The 5 person party and remedial cases.

[prototype00]

So in PoE I, I had my favourite party, we all did (For reference, mine was Pallegina, Durance, Grieving Mother, Hiravais and Kana).

 

But I ran into an issue when I wanted to switch things up, y’see not only did I have to learn the other new character’s groove, he/she was often a whole level (possibly 2?) behind the rest of the party! It really turned me off experimenting and switching (funny for such a small thing)

 

Now we come to Deadfire, with its 5 person party. With a smaller party there are going to be more remedial cases than ever! Would it be so hard to just have everyone in the extended party have the same bloody xp?

 

Anybody else feel like this? Is Obsidian doing anything? No PC left behind and all that?

[InsaneCommander]

I wonder if a mod could enable a 6 character party. The little I saw of the beta gave me the impression that there is enough room for a sixth portrait. But I don't know if the game requires that extra space between the 5 standard portraits.

[Voss]

Not sure what you mean.   In PoE 1, all you had to do was throw the laggards into a couple stronghold 'adventures' and they caught up (or even surpassed) the party. 

 

If there isn't anything like that, I suppose they could fall behind.

 

I'm not really worried about it though- with a few exceptions (Pallegina and Maia, ie paladin and ranger), there is a lot of redundancy in class availability.  For the most part you can pick companions on personality and not worry about missing roles or skill sets.

[prototype00]

Not sure what you mean. In PoE 1, all you had to do was throw the laggards into a couple stronghold 'adventures' and they caught up (or even surpassed) the party.

The Stronghold adventures that you could only assign to one of the out of party PCs, that would only complete when the rest of the party completed a quest that gave even more xp, driving the others non-quester out of party PCs even further down into the xp hole?

 

Brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that?

 

If there isn't anything like that, I suppose they could fall behind.

 

I'm not really worried about it though- with a few exceptions (Pallegina and Maia, ie paladin and ranger), there is a lot of redundancy in class availability. For the most part you can pick companions on personality and not worry about missing roles or skill sets.

I’m actually not so broken up about the build-a-PCs or the sidekicks. It’s the main story characters that concern me. Serafen probably isn’t going to make it into team A in my playthrough, but I don’t want to hesitate when I do bring him out. Edited April 18, 2018 by prototype00

[Tattyblue]

One of the many things they changed from Pillars that I disagree with, the issue was you cant see whats happening in a fight, so instead of changing how fights happen or having additional zoom or creating a turn based system, they just eliminate 1 character spot to make the battle field less crowded. A very negative fix in my opinion.

[Boeroer]

The guys you left at the stronghold did gain XP - just not 100% of yours. If you would have send every one of them doing adventures (alternating between them) you would have seen that they don't fall behind - it's enough XP. Did several runs where I did the "waiting" companions' quests very late in the game and shuffled the whole party several times right before the endgame and no one was even one level behind. I guess this will also be possible in Deadfire.

 

Brilliant! Why didn't I think of that?

Yeah, right? Edited April 18, 2018 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

One of the many things they changed from Pillars that I disagree with, the issue was you cant see whats happening in a fight, so instead of changing how fights happen or having additional zoom or creating a turn based system, they just eliminate 1 character spot to make the battle field less crowded. A very negative fix in my opinion.

So you'd prefer Baldur's Gate's combat (where martial classes have no active abilities) over PoE's combat? Or turning the whole thing into turn-based combat - for having one additional party member?

Edited April 18, 2018 by Boeroer

[Guest 4ward]

 

some bg2 melee classes have special abilities, specifically at higher levels like lvl 17 or somesuch, there‘s also a good amount of items (gear, potions) to overcome that. There was decision-making in BG2 for meleers and that‘s what‘s important, for me at least. Weapon and target changing, moving and repositioning during battle, decisions like ‚do i try to get down the mirrors / layers of mage defense spells down so i can hurt him?‘ - things like that. There could have been more abilities i guess but an ability overkill + per-emcounter isn‘t necessarily my idea of fun as it discourages movement and repositioning.

[prototype00]

The guys you left at the stronghold did gain XP - just not 100% of yours. If you would have send every one of them doing adventures (alternating between them) you would have seen that they don't fall behind - it's enough XP. Did several runs where I did the "waiting" companions' quests very late in the game and shuffled the whole party several times right before the endgame and no one was even one level behind. I guess this will also be possible in Deadfire.

 

 

Brilliant! Why didn't I think of that?

Yeah, right?

You sure that wasn’t the case because you hit Max level by Act 2 and then they eventually caught up with the extra XP? It’s very easy to mistake one for the other.

[Messier-31]

Oh bother.

[Ashen Rohk]

As someone else has said, party members at the Stronghold do get XP.

 

My party in PoE1 was me (Fire Godlike Monk), Eder, Kana, Durance, Hiravias and Aloth. Great!

 

Deadfire has been balanced towards 5 party members. You get a massive variation of character classes with the multiclassing system which is partly why it's done this way. I was pretty against it at first too, but if you've not had a chance to play the beta, just wait til you try the game. After an hour you don't notice a person missing.

[Boeroer]

You sure that wasn’t the case because you hit Max level by Act 2 and then they eventually caught up with the extra XP? It’s very easy to mistake one for the other.

Yes, pretty sure - I'm not always at lvl 16 when I finish a quick run. But I always only have one additional hireling (apart from the official companions) whom I never send to adventures because he's my early game mechanics guy whom I drop at a certain point. So having not too many guys in the stronghold helps of course. It also helps a lot if you don't pick up companions (that you don't want to bring early) too soon but wait a bit. Because once you pick them up they get the same xp as you. So if you pick them up later it's less of a hassle to keep them all at the same level as yours.

 

Of course meta knowledge helps - but all in all it's not too difficult to do it. The XP from stronghold adventurers is pretty high and will not be divided/shared between party members like quest XP/encounter XP will.

 

I understand that this "management" of XP can be a bit annoying though.

Edited April 18, 2018 by Boeroer

[Wormerine]

I have been hearing a lot of complain about this XP discrapency on these forums, and in my 3 playthroughs I never encountered anything like that. Maybe it’s something they fixed later on? I didn’t plah Pillars until 2.0 and they introduced adventures in 3.0 I believe.

 

In my recent playthrough characters I didn’t use and stayed in my stronghold were indeed short by 2000-5000 xp of reaching lvl 16. Easily remedied by recruiting them when handing in a single batch of bounties.

 

As PoE is a much more involved gameplay and decision wise that IE games (both ability use and positioning is much more crucial) 5 party actually feels very very good. Redundancy in fights on both player and enemy side has been reduced without limiting complexity of engagements. Curious to see these topics pop up again - I though they were all put to rest when first beta was released.

 

Edit: you reached level 16 by act 2? I am completionist and I didn’t hit lvl cap unti I beat both white marches and were doing 3rd act content. Do you run around with smaller party size?

Edited April 18, 2018 by Wormerine

[prototype00]

Errm nope? I just did absolutely everything else before heading to Twin Elms. It’s actually a bit boring, but unfortunate since this is my perfect playthrough party.

[Boeroer]

If you do WMI and WMII (including bounties, Concelhaut and Llengrath) you will hit lvl 16 before Act III. I also do it that way most of the time because Act III is pretty meh for me anyways. Often I simply rush to the god's table, pick a god, do the quest (and companion quests) and jump into the pit.

[Wormerine]

If you do WMI and WMII (including bounties, Concelhaut and Llengrath) you will hit lvl 16 before Act III. I also do it that way most of the time because Act III is pretty meh for me anyways. Often I simply rush to the god's table, pick a god, do the quest (and companion quests) and jump into the pit.

Ah, ok. I tend to leave bounties, dragons and arch mages till the very end. That’s probably why.

[Sedrefilos]

What are you even talking about? I haven't seen an rpg that left behind companions don't get xp to match the active ones since ages! The standard now is that who you left behind they also get xp. Same was in Pillars too. What kind of weird debate is this now? It's just fact.

[nightcobra]

Would be fun if the "stronghold quests" for the out of party companions was tweaked into using a fleet system, where you could make a companion use one of your older ships and crew to do their own quests. I just want a fleet in general

[prototype00]

What are you even talking about? I haven't seen an rpg that left behind companions don't get xp to match the active ones since ages! The standard now is that who you left behind they also get xp. Same was in Pillars too. What kind of weird debate is this now? It's just fact.

You are in fact, wrong. As Boeroer pointed out earlier, left behind companions get less, a point I’ve made clear since the start.

Edited April 18, 2018 by prototype00

[Sedrefilos]

 

What are you even talking about? I haven't seen an rpg that left behind companions don't get xp to match the active ones since ages! The standard now is that who you left behind they also get xp. Same was in Pillars too. What kind of weird debate is this now? It's just fact.

You are in fact, wrong. As Boeroer pointed out earlier, left behind companions get less, a point I’ve made clear since the start.

 

They get less but not to the point they're left much behind. You just pick 'em up and after a couple of fights they're in par with the rest.

[prototype00]

 

 

What are you even talking about? I haven't seen an rpg that left behind companions don't get xp to match the active ones since ages! The standard now is that who you left behind they also get xp. Same was in Pillars too. What kind of weird debate is this now? It's just fact.

You are in fact, wrong. As Boeroer pointed out earlier, left behind companions get less, a point I’ve made clear since the start.

They get less but not to the point they're left much behind. You just pick 'em up and after a couple of fights they're in par with the rest.

Fair enough, you think that’s fine, I thought it was irritating when wanting to switch characters. Did you have it in mind to tell me I’m mistaken in how I feel?

 

Edit: Also, for perfect clarity, most fights don’t give more than paltry beastiary XP. If you want them to actually level, you’re going to have to go around completing quests.

Edited April 18, 2018 by prototype00

[Ashen Rohk]

 Also, for perfect clarity, most fights don’t give more than paltry beastiary XP. If you want them to actually level, you’re going to have to go around completing quests.

 

 

I do all the quests I can find, and hit 16 on all characters.

 

Before I started WM, but I did do the bounties but no dragons/archmages.

[prototype00]

Once again, for clarity, I never said it was impossible to reach max level on all characters, just that in the interim, when your entire party is 10th Level, say, having to put in the 9th lvl second stringers makes me reluctant to freely switch out my awesome current roster.

 

This is compounded by the smaller party size in POEII meaning that more companions are benched/not tried.

[JerekKruger]

I never really had a problem with this in Pillars. With stronghold adventures my companions were rarely much behind the rest of the party, and if they caught a higher level adventure they'd sometimes even overtake the main party.

[Yenkaz]

To be honest I usually have *the team* consisting of either the full party limit or the limit-1 with a constantly rotating spot. I don't use anyone else than the core team much and sometimes refuse done members to avoid overcrowding.