Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Infinitron]

I don't think any one damage type immunity is broad enough to even be considered a "hard counter" at all. It's stuff like immunity to all physical damage or all magic spells that causes problems.

 

[tdphys]

This might be nice for making itemization more important too... damage immune enemies causing a weapon swap to get a different damage type - meaning it's not one weapon ( often upgraded ) for the whole game. I still wish they'd make the enchantments a little more meaningful. I'd like to see variety similar to Dungeon Crawl stone soup, where lightning brand, for example, is a flat damage bonus, nice on quick weapons, and fire/cold is dependent on base damage, obviously better for heavier ones.

 

[MilesBeyond]

PoE is not the Genre's icarus. Shut the fuck up. What a fucking stupid as fuck thing to say. Like, the genre's icarus would be a game that tried to do something so different it became a massive pile of unplayable shit. Like, is there anything that really fits that label well? A game where they tried to introduce 10/10 mechanics and it completely shit the bed and became a huge clusterfuck instead? I mean, Molyneaux's Fable was just...boring shit. It doesnt have many original 10/10 ideas in a sloppy, shitty mess of shit.

You'll have to forgive me, I'm afraid I haven't been keeping up to date on the recommended amount of melodrama required for an Icarus comparison.

 

[Dorateen]

Spoiler

 

[Bubbles]

We'll be talking to these guys at Gamescom; if you got any interview questions, post them here.

 

[One-and-a-half-Ivan]

Patch 2.0 is scheduled to go live tomorrow (patch 2.0 beta to be precise):
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/80...-expansion-and-update-20/page-17#entry1716893

Hey, guys. The beta is going to go out on Monday. Without getting into the technical reasons there was a bug that was introduced that was causing some conversations to have incorrect speakers. It isn't a huge issue, but I would prefer to get it fixed before releasing the Update to you guys.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

today is the patch day. Can't wait!
Here is what Badler had to say : "Hey, guys. The beta is going to go out on Monday. Without getting into the technical reasons there was a bug that was introduced that was causing some conversations to have incorrect speakers. It isn't a huge issue, but I would prefer to get it fixed before releasing the Update to you guys."

 

[Space Satan]

I'm interested in this mainly because it'll add a rogue companion. So I can ditch that feathery nigger and play with normal party.

 

[ArchAngel]

I'm interested in this mainly because it'll add a rogue companion. So I can ditch that feathery nigger and play with normal party.

Isn't the rogue coming with the expansion?

 

[Abu Antar]

Isn't the rogue coming with the expansion?

Yep. This isn't the expansion, it's the patch 2.0 beta.

 

[Immortal]

I don't think any one damage type immunity is broad enough to even be considered a "hard counter" at all. It's stuff like immunity to all physical damage or all magic spells that causes problems.

<Insert Creature with Immunity to Fire and Weakness to Ice>

Hmmm.. No hard counter here.. I wonder what equal opportunity strategy I could use... Maybe.. Fireball..? No no.. that won't work..

Hmmmm...

I'm interested in this mainly because it'll add a rogue companion. So I can ditch that feathery nigger and play with normal party.

 

[Infinitron]

In the context of an RPG, a hard counter is a character that utterly dominates/defeats other characters unless they have a specific counter-measure. Unless you're playing some kind of elemental-themed game where characters are very likely to have attacks of only one single element, or something like that, an immunity to one single elemental damage type is unlikely to "dominate". You will have something else available.

Well, I guess immunity to one damage type might be a hard counter vs certain enemies if the player gets to have it, but for now, that's not happening.

 

[ArchAngel]

In the context of an RPG, a hard counter is a character that utterly dominates/defeats other characters unless they have a specific counter-measure. Unless you're playing some kind of elemental-themed game where characters are very likely to have attacks of only one single element, or something like that, an immunity to one single elemental damage type is unlikely to "dominate". You will have something else available.

Well, I guess immunity to one damage type might be a hard counter vs certain enemies if the player gets to have it, but for now, that's not happening.

I don't know why is that the only definition. It usually also means you have an attack available that does especially well vs enemies while other attacks don't. You are a hard counter for that enemy in that case since enemy cannot use its special defenses vs you.
Hard counters are often used in PnP like DM sending dominate specialists vs warriors especially resistant to attacks vs body or reflexes.

 

[Infinitron]

*shrug* That's not what the term means. I get that it's become short-hand for "everything I liked about BG2 that PoE toned down", but strictly speaking that encompasses more than "hard counters".

Hard counters is originally a term from RTSes to describe stuff like, for example, how flying units will always utterly defeat ground units if the latter don't have anti-air attacks, as opposed to "soft counters" which is like, how a strong ground unit will defeat a weaker ground unit, but a massed attack of the weaker ground units might be able to bring it down.

It's not just about being immune to stuff - it means being immune to stuff in such a way that you can destroy your enemies with impunity and with little to no chance of defeat. Mages in BG2 fit that definition, some random fire elemental being immune to fire doesn't.

 

[ArchAngel]

*shrug* That's not what the term means. I get that it's become short-hand for "everything I liked about BG2 that PoE toned down", but strictly speaking that encompasses more than "hard counters".

Hard counters is originally a term from RTSes to describe stuff like, for example, how flying units will always utterly defeat ground units if the latter don't have anti-air attacks, as opposed to "soft counters" which is like, how a strong ground unit will defeat a weaker ground unit, but a massed attack of the weaker ground units might be able to bring it down.

It's not just about being immune to stuff - it means being immune to stuff in such a way that you can destroy your enemies with impunity and with little to no chance of defeat. Mages in BG2 fit that definition, some random fire elemental being immune to fire doesn't.

Actually now that you mention RTS, I didn't want to be first I can tell you that is not true. In Starcraft 2 a hard counter is considered Immortal when fighting vs Roaches because it does 2x damage to armored units and two shots roaches.

 

[Immortal]

In the context of an RPG, a hard counter is a character that utterly dominates/defeats other characters unless they have a specific counter-measure. Unless you're playing some kind of elemental-themed game where characters are very likely to have attacks of only one single element, or something like that, an immunity to one single elemental damage type is unlikely to "dominate". You will have something else available.

Well, I guess immunity to one damage type might be a hard counter vs certain enemies if the player gets to have it, but for now, that's not happening.

I thought Hard Counters were anything that forced you to Bring X. I acknowledge my example is not a true hard counter but it definitely pushes things more in that direction. Suddenly it's not about eliminating bad options (X Monster is strong to piercing), now it's more about (You should probably do Y or your gonna have a bad time).

The immunity thing does trivialize builds. What if your playing a fighter who specialized in a certain weapon and then run into a mob who is immune to slashing or whatever. How is that not a hard counter to the fighter.

We don't know how it's being implemented but immunity to anything goes against the mental masturbation Josh was feeding us a year before release. AKA it's like he's learning the shit we've been saying for years for the first time ever.

 

[Infinitron]

The immunity thing does trivialize builds. What if your playing a fighter who specialized in a certain weapon and then run into a mob who is immune to slashing or whatever. How is that not a hard counter to the fighter.

Immunity to a physical weapon damage types is indeed a bit more "hard countery" than immunity to a magical damage type - although not really because you can switch weapons, and there's plenty of them to go around. Also, remember that you specialize in weapon categories, not weapons.

But somehow I doubt we're going to see it.

We don't know how it's being implemented but immunity to anything goes against the mental masturbation Josh was feeding use a year before release

Don't think Josh ever said much about narrow immunities, like a fire elemental being immune to fire. He talked a lot about the badness of hard counters, but not about those. I think I tried asking abou it once, but he kinda ignored it.

BTW, PoE already has some stuff that's pretty close to being a hard counter, like those banshee screams that can paralyze your entire party. Only thing that stops that from being BG2-calibre "cast a defense spell or die" is that the paralyze durations aren't that long. It can still fuck you up bad/potentially TPK you though. Thinking about that Heritage Hill crypt battle here.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Heritage Hill crypt battle was fucking hard the first time.

 

[Immortal]

Immunity to a physical weapon damage types is indeed a bit more "hard countery" than immunity to a magical damage type - although not really because you can switch weapons, and there's plenty of them to go around. Also, remember that you specialize in weapon categories, not weapons.

Weapon Categories.. Of the same damage type.. no?

 

[Infinitron]

Weapon Categories.. Of the same damage type.. no?

Pretty sure most of them have a variety of damage types. Eg, Peasant has both spear and quarterstaff

 

[One-and-a-half-Ivan]

Unfortunately we'll have to wait a bit more
It's nice of badler to keep us up-to-date about the status of the update though.

So BAdler hows the beta build coming along? Is it on track to be released today still?

Not well. It is a tricky thing trying to pull apart the base game files from the expansion right now. We are trying to prevent story elements from leaking out before the expansion's release so we are Frankensteining a build together. There are a few things that came back from testing that need to be removed (or strings that need to be added), so unfortunately it won't be up until tomorrow at the latest.
I will give you guys an update tomorrow whether we are going to push it live or not.
Sorry, guys.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/80...-expansion-and-update-20/page-18#entry1717351

 

[Jedi Exile]

That's a bit weird. Why not just release the expansion along with the patch? We can wait.

 

[Infinitron]

That's a bit weird. Why not just release the expansion along with the patch? We can wait.

Because as much as pulling the patch apart from the expansion content is a pain in the ass, releasing a buggy patch is even a bigger one.

 

[ArchAngel]

That's a bit weird. Why not just release the expansion along with the patch? We can wait.

My guess would be that they want to test these changes on the base game player base before putting it in a paid expansion.

 

[Fry]

Isn't he just talking about pushing the patch to the beta channel? When they release to everyone, the patch is going at the same time as the expansion.

I kinda doubt expansion content will be put into public beta before release.