Pillars of Eternity II - Patch 1.02

During beta there was a bunch of very vocal testers who complained fights were too long. They did something between beta 3 and 4 that made the game way easier, although, officially they only reduced recovery and casting time…

Also, kith enemies are bad at using abilities, they stick to low level stuff. They just need new AI script though, I even think players might be able to make them.

But when you play on normal and pick random skills, equip random stuff, turn on AI, a bloody boss should kill something there. All those bosses just fail to do that.

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Dunno, Steel Preacher at level 5 destroyed my party (it's a level 16 encounter).

Bg1, you exit Candlekeep and run into first wolf and it one shots your guy. You run into Ogre and it one shots your party. You find a first wizard enemy in Friendly Arms Inn and it will probably kill your whole party on first try. In Beregost, it is hard to miss Silke quest and she will probably kill someone in your first battle. And on and on.. and this is Normal difficulty.

Bg2, you exit Irenicus dungeon and find adventuring group in Inn on Waukeen Promenade, on first try you will almost surely die to them. Go out at night and fight first Vampire, you will almost sure come out of it level drained which is not fixed by 2s of resting (anything fixed by quick resting is meaningless danger). Explore a bit, you will run into many fights that will kick your ass on your first try or give you "permanent" penalties that are not fixed by resting. And secret fights like Kangaxx or Twisted Rune are so much better and harder than anything I have seen in PoE1.
And again this is on Normal difficulty.

Both PoE 1 and now PoE2 have almost meaningless difficulty. PoE1 on hardest had at least a few harder fights but only because of over buffing enemy stats compared to party so you fought with statistical disadvantage (which comes down to cheating in my book) compared to AD&D where just enemy abilities and attacks that were very similar in power to your own were an actual danger to the party without a need to "cheat"

Archangel said:

Both PoE 1 and now PoE2 have almost meaningless difficulty. PoE1 on hardest had at least a few harder fights but only because of over buffing enemy stats compared to party so you fought with statistical disadvantage (which comes down to cheating in my book) compared to AD&D where just enemy abilities and attacks that were very similar in power to your own were an actual danger to the party without a need to "cheat"

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Yeah, POE1 was so easy that the devs totally didn't nerf it twice post release…wait they did. Also, no enemies have statistical advantage in POE1 unless you play on POTD…while BG plays with enemies stat on all difficulties but the "AD&D ruleset" one.

azarhal said:

Yeah, POE1 was so easy that the devs totally didn't nerf it twice post release…wait they did. Also, no enemies have statistical advantage in POE1 unless you play on POTD…while BG plays with enemies stat on all difficulties but the "AD&D ruleset" one.

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PoE1 patches nerfed player abilities and made it harder with AI fixes.. I don't know what you are smoking.

Also I did mean PotD, that is what hardest difficulty means...

BG had Normal and Core rules where no stats were changed. On Normal you had some other bonuses like always memorizing new spells, not being chunked into pieces when dying (that would prevent raise dead spells) and some tough spells lasting shorter.
But enemy stats stays the same. Then you had two more difficulties above Core that would give 50% bonus damage and 100% bonus damage to enemies but there was no reason to play beyond Core rules to have a challenging and difficulty game for 1st few playthroughs. PoE1 was only somewhat challenging on PotD but needed to cheat to accomplish that.

Archangel said:

PoE1 patches nerfed player abilities and made it harder with AI fixes.. I don't know what you are smoking.

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They reduced encounter size through out the games before White March pt 1 was released as well as nerfed a few of the enemies. AI came with White March pt 2...

Archangel said:

It is not like PoE1 had any challenge. I played it on second hardest difficulty and had like 4 harder fights in whole game (not counting expansions). Everything else was setup 2 tanks in front to block movement and cast same encounter spells and ability every fight until everyone is dead.
Per rest abilities/spells I would only use when I got bored or during those 4 harder fights.

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I agree.
But PoE2 is EVEN easier.

I stated in another post that i like poe2 much more than poe1.

But the fights? Man, what a boring thing. And it's not like raising the difficulty will change anything that matters. As Archangel mentioned about BG, you don't have to think and organize. I'm crafting so many potions(really, does alchemy has any role in that?) and keep stocking them for no reason.

Hope that my interest will remain, as i almost like everything else in the game.

Archangel said:

PoE1 was only somewhat challenging on PotD but needed to cheat to accomplish that.

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Only 0.6 % of current owners of the game on Steam have the completion of the Path of the Damned achievement. So I think you're probably understating the difficulty somewhat as far as mainstream players go. Also, speaking as someone who has that particular achievement, if you play White March part 1 & 2, beat Concelhaut and the Siege of Cragholdt, defeat all dragons on Path of the Damned, you know you've had a decent challenge.

That said, I do hope the combat is gradually improved and tweaked for Poe2 in future patches, because as it stands for me now, there has been very little sense of danger in exploration on Veteran difficulty and my party is only level 5.

Pessimeister said:

Only 0.6 % of current owners of the game on Steam have the completion of the Path of the Damned achievement. So I think you're probably understating the difficulty somewhat as far as mainstream players go. Also, speaking as someone who has that particular achievement, if you play White March part 1 & 2, beat Concelhaut and the Siege of Cragholdt, defeat all dragons on Path of the Damned, you know you've had a decent challenge.

That said, I do hope the combat is gradually improved and tweaked for Poe2 in future patches, because as it stands for me now, there has been very little sense of danger in exploration on Veteran difficulty an my party is only level 5.

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That's quite high, comparing to the number of people who completed the game at all, given it's about 6%.

If you think 0.6 % is quite high, then I don't think we have much to talk about, sorry.

The actual percentage for those who have completed the first game is currently at 10.9%. Perhaps this relatively low percentage could be partially why Obsidian have released the sequel with combat that seems so much easier than the first game.

https://steamcommunity.com/stats/291650/achievements/

Pessimeister said:

If you think 0.6 % is quite high, then I don't think we have much to talk about, sorry.

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I think he wanted to say that 10% of all players completing the game completed it in PotD. That could be considered high.

Pessimeister said:

If you think 0.6 % is quite high, then I don't think we have much to talk about, sorry.

The actual percentage for those who have completed the first game is currently at 10.9%. Perhaps this relatively low percentage could be partially why Obsidian have released the sequel with combat that seems so much easier than the first game.

https://steamcommunity.com/stats/291650/achievements/

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I was thinking about Deadfire, which according to Steam achievements, about 6% of players have completed. Therefore, 0.6% of those being PoD would be high, indeed.

Then I realized I'm mixing the numbers, as there is currently no PoD completion achievement for it.

Still, even if we are taking into account PoE numbers, 0.6% of the almost 11% people who have completed Act 3 is quite a good number. More like you should take into account that 1) Act 3 could be completed without finishing any side-content, including the expansion and those 2 challenging battles, nor the Adra Dragon, and 2) so could the PoD achievement.

Also, I'd like to point out that PoE has been out like 3 years now, so there have been countless price reductions and I think at least 1 bundle. The "Complete Act 1" achievements shows a completion rate of 43.2%. That's to say that at least half of those copies are gathering digital dust on peoples virtual shelves without being even opened.

I'm starting to think that in the long run, while Deadfire might sell as much copies as PoE, it will be 1) at a much lower pricepoint and 2) even more would sit untouched.

Enabling cheats in POE1 and 2 disable achievements and when the game released (POE1) the achievements didn't work for like a month.

wow. Cheats for PoE? even when it has like a story mode?

You learn something new everyday ...

Technically, Story Mode came with White March, it wasn't there at release.

But yes, people do cheat. I've seen people asking for the commands to add XP and items. I suspect some just want to stroll over everything at level 20 with the best gear while never spending one cent on anything.

I cheated in Icewind Dale (the old one), and used that "humble NPCs" mod for TOEE - so that they wouldn't take that much stuff any more.