Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

Not yet having played the beta, now I am less inclined to believe your opinions on the matter. Well, OP has a point in the fact that injuries get really unforgiving, because your character then becomes that much more likely to sustain another injury. However, it's not very much more brutal than POE 1's , where an injury would nuke 30 of your accuracy at level 2, basically making you unable to hit sleeping sheep. Nah I had the same thoughts. The injuries in the first game were randomized and often didn't "matter" for that particular character -- for example, if your healer lost accuracy, he could still buff and heal. With that random element gone every injury is basically time to rest.

Armor penetration seems kinda brutal. It makes it hard to function in most fights. May be a scaling issue. Spellcasting takes a REALLY long time. It feels like the monsters basically always get to cast first regardless.

Just you... My Mage was a top damage dealer last night. Note that the game doesn't really tell you but you should go do the first quest you are given out of the boat (given by Vektor). The rest of the island you first show up in is higher level than you. Ahhhhhhh ha So are those Lagufaeth *supposed* to be the new Stone Beetles or are they just high level? It felt like there must be a "trick" of some kind to that fight but I couldn't figure out what it was apart from "take high penetration weapon at character creation."

just so far from dinking around a bit: 1) the buttons need better highlighting; they go from like brass colored to gold colored and it's not clear ; for example, after my first levelup I wasn't clear if I'd finished levelling up or not 2) the pause menu needs a pause on ENEMY cast button, as it is if you switch all on you'll pause every time a guard in town enters the screen and casts their stance 3) Sure this is on the platter but the game needs to show racial bonus traits in character creation not just in game 4) Yowza wood elves and moon godlikes got nerfed 5) The skill selection is a lot more constricted than before which isn't necessarily bad just different 6) dissident background should get explosives skill Otherwise still learning how it all fits together. The penetration system seems kinda brutal but I may just need to learn it better. Lagufaeth are the new Beetles.

oh sadness =( I thought that was a bug, not a deliberate change, though I guess that's immaterial now if no more patches are incoming.

Ehhh, I think this depends on how you define "Bigger" and "Better." PoE 1 with White March is a massive, massive game. I've got something over six hundred hours in PoE clocked on Steam, and that's not counting time I spent in the beta. BG 2 is a huge game also, but after a certain point, you're just comparing elephants; both are exhaustively huge. In terms of mechanics, PoE benefits from roughly fifteen year's worth of game design, UI design, and hardware/software design improvements. In terms of writing and narrative yeah I'll grant BG 2 is superior to PoE 1, but PoE 1's writing is definitely superior to BG1; we won't really have a fair comparison there till PoE 2 comes out (this is to be expected since the pattern with these games seems to be "first game is for the engine, second game is for the writing and encounters"). DoS 2 is a great game -- especially for the first thirty or so hours of play -- but it's got some real flaws too (for example, the crafting system in DoS 1 was markedly superior to the crafting in DoS 2 -- to the point that I half-suspect stuff was cut for later DLC -- and the randomized items become a real pain as I mentioned above). I'll say this: if PoE 2 improves on PoE 1 to the same degree that BG 2 improved on BG 1 or DoS 2 improved on DOS1, then we're living in a new golden age of party-based computerized roleplaying games.

I'm surprised Spelltongue doesn't make anyone's list. To my mind "powerful" means "I can make a build around it."

hmm.... no trash items? What about Xaurip's spears? PoE had A LOT of trash items but with stash they were easy to seperate from stuff you wanted to keep. Better wording would have been "no junk magic items," perhaps. Have you played D:OS 2 yet? DOS2 has an essentially infinite array of "junk" magic items. They have to; because each party member might have a random mix of skills and stats depending on how they're built, the game has to fart out an endless stream of random-bonus items at you to ensure you eventually find some fraction that are useful to your particular character. There are a few unique designed magic items scattered around, but most of what you find is vendor trash, even the "epics" and "legendaries." In contrast all the magic items in PoE are designed. Even most of the seemingly random ones are well-designed enough that you could theoretically make a character around them (sigh for the nerfed Vile Loner Lance debuff barbarian). Net result is that in PoE a lot of the gameplay is driven by seeking out specific items to enhance your party's current builds, while in Divinity a lot of the gameplay is just re-checking vendors every so often until something you can use pops up. Well, I'd argue that PoE "raised the bar" in a lot of ways, but most of them were incremental -- PoE's goal was to make you feel the way you did when you first played Shadows of Amn, which is actually a lot harder than just remaking SoA, because we're all older now and expect more and computers are fancier and so forth. I'm about halfway through D:OS 2 now and it's an excellent game, and definitely raising the bar in a lot of ways. The main strength though is one that DOS 1 had also -- excellent tactical combat. The differences between DOS 1 and DOS 2 are: a) Better Writing across the board. b) Better Encounter Design. Those two tie together: each combat encounter feels meaningful, each one is slightly different, each one matters narratively. Even the few "trash" fight encounters (voidwoken on the beach, etc.) serve to further the story and raise questions ("why are the voidwoken following me here even when no one's using source magic?"). Even the Fort Joy magisters don't turn entirely into faceless stormtroopers -- they all have names, they're fighting you for a reason, etc. Even the random zombie you dig up while treasure hunting before you hit town -- even there, the zombie has a grave marker and the marker tells you about the island. Net result is the game and the story carry you along very immersively . . until later in the game when you find yourself spending all your time shopping and selling rather than adventuring.

I like a lot of things about DOS2. It's got much-improved writing over the prior Original Sin game, it has great encounter design and great turn-based tactical combat, and complex and intricate character progression / design that's going to give the game a lot of replayability over time. The downside to it is that by about level fifteen I found myself spending more time sorting my inventory than I did playing the rest of the game. The randomly-generated loot system made me really miss PoE's designed items. Upshot, DOS2 is a great game but it's done more to whet my appetite for PoE2 than anything else that's come along recently. I am capable of playing two games! It adds a new layer in combat where you have to reduce armor first in order for your different status effects to apply. It's good because else you could dominate opponents in turn 1, especially if you were the one who initiated the combat. It's a strategic layer added to the tactical as well. Now, some complain that this drags combat but in DOS2 there are no trash encounters. When combat starts is a combat encounter, just like a pnp rpg. You take your time and figure how to beat the opponents. There are no trash mobs here and there for you to plough through in order to get ti the "boss" fight. Every encounter is there for a reason and is designed to as such. This is rare for crpgs imo. This is a really good way of describing the difference, yeah. Divinity: Original Sin 2 has no trash encounters. Pillars of Eternity 1 has no trash items. You'd think that the second was less important than the first, but over the course of a game it starts to really matter.

I still like the blunderbuss for the ranged cipher, it's still a perfectly viable choice if not an optimal one. The nice thing about blunderbuss is that it delivers its "punch" as a single alpha strike, so you get a very powerful combat opener -- a big blast, and then you can cast a big power right away. Of course it has some real drawbacks, especially at high level, when the relative irreducibility of reload times starts to really tell, so bows and implements pretty clearly supersede it at top level/gear. Still, for the first 14 levels or so it's a good choice.

The one change I'd make to Chanters is I'd give them charm, paralyze, fear, etc. immunity chants, just like priest immunity spells, so that a priest isn't so necessary on higher difficulties.

I was disappointed at first but the argument is that it will 1) allow for deeper character writing -- i.e., we'll get more depth to each of the remaining characters 2) they're going to be designing the maps for five rather than for six, so some of the tactics should adjust, and you won't necessarily have to design every character to "stand and deliver" (though you will to an extent, yeah, but that's an issue in PoE 1 also, especially with the updated AI in later patches and on PotD) 3) multi-classing will open up party makeup a bit so that the limitations aren't as big of an issue. I.e., you won't have to choose between a rogue and a cipher because you can have a rogue/cipher. 4) With only five characters, you have a lot less firepower, so they have more space to design more challenging encounters -- it's harder for the PC's party to spam abilities, basically. I'm stil leery of the change and I don't necessarily disagree with you but at this point I'm very cautiously optimistic, or at least willing to see how it plays out in the beta.

I find Perception a lot more valuable on PotD, personally. When I've seen people calculate out the math, there's definitely a "break point" past which additional points of Perception are worth less than other stats -- from memory without looking up old posts it was something like +15 over opponent's Deflection, either when you stop converting Misses to Grazes and start converting Grazes to Hits instead, or the other later break point where you're hitting all the time and additional points only convert Hits to Crits. But on PotD you will rarely hit that, and on boss fights you never will (even on low difficulties Thaos has very high defenses). So Perception always helps when it matters. edit: tactically, I also like high Per builds because they're *reliable* -- I know my spells are going to hit, etc. 2nd: edit: basically Pillars has three damage stats: Might, Dex, and Per. Might gives the most damage *up front*, per-hit, which matters vs. armor or against weak enemies you can instakill. Dex gives the most damage *over time*, which matters strategically over the course of the game or over very long fights. Per gives the most damage when you're fighting enemies that are otherwise too tough for you (bosses, enemies over your level, or enemies on PotD).

I think because if it did, Intellect would increase the (overall) damage done, which is supposed to be Might's job. I think the end result was poor though, it would have been better to have Intellect not affect DOTs at all than have the current system. Yeah, I think that was the intent but in practice it was a bad call because letting Int increase DoT damage by adding duration would have added build depth and versatility. I think it never really got discussed or changed because it's such a subtle issue and easy to miss unless you're a real number cruncher.

I think the argument is that while they could manufacture high-end guns in the 16th century that might have been able to outperform bows in certain situations, bows and crossbows were still common and effective, especially in rural areas. We kinda see this in the first game, where guns and plate armor are harder to find than other gear by about one quality rank, consistently - at the same time you're finding "fine" bows and chain you're finding base plate and guns, etc., I expect we are going to be seeing guns get treated better in the next game.

You'd logically have tech from a lot of different eras, though. The Dyrwood is a frontier territory -- if you read the lore, it's basically like post-revolutionary-war America if the British had teamed up with the Native Americans. Similarly, the Deadfire is an area that's being actively colonized by different competing powers. It makes sense for advanced 'technology" to be rare and for a wide range of technology levels to be present.

Technically speaking, you can make a Deflection tank, i.e., a parry tank. It's just hard to do because grazes still hit for damage. It works better for missile attacks with the relevant magic shields.

My only real fear is that they'll find some way to **** up a good thing. Dragon Age Origins was a great game but boy howdy did they **** up the sequel, almost entirely via bad encounter design. So far 95% of what I'm hearing about PoE 2 has me really excited, but a few things (health changes, enchanting caps) make me nervous that they're going to screw up the things they did right in the first game.

It's not clear whether Steadfast was forged during the course of the game or shortly before it, but it's definitely not old; Stormcaller's description describes several owners and a journey across the Deadfire Archipelago, so I wouldn't call it new; as for Abydon's Hammer, well it might have been crafted during the course of the game, but it's crafted from something pretty ancient and powerful. True, but it's easy to imagine (for example) a storyline equivalent to Abydon's Hammer where you forge the metal into a gun. Each of those you can argue a bit about but overall it seems at least *possible* to stretch the lore to fit something relatively recent like a gun.

Isn't that the idea behind implements? Giving up some base damage in exchange for two damage types and thus more flexibility. Yeah, but implements are poor damage-wise unless you're a wizard, and have big problems from a RP perspective. Those are for wizzards! I'm talking more like a gun that shoots fire damage type, or a blunderbuss that you load with rocks for Crushing, etc. Soulbound weapons are ancient artifacts and guns are not so ancient. There are like at least four soulbound weapons that are crafted in the course of the game (unlabored blade, steadfast, abydon's hammer, stormcaller). The text for Steadfast even implies that Watchers can create soulbound weapons.

Yeah. Something like:- Regular (scalable with Int DoTs): .- Might increases totalDamage via increase in dps (i.e. damage of ticks) .- Intellect increases totalDamage via increase in duration (i.e. adding extra ticks) - Fixed (DoTs that deal fixed amount of damage like wounding): .- Might increases totalDamage via increase in dps .- Intellect does not affect them at all (note: at the moment unfortunately int reduces dps of such dots) How about this: Divide into weapon-based and non-weapon-based DoTs ALL dots get extra "ticks" from high int (explain in tooltips as "will hit more times") Non-weapon DoTs get increased damage per tick from Might Weapon-based DoTs don't get additional increased damage from Might (but still are boosted indirectly as Might boosts the weapon base damage). No other types of DoTs. It's still a little complicated but it's intuitive with no unexpected results. And it would mean that a high-Int fighter would benefit from using weapons with DoT effects. Currently they don't really, which is counterintuitive and could ruin some player's character concepts. Consider (for example) a high-Int Barbarian using Tidefall. There's also the issue of DoT stacking which I've never been clear on. It seems like weapon based DoTs (wounding, etc.) should stack with themselves, while spell based ones shouldn't, but I've never been clear on exactly how that works.

It's much improved since release, but even so, yeah, this is something they've said in chats etc. that they're working on already and will be improved with PoE 2.

More seriously: For me at least having a gimmick for a character is just one way to roleplay. Working out weird gimmicks forces me to get creative with character concepts and invent backstories that I never would have otherwise.

Oh, I'd argue that gimmick builds have a long tradition. You might even say they're. . . . classics

It might be helpful to focus this discussion on a particular, specific character and specific weapon(s), rather than the abstract. There are a lot of weapons in PoE 1 that have unique properties -- Spelltongue stands out as a really good example. You can design a whole character build around Spelltongue if you want (usually with a barbarian), in fact you can even design a whole party setup around Spelltongue (with casters giving the spelltongue wielder buffs, etc.). But (in PoE 1 with upgrading) Spelltongue isn't clearly "better" than any number of other weapons -- it's just different. You can do a Godansthunyr barbarian instead, or you can do a two-handed barbarian with the Grey Sleeper or St. Ydwen's. Now let's posit a Spelltongue-equivalent weapon in PoE 2. With one upgrade, that would take it to about level 12. So the first half of the game you'd keep it, then the second half you'd have to respec, because your build wouldn't make nearly as much sense any more -- especially if you had taken things like Noble weapon group and Two-Weapon fighting to maximize use of Spelltongue. For someone who roleplays even a little bit, having to do a complete respec halfway through the game really is "ruining", because it breaks your character concept. And I only see two ways out of that problem. Either (1) make sure there's a "Spelltongue 2" later in the game, which is just sortof boring (and presumably reduces item variety, since they're placing "Spelltongue 2" somewhere they could have placed something actually new instead), or (2) let people upgrade Spelltongue.