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Oh no. I have now reached the more-party-members-than-slots moment. I can't choose! Everyone is interesting. Edér stays no matter what, though.
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Oct 30, 2020 02:32
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doingitwrong posted:Oh no. I have now reached the more-party-members-than-slots moment. In the Quest Log there are little party member symbols that are recommended for each Quest for some unique interactions, I went by that guide and swapped party members in and out relatively frequently.
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Oct 30, 2020 02:35
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doingitwrong posted:Oh no. I have now reached the more-party-members-than-slots moment. I usually have one or two npcs per play through who spend most or all of their time with me and then I tend to use the other slots to rotate people through. Eder is definitely often one of those due to my propensity for giving him mechanics. I also like to give my pcs high perception (unless I'm playing a build where I really can't spare the points) due to the fact that perception lets you see traps and secrets and it's kinda annoying to always have to have Maia or whoever for that. Putting either high perception or high mechanics on the pc helps let you be more flexible with your choices. Just started with my Ranger in poe1. I love how strong they are out of the gate. One of the best starting classes really due to how powerful the pet is early on and the high accuracy. Same deal kinda applies with Poe2 as well.
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Oct 30, 2020 02:43
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The pet doesn’t get better armour as the it levels does it?
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Oct 30, 2020 03:04
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AngryBooch posted:In the Quest Log there are little party member symbols that are recommended for each Quest for some unique interactions, I went by that guide and swapped party members in and out relatively frequently. This is extremely helpful advice.
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Oct 30, 2020 03:35
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ilitarist posted:I did not know how well the game allows you to be a dick. There's no separate "evil" baby-eating path so it's not that noticeable but you can be quite a character. Like in port Maje you can get a drunken sailor from jail by blowing up the jail. Or when you asked to get money from card player Ruatai you can attack her. And the whole village descends on you. Usually I don't like "evil" path in RPGs cause usually it doesn't combine well with heroic narrative and in games like Dragon Age Origins it's more dumb than evil. But here you can just be selfish. You probably don't need to cause money is not a problem but at least the game is good at acknowledging your actions. evil in this game is less "im the dark side now" and more being a heartless colonial monster (Which is very evil!) but id say it does a real good job easing you into being a very bad person depending on your choices that isnt just [1]Help the old lady across the road [2](  disposition gain) kick old lady's dog and tell her, "Tough tits toots."
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Oct 30, 2020 05:24
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The game also allows you to hate people and factions personally. Again with BioWare RPG they tend to be philosophical. They ask you trolley problems. As in are you the kind of person who would kill a child to save a hundred people? Would you kill a terrorist and condemn his hostages or would you let him go saving hostages but allowing terrorist to continue his evil ways? Right now I see PoE2 choices system as liberating from all of this. I'm asked to clear out the tavern room from uncivilized clients. I can easily intimidate those guys into leaving and that's what minmaxer in me wants to do. But what I really want to do is beat them up and see how they react as soon as one of them falls. Cause they're dicks. Also on a more general note as you've said the game eases you in well. It's similar to New Vegas, "evil" faction tries to give you some justification on different levels - they make trains go on time but also Hegelian dialectics means we're doing something very intelligent with our slaver army here. Don't want to argue about how all the factions are "evil" if you think about it cause it's clear that most people in 3 of the 4 factions mean well. But even Principi will talk about nation-buildings and grand ideas to you. In some sense, it's even better than FNV cause there Caesar was charismatic enough to make people think that he's supposed to not be so bad. In PoE2 Furrante's speech about ideals behind our pirating is a more obvious nonsense. But still your character can be a plausible non-psychopatic pirate captain. (I don't mean that all the pirates are either idealists or psychopats. It's just that most characters in the game didn't have much choice in becoming a pirate and Watcher is a powerful person who doesn't have problems with finding a well paying honest work) Ginette Reno posted:I usually have one or two npcs per play through who spend most or all of their time with me and then I tend to use the other slots to rotate people through. Eder is definitely often one of those due to my propensity for giving him mechanics. I also like to give my pcs high perception (unless I'm playing a build where I really can't spare the points) due to the fact that perception lets you see traps and secrets and it's kinda annoying to always have to have Maia or whoever for that. Putting either high perception or high mechanics on the pc helps let you be more flexible with your choices. It's somewhat strange that Western RPGs aren't great at making you want to play with whole party. Even when absent party members level up they need new equipment and you probably won't think if someone on the bench needs that cool artifact your main party doesn't need. And then leveling up several characters 10 times might be exhausting. I guess it's part of the replayability deal. ilitarist fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Oct 30, 2020 |
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Oct 30, 2020 08:58
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i dont understand why I dont like PoE2 when I have 200+ hours in PoE1 and that was before I just popped off another 47 this year. I hate POE2. I get so bored playing it, I don't like anything about it, what kind of brain worms am I even infested with?
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Oct 30, 2020 09:02
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We will not judge you. Instead, I offer you my condolences. It's probably the setting, I guess? I myself feel sad when my brain says that that unique but unfamiliar setting is too hard to swallow, please bring me into familiar waters.
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Oct 30, 2020 09:30
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:i dont understand why I dont like PoE2 when I have 200+ hours in PoE1 and that was before I just popped off another 47 this year. I hate POE2. I get so bored playing it, I don't like anything about it, what kind of brain worms am I even infested with? Yeah I'm sorta in the same boat that POE2 doesn't click with me. I kinda find pirate stuff lame and the ship travelling annoying. The number of loading screens is sorta annoying me too but I know that was a problem with poe1 too. What's up with the engine that every building has to be a loading screen? Ahhgghhhhhh Im gonna finish it this time though! It's still fun.
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Oct 30, 2020 09:55
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Neketaka kills most of my runs. Such a huge block of story content you more or less have to do a few hours into the game. And the ship travel & loading screens really pile into one another in the late game, like being sent from Fort Deadlight to The Undercroft and back again to perform one small task contains more sailing and loading screens than I care to count for what amounts to a single errand.
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Oct 30, 2020 10:40
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i can kind of see that, ive had runs where running around taking care of everything in the city is like 10-15 hours of gameplay and its a lot, a lot of talking and light on combat until you get into the old city going from like level 4 to 10 maybe even up to 12 before really doing anything else i can see that being exhausting for some but i enjoy having a huge urban environment thats more talking with npcs and being exposed to the regions politics if i do have a quibble with neketaka is it is very easy to sequence break a ton of quests. most notably going down in to the old city ruins and clearing it all out can result in auto completing a ton of quests before you even knew they existed, which is what happened on my first playthrough. nowadays i usually talk to all the players in charge, line up all my quests, and save old city ruins for last but that first playthrough i came upon it early and was like "old ruins full of treasure? dont mind if i do!" before seeing half the rest the city (i was also like level six, and even on normal was pretty grueling tackling lol)
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Oct 30, 2020 11:03
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Berke Negri posted:if i do have a quibble with neketaka is it is very easy to sequence break a ton of quests. most notably going down in to the old city ruins and clearing it all out can result in auto completing a ton of quests before you even knew they existed, which is what happened on my first playthrough. Same happened on my first playthrough. Honestly I'm surprised there wasn't some kind of character who says let me guide you to the palace cause it's important. And you can say no and go on exploring the city. Cause on my first playthrough I forgot what I was doing in the city just walking around doing quests, and then I stumbled upon the palace and suddenly it's all urgent now. Instead, you're forced to walk through several districts. You get distracted and you probably spend a lot of time with the characters you have by now so final 3 companions you meet on top come too late. I wonder how many people never switch from Eder, Aloth, Xoti and Pirate Orlan Uncle. ilitarist fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Oct 30, 2020 |
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Oct 30, 2020 11:32
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id guess many people probably drop serafen a lot lol. his unique subclass is fairly unreliable commonly i roll eder/pallegina/aloth + 1 for whoevers faction the quest is about so i get the PoE1 squad all together
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Oct 30, 2020 12:32
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Berke Negri posted:id guess many people probably drop serafen a lot lol. his unique subclass is fairly unreliable I find that if you disable all his Cipher abilities except the healing from Pain Block his multi-class is quite bearable. He is not as percetive as Maia but he isn't bad, and he isn't badly positioned to back Eder up on Mechanics to raise that party bonus.
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Oct 30, 2020 13:45
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I usually have him as no-subclass Barbarian. It makes no sense for him, but he's at least a solid frontliner that way.
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Oct 30, 2020 13:59
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Can’t say I’ve ever noticed a wild surge
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Oct 30, 2020 14:02
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Colgate posted:I usually have him as no-subclass Barbarian. It makes no sense for him, but he's at least a solid frontliner that way. If I am not a Barbarian I make him one, if I am a Barbarian I place him in the Witch multi-class and he provides healing in between hitting enemies.
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Oct 30, 2020 14:04
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multijoe posted:Neketaka kills most of my runs. Such a huge block of story content you more or less have to do a few hours into the game. I have to admit i don't like big cities in games. I think i prefer travelling to a town/location and picking up the quests there, completing them and having some big event related to the area to finish which ties in to the main story and then moving on to the next place. i feel like it be better to have bigger and more fleshed out islands as quest hubs and less of neketaka. hemale in pain fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Oct 30, 2020 |
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Oct 30, 2020 17:23
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I'm glad Neketaka exists. The game would be so much lesser without the big, diverse city that helps giving you non-combat things to return to.
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Oct 30, 2020 17:54
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Jay Rust posted:Can’t say I’ve ever noticed a wild surge
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Oct 30, 2020 18:39
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Re: big cities. New Vegas's main path is still my favorite quest / story set up. You come across multiple small settlements/locations which have their own issues but never really overstay their welcome. The signposting of where to go next is done very well too, though you're always free to run off and do whatever you wish. I'd play it again if I didn't know that meant 10-20 hours of (fun) modding and never leaving Goodsprings.
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Oct 30, 2020 19:38
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Pilchenstein posted:The only one I remember is where he turns a bunch of enemies invisible. I had that happen once on the giant grub below Neketaka and it was hilarious. Serafen is really good as a single class Barbarian though it feels kinda weird to put him as that given all the Cipher type stuff he does in dialogue.
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Oct 30, 2020 19:58
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Jay Rust posted:Can’t say I’ve ever noticed a wild surge I used Serafen for like 30 hours in my run and I don't think I saw a single Wild Surge using him as a single class Cipher who cast whenever he had the focus for it. If he did surge it literally wasn't ever impactful enough to notice, I guess
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Oct 30, 2020 23:20
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Before I made sure he had no offensive Cipher powers he would wild surge every other fight. Took Tekehu down once in the middle of a battle that suddenly became extremely difficult without the lightning shark.
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Oct 31, 2020 00:50
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i dont like wild mind and how its implemented at all. its a fun idea and a nice throw back, but the fun of a bg wild mage was tossing 8 fireballs at level 2 and having 3 of them turn into cows or poison rings or whatever. serafen just doesnt deliver on that ridiculousness so i always end up making him more a barbarian type which feels off thematically. writing that out makes me think poe2 needs a wild surge mod that adds more ridiculous stuff to the procs
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Oct 31, 2020 02:08
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Just finished up Berkana's Folly, I have my little pet skull Concelhaut back  - Eder was so happy!That said, I wasn't expecting the final enemy there to be two skulls above my level, given the actual mission chain itself was skull-less. I died a couple of times right on the edge of victory, which was frustrating. In the end I won with a strategy from the Concelhaut fight in the first game, getting the mooks to chase me across the map and deal with them first, then go back in for the Boss. Also, the description of how they got to Deadfire was so great - I dragged myself one mouthful of soil at a time 
Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 10:30 on Oct 31, 2020 |
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Oct 31, 2020 10:21
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Poe2 definitely has a weird power curve where you can easily stumble into an area that is way too tough for you. It was generally harder to do that in Poe1 which was much more linear in scope. I wouldn't say I necessarily dislike that, though. It reminds me of older rpgs like Baldur's Gate where you can do that. I learned at a young age to be prepared to retreat and come back to fight after getting some more levels/gear.
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Oct 31, 2020 10:24
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i dont know, i find PoE2 pretty forgivable, you can definitely punch above your weight at times if you know what youre doing only area that's an exception is old city ruins where youre like well dont mind if i do but once youre down there kind of softly compelled to ride it out, but in the overworld youll definitely be warned "heres a ton of skulls saying gently caress off dont do this" that said my first playthrough of poe2 was doing old city ruins early as described earlier and me entering as like level 5 chumps and like level 10 badasses ready to take on half the deadfire by the end so its not unpossible
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Oct 31, 2020 10:55
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Ginette Reno posted:Poe2 definitely has a weird power curve where you can easily stumble into an area that is way too tough for you. It was generally harder to do that in Poe1 which was much more linear in scope. I don’t know about that. Unless it’s changed significantly, there were a lot of complaints (at least in the SA thread) about how folks were getting curb stomped super early on POE 1. Places like the bear cave and Temple of Eothas which were in almost immediate reach and not easily doable without a full party of six. I’m a big big fan of being able to walk into an area and get my rear end kicked before learning my lesson and coming back later. PoE1 and 2 both do this to a great degree and I love it. I call it the “Roomba” method of exploration, where you just keep bumping into walls until you find the right path. Eventually as you master a game’s systems, you end up with a less linear world because you can knock out those early challenges as you come upon them.
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Oct 31, 2020 12:55
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The problem with that design is that a lot of people don’t ever “learn their lesson”; they assume that, because they can reach the area, it should be doable, and so they just keep slamming themselves against the wall until they eventually get fed up and rage quit. And then they complain about the game being broken and unfair, leading to an overall negative public perception of the game. Hence, it’s considered bad game design.
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Oct 31, 2020 14:45
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:i dont understand why I dont like PoE2 when I have 200+ hours in PoE1 and that was before I just popped off another 47 this year. I hate POE2. I get so bored playing it, I don't like anything about it, what kind of brain worms am I even infested with? It's the Pen and the Per Encounter systems. 
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Oct 31, 2020 14:47
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E: wrong thread
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Oct 31, 2020 15:20
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I picked this up a few days ago. I bounced *really* hard off PoE1 because it was ball-bustingly hard for me and it wasn't interesting enough for me to get over that hump. But, everyone keeps saying that PoE2 is so much better and it's streamlined more and blah blah blah. Okay fine. The fact that I can make it turn based is what finally pushed me over, because one of my main complaints about PoE1 was that it was too loving fast/hard and I couldn't manage the party effectively. I like it, so far. I put a few hours into it for a few nights and just did the area with the rear end in a top hat that boarded your ship, now on the way to the capital city. I'm playing a Bleak Walker Paladin, with Eder as a DW fighter, Xoti as a pure Priest, Aloth as a pure Mage, and Serafen as a Cipher. I'm 100% going to swap Serafen out the moment I get a proper rogue or ranger. I figure it's best to stick with a boring party of pure classes so I can learn the game mechanics, because I haven't played BG or any other D&D based ruleset game (except for a bit of PoE1) in almost 20 years. gently caress me there's a lot of mechanics to learn.
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Oct 31, 2020 15:25
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Vasudus posted:I picked this up a few days ago. I bounced *really* hard off PoE1 because it was ball-bustingly hard for me and it wasn't interesting enough for me to get over that hump. But, everyone keeps saying that PoE2 is so much better and it's streamlined more and blah blah blah. Okay fine. The fact that I can make it turn based is what finally pushed me over, because one of my main complaints about PoE1 was that it was too loving fast/hard and I couldn't manage the party effectively. There’s an option in POE 1 to slow down the real time combat (it’s also in POE2) as well as options to auto-pause based on certain criteria. There’s also easier difficulties you can use. I’m a RtWP veteran and I set POE to easy for the first few hours on my first run through.
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Oct 31, 2020 15:31
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Honestly I bounce off of PoE1 because I think it's too faithful to the nostalgia format and eschews decades of game design because Infinity Engine Games Weren't Like That, and what I love about PoE2 is it does the best job of being extremely Baldur's Gate while also having stuff like engagement, AI scripting, etc. Basically when I pick up PoE1 I wonder why I'm not playing Baldur's Gate, when I pick up PoE2 I'm having a blast with PoE2
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Oct 31, 2020 17:05
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Darwinism posted:Honestly I bounce off of PoE1 because I think it's too faithful to the nostalgia format and eschews decades of game design because Infinity Engine Games Weren't Like That, and what I love about PoE2 is it does the best job of being extremely Baldur's Gate while also having stuff like engagement, AI scripting, etc. I kind of understand where you're coming from but lol your two examples are literally both things in PoE1. Hell, PoE2 scales back engagement from PoE1's implementation and is the game that has the Grog pet if you want to turn it off completely because so many grognards lost their minds about it. AI scripting was also added in a patch, so it wasn't there on release but it absolutely is these days.
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Oct 31, 2020 17:11
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Zore posted:I kind of understand where you're coming from but lol your two examples are literally both things in PoE1. Hell, PoE2 scales back engagement from PoE1's implementation and is the game that has the Grog pet if you want to turn it off completely because so many grognards lost their minds about it. It's very possible I was bad at it, but I don't remember Eder being able to effectively lock down more than one person at a time for a long drat time, and the time I built myself a tank I was constantly chasing poo poo running into my back lines to the point that I just stopped before even finishing the first town. I'll probably give it another go some day, though, especially if scripting is in now.
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Oct 31, 2020 17:24
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Attack is the best defence in PoE 1 anyway. Give Eder two sabres/warhammers, the improved regen talent with +healing equipment, offensive talents and murder everything. Enemies around him will die instead of being grazed for 5 damage and he'll still be very tanky for about a minute, which is more than enough.
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Oct 31, 2020 17:28
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Darwinism posted:It's very possible I was bad at it, but I don't remember Eder being able to effectively lock down more than one person at a time for a long drat time, and the time I built myself a tank I was constantly chasing poo poo running into my back lines to the point that I just stopped before even finishing the first town. I'll probably give it another go some day, though, especially if scripting is in now. So the big issue in 1 is that a lot of the early fights are against enemies who ignore engagement which was a poor choice for pacing and teaching people about how engagement works. But by default everyone in PoE 1 actually has the ability to engage by default instead of 2 where its tied to abilities or weapons/armor exclusively.
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Oct 31, 2020 17:36
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