Pillars of Eternity II Deadfire is out on consoles feat. TB combat. So who's going in?

[Bizzquik]

Not a single word from the developer about why controller support hasn't been added to the PC version.

I really hate this trend.

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It's a different developer handling the port, same as PoE1's console port. Obsidian is totally done updating the game.

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Yes, the trend is actually straightforward.

An entirely different developer is paid money to take a finished PC product and put it on consoles. Figuring out how to maneuver with a controller is just one aspect of a complicated port - across several platforms. The original developer may not even be involved in what developer is chosen to port the game if the game wasn't published in-house; the publisher may decide all of this without the original developer's participation.

 

[Hey Please]

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Much appreciated, danke.

Apparently they are a pretty new company (established 2017) with two games thus far under their belt including Pillars 2, insofar as porting is concerned. I can only assume that they will continue to patch the game post launch given PoE1 on consoles received patches.

 

[Yossarian]

Much appreciated, danke.

Apparently they are a pretty new company (established 2017) with two games thus far under their belt including Pillars 2, insofar as porting is concerned. I can only assume that they will continue to patch the game post launch given PoE1 on consoles received patches.

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That may explain why there is no save import on console too.

 

[Manipular]

Whew, my first battle with another ship threw me for a loop. Had to read 2 different guides online just to figure out what the hell I was doing.

Having a blast other than that, though. Sucks that this wasn't added to the Game Pass.

 

[Hey Please]

Whew, my first battle with another ship threw me for a loop. Had to read 2 different guides online just to figure out what the hell I was doing.

Having a blast other than that, though. Sucks that this wasn't added to the Game Pass.

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Which platform are and which mode are you playing on?

 

[Acewon]

Im playing it right now on a PRO and the load times are indeed atrocious. Sometimes it takes like 40 seconds just to go into a small house and much longer for big areas.

Im playing with turn based mode since i didnt like the combat in the first game at all and right now i dont think its as good as the combat in D:OS 2. It lacks impact and the game is really bad at explaining how things work. Id imagine you can create some really cool builds with this class system though so maybe it imroves later.

 

[Aeana]

One key point about load times: they seem to inflate in conjunction with the number of saves, so try to keep your total number of saves down. Disabling auto-save should also help (if it's possible; it was on the PoE1 port and it helped).

 

[Hey Please]

Im playing it right now on a PRO and the load times are indeed atrocious. Sometimes it takes like 40 seconds just to go into a small house and much longer for big areas.

Im playing with turn based mode since i didnt like the combat in the first game at all and right now i dont think its as good as the combat in D:OS 2. It lacks impact and the game is really bad at explaining how things work. Id imagine you can create some really cool builds with this class system though so maybe it imroves later.

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Just a reminder: In the threadmarked video review, it is mentioned that load times suffer even worse if there are more than a total of 10 saves. He also mentioned that by running the game off of an SSD as well as keeping the no. of save files below 10, the load times he endured were around 30 seconds.

 

[Deleted member 18400]

I just started the first one on PC weirdly enough. I bought it years and years ago but only played it for an hour for some reason.

Pretty solid game, but all this load time talk is making me nervous.

 

[Acewon]

Just a reminder: In the threadmarked video review, it is mentioned that load times suffer even worse if there are more than a total of 10 saves. He also mentioned that by running the game off of an SSD as well as keeping the no. of save files below 10, the load times he endured were around 30 seconds.

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I see, ill keep my saves below 10 at all times then.

 

[Manipular]

Which platform are and which mode are you playing on?

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Xbox One and RTwP. I considered going turn-based, but there are only a handful of games whose turn-based combat I enjoy, so I'll see how PoE2 feels on a separate playthrough.

 

[Switters]

Beware that turn based combat throws any action speed skill feats or perks in the garbage. Or so I've heard.

It's really meant to be played as RTWP and it excels in that respect.

Load times on Pro w/ SSD are 15-20 secs early game but that's as far as I've gotten.

 

[Switters]

I've also found that not playing the game at all reduces the load times to zero.

 

[Billfisto]

I just use the timeless "keep your phone beside you and fiddle around on it while you wait for the level to load" technique.

 

[Ivory Samoan]

10 hours in, feels amazing and the characters/storylikes are great.

TB combat on controller is perfection, love it!!

 

[Manipular]

A 2GB patch was released last night/this morning for the game on Xbox, at least. I assume it was just bug fixes and such?

Also, I created a separate character to try out the turn-based mode and I'm having a surprisingly good time with it, for someone who generally doesn't favor TB combat. I'm getting my ass kicked a whole lot less compared to the real-time combat lol.

 

[Deleted member 13645]

10 hours in, feels amazing and the characters/storylikes are great.

TB combat on controller is perfection, love it!!

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I really hope we see an X/Pro patch. I'd love to play with a controller but the IQ seems so rough. It's an excellent game, glad you're enjoying it!

 

[Deleted member 37739]

Yup, load times on PS4 Pro are considerable and very regular. I'm keeping my saves low but it's still quite surprising for a game with this kind of old-school approach.

 

[Hobbun]

That may explain why there is no save import on console too.

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So if you play Pillars of Eternity 1 PS4, you can't import your save to PoE 2: Deadfire for PS4?

 

[Deleted member 20831]

So if you play Pillars of Eternity 1 PS4, you can't import your save to PoE 2: Deadfire for PS4?

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Wouldn't a title on the platform reading saves from another break Sony requisites for submission? (Unless the saves are outside Sony's ecosystem)

Correct me if I am wrong.

 

[Sotha_Sil]

Yup, load times on PS4 Pro are considerable and very regular. I'm keeping my saves low but it's still quite surprising for a game with this kind of old-school approach.

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Been a while since I played the game on PC, but I was always struck by how poorly it ran. It seems like all these isometric games should run effortlessly, but they don't.

Regardless, the game itself is fantastic. Certainly one of the best RPGs made this generation.

 

[Hobbun]

Wouldn't a title on the platform reading saves from another break Sony requisites for submission? (Unless the saves are outside Sony's ecosystem)

Correct me if I am wrong.

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I have no idea, I didn't know about the rule. If there was a rule in place, I would have figured the publisher would have made a request to Sony due to the nature of the game (in being able to import).

Can anyone whom has played PoE 1 on PS4 and then PoE 2: Deadfire (also on PS4) confirm if you can import or not?

 

[Yossarian]

Can anyone whom has played PoE 1 on PS4 and then PoE 2: Deadfire (also on PS4) confirm if you can import or not?

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You can't, unfortunately.

 

[Hobbun]

You can't, unfortunately.

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Man, that sucks.

Thanks for the clarification.

Now, the posts indicate something about 'being able to re-input your history from the first game and save it", is that something you can easily view at the end of PoE 1, write it down, and then re-input it during character creation in PoE 2?

 

[LossAversion]

That may explain why there is no save import on console too.

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Oh... guess I'll be holding off until this is implemented.

 

[Yossarian]

Man, that sucks.

Thanks for the clarification.

Now, the posts indicate something about 'being able to re-input your history from the first game and save it", is that something you can easily view at the end of PoE 1, write it down, and then re-input it during character creation in PoE 2?

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Nah, not really. I've not done it yet, but this is the most detailed explanation I've seen:

Nope, it doesn't seem that you can import your decisions OR your character.

You can choose from a list of pre-built states, or go through a state-builder and pick your choices for everything. It's super in-depth, but that really works against it in my case, as I finished POE quite a while ago and barely remember anything about it.

There's an "Import Character" option, as well, but all it seems to do is allow you to choose from a selection of pre-built characters. Kinda disappointing.

Otherwise, I'm having fun with it so far. It seems to play a bit smoother / load more quickly than POE1, but that could just be recency bias. The load times are still a tad too long each time, though.

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Oh... guess I'll be holding off until this is implemented.

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If it were possible, they would've done it already. Whether it's red tape or a technical issue, I strongly doubt it's coming later.

 

[LossAversion]

If it were possible, they would've done it already. Whether it's red tape or a technical issue, I strongly doubt it's coming later.

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Spoiler: Tweet Text

Versus Evil wanted to be able to bring the import save function over to Deadfire on the consoles, but it was not initially possible during the porting process. When we have more news, we'll absolutely share it.

It's definitely something that the devs need to figure out on the technical side. Plenty of console games have had import save functionality so there's no red tape.

 

[Hobbun]

Actually, it appears there's certain items and references that only happen during an import. Looks like PC for me, then. Would have preferred to play on my TV, but PC it is.

Edit: Hm, looks like they are still trying to make it possible to port. Not going to play the game(s) anytime soon, anyways, so will see where this heads to.

 

[Yossarian]

Spoiler: Tweet Text

Versus Evil wanted to be able to bring the import save function over to Deadfire on the consoles, but it was not initially possible during the porting process. When we have more news, we'll absolutely share it.

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Well, shut my mouth. That's fab news.

 

[Billfisto]

Played another five hours and I'm really liking it.

The only thing is, if I were making a game that had minute-long loads on every scene change, I'd try and lay out the levels in a way that wouldn't necessitate changing screens every two minutes.

It's ridiculous to have full level loads for these little one-off rooms they keep putting everywhere. If the engine can't support loading little rooms as part of the base map, they really need to ditch it.

I just don't understand how it can run this poorly.

 

[Hey Please]

Been a while since I played the game on PC, but I was always struck by how poorly it ran. It seems like all these isometric games should run effortlessly, but they don't.

Regardless, the game itself is fantastic. Certainly one of the best RPGs made this generation.

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This is what confounds me as well. From what I understand other games featuring this viewpoint like Divinity, Mutant and Wasteland 2 are not as egregious.

Played another five hours and I'm really liking it.

The only thing is, if I were making a game that had minute-long loads on every scene change, I'd try and lay out the levels in a way that wouldn't necessitate changing screens every two minutes.

It's ridiculous to have full level loads for these little one-off rooms they keep putting everywhere. If the engine can't support loading little rooms as part of the base map, they really need to ditch it.

I just don't understand how it can run this poorly.

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Fellow Canuck, on which platform are you playing?

Overall, seeing all the load times issue for a game that is heavily features 2D asset speaks to presumably sub-optimal data management and streaming.

 

[Billfisto]

Fellow Canuck, on which platform are you playing?

Overall, seeing all the load times issue for a game that is heavily features 2D asset speaks to presumably sub-optimal data management and streaming.

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PS4 Pro, off the built-in hard drive.

It's really disappointing because I like the game itself. It's just infuriating to enter a door, wait a minute for the level to load, and then be confronted with an empty room. Then, upon exiting, have to load the main map again.

Don't even get me started on the fetch quests, and how all the quest givers are in their houses, rather than outside, necessitating another pointless load.

 

[Ivory Samoan]

My loads seem ok ish, I dont think any are hitting over 50ish seconds, this is keeping the saves to 9 total and running on reg HDD on Pro.

Would love a patch to iron out some of the kinks soon though, like the one where things remain highlighted forever and any shaving off of the loads would be stellar.

Also, patch the map button to the map key FFS!!!

 

[talecrafter]

The Pillars of Eternity games are probably my favorite games of recent years. The second one is gorgeous, has a fresh setting and interesting characters, wide cast of women included. It features good combat and build variety.

But I played on PC, not console. And moved the game to my SSD.
I wanted to add thoughts to why a 2D game like this might have longer loading times than similar games in 3D.

I believe it's mainly because of the prerendering of the levels. Scenes are built in 3D, but then rendered out to flat images and potentially overpainted. It's huge amounts of texture data, especially if there are animations in the scene. There's a depth map for the whole scene. Whereas a 3D game in that perspective needs to load a few textures, a few low poly models, and can already fill a large map with that through reusing these. The 3D game also has the advantage in dynamically streaming between low and high detail versions.

There might still be differences in optimization between games and different amount of data to be loaded on top, and small rooms needing long loading times too might suggest there are also other issues, but the basic setup will always be a burden to loading times. (If I'm correct with my assumptions.)

Why choose this technical approach then? I feel like these games have a huge visual charme that is very specific and hard to reproduce with a pure 3D setup.

 

[Bjones]

Oh god I made a huge mistake! This game is awful.... on Xbox at least .. the load times are so long they seem broken and take away all good things this game might actually have.

 

[Hey Please]

The Pillars of Eternity games are probably my favorite games of recent years. The second one is gorgeous, has a fresh setting and interesting characters, wide cast of women included. It features good combat and build variety.

But I played on PC, not console. And moved the game to my SSD.
I wanted to add thoughts to why a 2D game like this might have longer loading times than similar games in 3D.

I believe it's mainly because of the prerendering of the levels. Scenes are built in 3D, but then rendered out to flat images and potentially overpainted. It's huge amounts of texture data, especially if there are animations in the scene. There's a depth map for the whole scene. Whereas a 3D game in that perspective needs to load a few textures, a few low poly models, and can already fill a large map with that through reusing these. The 3D game also has the advantage in dynamically streaming between low and high detail versions.

There might still be differences in optimization between games and different amount of data to be loaded on top, and small rooms needing long loading times too might suggest there are also other issues, but the basic setup will always be a burden to loading times. (If I'm correct with my assumptions.)

Why choose this technical approach then? I feel like these games have a huge visual charme that is very specific and hard to reproduce with a pure 3D setup.

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Wow, I did not know this is how the PoE games have been rendered thus far. That sounds an additional layer of work. Would you happen to know if the Shadowrun Return trilogy of games are rendered in a similar fashion?

Thank you, kindly for sharing this information.

Oh god I made a huge mistake! This game is awful.... on Xbox at least .. the load times are so long they seem broken and take away all good things this game might actually have.

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By awful, I assume you're limiting the adjective to loading alone. IIRC, a post here mentions that keeping saves slots below 10 helps. Otherwise, I'd say awaiting patches is the only other solution.

I was so looking forward to this game.

 

[talecrafter]

The Shadowrun games use reusable sprites for the environment art. Some of them might be big singular ones like houses, others might cover floors, walls, props etc. and get reused.
There are level editors available for all three Shadowrun games, by the way. The complicated process for Pillars of Eternity and the old Infinity Engine games was probably the main reason we never saw level editors for one of them.

 

[Ivory Samoan]

Wow, I did not know this is how the PoE games have been rendered thus far. That sounds an additional layer of work. Would you happen to know if the Shadowrun Return trilogy of games are rendered in a similar fashion?

Thank you, kindly for sharing this information.



By awful, I assume you're limiting the adjective to loading alone. IIRC, a post here mentions that keeping saves slots below 10 helps. Otherwise, I'd say awaiting patches is the only other solution.

I was so looking forward to this game.

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OK, so the load times were the ONLY thing that isn't amazing in this port (controller works fluidly, turn based is a treat and everything looks/sounds/is great).

I deleted a bunch of saves to just 9 (including auto saves) now, and we just had Waitangi Day sales here in NZ (like a mini black Friday) and picked up a Samsung T5 500GB SSD really cheap ($89 NZD, about $60 USD). Formated it and moved this and Destiny 2 to it and WOW.....all I can say is, why didn't I do this sooner.

Loads were 25-90 seconds all day for me (even with the less saves), now they are 15-25 seconds all the time.

I cant recommend this little upgrade enough (helps a bunch with Destiny loading too, might move Apex to there too).

Game is a 9.5 easy for me, was getting dragged down by loading to about an 8 or less, back up to 9.5 now I reckon.

 

[Hey Please]

The Shadowrun games use reusable sprites for the environment art. Some of them might be big singular ones like houses, others might cover floors, walls, props etc. and get reused.
There are level editors available for all three Shadowrun games, by the way. The complicated process for Pillars of Eternity and the old Infinity Engine games was probably the main reason we never saw level editors for one of them.

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Thank you kindly for dropping by again and dropping knowledge. In the future, if possible, kindly tag me so that I don't miss out on your response.

And so, Shadowrun trilogy is entirely 2D sprite based, heh. And yea, now I recall, all of them come installed with an editor.

By the way, you mention, 'Infinity Engine games' but I thought that games of yesteryear like BG, Icewind Dale and Planescape Torment were purely sprite based/2D asset based and that the only close comparison to PoE might be Torment Tides of Numenera (built in Unity, if I recall correctly).

OK, so the load times were the ONLY thing that isn't amazing in this port (controller works fluidly, turn based is a treat and everything looks/sounds/is great).

I deleted a bunch of saves to just 9 (including auto saves) now, and we just had Waitangi Day sales here in NZ (like a mini black Friday) and picked up a Samsung T5 500GB SSD really cheap ($89 NZD, about $60 USD). Formated it and moved this and Destiny 2 to it and WOW.....all I can say is, why didn't I do this sooner.

Loads were 25-90 seconds all day for me (even with the less saves), now they are 15-25 seconds all the time.

I cant recommend this little upgrade enough (helps a bunch with Destiny loading too, might move Apex to there too).

Game is a 9.5 easy for me, was getting dragged down by loading to about an 8 or less, back up to 9.5 now I reckon.

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Having an SSD is eye opening isn't it (even when the console was not designed to best leverage the tech)?

Glad to hear you're enjoying yourself. I wanted the game for Xbox One X and unfortunately, altering its internal drive is tantamount to tampering with it (voids the warranty).

If the game devs ever patch in Pro and X enhancements, I think I shall pick it up.

Appreciate you dropping by and sharing your updated experience because that's a significant difference.

 

[Cheesetriangles]

Played another five hours and I'm really liking it.

The only thing is, if I were making a game that had minute-long loads on every scene change, I'd try and lay out the levels in a way that wouldn't necessitate changing screens every two minutes.

It's ridiculous to have full level loads for these little one-off rooms they keep putting everywhere. If the engine can't support loading little rooms as part of the base map, they really need to ditch it.

I just don't understand how it can run this poorly.

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The scene changes make more sense on the original PC release where the load times are like 4 seconds.

 

[FaultyFork]

It feels like the game just gets more broken the further i get into it, now it crashes every time I try to open the enchant menu and I've had to restart several times because item description pages gets stuck on screen and stops the game from responding :/
This is on the Xbox One X.

 

[Shodan14]

Obsidian and bad console ports, name a more iconic duo.

 

[talecrafter]

And so, Shadowrun trilogy is entirely 2D sprite based, heh. And yea, now I recall, all of them come installed with an editor.

By the way, you mention, 'Infinity Engine games' but I thought that games of yesteryear like BG, Icewind Dale and Planescape Torment were purely sprite based/2D asset based and that the only close comparison to PoE might be Torment Tides of Numenera (built in Unity, if I recall correctly).

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Shadowrun is mostly 2D, but uses dynamic 3D models for the characters.

Torment: Tides of Numenera and Tyranny share the engine that Obsidian built for Pillars on top of Unity.

The Infinity Engine is purely 2D, but the levels were built in a same way as Pillars: Environment built in 3D, rendered out, then potentially overpainted. Back then it was probably done like that because it produced nicer coherent visuals than full 3D scenes while also be less taxing to the graphics cards around year 2000.
The Pillars Engine is more sophisticated, using dynamic 3D models for the characters plus lighting from the scene, water with dynamic heights etc. The main reason Obsidian went with a similar approach like the Infinity Engine would be that a large part of the Kickstarter pitch for Pillars was to make another game in the spirit of the Infinity Engine games. And possibly aesthetic preference.

And sorry if this borders on off-topic. I just like talking about these games.

 

[Starlatine]

Just because the game is isometric doesnt mean it can't be heavy or taxing
Disco Elysium is no slouch to run on pcs either

Obsidian and bad console ports, name a more iconic duo.

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You and not reading the thread, since the port has nothing to do with obsidian

 

[ZeroMaverick]

Lol this is making me wonder how it'll run on switch whenever that port happens. DOS2 runs surprisingly OKAY. Hoping this will be okay too. I'd rather play it on switch than pc.

 

[Tibarn]

Load times for the game are REALLY long even on PC, unless you're using a SSD. In fact, it was the game that forced me to buy a big SSD to store games, the game has constant loading screens that in a HDD can be longer than 20 seconds. Even far bigger games like Tw3 had shorter or at least less loading times, as I said this is the "slowest" PC game from recent memory.

 

[Shodan14]

You and not reading the thread, since the port has nothing to do with obsidian

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I mean it's still an Obsidian game, someone else messing it up is even worse.

 

[Yossarian]

I mean it's still an Obsidian game, someone else messing it up is even worse.

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Take the L, mate. :)

 

[carlsojo]

Tried starting again on PC and man these load times get old really quickly.

And then the game crashed.

The story is okay but it's such a slooooow start that I'm not very motivated to push through the load times.

 

[Ushay]

Really want to pick this up, but may hold off for a while. Was half hoping it would get some enhancements for One X/Pro consoles too.

Take the L, mate. :)

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haha