Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire

Scotch_Lufkin · March 4, 2018, 3:10pm

So I was playing with the AI script editor this morning and I’m really pleased with it. But, it takes a little testing and anyone will benefit from some basic understanding of how it works, because I messed up my Brawler character pretty good, here is an example of where I went wrong and how I fixed it.

First, the Brawler is a multi-classing between Monk and Fighter. Fighter in this case is a Devoted - bonus accuracy and penetration with proficient weapons (but massive penalties if using non-proficient weapons) while the Monk subclass I went with is my favorite, the Helwalker - bonus Wounds to start the fight (used to power Monk abilities) and bonus STR per Wound, but also takes 5% more damage per wound, which gets ugly fast (then again, your STR gets massive fast, too).

So, I wanted to start each fight with Lightning Strike (a 10.8 second duration ability that increases attack speed and provides Quick (+5 Dex)) and Disciplined Barrage (a 15 second duration ability that provides both Aware (+5 Perception, which is more accuracy, and converts 50% of grazes to hits) as well as a Concentration shield (the first time you would be interrupted by an enemy attack/action you will not be but you lose Concentration).

So, here is what I set up for my script:

Seems reasonable? Maybe you’ve already spotted the problem.

Here is what happened. Combat starts, my awesome Brawler gains three wounds (normal for a Helwalker), pops Swift Strikes, Disciplined Barrage like planned…

FOUR TIMES EACH. That’s because each of those abilities cost 1 resource point (Mortification for Monks, Discipline for Fighters) and I start with 4 points of each. So in a moment the AI popped all 8 possible uses of those abilities. Oops.

I know! I’ll set a delay of 15 seconds!

I am genius.

Oops. Now it only does the first ability in the group and then waits … 15 seconds before it will ever do Disciplined Barrage. Worse, it’s never going to do the barrage, just Swift Strikes ever 15 seconds.

Okay, new idea. What if I break each of the abilities into their own section? What’s nice about that is since Swift Strikes lasts 10.8 seconds, I could put a delay of 10 seconds on that and Disciplined Barrage can have a 15 second delay, so in theory I’m always keeping them both active through the fight. Who cares if I run out of Mortification/Discipline during the battle? It’s there to spend!

And viola!

The fight begins, my character gains three wounds, activates Swift Strikes and Disciplined Barrage, and pulls out his dual axes and charges the fools what attacked him!

I’m really digging the AI scripting so far, if anyone has any questions or wants me to test something out let me know, today’s a good day to mess with this stuff.

inactive_user · March 4, 2018, 4:47pm

That’s awesome, Scott, thanks for sharing! So stoked for this.

Outlandish · March 4, 2018, 5:13pm

What, if any, is the limit on the number of conditionals for the script? Must check and make sure I pre-ordered this even though I never finished the first.

Scotch_Lufkin · March 4, 2018, 5:55pm

That’s a good question, but I can’t say for sure. The default scripts that they threw together for the beta are pretty big because they cover tons of abilities that a given class could potentially have from the beta content though, so I doubt there is a realistic maximum.

MiquelRamirez · March 4, 2018, 8:02pm

That was a very good write up, and was quite funny too.

Scotch_Lufkin · March 4, 2018, 10:47pm

Update - I got my bralwer to level 8 and played with some more of the script. It’s pretty easy to plug something in and test it (it’s handy that saved scripts transcend save states, so if you realize you fucked up half way into a fight and fix it right then and there, when you reload it stays fixed).

Here is the final script for my character (I’m not going to try and do all the content to hit level 9, and plus I’m hoping we get a new beta build next week) but you can see what I have done. The idea is right at the top, if I have an affliction I us Clarity of Agony to purge myself of debuffs and lower the duration of future debuffs that hit me by 50%. Next up, the Swift Strikes/Disciplined Barrage (upgraded to Disciplined Strikes at level 7) buff I keep on at all times, and finally new at level 8, Stunning Blow which will only trigger every 6 seconds (the duration of the stun) and only on targets that are not currently Strength afflicted (such as stuns). This one I may need to tweak - I worry I’ll stun someone and 6 seconds later just wander off to stun someone else. I think I can extend the duration to 7 seconds and specify “closest target” to keep that from happening. I have the target set to “Lowest Fortitude” because it’s a Deflection vs. Fortitude check, but that may make my concern happen all the more frequently, so that needs to be tested a bit more, if I were to keep playing.

Lastly, if I have 4 wounds or more just sitting around (and making me take additional damage) I will spend 2 of them for Blade Turning, to redirect melee attacks to other nearby foes!

Scotch_Lufkin · March 7, 2018, 3:26am

Scotch_Lufkin · March 11, 2018, 4:47am

Playing around this weekend with multi-classing for a bit again, once you get some ideas it’s incredibly strong. I am almost sure to multi-class most of my characters at this point.

I am finding I can’t figure out how the math works on Damage calculation. The base damage roll for this attack by my new Rogue (Assassin)/Fighter (Devoted - Sabre) was 16.1, modified by a ton of stuff including it being a crit, bonuses for Devoted class, bonuses for attacking from Invisible w/Backstab feat, being the Assassin class, Exceptional Sabre (listed twice, that’s confusing, two different bonuses) and it goes from 16.1 to 85.3 - not sure how that works out?

Also, in the tool tip it claims the damage was elevated from 85.3 x1.3 (for being WAY over the armor value vs. the penetration of the attack) to 91. 85.3x1.3 is NOT 91. Not totally sure how this works. If we get an updated beta I’ll try this combination again and see if I can’t get a big number like this (no matter how you slice it, 91 damage from a single attack is incredible) and see if there isn’t maybe just a display bug in the combat log or something.

inactive_user · March 11, 2018, 2:10pm

1.3x of base 16 damage would get you from 85-91. But yeah, their damage calc has always been… Ambitious.

Scotch_Lufkin · March 12, 2018, 2:08pm

I wonder if that’s what penetration is doing - just modifying the base damage but doing so after applying all the rolling modifiers. That makes it seem fairly inconsequential, right? Then again most of those bonuses are from backstab/sneak attack/critical damage anyway so the end result on a non-crit is a lot less dramatic.

On a related note, when asked (a fairly inane question about why we’ve only seen areas from the beta in streams and official videos so far) part of the response from Josh Sawyer on his Tumblr has led me to believe the base launch release of PoE 2 will be… substantial in terms of content/length.

inactive_user · March 12, 2018, 2:20pm

Boosh. So we’re talking about the size of PoE1 + both White March expansions?

Scotch_Lufkin · March 12, 2018, 2:32pm

Even bigger than that. I think PoE is around 40 hours, and then 20 more for the expansions (not a completion play though, just going from memory. E: I did a screen grab of what How Long To Beat shows, and I think I’m pretty depending on how many side quests you do but yeah, about the size of PoE plus expansions, maybe not a LOT bigger than that, but at least as big) with the level cap at 16.

The PoE2 level cap is 20. So I think it’s literally 20+ extra hours long over the base game + two expansions.

And there will be 3 expansions coming over time, based on the season pass info, and it’s been stated they are each about the size of White March. That’s a LOT of content potentially.

inactive_user · March 12, 2018, 2:35pm

Fifth_Fret · March 12, 2018, 3:59pm

Hm. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I found there was arguably too much filler in the first game. The real meaty content with interesting storylines wasn’t that big. I’d happily have sacrificed some of the former for a little more of the latter.

Scotch_Lufkin · March 12, 2018, 4:03pm

It’s hard to gauge the quality of the side content at this point, though. I mean, keep your expectations low if you like, but I don’t think at this point “too much content” is something to complain about just yet.

Fifth_Fret · March 12, 2018, 4:15pm

Do note my careful wording in the above comment!

Outlandish · March 12, 2018, 5:51pm

As someone who didn’t finish the first game I’m also leery of games going too long now. Hopefully it won’t be necessary to do all the side content and if I start to burn out I can just push through without a super nasty end fight that’ll make me need to grind 4 more levels.

Anyone know if there’s a dynamic difficulty slider and I can just drop it to easy if it starts to drag? I still really enjoyed the first one but it would be nice to see the end this time around.

lordkosc · March 13, 2018, 2:55pm

Delayed…Till May 8th.

Scotch_Lufkin · March 13, 2018, 3:04pm

I wondered. So many things up in the air, like what they want to do with Resolve. This is a bummer, but I’d much rather a delay than a rushed product they aren’t completely happy with.

Scotch_Lufkin · March 13, 2018, 3:05pm

You can do even better, you can not only adjust the difficulty (up or down) whenever you want (though the changes don’t take effect except on new areas - once the game generates/loads a map it’s set) and you can also go all the way down to Story difficulty, where you just blow through the combats to enjoy the RPG parts.