Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian's new CRPG in the vein of Baldur's Gate
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Hatorade
A nice asshole.
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There is a lot of stuff that is missing context but it gives you a heads up saying this interaction is due to previous game. That said I can see how it really won't effect enjoyment of the game.
I went multiclass druid/chanter with shark dude and regret it, don't multiclass the companions.
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Found some bow that fires snowballs or some shit, it fires like 3times and then for some reason the snowballs do aoe damage which also hit the same target again, so you basically hit 6times with it. While it does less damage than a normal bow, it still does fucking retarded damage. So now I have my Cipher just shitting on everyone else for damage, I just throw a Borrowed Instincts to make sure I don't miss(it gives +20accuracy and some defenses shit I don't need) and just explode everything with it. I've been trying to level the stupid talking sword too whenever I fight humans I just like CC everything while I have my Cipher solo mobs to get the stats up. Probably no point but it's not much trouble. I got the 1500damage one done pretty quick now I need to get 15kills again.
Also making Eder Fighter/Rogue was the right choice I think, he does a ton more damage than he'd do with pure fighter and honestly I barely have to heal him anyway. I use the engagement stance which gives +3 engage and 5%damage reduction per engage, and I unlocked a cool synergy rogue passive which gives +1 engage and everything engaged is automatically distracted(which means it's automatically flanked, which means it has garbage stats, loses deflection and accuracy for free). Really cool stuff. Just dual wielding with him and spamming rogue full attacks for big damage too, haven't needed to equip a shield yet.
But game is definitely super easy, the power creep from having unlimited ressources(no need to pace your spells) and multiclassing shenanigans make what would be otherwise hard fights pretty easy. I'm using Xoti as a pure priest but honestly, she's probably not needed. Hell unlike the first game which often had you getting hit by a fuckton of CC, I think they forgot to have them in this? Besides the random immobilizes I haven't seen much really.
Also making Eder Fighter/Rogue was the right choice I think, he does a ton more damage than he'd do with pure fighter and honestly I barely have to heal him anyway. I use the engagement stance which gives +3 engage and 5%damage reduction per engage, and I unlocked a cool synergy rogue passive which gives +1 engage and everything engaged is automatically distracted(which means it's automatically flanked, which means it has garbage stats, loses deflection and accuracy for free). Really cool stuff. Just dual wielding with him and spamming rogue full attacks for big damage too, haven't needed to equip a shield yet.
But game is definitely super easy, the power creep from having unlimited ressources(no need to pace your spells) and multiclassing shenanigans make what would be otherwise hard fights pretty easy. I'm using Xoti as a pure priest but honestly, she's probably not needed. Hell unlike the first game which often had you getting hit by a fuckton of CC, I think they forgot to have them in this? Besides the random immobilizes I haven't seen much really.
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That's cause Lone Wolf is meant to make it easier though, while this isn't built in. That said this is probably not so bad either and maybe even easier than the first game. I haven't really tested but you can just spam all your summon items and rest between every fight I think? That means as long as you have some form of healing or whatever you're probably cool. Maybe rogue invis shit so you can drop aggro to your summons and chanter so you get more stronger summons? Or like druid for tank form+healing and some sort of other class for damage and what not.
Vimeseh
Trakanon Raider
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The Devs came out and said that this one is flat out easier then the first especially PoTD mode. They also said that they will be massively tuning up PoTD and might tune up hard but aren't sure about the latter. It was a conscious decision to release the game undertuned for whatever reason and tweak it up with patches.
Vimeseh
Trakanon Raider
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The original PoE from what I understand wasn't really all that great until after a couple of patches and white marches was added. I figured number 2 would be similar especially reading about the difficulty level. A lot of CRPGs have had this problem lately though. Both Divinity's were much better after their 2nd large patch from a balancing standpoint. The only release that I can remember being pretty epic as is was Witcher 3 out of the last couple of years.
Grabbit Allworth
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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So, I'm one of the people who was giddy with excitement waiting for this game. Now, I really do like the game, but man.....the combat..
Early on the combat leaves A LOT to be desired. First, the ability system is unnecessarily complicated. Sure, you can figure it out with a bit of reading, but it's un-intuitive. Second, a bunch of the spells are completely worthless and you really only learn this through trial and error. I don't know about you, but I don't want to spend large chunks of the game playing a group of bad characters and having to re-spec them every couple levels to 'get it right.'
My party is level 10 now and combat lasts long enough that I can actually use tactics/abilities because my characters aren't in danger of dying instantly at every moment and the mobs also don't get gibbed in one or two hits. However, my party is effectively being carried by my Fighter (Devoted)/Rogue (Assassin) and the Story heal-bitch Cleric. My character literally does more damage than the rest of my party, combined.
Again, I love the game, but the combat is nothing more than a zerg-fest for the first few levels. If I'm wrong, someone please enlighten me.
Early on the combat leaves A LOT to be desired. First, the ability system is unnecessarily complicated. Sure, you can figure it out with a bit of reading, but it's un-intuitive. Second, a bunch of the spells are completely worthless and you really only learn this through trial and error. I don't know about you, but I don't want to spend large chunks of the game playing a group of bad characters and having to re-spec them every couple levels to 'get it right.'
My party is level 10 now and combat lasts long enough that I can actually use tactics/abilities because my characters aren't in danger of dying instantly at every moment and the mobs also don't get gibbed in one or two hits. However, my party is effectively being carried by my Fighter (Devoted)/Rogue (Assassin) and the Story heal-bitch Cleric. My character literally does more damage than the rest of my party, combined.
Again, I love the game, but the combat is nothing more than a zerg-fest for the first few levels. If I'm wrong, someone please enlighten me.
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The bad spells are for the most part the same as PoE1, so knowing that does help a lot, but yeah there's way too many shitty spells.
My pure cipher actually focuses on taking passives because of that which is kinda dumb design. First rank the only spell I have is charm, 2nd rank is Recall Agony(and I only use that once every 5hours or whatever to kill a boss), 3rd rank ectopsychic echo. I had 8points for these 3 ranks and I only ended up with 3spells because almost everything else isn't worth casting. Some are decent but just not worth the ressources over a higher rank spell or a better low rank spell(and by ressource I don't mean just focus, I mean like the time it takes to cast/recover too, I could be shooting my bow or casting a better spell). A lot are garbage.
The main character doing more than the rest was pretty common in PoE1 too. I built my party a bit more balanced, Eder especially does good damage as dual wielding fighter/rogue, Pallegina does ok-ish damage with flames of devotion but mostly here for mark, chanter buffs and heals/rez/aoe flames, Aloth does ok damage but more importantly enables my beam shenanigans with his clone summon and priest girl does like no damage but the somehow non nerfed might+accuracy buffs does a fuckton of work.
My pure cipher actually focuses on taking passives because of that which is kinda dumb design. First rank the only spell I have is charm, 2nd rank is Recall Agony(and I only use that once every 5hours or whatever to kill a boss), 3rd rank ectopsychic echo. I had 8points for these 3 ranks and I only ended up with 3spells because almost everything else isn't worth casting. Some are decent but just not worth the ressources over a higher rank spell or a better low rank spell(and by ressource I don't mean just focus, I mean like the time it takes to cast/recover too, I could be shooting my bow or casting a better spell). A lot are garbage.
The main character doing more than the rest was pretty common in PoE1 too. I built my party a bit more balanced, Eder especially does good damage as dual wielding fighter/rogue, Pallegina does ok-ish damage with flames of devotion but mostly here for mark, chanter buffs and heals/rez/aoe flames, Aloth does ok damage but more importantly enables my beam shenanigans with his clone summon and priest girl does like no damage but the somehow non nerfed might+accuracy buffs does a fuckton of work.
reavor
I'm With HER ♀
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but that's how it works in essentially every RPG, one figures out that 80% of the spells are worthless and in the end you use 4-5 of them over and over.
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Yeah I think I'm done with this for a while until they patch shit in into an acceptable state.
I was pretty soured after having to use console tricks to fix my character after a basic respec because they somehow didn't QA respecs at all since losing watcher abilities should be a big enough thing to notice, but that was fine since it was fixable with console. Then I got annoyed at how easy the game was on potd and me outleveling content just for trying to do everything, so I tried to console level scaling in, but it wouldn't work. So I did what everyone with a lot of time on their hands would do and I abandonned my 25hours playthrough to reroll the exact same thing and replay through the game the same way, but this time with level scaling on. And after about 10hours to get back where I was(skipping all text does help quite a bit), I noticed that the monsters were just as easy.
Spent a little bit trying things out using the console to level super high, and as far as I can tell, level scaling upwards doesn't work at all. It supposedly works for scaling down stuff, I assume, haven't seen anyone complain about it but I'm not sure if people actually use it though, but at lvl 15 in low level areas, everything has exactly the same stats.
The fact they basically didn't bother balancing the difficulty at all in general, making the game easy as fuck even on veteran, and by their own admission that they didn't bother doing anything for potd difficulty either makes it a snoozefest, and if scaling doesn't even work, it's even worse because now I'm just one shotting packs of stuff with a single ability and that shit's not really interesting. It is if I build my way up there, but if I literally just don't use any consumables, buffs or broken build and can still one shot monsters with a normal attack, your game is shit.
Maybe I'll be bored tomorrow and play the game again but fuck am I annoyed at this, especially since I could have saved 20bucks buying it in 6months when it'll be fixed instead. It wasn't that expensive but yeah.
I was pretty soured after having to use console tricks to fix my character after a basic respec because they somehow didn't QA respecs at all since losing watcher abilities should be a big enough thing to notice, but that was fine since it was fixable with console. Then I got annoyed at how easy the game was on potd and me outleveling content just for trying to do everything, so I tried to console level scaling in, but it wouldn't work. So I did what everyone with a lot of time on their hands would do and I abandonned my 25hours playthrough to reroll the exact same thing and replay through the game the same way, but this time with level scaling on. And after about 10hours to get back where I was(skipping all text does help quite a bit), I noticed that the monsters were just as easy.
Spent a little bit trying things out using the console to level super high, and as far as I can tell, level scaling upwards doesn't work at all. It supposedly works for scaling down stuff, I assume, haven't seen anyone complain about it but I'm not sure if people actually use it though, but at lvl 15 in low level areas, everything has exactly the same stats.
The fact they basically didn't bother balancing the difficulty at all in general, making the game easy as fuck even on veteran, and by their own admission that they didn't bother doing anything for potd difficulty either makes it a snoozefest, and if scaling doesn't even work, it's even worse because now I'm just one shotting packs of stuff with a single ability and that shit's not really interesting. It is if I build my way up there, but if I literally just don't use any consumables, buffs or broken build and can still one shot monsters with a normal attack, your game is shit.
Maybe I'll be bored tomorrow and play the game again but fuck am I annoyed at this, especially since I could have saved 20bucks buying it in 6months when it'll be fixed instead. It wasn't that expensive but yeah.
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TJT
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Grabbit Allworth
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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I found a slick way to shoplift/pickpocket for people with low stealth scores (or against mobs with insane alertness). Have the character who is going to steal the items stand in an area where they are unnoticed while in stealth, then have Aloth (or whoever can cast Dimensional Shift) stand next to the person/container and then swap places with the hidden character. Using pause, you'll have plenty of time to steal everything before you get noticed.
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I'm playing a pure Cipher, Beguiler sub, which only strength is you get a slight focus refund on using CCs on targets that can be affected by sneak attack(basically flanked or any affliction), which is nice to chain charm early on but barely affects shit later on since I start fights with 50 focus and charm is 10 anyway and the refund is a static amount, you don't get 50back for using a 50spell, you just get 10 or whatever it is. The only reason I went this over no subclass is because the downside is also small, you get less focus if the target isn't debuffed, so it's more or less always active.
The rest of my group is companions, so no funky minmaxing multiclass bulldozer. Even my main isn't like a crazy thing, sure I minmaxed the stats so I have max perception to not miss all the fucking time while still have 14might/dex, but that's not like multiclassing some overpowered synergetic bullshit.
To put things in perspective in the 25hours in my first playthrough, I used 2 minor heal pots and I died once. And by die I mean my Cipher died once, to a bunch of gunners who started the fight aggroing me. On my 2nd catchup playthrough I didn't use anything. In either playthroughs(up to lvl 10 where I stopped), I didn't use any grenades, scroll or potion other than the 2 heals, I didn't use crazy food(I used rice, -10% damage, same as the old rest bonus). There's very little I could do to make the game harder without purposefully fully limiting myself like removing a companion(well 2 really, I could remove aloth without an issue...I could probably remove Pallegina too and still be fine) or running around with white gear or whatever.
But the game's difficulty was ok at times when I was leveling, the area under the gullet had a bunch of cool encounters and felt fairly balanced(probably because stuff was 1 or 2 skulls, so +1 to +2 levels). I even had to use some empower charges during this dungeon on the boss and one of the encounter event because I ran out of abilities. Then I go out at sea to do some sidequests I was given in town after clearing the town and everything so low level I just one shot everything left and right. Like literally while I was testing stuff out to check scaling, I entered a room that had 8enemies with Eder alone, and he killed everything on his own. Shit's probably lvl 5 or 6, you get the quest from the inn in Queen's Berth so I guess they expect you to go there right away after entering Neketaka, so if you do it after clearing the city you're 5 levels higher and it's boring as fuck.
The first game had this too, to an extent, but it wasn't nearly as bad imo.