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

[Grunker]

You called it cheese, not me *shrug*

 

[Delterius]

the reason its called cheese is because cheese is the perfect food sent by God it tastes real good when its starting to go rank but then when it feels too cheesy you stop eating it but then you add a twist and make cake with it or something and its cheesy (good) again

praise be to parmesan

 

[Grunker]

I chose to play on Veteran despise
1) liking a decent challenge
2) Knowing by reputation that POTD is more than manageable enough

...because I'm simply not interested in the means it uses to "increase the difficulty". I don't think buffing enemies' damage and giving them a massive HP bloat is a compelling way to increase challenge, I so I made the conscious choice to not bother with it.
If anything, being more or less half way through the game (I think) is validating my choice, because in turn-based mode the "time to kill" for a lot of enemies feel already fairly slow as it is.
Which has nothing to with the difficulty of the fights so far (hardly any unless "multiple skull" enemies are involved and not much even then).

Which RPGs increase difficulty in a way you find fun? Because PotD is one of a very, very small group of difficulties that actually change encounter composition and structure, so I'm calling bullshit on your claims. If PotD's methods are too basic, there must be extremely few to no RPGs that satisfy your criteria, in which case your observation is useless. Especially seeing as this game is more than managable on PotD.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Which RPGs increase difficulty in a way you find fun? Because PotD is one of a very, very small group of difficulties that actually change encounter composition and structure, so I'm calling bullshit on your claims. If PotD's methods are too basic, there must be extremely few to no RPGs that satisfy your criteria, in which case your observation is useless. Especially seeing as this game is more than managable on PotD.

Yeah, look. it's not like I actually give a shit about your endorsement, so feel free to call whatever the fuck you want.

But to answer your question: in this genre? Hardly any. It's the very same reason I avoided the highest difficulty settings in Pathfinder or in BG1 and 2 (where "core rules" is basically the only setting that matters to me).
I think DOS 1 and 2 also had their encounter designs vastly revamped in the hardest setting, but even these couldn't move past a certain degree of HP bloat and gratuitous damage buffs.

Also, not sure why you are repeating back to me that "POTD is manageable" when I stated it myself. Being manageable is not the problem, being fucking tedious to deal with with all the HP bloat is. I don't want to have to hit the same target fifteen fucking times to actually score a single kill with a trash mob.

 

[Grunker]

Hardly any

"This sucks"

"It's actually quite good relative to the other existing things"

"Aha, but what about relative to this perfect utopian thing I've created in my head!"

 

[Delterius]

Eh I didn't feel like there was much of an HP Bloat issue after Port Maje. But I only played Wizard and Priest and those two become good AoE nukers from midgame onwards.

 

[Grunker]

Eh I didn't feel like there was much of an HP Bloat issue after Port Maje. But I only played Wizard and Priest and those two become good AoE nukers from midgame onwards.

It might be a penetration-issue, though I doubt Tuco would admit to it if that were the case. Penetration is so awfully designed that the same player might feel like everything is horribly bloated while another finds the balance just right, if the former player is just 1 point of penetration away from dealing full damage.

I had a pretty bad first BoW-experience because I lacked just a tiny bit of PEN before I finally read up on the system and couldn't believe how poor the design was.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Might as well get upset that people use a mod to skip Peragus.

 

[Grunker]

Might as well get upset that people use a mod to skip Peragus.

Then you didn't read my post properly. That's exactly what I'm asking: why not just turn down the difficulty to easy or an equivalent (Peragus-mod is a good example). But I guess it makes sense if you can't. Never knew, since I never had cause to do it.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

Eh I didn't feel like there was much of an HP Bloat issue after Port Maje. But I only played Wizard and Priest and those two become good AoE nukers from midgame onwards.

It might be a penetration-issue, though I doubt Tuco would admit to it if that were the case. Penetration is so awfully designed that the same player might feel like everything is horribly bloated while another finds the balance just right, if the former player is just 1 point of penetration away from dealing full damage.

I had a pretty bad first BoW-experience because I lacked just a tiny bit of PEN before I finally read up on the system and couldn't believe how poor the design was.

It MAY be a Penetration issue, which given that I tried to build my characters to maximize their Penetration at any given time with what was available to me is arguably an issue in itself.

Not sure what I "wouldn't admit" given that I'm not exactly offering a particularly unheard opinion. You are just being weirdly over-defensive about it.
There's a reason if the mod to HALF the HP of both your party and the enemies in turn based mode is apparently of the most popular ones.

 

[Grunker]

I'm not being defensive, I'm just arguing with you because I disagree with you. I think PotD is one of the most well-designed difficulties in any RPG I ever played, and I wish more RPGs designed difficulty like that, instead of just adding stats. Furthermore, I think it's retarded to chastise it for being poorly designed if you can't even think of a single example that does it well.

It's also untrue that PoE is HP-bloated, BUT it may feel that way if you don't have enough penetration. And the PEN-system is so horribly designed there will be no difference whether you have 0 or 50 PEN, as long as you're 1 PEN below the target number.

Turn-based combat will always be slow by the way. It's not because of HP-bloat but because the game obviously wasn't designed for it. I play mainly on turn-based, and the slow tedium is just the price you pay if you do that. It is not a well-balanced addition to the game. But I really like the combat and I dislike the way PoE handles in realtime enough that I just live with it.

 

[Butter]

I was under the impression that PotD was only stat manipulation, and that encounter changes stop at Veteran. That drake at the digsite isn't PotD-exclusive.

 

[Arthandas]

the PEN-system is so horribly designed there will be no difference whether you have 0 or 50 PEN, as long as you're 1 PEN below the target number

That's actually wrong, you get -25% damage per 1 penetration point below armor rating and it caps at -75% with 3 or more points below. Ideally you should always have "enough" pen but being just 1 point below is not a deal breaker.
You also get +30% damage if your pen is at least two times larger than the armor rating. All crits have 150% penetration.
I actually really like this system.

 

[Grunker]

I was under the impression that PotD was only stat manipulation, and that encounter changes stop at Veteran. That drake at the digsite isn't PotD-exclusive.

 

[Grunker]

the PEN-system is so horribly designed there will be no difference whether you have 0 or 50 PEN, as long as you're 1 PEN below the target number

That's actually wrong, you get -25% damage per 1 penetration point below armor rating and it caps at -75% with 3 or more points below. Ideally you should always have "enough" pen but being just 1 point below is not a deal breaker.
You also get +30% damage if your pen is at least two times larger than the armor rating. All crits have 150% penetration.
I actually really like this system.

The wiki is outdated then. This was the system when I played, I'm pretty sure. I recall Haplo and others echoing this:

Full Penetration (+30% Damage) - Penetration is twice the target's Armor Rating or more.

Penetration (Listed Damage) - Penetration meets or exceeds the target's Armor Rating.

No Penetration (-70% Damage) - Penetration is less than the target's Armor Rating.

I dislike the system even with the changes you mention however, since you're still at a point where the variance within a very small integer is incredibly impactful, while the entire rest of the number line has no effect at all.

 

[Delterius]

Pretty sure it's some of the panthers who are the extra enemies in the digsite, not the drake. But I can't be certain.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah I think they changed the way penetration works at some point.

 

[Haplo]

It was always 25% less damage per point of Pen "missing", capped at 75% in the release version. Still it's rather crippling, also due to how damage is calculated (+25% and 25% reduced damage will NOT cancel out).

Edit: I guess it might have been different in the beta.

 

[Arthandas]

Do you know how enemy scaling works when upscaling them? Do they get a simple stat boost or do they also get new abilities or better equipment?

 

[Arthandas]

Jesus Christ, 45-50 fps in Neketaka on rtx 3060, is Obsidian secretly mining bitcoins with this shit?

 

[Grunker]

Jesus Christ, 45-50 fps in Neketaka on rtx 3060, is Obsidian secretly mining bitcoins with this shit?

The game suffers from bad memory leaks after playing for a time. For me, the FPS rose after exiting and reentering the game.

 

[Yosharian]

Your gaming experience also improves if you exit the game and play something else

 

[Ontopoly]

Your gaming experience also improves if you exit the game and play something else

Have you played the game since release? I'm playing it for the first time and it's actually better. Not amazing but much better. I think I'm actually excited for the dlc.

 

[Desiderius]

Eh I didn't feel like there was much of an HP Bloat issue after Port Maje. But I only played Wizard and Priest and those two become good AoE nukers from midgame onwards.

It might be a penetration-issue, though I doubt Tuco would admit to it if that were the case. Penetration is so awfully designed that the same player might feel like everything is horribly bloated while another finds the balance just right, if the former player is just 1 point of penetration away from dealing full damage.

I had a pretty bad first BoW-experience because I lacked just a tiny bit of PEN before I finally read up on the system and couldn't believe how poor the design was.

It’s exactly this. I’ve mostly played on Veteran and found it fine after they fixed the release day faceroll but then played Arcane Archer/Wiz which lets you crank up the crits and PotD became more realistic.

Unbroken/Stalker double tank also lived forever so Tehanu (enemy only debuff/nukes) and Serafen (Borrowed Instinct/Leap/Shout) could eventually kill everything too.

 

[Poseidon00]

Just completed it. Didn't get far at all in RTwP mode the first time around but ran straight through in turn based mode and had a good time. Multiclassing makes it way more interesting than the first. Lack of some old universal feats is decline. I liked having Envenomed Blade and Field Triage on vanilla warriors. Mixing and matching builds was satisfying. Arcane Archer/Psyblade made short work of the harder difficulties. Lots of damage to go around with your special abilities and the companion is just icing on the cake. I think I want to try a Debonair/something else next. Maybe Chanter.