The 5 person party and remedial cases.

[Wormerine]

Deadfire might do a better job encouraging switching companions, as you get to choose your party every time you embark. It was the case when leaving Caed Nua, but they would you go there in the first place?

[Messier-31]

Deadfire might do a better job encouraging switching companions, as you get to choose your party every time you embark. It was the case when leaving Caed Nua, but they would you go there in the first place?

 

KOTOR had this, so I assume the same here.

[Wormerine]

 

Deadfire might do a better job encouraging switching companions, as you get to choose your party every time you embark. It was the case when leaving Caed Nua, but they would you go there in the first place?

 

KOTOR had this, so I assume the same here.

Yeah, personally I felt like those “you recruit everyone but not everyone goes with you” works only with ships. KOTOR did it first, from what I canremember, and it was great, the same with ME. In other titles it always feels like bunch of people tag along and then sit on their asses for the majority of the adventure.

[nightcobra]

personally i'd love it if we had those "choose your adventure book style" sections as the new stronghold quests for the reserved party. it would be a fun breather from normal gameplay while you have a small adventure with your second team.

[Sedrefilos]

DA:O had the best companion switch mechanic: as long as you were in a settlement and not in combat, you could swap companions at will. Though it took me sometime to figure out

Edited April 18, 2018 by Sedrefilos

[Archaven]

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.

 

IIRC based on latest interview with josh on pax east, he mentioned that it's difficult to mod the 6th character in as most of the UI was designed to show only just 5 characters. i think that's probably an intentional restriction to prevent modders from adding in back the 6th characters as they probably balanced the encounters just around 5 characters. i read somewhere that all of the encounters are hand-crafted.

 

i'm not sure how possible it is, but it would be great if they have some kind of procedural generated combat scaled based on party composition and levels in future expansion or dlc? that would be really interesting. and also probably breaking the game? where it's possible to encounter an impossible fights.

 

anyway, one of my gripe is that they expanded the character portraits by having the Injury for each characters to make it less obvious being so empty. i would have like it looks the same as pillars one aesthetically where the injury was in the portraits. i think there's no need to intentionally space out each portraits to make it less obvious having 1 lesser characters. also, was wondering if they can have the old classical UI design as an option that would be really neat.

Edited April 18, 2018 by Archaven

[Artaios]

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.

Correct me if I am wrong but can't you rotate now in PoE II?

[Boeroer]

Rotate camera? Nope. The backgrounds are still painted.

 

Thank the gods nope. 

[Artaios]

I just saw it rotate in one of the videos and assumed that was a thing now. Would not say no to a fully 3D world. Would help immensely with combat.

[nightcobra]

I just saw it rotate in one of the videos and assumed that was a thing now. Would not say no to a fully 3D world. Would help immensely with combat.

 

do you mean the smart camera system they implemented recently? it's just a feature that locks the camera to be centered on your party, so you can explore without dragging the mouse everywhere.

[Artaios]

 

I just saw it rotate in one of the videos and assumed that was a thing now. Would not say no to a fully 3D world. Would help immensely with combat.

 

do you mean the smart camera system they implemented recently? it's just a feature that locks the camera to be centered on your party, so you can explore without dragging the mouse everywhere.

 

No, take a look at this video starting at second 40:

 

Might just be the world editor but don't see why you could not have the same thing in the actual engine when the editor lets you do that.

 

Also: Yay, for centered camera and welcome to the 21st century :D

Edited April 18, 2018 by Artaios

[Boeroer]

But you did see in the video that the whole environment and background was flat, right? 

[nightcobra]

 

 

I just saw it rotate in one of the videos and assumed that was a thing now. Would not say no to a fully 3D world. Would help immensely with combat.

 

do you mean the smart camera system they implemented recently? it's just a feature that locks the camera to be centered on your party, so you can explore without dragging the mouse everywhere.

 

No, take a look at this video starting at second 40:

 

Might just be the world editor but don't see why you could not have the same thing in the actual engine when the editor lets you do that.

 

Also: Yay, for centered camera and welcome to the 21st century :D

 

 

I think that was just for lighting testing purposes, the background is still flat when rotated and thus it'll probably be like pillars 1, 

[Wormerine]

I just saw it rotate in one of the videos and assumed that was a thing now. Would not say no to a fully 3D world. Would help immensely with combat.

Would do the complete opposite? Make exporation and combat more of a pain in the butt? 

 

Frankly, if you go for the top down perspective, the game should be playable without flipping the entire world upside down all the time. I got Dvinity: Dragon Commander for free a while ago and booted it up recently. Wow, the camera might make me not boot it up ever again.

[Artaios]

 

I just saw it rotate in one of the videos and assumed that was a thing now. Would not say no to a fully 3D world. Would help immensely with combat.

Would do the complete opposite? Make exporation and combat more of a pain in the butt? 

 

Frankly, if you go for the top down perspective, the game should be playable without flipping the entire world upside down all the time. I got Dvinity: Dragon Commander for free a while ago and booted it up recently. Wow, the camera might make me not boot it up ever again.

 

I agree, it should be playable without doing that, but I often found myself wishing that I could rotate the camera during combat in PoE I. Don't see how rotating would make for worse exploration though. At worst you can always ignore the feature. The only thing it would do is make things much more expensive if you want to achieve similar visuals. Games like Exanima show how this can be done.

[Wormerine]

I agree, it should be playable without doing that, but I often found myself wishing that I could rotate the camera during combat in PoE I. Don't see how rotating would make for worse exploration though. At worst you can always ignore the feature. The only thing it would do is make things much more expensive if you want to achieve similar visuals. Games like Exanima show how this can be done.

Well, you can't rotate isometric view. To make it rotatable you need to create full 3d world. and then you run into an issue of obstructing view, which means that you can't ignore it. I didn't play Exanima though every game I can think of which was top down and was full 3d suffered from it. Even if they stop doing prerendered background in the future, I would still prefer if they stick to locked isometric view - it just makes game easier to play and I don't see an appeal in being able to move the screen upside down. 

[Gilthas]

For me, the one big change for PoE:D that I dislike is the reduction of party size.

 

I like having a dedicated healer in my party, so I always have a Cleric of sorts in it. My PC is usually a melee class, and I really like Pallegina, Aloth and Eder, so they'll all be staples in my party. I also want all of them to use the single classes that they had in PoE1. That leaves a spot for the healer and no room to play with anyone else. It just changes the party dynamics that I'm accustomed too.

 

But I'll live.

[Artaios]

For me, the one big change for PoE:D that I dislike is the reduction of party size.

 

I like having a dedicated healer in my party, so I always have a Cleric of sorts in it. My PC is usually a melee class, and I really like Pallegina, Aloth and Eder, so they'll all be staples in my party. I also want all of them to use the single classes that they had in PoE1. That leaves a spot for the healer and no room to play with anyone else. It just changes the party dynamics that I'm accustomed too.

 

But I'll live.

I share your feelings. Looking at the new companions I will likely have to sacrifice Pallegina. In the first game I found that she can heal plenty and it was usually enough for me so maybe just have Pallegina focus more on healing?

[Frog Man]

For me, the one big change for PoE:D that I dislike is the reduction of party size.

 

I like having a dedicated healer in my party, so I always have a Cleric of sorts in it. My PC is usually a melee class, and I really like Pallegina, Aloth and Eder, so they'll all be staples in my party. I also want all of them to use the single classes that they had in PoE1. That leaves a spot for the healer and no room to play with anyone else. It just changes the party dynamics that I'm accustomed too.

 

But I'll live.

I feel like if you love these games you’re going to do well more than 1 run. The decreased party size (in addition to a host of other benefits) will leave more companions and clssses for a second run. I’m excited to play the game this way:

 

1) traditional good guy run on hard with all my buds - Eder aloth and Pallegina (plus tekehu)

2) evil run with xoti Serafen rekke maia constanten etc on POTD

3) more POTD but with full created party of oddball and optimized multiclasses

[Raygne]

I really don't like that they reduced the party size.  It feels a little lazy.  There were other ways they could have addressed this issue but it would have taken a little more effort I guess.  This always concerns me in the thought process and how it will continue.

[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.

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?

 

I would pay 25 more dollars then regular price for a true fallout 2 turn based pillars or deadfire. However, thats not the issue. They just cheesed out of the problem instead of actually fixing it. One character might not be worth that much but cutting content to fix an issue should be the last step not the first.

[Messier-31]

DA:O had the best companion switch mechanic: as long as you were in a settlement and not in combat, you could swap companions at will. Though it took me sometime to figure out

 

Immersion broken 

[Wormerine]

 

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?

 

I would pay 25 more dollars then regular price for a true fallout 2 turn based pillars or deadfire. However, thats not the issue. They just cheesed out of the problem instead of actually fixing it. One character might not be worth that much but cutting content to fix an issue should be the last step not the first.

I wouldn’t mind a turnbased RPG either, but it’s not a turnbased title. Even so turn based RPGs tend to have less characters under your control (fallouts1, divinitites4) and taking 10 minutes to go through a turn can be daunting even if choices are limited,

 

So without changing the game’s genre, what would be considered by you a not “cheesed out” of the problem. Beoroer suggested reducing active skills as that is what is making PoE more hectic that IE which is point&click and see number roll. No content was cut as far as we know.

[Boeroer]

The amount of activations of abilites at the start of every encounter was already tedious in PoE - and then came the actual encounter (where I don't mind a lot of pausing and micro, but others do). In Deadfire there's even more active abilites, so it would have gotten even worse. And they weren't lazy and also didn't cheese out. They tried to tackle the problem from different sides:

 

- reducing VFX opacity when pausing so you can see better

- way better AI control via scripting - so you don't have to trigger all buffs/active abilities manually anymore even at higher difficulties

- retargeting function

- slower combat via longer casting times and recovery

 

And they still decided that it would be best to remove 1 party member - which I can understand after playing the beta. Else there is too much going on for the average player. I would even say 4 would be best for gameplay, maybe even 3. But I and many others also like to have a big party, so 5 seems to be the reasonable compromise.

Edited April 19, 2018 by Boeroer

[molotov.]

Well, I tend to rotate between the characters, I see the context of the next quest and choose the character according, for example, act III I had Pallegina and Hiravias for their quests. But now with the relationship system... things will get messy.

My favourite party was Me - fighter tank -, Éder - dps -, Hiravias/Pallegina/Devil - to choose between them was a pain... I really liked all of them, dps and a little bit of tank -, Durance - horrible healer but the only one -, Kana - dps and for summons and also for his commentaries they were hilarious -, Aloth - wizards are OP and Aloth is a swell lad.