Don't put good magic items right at the end of the game so you can't use them

[firkraag888]

In pillars 1 they put that end game items merchant in twin helms and you had hardly any time to use the items eg

 

Serious pain in the arse.

 

There where lots of other examples of this going on aswell.

 

This problem combined with having to level up the underwhelming soulbounds really left a bad taste in my mouth in regards to the magic items in the game

[DigitalCrack]

It wasnt as bad as the BG series but some weapon types had way more magic versions than other types. like halberds were basically non existent and you really only had 2 of them but yet I always found myself swimming in magic greatswords like Scrooge Mcduck...

[draego]

I know this is not quite the same thing but i am not so sure POE2 will be better than POE1 in this regard. At least in POE1 you could make a few of your weapons/armors go to the highest level before the endgame to make up for not having millions of magic items drop. In POE2 they are taking that away too. So it really will be wait to end game to get best weapons.

Edited April 14, 2017 by draego

[Baltic]

I did the bounties and Od Nua after Twin Elms so I was using weapons from their for decent chunk of the game. Conversely some of the weapons from the late bounties and later levels were not used enough. There's always gonna be weapons and armor you can get that you don't get to properly use.

[Gromnir]

am thinking it is unlikely we will see an end to twin elms merchant or soulbound weapon lateness.  wm soulbounds is actual a unique issue as the expansions could be accessed relative early, but twin elms is last 1/4 o' the critical path.  soulbounds were not part o' the core game, so am expecting they will function a bit different in poe2.  poe 2 soulbounds might be included earlier, but have more difficult power unlocks.  still, for the core poe player who did every tangential side-quest before arriving at twin elms, the twin elms merchant is indeed only available very late in the game. then again, one needs to make such merchants available so all the accumulated money will have a point, eh?  get to near end of game and have nothing to spend tens or hundreds o' thousands o' 'ccumulated gold/copper 'pon would be disappointing for many.  ideally, the power o' found or sold weapons increases proportional to challenges found in the game.  as such, am not expecting a change to the ordinary availability o' such weapons. best non-crafted weapons should be found at a place in game where their relative power is not unbalancing.

 

that being said, we do feel bad for the morningstar folks who were not lucky 'nuff (or did not exploit azzuro) and manage to get mebec's early/mid.  there is two fantastic morningstars in the game.  one is available after you jump down into the well o' souls, or whatever it were called in-game.  the other is found on arguable the toughest map o' the wm ii expansion. pre-expansion daystar, in particular, does feel like a kinda thin veiled developer joke.  you finally find a great morningstar and you got maybe three encounters + the final boss left in the game. hurrah.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps rose is also a nice morningstar, but it can be missed.  am suspecting no mebec or rose makes for a disappointing morningstar slog... 'least pre expansion.

Edited April 14, 2017 by Gromnir

[MaxQuest]

Don't put good magic items right at the end of the game so you can't use them

Agreed. And same thing with spells.

Getting Llengrath's grimoire and finishing the game 30 minutes thereafter left a strange feeling.

Blunt Wisdom looks like a great example of Infinity+1 Sword Spell.

Edited April 14, 2017 by MaxQuest

[hilfazer]

Good thing i unlocked Twin Elms before diving into The White March.

[rjshae]

The end of the game is the point where your character is supposed to be at their highest level, and accordingly the items are among the best you're likely to obtain. It wouldn't make sense to put them earlier because they'd let you plow through any battles.

 

An alternative would be to have upgradable items and make the best upgrades available toward the end.

[DigitalCrack]

The end of the game is the point where your character is supposed to be at their highest level, and accordingly the items are among the best you're likely to obtain. It wouldn't make sense to put them earlier because they'd let you plow through any battles.

 

An alternative would be to have upgradable items and make the best upgrades available toward the end.

my only gripe with it was that magic axes and hatchets were very sparse until you got to twin elms in which the game was practically over by then..

[algroth]

The end of the game is the point where your character is supposed to be at their highest level, and accordingly the items are among the best you're likely to obtain. It wouldn't make sense to put them earlier because they'd let you plow through any battles.

 

An alternative would be to have upgradable items and make the best upgrades available toward the end.

Yeah, this is where I stand too, roughly. There's also the issue that if you offer your best items at earlier stages in the game you eventually get a whole act where the loot you pick up and the items you get access to are made pointless and redundant. I do reckon that soulbound items are a good way of balancing end-game powerful items at earlier acts too though.

[Katarack21]

The end of the game is the point where your character is supposed to be at their highest level, and accordingly the items are among the best you're likely to obtain. It wouldn't make sense to put them earlier because they'd let you plow through any battles.

 

An alternative would be to have upgradable items and make the best upgrades available toward the end.

Truth. A better statement for things like the morningstars and hatchets would be "don't have the ONLY good magic versions at the end of the game".

[MortyTheGobbo]

The traditional RPG gear treadmill has always been annoying. This feels like a more old-school version of it, though. I remember it from Baldur's Gate - the quality of a particular weapon group depends on how easy it is to get the cool unique pieces. Now, Pillars offers remarkably easy crafting to sort of make up for it, but the uniques have abilities you can't replicate by crafting.

 

So, yeah. I also hope they change it somehow in PoE 2.

[DigitalCrack]

 

The end of the game is the point where your character is supposed to be at their highest level, and accordingly the items are among the best you're likely to obtain. It wouldn't make sense to put them earlier because they'd let you plow through any battles.

 

An alternative would be to have upgradable items and make the best upgrades available toward the end.

Truth. A better statement for things like the morningstars and hatchets would be "don't have the ONLY good magic versions at the end of the game".

Yeah its annoying to go with a weapon type likes clubs for example only to find out that there is only a single magic club pre-endgame....

[rjshae]

^ How about a magic item scrounger who'll look for a magic weapon of a particular type... for a favor?

[Katarack21]

^ How about a magic item scrounger who'll look for a magic weapon of a particular type... for a favor?

That's a great idea. Or something like Cladhaileth, only instead of different enchantments on one weapon type it can become different weapon types but with the same enchantment.

[firkraag888]

The end of the game is the point where your character is supposed to be at their highest level, and accordingly the items are among the best you're likely to obtain. It wouldn't make sense to put them earlier because they'd let you plow through any battles.

 

An alternative would be to have upgradable items and make the best upgrades available toward the end.

Well no not really. There isn't just two stages of the game: start and ending.

 

There is the middle of the game and the middle- End game.

 

I would call that end game merchant in twin elms definantley End game.

[algroth]

 

The end of the game is the point where your character is supposed to be at their highest level, and accordingly the items are among the best you're likely to obtain. It wouldn't make sense to put them earlier because they'd let you plow through any battles.

 

An alternative would be to have upgradable items and make the best upgrades available toward the end.

Well no not really. There isn't just two stages of the game: start and ending.

 

There is the middle of the game and the middle- End game.

 

I would call that end game merchant in twin elms definantley End game.

 

Twin Elms is a pretty huge location with a number of long and combat-intensive quests, though - it's definitely not the very end of the game lest you rush through it like a madman.

[dragubaba]

In pillars 1 they put that end game items merchant in twin helms and you had hardly any time to use the items eg

 

Serious pain in the arse.

 

There where lots of other examples of this going on aswell.

 

This problem combined with having to level up the underwhelming soulbounds really left a bad taste in my mouth in regards to the magic items in the game

 

This is very case specific. My character dual-wields warhammers and at the time I got to act 3 (and thus had the best 1-handed warhammers PoE1 has) I hadn't fully done Endless Paths nor started The White March. So I ended up using the same two weapons for most of the games content.

[AndreaColombo]

I'd consider this a specific subset of a broader gripe I've always had with RPGs: If the game ends ten minutes after I've maxed out and realized my potential, it's a bummer. I want some content to enjoy the power I've spent the whole game building up—a number challenging fights for my max-level character with endgame equipment. Pillars 1 gave a me a lot of content after maxing out, but all of it was balanced against much weaker parties so it wasn't necessarily much fun. A little less content (after maxing out) with a much higher challenge rating is what I hope we'll get in PoE 2.

Edited April 15, 2017 by AndreaColombo

[Boeroer]

I hope they put really ridiculously difficult (but optional) fights into PoE2. I don't mean that the enemies should be invincible, but that you need to have a good strategy or have to discover weaknesses in order to beat them.

Does anybody know Titan Souls? It's a game that only does boss fights and they are supertough. You have to find out in which way a boss can be defeated. An approach like that (not 100%, but a bit in that direction) would be nice for certain fights on PoE2.

 

I once posted a brief example how such a fight could be done: your enemy would be a monk with the Long Pain (skilled accordingly), very low to 0 recovery and +6 move speed (Boots of Speed, Long Stride, Fast Runner) and immunity to stuck and very high defenses against most other disabling afflictions - and he would be scripted in a way that he would kite like crazy and use Force of Anguish, Stunning Shots, Skyward Kick and Knockdown from 12 meters away all the time. He would be sooo annoying and difficult to beat if you would just try to hit him in melee. And if you shoot him je would just get more wounds. You would need to find a way to disable him in order to get him. But things like Battle Forged and retaliation gear, paired with Turning Wheel and Lightning Strikes as well as Rooting Pain would even make the process of killing him in melee painful - so you would have to do it in ranged combat while keeping him disabled. Stuff like that... 

So basically it's nothing unfair, but stuff the player also could do - but used in smart ways so that it really becomes a challenge.

 

Another thing could be a rogue with Backstab and a blunderbuss, stacked DR bypass and a lot of Shadowing Beyond uses who uses randomly placed traps (hopefully trap mechanics will be better in PoE2) to cause afflictions and then delivers Deathblows-Backstabs from invisibility - and vanishes again.

 

Not this "giant Kraken with five hundret arms and a ton of endurance who one shots you". That is kind of boring...

Edited April 15, 2017 by Boeroer

[SonicMage117]

Or do...

 

But also give us New Game+ where our inventory and stats can carry over so we can use those awesome items in a fresh game

[DigitalCrack]

 

^ How about a magic item scrounger who'll look for a magic weapon of a particular type... for a favor?

That's a great idea. Or something like Cladhaileth, only instead of different enchantments on one weapon type it can become different weapon types but with the same enchantment.

"lets talk merchants" thread brought up wanting something like the adventurer's mart from BG2 but with a changing stock of items based on your exploits and alliegences.

Edited April 15, 2017 by DigitalCrack

[bjon045]

"lets talk merchants" thread brought up wanting something like the adventurer's mart from BG2 but with a changing stock of items based on your exploits and alliegences.

 

 I like the sound of that. It would be good to have one store stand out from the rest like the Adventurers Mart.

[BrettNLowe]

I liked the New Vegas method, where most of the special weapons (excluding DLCs) were available once you hit New Vegas (and some before), but many of them either cost a healthy amount of caps (so they are something you work toward) or are available via side quest/area. Maybe some sort of rumor monger could give you hints on the locations so you don't have to use a wiki.

[injurai]

The problem with really powerful weapons right at the last minute. Is that if you have just the right build, using the ultimate weapon can make the final encounter all of a sudden very very lackluster. Did I mention very?

 

Stuff like the Super Gravity Gun work because you get to just have fun for an entire level built around it. But for games more encounter focused, it can ruin the encounters. All of a sudden you find yourself robbed of the compelling aspect of the game.