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

[rusty_shackleford]

A huge statue of a god is destroying everything in its path in a fantasy world that's so poorly presented that no one really cares.

huge statue of a god is destroying everything in its path, time to go explore uncharted islands, settle family disputes, and get involved in local politics

 

[pomenitul]

To be fair, Deadfire is hardly the first CRPG to have failed at reconciling narrative urgency with open world design.

 

[Butter]

First game is better. It's tonally consistent.

Dour and beige throughout is pretty consistent IMO.

 

[jf8350143]

A huge statue of a god is destroying everything in its path in a fantasy world that's so poorly presented that no one really cares.

huge statue of a god is destroying everything in its path, time to go explore uncharted islands, settle family disputes, and get involved in local politics

Every RPG has this kind of problem, unless you give every mission in the game a timer, which has been proven to be something people really don't like.

 

[Shadenuat]

RPGs would have failed if designers actually set that as a design priority; the don't because they know it's not an issue and putting stress on players is dangerous to sales, especially on the "RPG" crowd. Modern RPG players do not think that RPGs should be challenging, they're all about exploration, story, etc.

Some critics would make videos about it, gamers would give them many likes; then when they see game with timer they would go into hysteria about it and mod that shit out of the game first time mod gets made.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

A huge statue of a god is destroying everything in its path in a fantasy world that's so poorly presented that no one really cares.

huge statue of a god is destroying everything in its path, time to go explore uncharted islands, settle family disputes, and get involved in local politics

Every RPG has this kind of problem, unless you give every mission in the game a timer, which has been proven to be something people really don't like.

BG2 gives you a very good excuse to skip doing the main plot for a while. The amount needed should have been much higher though.

 

[Roguey]

Every RPG has this kind of problem, unless you give every mission in the game a timer, which has been proven to be something people really don't like.

There's the NWN: Kingmaker approach where time itself isn't an issue but you can only do x amount of quests before triggering the endgame. If such a thing were transparent, it might not receive a negative reaction from most people (it'll certainly get a negative reaction from completionists who find such a content limit pointlessly arbirtary which it is, really; given the huge popularity of Oblivion and Skyrim and such it's clear that most people do not give a damn about gameplay not reinforcing narrative urgency)

 

[agentorange]

Time limits and limitations of all sorts should be implemented in more crpgs. People who don't like them are drooling mental midgets.

 

[Tigranes]

A huge statue of a god is destroying everything in its path in a fantasy world that's so poorly presented that no one really cares.

huge statue of a god is destroying everything in its path, time to go explore uncharted islands, settle family disputes, and get involved in local politics

Every RPG has this kind of problem, unless you give every mission in the game a timer, which has been proven to be something people really don't like.

BG2 gives you a very good excuse to skip doing the main plot for a while. The amount needed should have been much higher though.

Let's face it, it was a stupid as hell excuse that only works because it's a video game and holy fuck we're in one of the biggest and best cities in CRPG history and hell yeah we want to go sidequesting.

That said, who cares? It's a video game, I don't need these really sophisticated rationale around the save/load or death or sidequests mechanism, I just want sensible world building a la AOD or Underrail.

POE2's problem wasn't that you go sidequesting while Eothas is on the warpath, its problem was that the game's both main & side content is strewn messily across several different themes that don't gel together.

 

[PsychoFox]

For those who are still experiencing constant micro-stuttering, check out this potential fix:

https://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/cf6fs8/i_solved_my_microstuttering_for_poe2/

Working pretty well so far on my end.

Nice, previously i had to go to a lot of trouble with the settings to get rid of them. Though i wish it worked for PFKM too.

 

[purpleblob]

Here's my question: What exactly is the problem with the writing in PoE2?

Simply the fact its attracting people like Sailor Woedica is enough evidence that the writing is shit.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

First game is better. It's tonally consistent.

Dour and beige throughout is pretty consistent IMO.

Wat.

 

[Agame]

First game is better. It's tonally consistent.

Dour and beige throughout is pretty consistent IMO.

Wat.

Let us all agree POE is consistently boring and tedious...

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

There whole problem with the first game is they literally threw everything they could come up with into it. There's nothing consistent about it whatsoever.

 

[Eisenheinrich]

PoE 2 Deadfire would be a much better game, if the Eothas Plot would only be the first chapter of the game and after that it's just dealing with the faction and politics in the Deadfire, which is obviously the part which was given most work and attention by the writers. It truely is really weird to run errands across the archipelago while thathuge god statue is literally destroying everyhting in it's path. I can ignore that for there is plenty of good stuff in Deadfire, but I see why it breaks the game for some or even muh' immersuhn.

The main problem still is Obsidian's attempt at writing huge epic world shattering stories with you as a chosen one in the center, when they obvously can handle much smaller and compact stories much more better. White March and Deadfire DLC's show that pretty good. I still consider WM 1+2 to be the strongest output in the franchise, in terms of story, gameflow, combat and cohesion. It's a fun wilderness and dungeon romp much more true to the final frontier feel than the Dyrwood ever was.

WM 1+2 > PoE 2 > PoE

 

[jf8350143]

Every RPG has this kind of problem, unless you give every mission in the game a timer, which has been proven to be something people really don't like.

There's the NWN: Kingmaker approach where time itself isn't an issue but you can only do x amount of quests before triggering the endgame. If such a thing were transparent, it might not receive a negative reaction from most people (it'll certainly get a negative reaction from completionists who find such a content limit pointlessly arbirtary which it is, really; given the huge popularity of Oblivion and Skyrim and such it's clear that most people do not give a damn about gameplay not reinforcing narrative urgency)

It's not about the time limit, it's about the pacing of the game. Time limit is just a tool for the devs to control the players' pacing. That's the reason why people don't like it because they want to play the game in their own pace.

The problem not only goes to the main story, it applies to the side quest as well: I promise you to find your stuff which has been stolen by some bandits. But I'll do it half year later because I have other things to do, but the bandits will always stay there and wait for me to find them instead of sell the stuff because of reasons. And the one you do side quest for will never try to find someone else to do it for them or ask you to hurry the fuck up.

So you have to put time limit on everything, and then it begs the question why do you make a game where you allow the players to explore and do sidequest, why not just make a complete linear game where you get no choices whatsoever in the first place.

 

[Sailor Woedica]

I just use my imagination and pretend around the main quest and side quest pacing stuff in rpgs

 

[Roguey]

There whole problem with the first game is they literally threw everything they could come up with into it. There's nothing consistent about it whatsoever.

Looks like he's referring to the tone of the dialogue which is true enough. PoE did not have random outbursts of squee or degeneracy.

 

[Reinhardt]

PoE 2 Deadfire would be a much better game

if there was no gods bullshit and different main character.

 

[PsychoFox]

PoE 2 Deadfire would be a much better game

if there was no gods bullshit and different main character.

Or if the player had more say in the outcome of each individual God.

 

[Reinhardt]

PoE 2 Deadfire would be a much better game

if there was no gods bullshit and different main character.

Or if the player had more say in the outcome of each individual God.

Gods not needed. Period.

 

[Piotrovitz]

Got a question about some Nature's Resolve perma-buff - where the fuck does it come from?
I've read somewhere that you get this if your MC is a cipher and you meditate at some certain shrine. I cannot recall where I got it tbh.

That's cool, but should entire party be affected by this, or is it a bug?
If so, this is hilarious, because it's fucking permanent +10 accuracy and +2 resolve, and I got it like 5 hours into the game.

Bumping dis up.

 

[Shadenuat]

Wasn't it removed in 2.0? and it was always before rest I think
so your char might be bugged

 

[Shadenuat]

So you have to put time limit on everything, and then it begs the question why do you make a game where you allow the players to explore and do sidequest, why not just make a complete linear game where you get no choices whatsoever in the first place.

Because you don't actually have to design it so player will lose like half of content. (althought that can be p fun game)

You can, but truth is, just like Fallout 1 timer, it is all smoke and mirrors. While the biggest casuals might fail (people do fail at first PK quest) completionists still finish game with all achivos/quests provided they don't restscum for 2 years.

It's a trick not to make you fail, but to make you THINK you can fail. And it works. It ever worked on me for first like 2 playthoughs until I mastered the game.

 

[vortex]

Some people get so triggered at the thought of a woman blacksmith in their magical fantasy games they can't even.

Yeah. That wouldn't work. It's too (toxically) feministic.