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

[Daidre]

Casting same spell every 20 min > casting same spell every 20 sec. Especially if you need to cast 20 more "spells" with every party member each lasting 3,4-4,1 seconds.

Buffing routine in PoE makes me want to kill someone, especially when playing some buff-heavy builds like melee mages or ciphers. Automatic reset of all buffs after combat ends is more pure evil than actual buff duration. Even more so when, thanks to brilliant Obsidian coding, in some encounters that go right after one another buffs reset but not a class resources or spell charges.

Deadfire scripting added extra layer of ridiculous on top of that.

First I automated buffs and managing them became a little easier, but than I scripted most cost-effective ability spam every 6 seconds + healing and got a game that plays itself 95% of the time on PoTD.

 

[Haplo]

What buffing routine?
Yeah, some classes have some useful buffs you tend to use every fight, for example mages, fighters, monks - but most of those are instant-cast and can be automated.

Plus nobody's forcing you to play "buff-heavy builds". Also Ciphers? Did I miss something? How exactly are they buff heavy?

 

[Daidre]

I mostly meant martial/cipher hybrids that profit a lot from Tactical Meld or Borrowed Instinct, and other class buffs from monk or fighter.
But main culprit is wizards with their Spirit Shield + Mirrored Image + Llengrath's Displaced Image + Some Alacrity at every fight, even more stupid when you use summoned weapon.

Priests are annoyance too after all decent buffs were nerfed with huge cast time after first POE.

 

[Diggfinger]

BG 2 has brutal permanent debuffs like level draining and petrification and permadeath for party members.

When Deadfire designers were almost religiously afraid to inconvenience player with any impactful debuff, requirement for protection spell from specific spellbook or even simple encounter-to-encounter HP-pool managing and healing.

End result is so damn... sterile that could never compete even with 20 years old original BG, not mentioning BG 2.

Unlike BG, however, PoE (1) has interesting and flexible level progression.
Fighters and barbarians can make meaningful choices with many options (passive skills, AoE abilities, weapon specialisation etc.), and can even choose from a huge pool of skills from other classes. This is in stark juxtaposition to BG where leveling fighters was mind-numbingly boring (+xHP, every X level 1weapon proficiency point). Although I guess multi-classing made that somewhat less tedious in BG (never tried).
Wizards in PoE are awesome too, with much more flexible way of learning sand using spells, e.g. stealing from other Grimoires.


I get that BG was oblously tied to the D&D rules, but find PoE's character progression much more enjoyable all-together.

 

[Reinhardt]

Fighters and barbarians can make meaningful choices with many options

If i wanted to play piano gay faggot i'd chose some mage. Not every class need "kick", "another kick" and "slightly different kick" on different cooldowns.

 

[Daidre]

For me character progression is pretty close between PoE and IE games. Better choices for non-caster but casters (mages, cleric druid) in nowhere close to BG or IWD. And dual/multi classing so good that my dream party (usually for HoF IWD) barely has anyone without at least some spells.

It is encounter and dungeon design that makes most difference for BG 2, but it has somewhat unfair advantage due to the modding.

Both (all three if counting Deadfire) are blown out of the water in character building department by P:K, but NWN 2 with Kaedrin's PrC pack is very, very close. Engine is quite a bit shittier though.

Deadfire is tricky for me to appreciate - a like multiclassing but my favorites: Carnage focused barbarian, cipher and priest are nerfed so much they are not fun anymore. Main paradigm with "add rogue/monk to any class" hurts system more than helps and results for me in the parties where 3/5 people are half-rogues.

 

[gurugeorge]

Settling in with this now, actually rather enjoying it. Where P:K felt like a long, cohesive, epic story, this feels like a series of mini-adventures, but they are a lot of fun. And some of the writing is really rather good in places. For example, earlier in the game I'd come across some smugglers. They attacked me, so naturally I slaughtered them. But then later on I find out that the smugglers were the only ones providing a trickle of food to the destitute in a ghetto. I then had several options to try and get the poor fed again. That was a good bit of immersion, realizing that my earlier actions had had unforeseen negative consequences. There's a lot of SJW box-ticking in the game, but that's unavoidable these days, and I get the feeling that apart from lingering over the pervy sexual possibilities, the team's heart really isn't in it, they're just doing it because they have to. The meat and potatoes of the writing seems to be more focused on actual intricate little stories, with personal, tribal and corporate motivations being the main driving forces.

My party is starting to get OP though (lvl 8-9). e.g. two-skull island encounters are pretty much trivial now on Classic - I think they should at least be a bit "hard", like it says on the tin. And I haven't yet had a single team wipe. I think I need to bump the dififculty up a notch.

Two little things I particularly love: the detailed, realistic paper dolls, where there's a visible difference between just "fine" and "exceptional" gear (not just shinier, but more and different details); the boarding combat. I always just go straight for the boarding with ship-on-ship encounters, because I'm pretty secure in the knowledge that my merry band of adventurers can pretty much whup any two-bit pirate's ass, and his crew, even if they're several levels above me.

 

[chuft]

I guess what it comes down to is I would pay $80 for a game using AD&D 2nd edition mechanics, but for a game using MMO-like mechanics, I will get it with all expansions from some Steam, Fanatical or Humble Bundle sale for $19.99, if I get it at all.

 

[Morality Games]

That's consistent with my experience. Pillars of Eternity II disappoints partly because it baits players into investing their attention and expectations of a faux-Mask of the Betrayer narrative that is bound to underwhelm. If you can force yourself to ignore the main quest/story (difficult because the writing baits you into devoting your attention to it) and just treat the game as an open world exploration with a bunch of overlapping vignettes for quests (like your character moved to the Deadfire after PoE1 solely to be a pirate/privateer and finding Eothas is just a footnote in your list of things to do to advance your career in Deadfire), it is much more fun.

 

[StaticSpine]

Man, I tried to love the game, but it feels so bland. It looks gorgeous, though.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I get the implication that the lady who gives the bounties for the treasure map(Dessiral) doesn't have a sister, but the woman she's referring to is herself — and the "death" of her sister was her starting a new life.
Was this meant to be implied?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

This is my 3rd or 4th time playing PoE2 and I just realized you can put grimoires in your quick slot and change them during combat…

 

[Butter]

This is my 3rd or 4th time playing PoE2

 

[Lacrymas]

playing PoE2

 

[Mikeal]

PoE2

 

[ERYFKRAD]

grimoires

 

[rusty_shackleford]

How to easily pickpocket anyone:
Wizard's dimensional shift is usable outside of combat.

 

[Reinhardt]

 

[FreeKaner]

There is no spell that 'solves' Lagufaeth paralyze in the sense of stopping the paralyze from affecting your party. Whenever I encountered these enemies I either came back when I was higher level and simply brute forced it, or used pull tactics to abuse the encounter, etc. I never had the satisfaction of 'Aha, this spell stops paralyze, and now I can beat on these guys with impunity!'

Sawyer doesn't consider solving a puzzle tactical or strategic.

* Does the game allow you to develop and use tactics?
* Does the game allow you to develop and deploy a strategy?
* Does the game allow you to resolve conflicts in multiple ways?

If you answered "no" to all of the above, you're playing a "pure" adventure/puzzle game.

Perhaps you'd like Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, it's a RPG where every battle is a puzzle to be solved.

Sawyer is correctly in principle but his dogmatic adherence to this instead leads to extreme streamlining. Sure, don'T make the entire game a one solution puzzle but occasional rock-paper-scissors or hard counters are fine to spice it up. As how one shouldn't eat entirely spice, one shouldn't just go in unseasoned either.

That's the problem with Sawyer in general, he is good at identifying problems but he is not good at devising solutions.

 

[FreeKaner]

I consider this to be a massive improvement. Stacking stupid amounts of long-lasting prebuffs is dumb.

An AD&D fanatic gronard and medieval fantasy fanboy was teaching a class on Bioware, known action-adventure studio

”Before the class begins, you must get on your knees and worship Bioware and accept that it was the best rpg developer world has ever known, even greater than Troika!”

At this moment, a brave, innovative, pro-crowdfunding Ars Magica game master who played 1500 hours of Pillars of Eternity and understood the necessity of streamlining and fully supported all design decisions made by Josh Sawyer to eliminate prebuffing stood up and held up a copy of BG2.

”What is this, pinhead?”

The arrogant professor smirked quite Jewishly and smugly replied “The best RPG ever made, you stupid larper”

”Wrong. It doesn't even have C&C. If it was the best, as you say, RPG… then it should have been balanced”

The professor was visibly shaken, and dropped his chalk and copy of D&D 2nd edition. He stormed out of the room crying those kensai-mage crocodile tears. The same tears kensai-mages cry for the “itemisation” (who today have such selection that most own 23 unique swords) when they jealously try to claw justly earned auto-attacks from the deserving martial classes. There is no doubt that at this point our professor, Edwin, wished he had learned another ruleset and become more than a nostalgiafag. He wished so much that he had an in-game gamepedia, but he himself had petitioned against them!

The students applauded and all registered as fig backers that day and accepted Feargus Urquhart as their lord and savior. An eagle named “Obsidian” flew into the room and perched atop director's board and shed a tear on the chalk. The pillars of Eternity gameguide was read several times, and Tim Cain himself showed up and announced a new IP.

The professor lost his tenure and was fired the next day. He died of The Awakening and was tossed into the In-Between for all eternity.

Watcher of Caed Nua.

 

[pomenitul]

smirked quite Jewishly Avellonely

FTFY

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

I consider this to be a massive improvement. Stacking stupid amounts of long-lasting prebuffs is dumb.

An AD&D fanatic gronard and medieval fantasy fanboy was teaching a class on Bioware, known action-adventure studio

”Before the class begins, you must get on your knees and worship Bioware and accept that it was the best rpg developer world has ever known, even greater than Troika!”

At this moment, a brave, innovative, pro-crowdfunding Ars Magica game master who played 1500 hours of Pillars of Eternity and understood the necessity of streamlining and fully supported all design decisions made by Josh Sawyer to eliminate prebuffing stood up and held up a copy of BG2.

”What is this, pinhead?”

The arrogant professor smirked quite Jewishly and smugly replied “The best RPG ever made, you stupid larper”

”Wrong. It doesn't even have C&C. If it was the best, as you say, RPG… then it should have been balanced”

The professor was visibly shaken, and dropped his chalk and copy of D&D 2nd edition. He stormed out of the room crying those kensai-mage crocodile tears. The same tears kensai-mages cry for the “itemisation” (who today have such selection that most own 23 unique swords) when they jealously try to claw justly earned auto-attacks from the deserving martial classes. There is no doubt that at this point our professor, Edwin, wished he had learned another ruleset and become more than a nostalgiafag. He wished so much that he had an in-game gamepedia, but he himself had petitioned against them!

The students applauded and all registered as fig backers that day and accepted Feargus Urquhart as their lord and savior. An eagle named “Obsidian” flew into the room and perched atop director's board and shed a tear on the chalk. The pillars of Eternity gameguide was read several times, and Tim Cain himself showed up and announced a new IP.

The professor lost his tenure and was fired the next day. He died of The Awakening and was tossed into the In-Between for all eternity.

Watcher of Caed Nua.

RPG Codex POTTY (Post of the Year).

 

[santino27]

I consider this to be a massive improvement. Stacking stupid amounts of long-lasting prebuffs is dumb.

An AD&D fanatic gronard and medieval fantasy fanboy was teaching a class on Bioware, known action-adventure studio

”Before the class begins, you must get on your knees and worship Bioware and accept that it was the best rpg developer world has ever known, even greater than Troika!”

At this moment, a brave, innovative, pro-crowdfunding Ars Magica game master who played 1500 hours of Pillars of Eternity and understood the necessity of streamlining and fully supported all design decisions made by Josh Sawyer to eliminate prebuffing stood up and held up a copy of BG2.

”What is this, pinhead?”

The arrogant professor smirked quite Jewishly and smugly replied “The best RPG ever made, you stupid larper”

”Wrong. It doesn't even have C&C. If it was the best, as you say, RPG… then it should have been balanced”

The professor was visibly shaken, and dropped his chalk and copy of D&D 2nd edition. He stormed out of the room crying those kensai-mage crocodile tears. The same tears kensai-mages cry for the “itemisation” (who today have such selection that most own 23 unique swords) when they jealously try to claw justly earned auto-attacks from the deserving martial classes. There is no doubt that at this point our professor, Edwin, wished he had learned another ruleset and become more than a nostalgiafag. He wished so much that he had an in-game gamepedia, but he himself had petitioned against them!

The students applauded and all registered as fig backers that day and accepted Feargus Urquhart as their lord and savior. An eagle named “Obsidian” flew into the room and perched atop director's board and shed a tear on the chalk. The pillars of Eternity gameguide was read several times, and Tim Cain himself showed up and announced a new IP.

The professor lost his tenure and was fired the next day. He died of The Awakening and was tossed into the In-Between for all eternity.

Watcher of Caed Nua.

RPG Codex POTTY (Post of the Year).

That's not how acronyms work.

 

[Delterius]

I consider this to be a massive improvement. Stacking stupid amounts of long-lasting prebuffs is dumb.

An AD&D fanatic gronard and medieval fantasy fanboy was teaching a class on Bioware, known action-adventure studio

”Before the class begins, you must get on your knees and worship Bioware and accept that it was the best rpg developer world has ever known, even greater than Troika!”

At this moment, a brave, innovative, pro-crowdfunding Ars Magica game master who played 1500 hours of Pillars of Eternity and understood the necessity of streamlining and fully supported all design decisions made by Josh Sawyer to eliminate prebuffing stood up and held up a copy of BG2.

”What is this, pinhead?”

The arrogant professor smirked quite Jewishly and smugly replied “The best RPG ever made, you stupid larper”

”Wrong. It doesn't even have C&C. If it was the best, as you say, RPG… then it should have been balanced”

The professor was visibly shaken, and dropped his chalk and copy of D&D 2nd edition. He stormed out of the room crying those kensai-mage crocodile tears. The same tears kensai-mages cry for the “itemisation” (who today have such selection that most own 23 unique swords) when they jealously try to claw justly earned auto-attacks from the deserving martial classes. There is no doubt that at this point our professor, Edwin, wished he had learned another ruleset and become more than a nostalgiafag. He wished so much that he had an in-game gamepedia, but he himself had petitioned against them!

The students applauded and all registered as fig backers that day and accepted Feargus Urquhart as their lord and savior. An eagle named “Obsidian” flew into the room and perched atop director's board and shed a tear on the chalk. The pillars of Eternity gameguide was read several times, and Tim Cain himself showed up and announced a new IP.

The professor lost his tenure and was fired the next day. He died of The Awakening and was tossed into the In-Between for all eternity.

Watcher of Caed Nua.

RPG Codex POTTY (Post of the Year).

TNHAW

fix'd

 

[gurugeorge]

Well you've got to click on something to interact with the game. The buffs don't magically activate themselves: either it's stupid amounts of pre-buffs that will last for a goodly portion of a map, or it's stupid amounts of clicking per-encounter buffs every combat

I suppose the latter feels more "interactive," while the former seems like a tedious formal routine, but really it's six and a half dozen.