Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire + DLC Thread - now with turn-based combat!

[Safav Hamon]

I have a feeling scaling is borked in my game. I'm level 10, yet the Engwithan Titan in Poko Kohara and the Risen ones are still three red skull mobs and I have like a 35% chance to hit them. Is this normal?

The Engwithan Titan is supposed to be difficult at level 10

 

[Lacrymas]

It's not so much 'difficult' as impossible, at least with the party I have.

 

[fantadomat]

Yeah, scaling doesn't work at all. I set it to scale downwards and exited and reentered the map to be sure, but there was no change in the stats or level of the mobs.

Ughhh it works only when you are entering a map for first time,after that the enemies are set. Unless they change it with the patches.

 

[Lacrymas]

Ok.

 

[Quillon]

 

[Safav Hamon]

It's not so much 'difficult' as impossible, at least with the party I have.

I thought the fight was trivial using story companions, but I went there at level 14.

 

[frajaq]

 

[Owlish]

The joke's on him, I paid him $0 (this time) and didn't bother finishing the game.

Can't cuck the duck!

 

[Ulfhednar]

So Josh’s official position is that the ending of PoE2 should feel like a cattle gun to the skull.

Well played Josh, well played!

 

[santino27]

"My goal was to present the player with an unsatisfying and frustrating situation that they can do little to resolve because adra giant guy is big. Why? Do people play these games for fun and enjoyment?"

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

It's not so much 'difficult' as impossible, at least with the party I have.

Oh my god, so you might need to get some levels and try the encounter again?

The horror.

 

[Ulfhednar]

So is the RPG Codex actually Tommy Lee Jones' character Sheriff Bell?

Is the point of PoE 2 to watch the Watcher vs Eothas (Moss vs Chigurh) as Bell and recognize our own impotence in the face of the decline, our true role only to provide commentary on the RPG greats of yesteryear?

Is PoE 2 marked with the epitaph "No Country For Old Grognards"?

Cause that would be meta as fuck...

 

[aweigh]

what was the ending again for that movie?

javier bardem kills the guy he's after and the sheriff gets scared and decides to not keep chasing him?

 

[Ulfhednar]

Javier Bardem kills Josh Brolin and gets away. He's wounded in a car wreck, but survives and can keep his killing spree going if I remember right.

Tommy Lee Jones laments at the beginning of the movie that criminals are now basically psychopaths instead of the problematic but somewhat sympathetic people in the old days. The last scene is basically him saying "I'm too old for this shit."

 

[Shadenuat]

Holy shit he actually did base a product inside a medium and even inside a specific genre about player agency... around removing player agency. That was not a mistake or bad writing.

My brain can't handle this

 

[Neanderthal]

Holy shit he actually did base a product inside a medium and even inside a specific genre about player agency... around removing player agency. That was not a mistake or bad writing.

My brain can't handle this

To remove something you'd have to have it in the first place. Crpgs have always had a bad case of GM telling you his story, rather than working with players to craft theirs. To point where you get sequels where dead characters rise, all choices are rendered pointless and a 100 hours invested in their game is undone.

Nowt new here.

 

[Ulfhednar]

Holy shit he actually did base a product inside a medium and even inside a specific genre about player agency... around removing player agency. That was not a mistake or bad writing.

My brain can't handle this

To remove something you'd have to have it in the first place. Crpgs have always had a bad case of GM telling you his story, rather than working with players to craft theirs. To point where you get sequels where dead characters rise, all choices are rendered pointless and a 100 hours invested in their game is undone.

Nowt new here.

But did you ever have it in the first place? Or was player agency and crafting a character arc always an illusion in cRPGs that you could only see with the rose-tinted glasses of youth?

"What you got ain't nothin' new. This country's hard on people. Can't stop what's comin'... Ain't all waitin' on you... That's vanity."

Spoiler

I elect Sheriff Bell as the ultimate metaphor for Codexian Grognards and their hopes for the revival of the cRPG genre.

 

[Glaucon]

Anyone else having a problem with npcs not spawning in their proper location when you "wait" into another part of the day/night cycle? They'll spawn if you reload/change zone/enter a building but that's annoying.

 

[Glaucon]

Another fun fact - The Huana longships in Deadfire are modeled after double-hulled Polynesian canoes called Hōkūleʻa

Is it known which writer(s) contributed most to Huana lore?

 

[Dodo1610]

Ashen Maw actually only exists to make the player realize that you cannot do anything to stop the "bad thing" this time. In POE you simply fight an agent of a god in POE 2 you go aginst a god directly. The biggest problem here is not the idea of gods being immortal all powerful beings that look down on everyone. The problem is the muddy writing, the gods simply do not seem so powerful during the talks you have with them. This problem comes from the fact that despite the games verbosity there is no point where your watcher has to admit his defeat. So the player may not realize until the very end that there will be no epic boss battle against a god.

The idea behind the story is pretty unique and interesting but the execution remains lackluster

 

[Safav Hamon]

I disagree with you. The game takes every opportunity to show how powerful the gods are. Not only do you witness them performing dozens of incredible feats in POE2 alone, but at several points throughout the game they will murder you for disrespecting them (even Eothas). Anyone that thought you were going to be able to sail to Ukaizo and kick Eothas ass wasn't paying attention. It's immediately obvious that the Guardian is supposed to be the final boss.

The criticism reminds me of a horror movie called Resolution. Watchers of horror movies typically expect death at the end, so the film broke the 4th wall and made the viewer's bloodlust the supernatural force that was trying to kill them. Likewise in videogames, most players expect to be treated like an invincible badass towards the end, and get upset when that trope is subverted.

 

[Lacrymas]

Ok, but what's the point of not being able to defeat Eothas? It really doesn't say anything and it isn't somehow a logical conclusion to the rest of the narrative (i.e. in a "what is the author trying to say?" school-teacher kind of way). Not being able to conquer a challenge in fiction is an extreme end result that is more often than not tragic, see Oedipus Rex for example. The only tragedy I see here is not convincing Eothas to destroy Eora.

 

[Owlish]

There was also foreshadowing that that god taking a worldly form was mortal. They could have conceived of some way you could have thwarted him but they'd rather be pretentious in their kid's game.

 

[Safav Hamon]

Ok, but what's the point of not being able to defeat Eothas? It really doesn't say anything and it isn't somehow a logical conclusion to the rest of the narrative (i.e. in a "what is the author trying to say?" school-teacher kind of way).

What's the point of being able to kill him? It's just another type of conflict, no more logical than the other.

 

[Lacrymas]

Being able to defeat him is conquering a challenge, that is enough of a point. I don't care either way, it's just Josh says it's something deep, yet it's not. Not being able to destroy the Wall of the Faithless in MotB is profound in the context of the setting and narrative, not being able to defeat Eothas not so much.