Pillars of Eternity II - Backer Beta Live

The latest update announces that the Backer Beta for Pillars of Eternity II is live.

Greetings, everyone. In this latest update, we are very happy to announce that the Backer Beta is now live! If you pledged at a tier that included the Backer Beta, or purchased it as an add-on during the Fig campaign, you can get your key for either Steam or GOG in the Products Page of your Account Profile. Then head on over to our forums for instructions on how to get the beta set up. We know you're excited to play, so go ahead and get to it! It's okay. We'll continue on when you're installing the Backer Beta.

Installing? Great!

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Producer Katrina Garsten, sat down with Design Director Josh Sawyer, to ask him about the Backer Beta and what players can expect, so let's check out what they have for us!

Excited about the Backer Beta? So are we! We're looking forward to getting all of your feedback to help make Deadfire the premier RPG. If you didn't get the Backer Beta during the campaign, you are still able to add it to your existing pledge now!

But Wait, There's More!

Today also marks the release of Pillars of Eternity: Definitive Edition. This complete collection of Pillars of Eternity comes with everything from the Royal Edition as well as both of the White March expansions. Not only that, but we're also releasing a new free DLC for Pillars of Eternity called the "Deadfire Pack" that will get you some new Deadfire inspired items! You can get the Pillars of Eternity: Definitive Edition now on Steam or GOG.

[...]

Click to expand...

More information.

It was noted elsewhere that they've added an 'Explosives' skill since the last time they showed the skills list. Presumably they'll have plenty of grenados to toss.

Do explosions ever get boring?

AHHH too bad minimum beta access pledge is $115. I'd gladly pay the $35 now to access beta.

Beta already? That's much sooner than I expected.

Yeah, I skipped beta access since it was too steep. Besides, I have other stuff to play and will (this time) not pollute my experience of the game by playing big chunks of it beforehand...

So, any feedback from the folks who paid an extra hundred dollars for the privilege of doing the QA?

Don't want to spoil it by playing the beta, but I'll gladly listen to the impressions of any Watchers who do.

They removed most of the spoilery bits and dump you in a side area at level 6 just like POE1 beta. Which means it is a bit of a cluster to understand how everything works (lots changed), some stuff might throw errors but that's because they removed that chunk from the beta and some parts are simply unfinished.

I played about 3 hours last night. Graphically it looks awesome. Not as buggy as POE1 first beta release too.

Lots of people complaining that classes are too specialized because universal talents are "gone" (not all gone, a lots of them were moved to weapon proficiency which are available to all but somehow that doesn't count, some stuff was given to specific classes too). Basically, we are back at POE1 beta when super vocal people whined they wanted to be able to make their ranger a melee tanks as good as a Fighter/Paladin tank. I personally prefer these more "focused" classes (although some are missing stuff, Fighter, Paladin, Rogue and Barbarian seems like the most ready of the classes). Talent currency is for both passives and active talents and looks like the min/maxers are pissed they can't pick all the passives and still get actives (or that they have to multiclass to cover everything).

Combat wise, they removed the slow mode, but clearly didn't slow combat down enough to compensate (will change). Pathfinding is much better and I'm liking the new per-encounter and health/injuries system (there are already people complaining about both changes). New stealth is awesome. Using a fireball on gunpowder barrels = huge glorious explosion (and dead creatures). Getting to pick between 6 different UI layout is cool too. I'm a bit confused by the skill system though, there is some sort of party average but I have no idea if I should max skills or spread out to get the most out of it.

The new travelling map is different. Feels like Wasteland 2 a bit (currently lacking random encounters though not yet in the beta so it's a bit boring to move around).

Thanks Azarhal. I certainly like the sound of more specialized classes, to me the "every class can do everything" approach of PoE Vanilla was not good design. It didn't feel that way at all in my second playthrough though (with expansions), but that could have been me just making better choices toward certain specialized builds.

Let's hope the whiners don't get their way, to me it sounds like it's currently on the right track! (Which would of course make me a whiner in the opposite camp...)

I think a lots of the complains about the classes come from people who just want to make their POE1 builds into POE2 without dealing with POE2 features (weapon proficiency, multiclassing, sub-classes, new classes features or their changes).

For example, some people are complaining about the weapon styles (like Two-Weapon fighting) being Fighter only, but I haven't seen a single one of them comment on the Barbarian, Rogue and Paladin getting their own passives that grant them combat bonuses that wasn't in the first game (sorta, they kept name of stuff from the first game, but not necessarily what they did). These take the place of these weapon styles for those classes as far as I'm concerned.

From my point of view, only the Priest currently really sucks, in the sense that they have a small spell selection, trimmed from the first game, and nothing else to offer. Gameplay wise, they feels smooth with the little stuff they have. The Ranger seems to be missing it's melee version of skills that were in POE1 (kinda weird because one of the sub-class is basically melee oriented) and pure Wizard/Chanter are kinda boring (the sub-class are interesting though).

Some stuff is also broken/not there and the balance might be a bit wacky so it might affect how people react to classes too. Like were are supposed to get skills/talent/abilities that improve based on power level, but right now that only seems to work for Wizard's spells.

azarhal said:

From my point of view, only the Priest currently really sucks, in the sense that they have a small spell selection, trimmed from the first game, and nothing else to offer. Gameplay wise, they feels smooth with the little stuff they have.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I was worried about how the Priest class would turn out. I usually only cast a small subset of the Priest spells anyway so I thought it might not matter. Still, not having that large variety available for dealing with special cases kind of takes away the appeal.

Combat wise, they removed the slow mode, but clearly didn't slow combat down enough to compensate (will change). Pathfinding is much better and I'm liking the new per-encounter and health/injuries system (there are already people complaining about both changes). New stealth is awesome. Using a fireball on gunpowder barrels = huge glorious explosion (and dead creatures). Getting to pick between 6 different UI layout is cool too. I'm a bit confused by the skill system though, there is some sort of party average but I have no idea if I should max skills or spread out to get the most out of it.

Click to expand...

In terms of combat, are there better scripts for the player and party in terms of competent tactics?

Are the ranges for spells still extremely short?

What is cool about the new stealth?

Thanks in advance

Excited about the Backer Beta?
No..

But Wait, There's More!

NO..

NewDArt said:

In terms of combat, are there better scripts for the player and party in terms of competent tactics?

Click to expand...

The custom AI scripting isn't in yet and I haven't looked into the default options (I've been looking mostly at class stuff and maths). Right now, with whatever is set on the party at creation, characters don't use actives, but they are a lot faster to start to attack enemies in visible range (even after enemy death), move after their enemies that "teleport" around and it feel smoother than POE1. I only micro-manage my casters spells.

Also, I saw that Priest enemies actually tries to save their friends via healing now.

NewDArt said:

Are the ranges for spells still extremely short?

Click to expand...

Most stuff seems to have POE1 stats right now, I don't think they did any balance pass yet.

One thing did change though, some spells are now instant and they are really instant. Healing spells are like that now, which means you can actually use them in a pinch.

NewDArt said:

What is cool about the new stealth?

Click to expand...

First, It's per character, so you can have a single character in stealth instead of the entire party and until that character enter combat or is spotted it's not broken.

Second, enemies have "cone of views" and "noise" range. The "cone of views" is kinda similar to Divinity Original Sin. So you can sneak up behind people's back more effectively (unlike POE1 where character orientation didn't matter).

Third, you can make noise while in stealth (there are consumables for that) and nearby/patrolling enemies will come investigate. So you can scout and lead enemies to desired spots for ambushes.

Thanks for the info!

Seems there's a long way to go yet.

As for stealth, I believe individual Stealth was possible in PoE1 as well? Maybe I'm remembering that wrong.

NewDArt said:

Thanks for the info!

Seems there's a long way to go yet.

As for stealth, I believe individual Stealth was possible in PoE1 as well? Maybe I'm remembering that wrong.

Click to expand...

It was possible after first major patch few months later.