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zedprime posted:PoE2 gonna be cool but got to put on my cynic hat and remind everyone not to preorder video games. Fig needs PoE2, not the other way around. I trust enough in Obsidian to deliver a product that I'm fine with crowdfunding PoE. The announcement has me excited. Glad to see the return of Pallegina and Eder, and the screenshots already look great. The lighting on the exterior palace is incredible.
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Jan 26, 2017 15:38
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Thumbs up to the graphical upgrade. This game looks absolutely jaw-dropping.
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Jan 26, 2017 19:26
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I'll pledge more if there's another Ribsmasher cameo appearance.
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Jan 26, 2017 19:31
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Inspector Gesicht posted:It's amusing how in BG2 a load of your allies from BG1 die without any drama and sometimes offscreen: Ajantis, Tiax, Dynaheir, Xzar, Montaron, Khalid, Faldorn, and Safana all get the boot in such a manner you'd think the writers hated them. I wonder how they will write out previous party members in Pillars 2: "What ever happened to Durance?" "He... got scurvy." Most of the companions' ending slides include some bit about, "They wandered off to do X," or, "They died," so it's pretty easy to explain the absence of the majority of the cast.
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Jan 26, 2017 20:09
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Basic Chunnel posted:yeah one of em is me but I value my money too much to throw it away on an intentional joke. I dunno how you're gonna top Tayne's Chaotic Orb, but godspeed.
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Jan 26, 2017 22:21
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If strongholds return I hope they're a boat Feargus has been all but outright saying there'll be a stronghold boat in the comments over at Fig.
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Jan 26, 2017 22:45
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2house2fly posted:It is, "Tane" from some Tim and Eric sketch and "orb" I guess because it sounds funny? Now Tayne I can get in to.
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Jan 26, 2017 22:52
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Space Pussy posted:Slower default combat sounds good but I'm super triggered about the 5 party member change. Not quite the 4 I was hoping for, but it's a good compromise. I suspect the total available companions will be smaller to compensate (and to allow for a tighter core stories).
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Jan 27, 2017 00:32
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I'm glad for 5 player parties. It will allow them to write better companions, balance the combat encounters more effectively, and make each encounter less mentally taxing (fewer variables that need to be tracked).oswald ownenstein posted:The writing is too good for any ridiculous romances but if you're looking at the audience, the game could use a Viconia or Morrigan. Characters like Viconia and Morrigan - ones that constantly second-guess the PC's choices - are very much an acquired taste. I suspect the PCs in PoE1 were written the way they were to make them more-or-less appealing to everyone (if not especially engaging).
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Jan 27, 2017 01:00
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Harrow posted:Well, I think your second paragraph there kind of hits on why five is (slightly) easier to balance around: there are fewer variations in party composition to account for. I think it also makes it easier to challenge players with smaller enemy groups instead of big hordes of enemies. At least, I hope they take the opportunity to do that, to vary up encounter design. (I also hope they just give us fewer, but more unique encounters, but that's unrelated to party size.) Additionally, players will de facto have fewer per-day resources to spend in each encounter, making it easier to balance the rate of encounters around the assumption that players probably won't be doubling up as much. If the opportunity cost for bringing along a second Wizard isn't high enough, then you're probably just going to bring two Wizards to lock down the entire enemy party in each encounter, since (even without rest scumming) you have twice the number of per-day Wizard abilities to use. With 5 party members, it's harder to convincingly fit two Wizards or two Priests or whatever into a party. I think a party of 4 would have pushed this opportunity cost even higher and made party composition even more relevant, but I can understand them not wanting to go all the way down that road and I'm fine with 5 as a compromise. Lt. Danger posted:But I think the biggest factor is avoiding clutter and info overload. Agreed. If they want to avoid encounter fatigue this time around, then reducing the number of variables you have to pay attention to is a solid step in that direction. Vermain fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Jan 27, 2017 |
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Jan 27, 2017 15:31
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Power Bottom posted:I'm very salty about the 5 man party limit. I personally prefer 5-man parties because of the formations I use, but at the same time it's very frustrating to me that I can no longer pick up an additional NPC for quests and such. I've always viewed extra companions that I don't take along the first time as an opportunity for something new on a second playthrough.
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Jan 27, 2017 15:35
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Lonkface posted:Also, since we're continuing from where we left of, I assume we're gonna keep our levels, which means we might be headed towards some high level stuff. We're apparently starting from level 1 again, which I presume is explained as being a consequence of Eothas rising from the grave and doing some kind of soul siphoning thing (like what you can see in the cutscene). This is also presumably why we're chasing after him, since he's damaged/taken our soul in some way.
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Jan 27, 2017 15:56
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bitmap posted:What? It was such a great, elegant delivery platform for his writing. What's his beef? I think at this point the best that anyone can say is that there were creative differences. Anything else is just speculation.
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Jan 27, 2017 16:10
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oswald ownenstein posted:I get all that, I just don't think you're gaining much 'balancability' out of lowering to 5, but you're losing more flexibility in encounter design because now you have to assume everyone has only 1 tank. Why do you have to assume that? I'm still going to bring two tanks in a five person party because there's very few bottlenecks, even in PoE1, that can be stopped up by a single frontliner. Two tanks still leaves you with three long-ranged characters that you can customize to your heart's content.
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Jan 27, 2017 17:01
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rope kid posted:It's worth noting that our push/pull mechanics are much more reliable in Deadfire. A single tank squatting in front of the rest of the party can be knocked out of formation if an enemy has a push/pull ability, regardless of what's in front of or behind them. Great to hear. This should help to make combat encounters more dynamic. oswald ownenstein posted:Balancing has to be done on what most players are going to run - and most players are probably going to run some kind of 1 tank 1 heal 1 dps (melee or otherwise) 1 mage 1 flex - where at least some large percentage of the time that flex is not another tank and is instead something different from their other members. How do you know that this is what most players are going to run? Vermain fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Jan 27, 2017 |
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Jan 27, 2017 17:16
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MotB had romances that worked because they built up subtly, were well-written, and tied in nicely to one of the core themes of the game (love). I think they're nice to have, but I understand that they're another branching flag that the developers need to track.
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Jan 28, 2017 02:59
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Scorchy posted:How come Geralt forgot everything in between games Too busy playing gwent and slacked off on his Witcher training.
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Jan 28, 2017 04:32
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I assume that sub-classes are like what you got in BGII, where you could be a Druid with a werewolf shapeshift and special powers or whatever. They'd take the basic conceit of the class and give it some unique features in exchange for weakening some of its core abilities.
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Jan 28, 2017 04:34
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:All this discussion of combat/mechanics reminds me that I admittedly found it a bit weird that they launched this Figstarter without a separate video showing a small slice of gameplay. I'm guessing it's because, while the core engine and basic mechanics of gameplay are nailed down, there's still a lot of spit-and-polish the game's missing (the UI, animation tweening, spell effects, etc.) that would make it look janky.
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Jan 29, 2017 22:45
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I like puzzles, but it can be challenging to make them feel like they organically fit wherever they're put in when it comes to an RPG like PoE. They're also one of the few elements in an RPG like this that remain static from playthrough-to-playthrough, unless you're willing to invest some serious time in puzzle development, and that can grate on people's nerves. I think the "adventure scenes" they had in the White March are a nice compromise: the bit where you rescue people from a burning building is a puzzle (figuring out the right set of moves to save both people) that uses diegetic elements (having a Wizard or Druid that can use a cold spell) to enhance the experience and change things up from playthrough-to-playthrough. I imagine this will be even easier now with the new keyword system rope kid talked about. Vermain fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Jan 30, 2017 |
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Jan 30, 2017 21:21
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bongwizzard posted:What makes a fight "meaningful"? The goblins complain about their mothers and their love life for a little bit before you kill them? I consider a meaningful fight to be one that performs one (or more) of these functions:
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Jan 31, 2017 03:38
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I assume that, since the strength of abilities is keyed to that class' specific Power Level, single-level splashing will just get you a fairly weak ability along the lines of what you could get from the White March multiclass talents. It seems like you'll need to invest a lot into another class' levels if you want more than just some tiny utility bonus or a weak version of one of their abilities.
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Jan 31, 2017 18:37
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Power Bottom posted:I've played a lot of 3e but never with anyone who did any kind of multiclassing (and I never bothered to look into it myself). What made it so terrible? It was simultaneously an incredible noob trap and a way of making insanely godlike characters that could completely obviate everyone else in the party. If you didn't know what you were doing and were aiming for some kind of concept build (like, say, "a front-line cleric who's good with weapons"), you might do something like Cleric/Fighter and completely hamstring yourself because of how important spell levels (and, thus, single-class levels) are for casters. Conversely, if you had sufficient system mastery, you could create outrageously broken combos that cherry picked the best features of certain classes and combined them in unintended ways.
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Feb 1, 2017 15:23
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Glad to hear that Animancy's getting a more nuanced expression in PoE2. I keep getting more and more excited for this game as it seems to solve almost every problem I had with regards to PoE1.
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Feb 2, 2017 01:20
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Interesting change to combat: most abilities are now per-encounter, but there's a per-character "Empower" resource that you can spend to greatly enhance an ability which is recharged by resting.
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Feb 2, 2017 01:52
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Having a certain level of openness in companion classes is a welcome addition, as is the per encounter/Empower system. Will Empower be a toggle or is it some kind of activated spell you use before another ability?
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Feb 2, 2017 06:36
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Chairchucker posted:Per rest mechanics don't actually make a game harder though. They are an embuggerance, not a challenge. It works if there's a limiting external factor (some kind of countdown timer, a limited number of rests between checkpoints, etc.) that specifically encourages you to maximize what you get from each rest optimally. As Lt. Danger said, though, it doesn't really work with low stakes exploration-style games, because something like a countdown timer is at odds with a game that wants to fully encourage you to explore every nook and cranny. It's why I'm glad that they've moved to a system that by-and-large is focused on encounter-to-encounter management. Fair Bear Maiden posted:I admittedly don't have a large sample size, and I certainly haven't studied player behavior nearly as much as Rope Kid, but even when I observed other people play, you'd sooner see them drop the difficulty than actually go back to town to grab more camping supplies. If the driving force behind optimally spending resources in a video game is "I don't want the game to tediously waste my time traveling through load zones," then the game's resource system is busted. Vermain fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Feb 2, 2017 |
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Feb 2, 2017 17:23
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Color me a little surprised by the new localization stretch goal. I wasn't even aware that games of PoE's type were played that much in Korea. Is there a bigger market than I assumed?
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Feb 2, 2017 21:14
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AfricanBootyShine posted:I'm all for streamlining, but my deepest worry is that PoE 2 turns into something like Dragon Age where you smash the same four or five abilities over and over again and pop empower when it's up. That describes a large chunk of early PoE1 in a nutshell (rest in peace, Mind Blade-spamming Cipher party), and even post-patch still involved the use of many of the same abilities (Crowns, Slicken, Firebug, etc.) on every encounter unless something was flat-out immune to it.
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Feb 2, 2017 21:21
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AfricanBootyShine posted:I trust ropekid, but some of the other stuff people are throwing out here sounds straight unfun/boring. Could you quote some specific mechanics people are mentioning that sound straight unfun/boring?
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Feb 2, 2017 21:33
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frajaq posted:Is there a TL;DR summary about the recent changes that got everyone's panties in a twist? It's related to the recent Q&A by Sawyer no? All abilities are now per encounter, with a special resource called "Empower" that is per character (and per rest) that can be spent to increase the effects of a single ability. Ladolcevita posted:Therefore, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody that the people who backed and enjoyed PoE1 want and expect PoE2 to not stray too far away from the core of the IE game. Why not? I backed and enjoyed PoE1 and am sincerely looking forwards to every proposed change being made to the combat system, because it deals with the elements of the first game's combat system that I didn't like. It's not like PoE2 is being turned into an action RPG.
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Feb 2, 2017 21:51
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AfricanBootyShine posted:I'm coming from playing Inquistion and Tyranny. Both had non-Vancian combat systems that I found to be very boring. When I go through the games that I've played, I can't think of a party-based game that did non-Vancian casting well without it feeling like an MMO. The combination of dropping vancian casting and cutting down on the number of spells automatically makes me think MMO-like combat. What do you mean specifically by "MMO-like combat"? Why is MMO-like combat bad?
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Feb 2, 2017 22:00
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Rookersh posted:If I'm halfway through a dungeon and start running out of spells, suddenly I need to make a choice. Do I start using lower tier spells/get more stingy with my spelluse, or do I decide to run back out and get more supplies. Again: I'm not convinced that any mechanic where the encouragement to do well is "I don't want to have to sit through three loading screens" is a good mechanic to have in a video game. Ferrinus posted:What I wanna know is, what game mechanic keeps me honest such that I don't actually have the option of returning to town and resting between each encounter? I'd love to see Dark Souls-style respawning enemies or something. I think I mentioned it in the previous thread, but one possibility is to provide some kind of stacking bonus (such as an increase in damage/max HP/mitigation/etc.) for not resting in-between encounters. I feel that PoE's general combat length is too great to really support respawning enemies without them becoming a major hassle. Dark Souls can get away with it because combat encounters generally take up little time and, if you'd like, you can always just sprint straight past them if you know where you're going anyways. Vermain fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Feb 2, 2017 |
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Feb 2, 2017 22:07
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oswald ownenstein posted:It's definitely resource management. It is adamantly not resource management if the only thing preventing you from not using all of your resources at once is that you don't want to spend time slogging back to a town. That's the illusion of resource management.
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Feb 2, 2017 22:22
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oswald ownenstein posted:Still sounds like one of those early alpha things that you scrap and talk about later on in a video saying "yeah we had this awful clunky system before we came up with X" Nah.
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Feb 3, 2017 05:51
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zedprime posted:This highlights the language quagmire power points, power levels, and character levels lead to. I agree that the terms are confusing. While I like the individual power source names, it might be better for simplicity's sake to bundle them under a single term like "Mastery" and then simply append the name of that particular class to it (Fighter Mastery, Rogue Mastery, etc.). The tooltip can say something like, "Represents your mastery in a particular class, increasing the power of that class's abilities. Single-classed characters gain more mastery than multiclassed characters." UI-wise, I'd go with something like this:  You'd have the character's class and that class's level on the left, and then the class's Mastery on the right (with some kind of decorative feature like a crown or whatnot to make it distinctive). This would help to clarify what power level is (a derived stat based off of your class level), I feel. Vermain fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Feb 3, 2017 |
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Feb 3, 2017 18:05
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Do we have the option of playing a standard non subclass class? Yes. Subclasses are spun off from the base class, so you get "class A, but with X instead of Y".
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Feb 4, 2017 01:17
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bongwizzard posted:It is absolutely the players fault if they make decisions that ruin their enjoyment of a thing, and somehow feel that they have to be forced into playing a certain way to have fun. Nah. If players start resorting to cheesy tactics or begin abusing certain mechanics in a way that heavily neuters the game's challenge, that's squarely on the developer for either A) not disincentivizing that behaviour enough or B) leaving that mechanic in the game in the first place. Developers must constantly assume that players will take the path of least resistance, and if they don't compensate for this, then the game will suffer as a result. Dark Souls 2 fell victim to this, because the developers didn't make it clear enough (either in their tutorials or through explicit gameplay) that health management had changed from Dark Souls 1 into being about encounter-to-encounter management, rather than bonfire-to-bonfire management. This led to a lot of players resorting to cheesy tactics (like spamming poison arrows at things and then waiting behind a wall until they died) to deal with larger enemy groups, rather than simply accepting that they'll take damage (which can be healed up before the next encounter), and ultimately turning them off of the game because of that. From Software either should have discouraged these sorts of tactics (such as by giving enemies regenerating health if players are out of LoS or not dealing enough direct damage in a period of time) or reinforced the core conceit of using Lifegems between encounters in an explicit way. Vermain fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Feb 4, 2017 |
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Feb 4, 2017 15:46
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Very glad to hear about the change to stacking rules. Trying to sort out what equipment to wear without overlapping was a massive hassle.
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Feb 4, 2017 15:52
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bongwizzard posted:As a player I want maximum flexibility in play styles at all times. This is why difficulty levels exist in video games: to provide different levels of challenge to different people by setting the arbitrary rules that govern what a player can and cannot do in the game. You're certainly free to impose your own rules when playing a game, but blaming players for not restraining themselves from doing X when the game makes it readily available and, in some cases, explicitly encourages you to do it, is foolishness. It would be just as moronic as a speedrunner bursting in and yelling at you for not clearing the game as fast as humanly possible and instead taking your time reading dialogue options and exploring.
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Feb 4, 2017 16:10
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