jferd

That's bad--none of the additional staying power with less of the offensive power...

It's just that changing the Cipher focus balance this late in the game cycle shifts playstyles quite a bit, especially for low-level Ciphers who essentially are going to be crappier Rogues for a few early levels until they can get some level of useful starting Focus. (I haven't experimented with Focus generation yet, but I do wonder if that renders some already-made builds less favorable than they used to be, while boosting other builds). I'm always a little loathe about changes like this in single player games--it's not like this is a multiplayer game where balance is superbly dicey because players are collaborating with or fighting/competing with other players.

Not a fan of the huge Cipher nerf, I'd have to say. While 1/2 may have been perhaps too easy, I can't imagine having played the class up to this point with such a low, low, low starting Focus. Cipher is only fun right now because I'm at level 11 and I can start off being able to play around with abilities... Any chance of this changing to 1/3 instead of 1/4 as it currently stands? I'm borderline looking for ways to reverse this in the game code! Not super fun. On the other hand, thank you guys for fixing the Companion item loss bug, at least on my end!

Honestly, it sounds like something got lost in translation in this choice--it's pretty boilerplate for quests in these kinds of games to (a) not really "count" until you've actually started or finished them (let's be real, a common playstyle is "collecting" all of the quests in the area and then deciding which stories seem fun to tackle at that moment); and nevertheless (b) commonly involve a double-crossing or Come-to-Jesus aspect (e.g., someone tells you to kill person A, and you go and tell them, resulting in a chance to get back at the would-be-assassin mastermind). Much like sparklecat above it didn't at all dawn on me that merely accepting the Dozens' quest (in a mechanical way) would get me locked out of all the other questlines... and through the rich lore and content I encountered through the other game quests, "my" perspective on which faction I would want to join changed. Also, how on Earth do the other factions magically know I decided to embark on a secret mission for the Dozens that I haven't actually enacted as of yet? I don't even think I've done anything for the Dozens other than chat someone into giving up some armor! (I even killed some of their agents on a different quest!)... To me, locking out at that stage doesn't even make sense from an in-universe perspective, nevermind a game-mechanics perspective. I'm about to dive into the woolly world of altering the game flags manually to reverse the "choice," because it's been probably 15+ hours since I accepted the Dozens' quest way back when. It feels really disappointing--given how fun and reactive the rest of the game is--to not be able to "play out" my character's story due to a somewhat opaque and artificial lock-out. I think it would be fair just to reset that quest threshold for folks who clearly have not done anything beyond accepting the quest, or change the flags to be lockout for completing the quest (either to a certain meaningful point or in total) rather than provisionally accepting it