens with these shadow realms gameplay or writing wise, just look at Numenera or even Shadowrun), but Waidwen I thought was actually written really well, and enriches the main narrative in the way Honest Hearts did for FNV.

 

[Bohr]

Haven't visited the PoE threads for a while, is Elephant like the Deadfire Celerity?

 

[Roguey]

Flat DR systems are bad because it screws over anything that attacks fast but things that attack slow are barely impacted.
This is one of those mechanics that "seems" more realistic but just isn't fun.

How do you balance this?

% DR

As Josh pointed out way back when, this also has its own downsides

Pure % DR turns into extra hit points against which there isn't any real tactic. Non-linear scaling -- where you get some abstract armor value like "291" that correlates to a percentage value based on your level and the enemy's level -- is a black box that forces people to reverse engineer what's going on just to make sense of how their bonuses influence how well protected they are. In both of these cases, the general result is that armor doesn't really feel like much of anything. In a system where you have inflating hit point values, percentile reduction also forces the damage values to spike even higher and higher because a greater portion of it is being swallowed by the % reduction. You wind up with endgame scenarios like Fallout 1 and 2, where % DR negates such a huge amount of incoming damage that typically only triple damage armor-bypassing crits (against the eyes, naturally) really get through.

There are no perfect systems, everything has a trade-off.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Flat DR systems are bad because it screws over anything that attacks fast but things that attack slow are barely impacted.
This is one of those mechanics that "seems" more realistic but just isn't fun.

How do you balance this?

% DR

As Josh pointed out way back when, this also has its own downsides

Pure % DR turns into extra hit points against which there isn't any real tactic. Non-linear scaling -- where you get some abstract armor value like "291" that correlates to a percentage value based on your level and the enemy's level -- is a black box that forces people to reverse engineer what's going on just to make sense of how their bonuses influence how well protected they are. In both of these cases, the general result is that armor doesn't really feel like much of anything. In a system where you have inflating hit point values, percentile reduction also forces the damage values to spike even higher and higher because a greater portion of it is being swallowed by the % reduction. You wind up with endgame scenarios like Fallout 1 and 2, where % DR negates such a huge amount of incoming damage that typically only triple damage armor-bypassing crits (against the eyes, naturally) really get through.

There are no perfect systems, everything has a trade-off.

He's wrong. There is no fundamental difference between AC and DR from a pure statistical PoV, only from a gameplay perspective by removing the short-term RNG streaks. Some "abstract armor value" would be as confusing as the "abstract armor value" already in the game -- deflection.

 

[Roguey]

There is no fundamental difference between AC and DR from a pure statistical PoV, only from a gameplay perspective by removing the short-term RNG streaks.

Balor vs Hezrou in ToEE: The former has more AC, the latter has more health. It takes far longer to kill the former.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

There is no fundamental difference between AC and DR from a pure statistical PoV, only from a gameplay perspective by removing the short-term RNG streaks.

Balor vs Hezrou in ToEE: The former has more AC, the latter has more health. It takes far longer to kill the former.

What does that have to do with anything?
Damage reduction and Chance to miss(or whatever you want to call it) are equivalent over a long enough period of time. The only difference is that the former is much better at preventing frustrating scenarios such as

I reminds me very much of a natural 20... Soyer in shambles!

 

[Lady_Error]

Where do I even start....

edit: well, an assassin axe bleed prolly works, you just need to land it

Magic attacks, obviously. He is wide open to Fire, Ice and Corrosion.