Eternity Pillars of Eternity II Beta Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Abu Antar]

I hope they just release it completed this time. I'm also someone who disliked PoE 1.0 quite a bit, but retried it with The White March and 3.0 and enjoyed it quite a bit. I want that at release however long it takes.

I am 100% certain that PoE2 will suffer the same fate as PoE1. They will change things after release for at least a year.

 

[Nihiliste]

I don't really get why they needed to change everything from 3.0 which was pretty fun. Would have been better to use that time and those resources on story, lore, setting, encounter design, area design

 

[Sherry]

Hi!

We are going to be doing some crafting on the weekend and while watching beta character creation I thought of a fun craft to try out before the kids get involved to see just how difficult or how messy it would be and today I just finished the first attempt and I wanted to share with you too. It was fun looking for clipart for the game and other games like Ultima, HOMM3 and others on the family PC but I found some for Pillars and after watching a few yt videos came up with a fun clipart crafting to hide part of the ugly part of the family PC.

Put in spoilers because of two pictures to show how it looks before and after. The before picture is what we wanted to hide and the after is the new Pillars of Eternity designs of the game's logo and the Sky Dragon!

right side ugly part of case showing

With 4 colour strips added it shines nicely through the new panel cover.

right side new case cover showing

Happy to make a thread outisde of this one to show how they are made and of the other game panels for anyone interested but the family PC is now DEADFIRE ready!

Thanks,
Sherry

 

[Abu Antar]

I don't see no cloud...

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I don't really get why they needed to change everything from 3.0 which was pretty fun. Would have been better to use that time and those resources on story, lore, setting, encounter design, area design

I'm still puzzled by that decision too. With 3.0 it seemed like they have a nice framework that can continue to serve them well for the next 1-2 games. And with systems battle-tested in the field by thousands of players, they could just focus on making the best game they can.

Instead they decided to basically just piss everything away and start from scratch. I can't deny that combat and system changes announced so far seem exciting. But if the game was simply based on slightly revised 3.0, there would be no need for these debates on whether to buy it on launch or wait a year. I seriously wonder if this whole redesign won't backfire on them if the launch turns out as bad as PoE1.

 

[Lacrymas]

We've been over this, it's because Josh says "everyone" just rests after every battle or backtracks so there's no point to per-rest abilities or a semi-Vancian system. Instead of doing the obvious and limit resting, he decided to cater to the droolies and scrap the entire system.

 

[Delterius]

Eothas voice acting sample/preview found.

Spoiler

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[Infinitron]

Hint about the topic of the next Fig update?

 

[Lacrymas]

I.e. Mephits.

 

[Abu Antar]

I.e. Mephits.

See? They ARE inspired by D&D!

 

[Jimmious]

At least they called them imps and not ỷmps

 

[Lacrymas]

I was thinking that maybe they are a bit TOO inspired by D&D. Have they created a creature that isn't directly ripped off from D&D for this franchise? Honest question. It's starting to annoy me a little bit, their artists claim to be artists but can't create anything that isn't almost a direct copy of something else. What's the point of being an artist, just tell the 3D designers to copy whatever they can find in the D&D monster manual and call it a day.

 

[Sensuki]

I also can't find a way to pirate the beta for some reason, so even I can't check it out, sooo.

I woke up one day and had a PM with a PoE2 beta key in it

 

[Infinitron]

Now all pledges are shutting down. Definitely releasing early this year.

 

[Sizzle]

I was thinking that maybe they are a bit TOO inspired by D&D. Have they created a creature that isn't directly ripped off from D&D for this franchise? Honest question. It's starting to annoy me a little bit, their artists claim to be artists but can't create anything that isn't almost a direct copy of something else. What's the point of being an artist, just tell the 3D designers to copy whatever they can find in the D&D monster manual and call it a day.

Yeah, but you gotta remember that basically everything exists in D&D - from every type of mythological beings from our own legends, to absurd things like horsespiders.

The bigger issue I have with PoE's beastiary, is that that I expected more creatures to have unique abilities/behavior that would change how we interact with them. For example, the Skuldrak's ability to see souls, so sneaking gets a penalty around them. Something similar to that, applied to more enemies.

 

[Lacrymas]

I'd take horsespiders over mephit-a-likes any day of the week. If they want to rip off D&D so much, rip off the more obscure monsters, rather than the most mainstream and used ones. They are a bit too reminiscent of their D&D design, though. There are many ways to represent an imp, but the way they do it is literally mephits even down to how they fight. It rubs me the wrong way, it seems uncomfortably like plagiarism.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Would be awesome to have this land this quarter, as its rather sparse in terms of quality rpg's, think the only one im looking forward to somewhat is ni no kuni 2.

 

[Sizzle]

I'd take horsespiders over mephit-a-likes any day of the week. If they want to rip off D&D so much, rip off the more obscure monsters, rather than the most mainstream and used ones. They are a bit too reminiscent of their D&D design, though. There are many ways to represent an imp, but the way they do it is literally mephits even down to how they fight. It rubs me the wrong way, it seems uncomfortably like plagiarism.

By that logic, do you consider Vithrack and Xaurip to be good, just because they look a bit different than the creatures they are copying?

 

[FreeKaner]

I'd take horsespiders over mephit-a-likes any day of the week. If they want to rip off D&D so much, rip off the more obscure monsters, rather than the most mainstream and used ones. They are a bit too reminiscent of their D&D design, though. There are many ways to represent an imp, but the way they do it is literally mephits even down to how they fight. It rubs me the wrong way, it seems uncomfortably like plagiarism.

It's impossible to not "rip off" D&D if you are making medieval fantasy. D&D itself is like a collection of everything from Tolkien to regular mythology and everything else. Put ogres, orcs and elves in your game and it's a "D&D rip off"

 

[santino27]

I don't really need them to differentiate their bestiary from D&D (especially when their attempts at doing so seem to mostly just involve throwing in a few words about souls and changing the name to look more stupid, per JES' linguistic fetishes), but I do agree with Lacrymas that they could really stand to bring in some of the more unusual or off-the-wall creations if they're looking for inspiration.

(At least it's better than Dragon age: origins, whose bestiary mostly felt like 'human, animal, orc, ogre, or dragon')

 

[Lacrymas]

By that logic, do you consider Vithrack and Xaurip to be good, just because they look a bit different than the creatures they are copying?

A bit, yes. While it's obvious where the "inspiration" comes from, it has a modicum of creativity put into them to make them stand out a little bit. I'm not saying it's good or that's how they should do it, quite the contrary, it's scraping the bottom of the barrel, if it hasn't already drilled a hole through the barrel, but at least it's something. PoE is ... derivative in the worst possible ways. Even DA:O is better in its derivativeness and that's saying a lot.

It's impossible to not "rip off" D&D if you are making medieval fantasy. D&D itself is like a collection of everything from Tolkien to regular mythology and everything else. Put ogres, orcs and elves in your game and it's a "D&D rip off"

Only if your concept of "medieval fantasy" is "Tolkien and D&D" and literally nothing else. Gothic is also medieval fantasy, but it's made very well, it has its own identity and the twists of the old formula are the norm, not the exception. The setting is what makes Gothic good, it doesn't rely that much on characters, so it can be done. PoE, however, is TOO much like D&D, uncomfortably so.

 

[Sentinel]

I'd take horsespiders over mephit-a-likes any day of the week. If they want to rip off D&D so much, rip off the more obscure monsters, rather than the most mainstream and used ones. They are a bit too reminiscent of their D&D design, though. There are many ways to represent an imp, but the way they do it is literally mephits even down to how they fight. It rubs me the wrong way, it seems uncomfortably like plagiarism.

It's impossible to not "rip off" D&D if you are making medieval fantasy. D&D itself is like a collection of everything from Tolkien to regular mythology and everything else. Put ogres, orcs and elves in your game and it's a "D&D rip off"

*cough* Elder Scrolls *cough*

 

[FreeKaner]

Only if your concept of "medieval fantasy" is "Tolkien and D&D" and literally nothing else. Gothic is also medieval fantasy, but it's made very well, it has its own identity and the twists of the old formula are the norm, not the exception. The setting is what makes Gothic good, it doesn't rely that much on characters, so it can be done. PoE, however, is TOO much like D&D, uncomfortably so.

It's not what people, specifically average rpg fans, want to play. There was even backlash for just deviating a bit from the medieval and including gunpowder and how what's the point of it in a world magic exists?

Sure a completely original world that takes nothing from Tolkien or D&D can be made, but that would mean you'd make something that's not not-Europe, because Tolkien and D&D are essentially European fantasy. People want knights in armour, wizards, supernatural creatures to kill and all that.

 

[Lacrymas]

Who are these "people" and how do Obs know this? Are there a lot of medieval settings in games that deviate from D&D/Tolkien out there that are unsuccessful because of that, so they know the statistic? At the top of my head, only Arcanum comes to mind as a not successful attempt, but I don't think it was because it wasn't like D&D.