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

[IHaveHugeNick]

Tigranes Were you playing POTD?

always.

what did you find unplayable?

Everything being so reliant on accuracy vs. defense, I find it anticlimactic that 3 turns can pass and my main damage dude scores graze/miss/graze. It's not just slow, it's slow and uneventful.

 

[Daidre]

The Cast Time is another thing that bugs me to no end in Deadfire's TB, when caster only starts action in his round and spell is stuffed into initiative query and goes off later. I understand it is the way (cheapest) to make interrupt possible, but I vastly prefer AoO's or some sort of Prepared/Ready/Contra Actions as a solutions, not a delayed application that is just annoying.

 

[Tigranes]

Tigranes Were you playing POTD?

always.

what did you find unplayable?

Everything being so reliant on accuracy vs. defense, I find it anticlimactic that 3 turns can pass and my main damage dude scores graze/miss/graze. It's not just slow, it's slow and uneventful.

Isn't that the same in RTWP? I suppose you notice it more on TB. But AC/BAB stacking is far more haywire in PKM, while Deadfire actually offers far more possibilities around buffing and debuffing defences. (In PKM the vast majority of useful attacks on both sides appear to be Will-based, for instance.)

I think Daidre's point is more on the mark - I suspect if Deadfire was built for TB from the start it might have also gone for more discrete time blocks. As it is it's trying to translate microsecond timings into the initiative order.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Lacrymas]

I had such hopes that I could corrupt her in service to Skaen, turns out I shouldn't have bothered abducting her.

 

[Smoker]

The Cast Time is another thing that bugs me to no end in Deadfire's TB, when caster only starts action in his round and spell is stuffed into initiative query and goes off later. I understand it is the way (cheapest) to make interrupt possible, but I vastly prefer AoO's or some sort of Prepared/Ready/Contra Actions as a solutions, not a delayed application that is just annoying.

Yea it's lame you can rarely stop someone before they get to your party.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Isn't that the same in RTWP? I suppose you notice it more on TB.

You know, it might be that I notice it more than others, because all my parties are designed to remove the P from the RTWP. I use very extensive scripting, focus on passive abilities, I usually use no healer and so on.

So swapping to TB was exhaustively slow and painful, lol. I don't remember the build, but I probably defaulted to what worked in RTWP and might have been shit for TB.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Orma I admit this was a fair use of autism button. :D

 

[DalekFlay]

Even if there were passionate fans willing to do it, community balancing patches usually suck.

99% of time these patches are made by "muh realism" nerds who think they are experts about medieval weaponry because they wear fedora and study the way of the blade by watching furry porn.

So instead balancing the gameplay, they do shit like nerfing fireball damage "because 3rd degree burns take more time to develop" or "you cant penetrate a plate armor with a dagger" and similar autistic nonsense that does nothing to improve the game.

I have spoken.

Texture mods usually suck too, changing the art too much, focusing on resolution over design and adding superfluous bullshit. I main;y only use "mods" that are community patches, widescreen hacks and shit like that.

 

[Murk]

I only played it after it went included turn-based mode, and I thought it was fine. A lot of the generic +5 to this or 25% to that style of buffs become tedious, and anything related to 'attack speed' is meaningless, also Dex is mostly a dump stat now unless you are planning some initiative based shenanigans.... but it was pretty decent.

Not as fun combat as Original Sin or ToEE, but not bad.

I hated the voice acting for most characters though, and the writing is pretty bad at times too, but eh -- can easily make a full custom party with only a minor XP gap if you do it early on.

I liked the Beast of Winter DLC area, reminded me of IWD 1 in a good way.

 

[Tenebris]

 

[Lacrymas]

The story of the Watcher shouldn't have even been begun tbh.

 

[Tigranes]

*shrug* how many of the central protagonists / stories do we really care about having an epic 3-part narrative?

I don't care about PKM's Baron or the nymph and I don't need their stories extended. Same goes for Henry, even though I don't dislike the character. Can't even remember any of the names from DOS1 or 2 obviously.

I've said this a million times but POE1 needed to be about faction politics, taking it further than other RPGs to really root it in the history of different lands, invasions, newcomer settlers, etc., and play out the vast intractable differences between them, with intrigue and infiltration, double-dealing and explosive misunderstandings. Deadfire would then have run on with it in its colonial setting.

St. Waidwen is actually a fascinating story and it is one of the best potential hooks for a CRPG story in a long time: the peasant self-declares an avatar of the gods and a great mob of underclasses follow in its wake, and the religious establishment commissions a vast strike team to eliminate the threat, with their own internecine shivving complicating matters. Actually playing through Waidwen's journey - e.g. maybe your main character starts out by joining his mission, your first joinable being Eder's brother, or joining the clerical faction, your first joinable being a young Durance - and then witnessing the events, affecting them, seeing them not through the metaphysical discussion of 'what if there's a vast conspiracy about gods' but experiencing a real event of violence and destruction and faith as weaponised for political ends.

Instead it became a background lore story.

 

[Lawntoilet]

Was all the Waidwen stuff part of Zeits' story? I think he wrote the bulk of the gods for PoE1.

 

[Riddler]

Was all the Waidwen stuff part of Zeits' story? I think he wrote the bulk of the gods for PoE1.

I believe it actually was Sawyer since Waidwen was created before the other gods in the process of making the initial map of the Dyewood (which Sawyer did).

 

[Verylittlefishes]

He sounds depressed. I feel sorry for him but Deadfire was a bad game and PoE 1 was an ok game with so much wasted potential.

 

[Haplo]

Well, its the first time I'm playing the DLC. The SSS arena fights were pretty fun - well designed, a good challenge.

But now I'm going trough Beast of Winter and I'm liking it A LOT. Travelling trough planes / memory echos, piecing together lost memories.... its all giving me Planescape / MotB vibes... and that's something I really didn't expect from Deadfire.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Well, its the first time I'm playing the DLC. The SSS arena fights were pretty fun - well designed, a good challenge.

But now I'm going trough Beast of Winter and I'm liking it A LOT. Travelling trough planes / memory echos, piecing together lost memories.... its all giving me Planescape / MotB vibes... and that's something I really didn't expect from Deadfire.

Yes, The Bridge Ablaze is probably a top game moment.

 

[Elex]

He sounds depressed. I feel sorry for him but Deadfire was a bad game and PoE 1 was an ok game with so much wasted potential.

They wasted a huge opportunity.
Poe was the game reigniting the flame of RTWP rpg, and poe 2 the game that killed RTWP.

it was a gradual realization.

Poe was a ok and good game, not a great game. But the reaction was extreme: “They are back!! We love them we hope more comes!!”

but then larian happened: “wait now people buy turn based game?” “Of course people also buy turn based game if they are decent they buy both”

poe 2 happened: “ehh well actually turn based and co op is better maybe i will play it after all the DLC already planned”

kingmaker happened:” hey it’s not turn based don’t have coop, it’s bugged, i need an external wiki to understand rules...BUT hey it’s still better than poe 1/2” “oh look a turn based mod too!!”

poe2: NOW TURN BASED PLZ BUY “no you don’t understand pirates sucks the story is meh, the lore is meh, i don’t even finished the first game, who was the bad guy in the first game?”

pathfinder 2: “yeah both turn based and rtwp, and it’s a new game i read it was good but bugged, luckly the next game is a new storyline!!”

larian with BG3 license: “hello we have 350 people working on the game because our game have a big big license and tons of money from the last two games we made”

so yes he sound depressed because both pathfinder and divinity are not perfect or masterpiece but still better than poe 1/2 and more succesful.

 

[vortex]

PoE2 RTWP combat is fine. Problem is as follows. Game flow is regularly disrupted with pop-up screens which backs you from the game. In the ruins you come up to dead person,you search him, pop-up screen. Why? It could be in done in the game. You get the ship, pop-up, go for the crew, pop-up, loading screens 2x...
DOS2 is better not becasue of the TB but game let's you breathe and play the game. In Deadfire pop-ups ruin the game flow, IMO.

 

[Lacrymas]

The worst aspect of PoE2 is the frequent and long loading screens.

 

[Quillon]

Obsidian must really have shit programmers; playing PK atm after more than a year and everything's faster; initial title menu loading of the game used to take at least 30 secs for me, now its 5 secs. Besides adding functionality to bypass loadings around capital city and kingdom management screens, Owlcat apparently added no loading in-door/out-door transitions which Obsidian said Deadfire was going to have before release; its fully functional in PK and there are still loading screens in Deadfire everywhere no matter which transition which progressively got worse with patches & expansions.

 

[pomenitul]

Loading times are perfectly fine on my end (pick up an SSD, for fuck's sake, they're cheap these days). Now, the indelible micro-stuttering every 40 or so seconds, on the other hand…

 

[Lacrymas]

Loading times are perfectly fine on my end (pick up an SSD, for fuck's sake, they're cheap these days). Now, the indelible micro-stuttering every 40 or so seconds, on the other hand…

I'm hesitating picking up an SSD because I'm not sure how they work with motherboards. My motherboard is really old, like 10ish years old, and I'm not certain it supports SSDs (if that's even a thing). So I have to replace my motherboard too if that's the case.

 

[pomenitul]

Chances are it's compatible. Which mobo do you have, exactly?