Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[BruceVC]

Im 20 hours into PoE2 and still loving it

I appreciate the whole design of finding islands and exploring them, its a good way to motivate exploration especially if you need supplies on a long ship voyage

I also decided to implement Level Scaling but only upwards, after it was strongly recommended from people on this thread who pointed out combat becomes too easy if you dont do this and the level scaling is only by 4 levels so you wont find a level 10 rat, if the rat is level 2 it will only scale upwards to 6, which is silly and unrealistic

Anyway it has made me much more strategic in battles. I was using the AI most of the time for my companions and now Im micromanaging more

Im also really enjoying the broader narrative and interacting with the gods and understanding what are Eothas motives, I can see myself having to make huge and difficult decisions later on similar to the end of PoE1 but this time I understand more about the lore and history of the game world so my final decision about who I support should be better informed

Im actively pursuing Romance with Xoti, Im helping her with her soul burden journey and I still love her cute Southern accent

 

[Haba]

Jesus fucking Christ.

This is what we've become.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I recently loaded an old savegame - my Deadfire-native irredentist Barbarian/Fighter. I wanted to play some TB Deadfire, but it turns out I had started that game in RtwP.

It's actually a rare expression of good design how Deadfire equally allows you to RP a Cortez-type ruthless conquistador just as well as a Huana nationalist. The variety in defining a character through taking stances on in-setting issues seems much more limited in the Pathfinder games and in Larian's games if we compare to those. I don't know about InXile's.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Anyway it has made me much more strategic in battles. I was using the AI most of the time for my companions and now Im micromanaging more

If that's enough depth for you, great. In my experience, as long as you know which defense to target and which damage type is better, you are set, and combat can get boring. I like the tightly controlled combat in something like AoD and Dungeon Rats, where RNG matters more, but the philosophy in PoE is altogether different and the margin for error the player is allowed is huge.

 

[BruceVC]

Anyway it has made me much more strategic in battles. I was using the AI most of the time for my companions and now Im micromanaging more

If that's enough depth for you, great. In my experience, as long as you know which defense to target and which damage type is better, you are set, and combat can get boring. I like the tightly controlled combat in something like AoD and Dungeon Rats, where RNG matters more, but the philosophy in PoE is altogether different and the margin for error the player is allowed is huge.

Yes so end of day Im not someone who plays games multiple times or gets too deep into ruleset mechanics outside of what is necessary for my companions. So Im more of a "casual " gamer but I always finish every game I play, in the 20 years I have been gaming I have only not finished maybe 3 games

But on Steam there are good guides for Deadfire and I was reading this one " AI Behavior : Understanding how it works and how to make good use of it " https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1392162466

As I mentioned Im happy with how the AI functions but if I want to change it I will use this guide or just get feedback on this thread

 

[Justinian]

Replaying POE1, I beat it when it first came out, then I beat White March 1 when that came out, but never finished WM2. 68 hours in and I almost want to throw in the towel, the drudgery of late game cut and paste encounters is hard to bear. I'm glad I built a nuke heavy party (2 wizards, 1 druid) and stuck with hard instead of POTD. This game would have been considerably better with just some small balance changes* and extra difficulty options. I'm guessing i have another 10-12 hours left so I'll push through but the game has really overstayed its welcome by this point.

I read POE2 has considerably lower mob density, I hope that's true because repeating the same fight 200 times is pretty stale. Thank God I didn't build a balanced party like the first time around.


*Would love to see a "realistic mode" where instead of increasing accuracy, deflection and hp of mobs both player characters and enemies get like +30 accuracy, or have their health cut in half.

 

[Lacrymas]

Should've gone with PotD, these games make no sense on anything lower.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I thought so too, but PoE on PotD felt like a lot of filler combat. I've done it once, but I wouldn't replay it on that difficulty. It just doesn't feel in any way an improvement on the experience, feels like "dumb kind of challenge" as opposed to challenge that requires a change of approach..

 

[Roguey]

Should've gone with PotD, these games make no sense on anything lower.

User A: This game's getting to be a slog, glad I made a party that can nuke them relatively quickly.
User B: You should have played at the difficulty that makes it even more of a slog.

 

[Lacrymas]

The game is always a slog, but PotD makes that slog enjoyable in certain parts. Hard and below is never enjoyable.

 

[Technomancer]

Saw a mod on nexus that basically takes enemy amount in encounters from POTD difficulty but uses stats from Hard so there is no inflated bullshit. I wonder how it plays. I finished pillars like six times over the decade but since first play only played on hard and it was somewhat easy most of the time.

 

[Lacrymas]

That is literally pointless. The good part about PotD is the higher stats. PotD doesn't have inflated stats, Hard and below have reduced/undertuned stats.

 

[Roguey]

Saw a mod on nexus that basically takes enemy amount in encounters from POTD difficulty but uses stats from Hard so there is no inflated bullshit. I wonder how it plays. I finished pillars like six times over the decade but since first play only played on hard and it was somewhat easy most of the time.

The PotD munchkins insist on the inflated stats and wouldn't find it as interesting without it. What could work would be the reverse of that (hard level encounters with PotD-stats).

 

[Axel_am]

The game is always a slog, but PotD makes that slog enjoyable in certain parts. Hard and below is never enjoyable.

Opinions in such extremes sound very stupid to me. The story and how it's presented might not be the best, but it does have moments that hit hard.

 

[Technomancer]

The PotD munchkins insist on the inflated stats and wouldn't find it as interesting without it. What could work would be the reverse of that (hard level encounters with PotD-stats).

Well tough titties, there is no such mod. Maybe there is or something close to it. Didn't really look. Like this scaling thing.

Didn't really care what they think though, if they enjoy it I can understand it since in some games I also like to crank it. But in pillars inflated stats always felt like artificial lazy bullshit I didn't want to deal with (too lazy for it myself in fact). I never was bothered with so called 'trash fights', I enjoyed butchering hordes of things. And so I liked the added amount of enemy from difficulties, made me use all sorts of 'cheese' like kiting, positioning, door blocking as choke point. And when I couldn't it sure was challenging.

Never killed adra dragon on lvl 12, the original level cap. Always came for it overleveled with OP white march stuff. Adds that spawn in the fight act as neat distraction that you cannot easily funnel because you fight in the open. And I recall every guide online being outdated and relying on cheese tactics that were patched out since then. If I remember correctly it was pre nerf cheese with turn to stone trap and a rogue. Stone effect had like +100% damage received or something and mostly stone dragon was not immune.

 

[Roguey]

But in pillars inflated stats always felt like artificial lazy bullshit I didn't want to deal with (too lazy for it myself in fact).

From the perspective of the normie gamer, it's artificial and lazy. From the perspective of the powergamer, the default stats are undertuned.

This is also how we get the stat bloat in Owlcat's Pathfinder games where you have to set it below the defaults to get the rules as written (because their core difficulty is tuned for powergamers who would find the enemies with RAW stats completely unchallenging).

 

[Justinian]

That is literally pointless. The good part about PotD is the higher stats. PotD doesn't have inflated stats, Hard and below have reduced/undertuned stats.

That doesn't make it interesting. It turns everything into a bullet sponge and reduces the number of effective solutions. It's precisely the wrong way to increase difficulty. It's also debatable whether they have undertuned stats. Llengrath's stats are well above what a player could generate if they rolled a Nature Godlike wizard, for example.

Increasing number of enemies isn't that interesting either (although in my case it doesn't matter that much since I just bunch them up with Pull of Eora), although it's a little better because it adds new enemies to group compositions.

Interesting ways to increase difficulty: Improve AI, increase enemy ability variety, improve enemy equipment (that you should then be able to loot). AFAIK Pillars does neither.

 

[Justinian]

Saw a mod on nexus that basically takes enemy amount in encounters from POTD difficulty but uses stats from Hard so there is no inflated bullshit. I wonder how it plays. I finished pillars like six times over the decade but since first play only played on hard and it was somewhat easy most of the time.

The PotD munchkins insist on the inflated stats and wouldn't find it as interesting without it. What could work would be the reverse of that (hard level encounters with PotD-stats).

What would work best is if you could finetune everything yourself. Want the same number of enemies as POTD with nerfed stats like Story Mode? Should be available. Want the same number of enemies as Easy but with the stronger varieties only and upscaled stats? Should also be available.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

PoTD goes further than just extra monsters with inflated stats. It was only like that on release, but eventually the balance man put some time into making it harder, so the encounters will often have different composition and using the abilities more.

 

[Lacrymas]

What would work best is if you could finetune everything yourself. Want the same number of enemies as POTD with nerfed stats like Story Mode? Should be available. Want the same number of enemies as Easy but with the stronger varieties only and upscaled stats? Should also be available.

Even if we ignore the logistics of making such a thing, this will only ever be useful to someone who has already played the game enough times to know what the sweet spot for him would be. It also kind of defeats the purpose of a challenge. A challenge isn't supposed to be tailored to you, you are supposed to tailor yourself to it.

 

[Justinian]

What would work best is if you could finetune everything yourself. Want the same number of enemies as POTD with nerfed stats like Story Mode? Should be available. Want the same number of enemies as Easy but with the stronger varieties only and upscaled stats? Should also be available.

Even if we ignore the logistics of making such a thing, this will only ever be useful to someone who has already played the game enough times to know what the sweet spot for him would be. It also kind of defeats the purpose of a challenge. A challenge isn't supposed to be tailored to you, you are supposed to tailor yourself to it.

The logistics and coding are very simple, just don't tie the various existing difficulty elements to the same variable. Literally a half hour's worth of work (including UI elements which would take up the most time).

Nothing would stop anyone from using the default difficulty settings anyway, just add a second screen for people who want the fine-tuning. Similar to what Owlbear did in their games.

This game is very frustrating because it could easily go from a 6/10 to at least an 8/10 with some minor fine-tuning.

 

[Lacrymas]

It can't go to 8/10 just by fine-tuning the difficulty in order to make PotD easier, trust me.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Hard and below is never enjoyable.

Says who. What if I play this with my morning coffee and I'm half asleep? :D

 

[AwesomeButton]

(hard level encounters with PotD-stats).

This exactly what I've said I wish was possible, though it was some years back.

 

[Justinian]

It can't go to 8/10 just by fine-tuning the difficulty in order to make PotD easier, trust me.

I don't mean just difficulty, there are a lot of small things that detract from the experience. Basic modern RTS shit like being able to use a common ability with multiple characters at the same time doesn't exist, I have to use it individually for each. Ability bar being only 1/3 the length of the screen, with all my mastered spells getting needlessly condensed into a separate menu I now need to access before using spells I use virtually every battle, formations getting scrambled after conversations, etc.