PrimeJunta

The penetration mechanic itself is fine. However there aren't enough ways for many/most characters to increase it. This means that low-pen weapons with no modal to increase it are useless for any of the harder fights. Moreover, non-martial classes don't have any feats that let them increase Pen, making them effective bystanders in many of the fights.

Would be nice to have a better-stocked shop too. Hard to test heavy armour or some weapon modal if there’s none to be found.

I have found Empower rather thoroughly underwhelming when I’ve attenpted it, but then I haven’t tried it much. (First time I did, I whiffed...)

Put another way: my favourite P1 Watcher is a Pale Elf wizard focused toward maximum damage with implements. I can't do that in P2 as a pure wizard. The closest I can do in P2 is a Wizard/Ghost Heart Ranger, which is a pretty drastic change to the concept. This is a problem, as I would really like to continue as the character I finished with, even if I've been reset to level zero.

"Stop sucking" is too meaningful advice. I've got a guy with one injury in my party. Guess what I did? Gave him a ranged weapon and put him at the back, and pay more attention to how he's doing in fights. Again: if you get one guy knocked out three times in a row, you're either playing badly/at too high difficulty or are in an area that's too hard for your level. If someone is injured, adjust your tactics. Resting is almost vestigial as it is. If they take the edge out of injuries, they might as well scrap injuries and resting altogether and go full goon. Personally I feel very strongly that they need to correct in the other direction -- bring back per-rest spells at least, if not endurance/health. By the way, as the beta currently stands, it's clearly somewhat harder than P1. I'm playing on Veteran and it feels just a hair easier than PotD, but distinctly harder than Hard on P1. This may be because the party is certainly undergeared compared to what it would be in the real game. I believe this could contribute to your perception about the injury system. I.e., the problem still isn't injuries, the problem is getting knocked out too much.

On the other hand there's no health attrition. So yeah it has to be somewhat tougher to make up for that and still be meaningful. I preferred the P1 system but if you have to get rid of Health/Endurance then the injury system is about where it ought to be to compensate IMO.

That's simply not true. Two injuries in PoE 1 do not automatically put you at 50% health. That's simply not how injuries work in PoE 1. In PoE 1, I could have 3/4 of my team go down four fights in a row and still continue fighting, longer if I have triage. Not so in this beta; in this beta if I have three guys get knocked out twice in a row, that's over half my team at 50% health and I'm *immediately* resting, because no way am I risking a combat scenario with that going on. If you get three guys knocked out twice in a row, either you're playing badly or you're in an area that's too high-level for you. This is also true for P1.

Chalk me up as a fan of the old system as well.

The injury system is only marginally tougher than in P1; getting two knockouts there will mean you're pretty low on head and sporting two injuries which means you prolly ought to rest too. I.e., don't get knocked out so often and you'll be fine. I strongly prefer the P1 system however.

I rolled up a cipher with the subclass that buffs it at max Focus and gimps it when below max Focus. I don't think I made him all that hopeless as a combatant, but his focus nevertheless took forever and a day to go up. It could be I'm just playing badly though, as I haven't investigated this all that much, but at first blush it looks like focus charges up real slow-like. What are everybody else's impressions?

Nah. It's streamlined, in some cases in a good way, in other cases in a bad way (I've detailed my views on that elsewhere) but there isn't a whiff of consolitis about it AFAICT.

.... moreover .... the long casting times aren't doing it for me Non-Empowered spells (also some cipher abilities) are pretty low-impact. With the long casting times and the consequent risk of getting interrupted, a lot of the time they just aren't worth it: I feel that I'd be better off straight-up attacking. Put another way, casters aren't much fun anymore. It's like the system is designed with martial classes in mind, and it works quite well for them, but surely that can't be the intention.

One of the defining characteristics of D&D is a really big and broad magic system that's mechanically largely unrelated to the rest of the game. Casters have a big pool of spells to draw from, but they're restricted by having to rest in order to replenish them. The changes to magic in Pillars 2 pretty much sever this connection, and turn spells into just another set of abilities picked on level-up. Since characters now have far fewer spells to draw on, tactical options are much more limited. Since I pick my spells on level-up, that choice is much more critical. This discourages experimentation and encourages "safe" choices -- spells that I know I'm going to use a lot. And since everything is per-encounter, I chain-cast continuously. Moreover, the decision to make Empower the per-rest resource has forced a nerf of the spells: they feel ineffectual, little more than special attacks with FX. A lot of the richness of gameplay that the IE games had and Pillars 1 retained has now been lost. Now all casters feel like ciphers or chanters (minus the "charging up") and that's a big, big loss. I really hope the team reconsiders the decision to make everything per-encounter and restrict casters with spell selection and overall weaker spells, and brings back the rich, big, broad spell selection restricted by resting instead. Everything per-encounter works fine for most other classes, but wizards and priests at least should be the exception. The old way was not only more in tune with tradition and made for richer, more creative tactics and gameplay, it was just plain more fun.

I think it would be preferable if this forum is for beta feedback only, from people actually playing it. Second-hand feedback would muddy the waters. I don't think there's a rule against it however, but at the very least it would be polite to indicate that your feedback is from observation rather than direct experience.

I disagree. Getting knocked out twice in a row in P1 would give you two knockout injuries and likely put your health in the red zone -- I'd want to rest at that point in it too. I.e. knockout injuries don't change my incentives much.

I think you guys already know what's good so I won't comment on that much. Main points though: Great job on the new stealth mechanics. The UI is intuitive and easy to understand and it feels a lot more "real." Great job on the various QoL improvements. World map is nice. Dialogue reactivity is nice. The bad, however: Health/Endurance ---> Health only is a loss. Since there's no strategic cost, I don't care about taking some damage, which makes the game feel less "tactical." Everything per encounter is a loss. I don't care about which spell I should use now and which save for later, which makes magic feel spammy. Progression feels a lot more linear/streamlined. Magic doesn't feel all that magical as it's mixed with the rest of the talents, and the loss of non-class talents feels restrictive. One of D&D's signature elements is a magic system that's kind of chaotic and has entirely its own rules and mechanics. Merging that into the level-up talent trees blands it down. The upshot is that combat feels shallower. In Pillars 1, I had several layered objectives for a fight: Win it. Don't have anyone knocked out (because I don't want knockout injuries). Don't take damage on those characters that can't afford it. Don't expend spells or other per-rest abilities unnecessarily. In P2, I just have Win it. Don't have anyone knocked out. Don't expend Empowers unnecessarily. Overall: The mechanical changes are mostly bad. The game feels streamlined and simplified in a bad way. Less thought is needed to play it, I just need to focus on the current combat and nothing else, and there appears to be less freedom to build my characters like I want them, despite the mass of subclasses and multi-class combinations. The QoL improvements are mostly good and the UI -- especially character creation and level-up -- are way better. The stealth system rocks. Finally, a comment on the language -- certainly too late to change now, but anyway for what it's worth: I interact daily with people from literally all over the world, and nobody talks like that. The Russians don't go "Da, today is very nice day, harasho nyet?" and the French don't go "Oui mon ami, indeed the weather today is la belle." It's cool that you've got a conlang but there's way too much of "That kamahima has tipu my raumanuma, if I ever catch him he's going to be kaunahini!" It's grating, and the hypertext kind of underlines the "Look at how clever we are" aspect of it.

Agreed. This is just like the early P1 betas where the fighter was railroaded into a specific role (tank). Bring back the possibility to skew builds within a single class using talents.

All 4 of them? I painted the whole gang this time except Eder Uh... also paint Eder. Please?

These are really good. Kudos @LLaney

No, they're using hand-painted "watercolour style" portraits for dialogues.

Nah, they're more of an amalgam. Fashions are more French or Spanish than Italian, they trade like the Dutch, and have an armada like Spain. Politically the Vailian Republics do sound a lot like Northern Italian Renaissance city-states though.

Give it another shot. The combat is way, way better than in 1.0. As are items. Character progression, too. They even fleshed out the stronghold a bit (although it does still feel somewhat tacked-on). They've removed lots of pointless trash mob encounters, and made some really good ones in White March. That said, if you don't like the combat, items, and character progression, it's unlikely the rest of it will rescue it for you. It's not that it's bad, it's that it's not good enough to carry the game on its own.

You're missing out. With Blast and Dangerous Implement they'll turn your wizard into a murder machine. There are also plenty which apply various status effects.

I also have a thing for brunettes.

Wel-l-l... yeah, but it also has a ton of gratuitous unsavoury scrap. The Whoreson Jr questline, the one where you and Triss infiltrate that one place and then that one thing happens, that one questline with the serial killer... and also they completely changed Triss's character; in W1-2 she was a tough-as-nails scary sorceress, in W3 she was a mopey wilting flower. (Yennefer kicks butt though.) Don't get me wrong, W3 is a good game and definitely worth playing but IMO it would have benefitted greatly from a ruthless editor taking an ax to it. The writing and quest quality is uneven and there's a ton of treasure-hunt-filler type stuff there too. Sometimes-questionable sexual politics aside.