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Gairnulf

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Everything posted by Gairnulf

  1. Classless vs character class system is a pointless argument without comparing actual implementations of either, Either can be executed well or badly. In the case of PoE, where the IE games are the spiritual ancestor, it makes sense that the rules move towards more sharply defined classes, and in my opinion it should be the lack of clearly defined classes that should be considered an experiment and a deviation from the norm. I don't hate classless systems, as a matter of fact I've had great fun with games with classless systems.
  2. I still say that the injuries system is fine, and if someone is getting knocked out in every fight, he can 1. continue on, regardless of the injuries, if he would watch what he is doing and adapt his tactics 2. lower the game difficulty 3. load up a savegame from before getting knocked out, and continue trying until he finds the right tactics for the combat encounter, same as he has been doing in PoE too! So what is the big deal?
  3. The majority of general talents in PoE were fluff anyway. I am glad some of them will serve a more important task - to shape a clearer image of some class or another. I could say that I will very much miss the ability to make a muscle wizard, equip him with sword, shield, and grimoire at the same time, and then cast spells while taking advantage of the shield deflection bonus. Or just ignore the fact that I have a grimoire in my (apparently) third hand, and whack at enemies with the sword instead. Why do this with a wizard who has 1/3 of a fighter's base deflection, 2/3 of a fighter's base accuracy? I don't know, no one really knows, but the game allows me to. I could also say I'll miss the ability to create a fighter who shoots at enemies with wands from the backline. And if I gave him the irreplacable, no really, talent Weapon Focus Adventurer, this would give him +6 accuracy with the wand, which at level 7 would mean an increase of 1/6 (a "whole" 54 instead of the base 48!), and would be progressively unimportant as the character levels up. But I would not say I am sorry, because I will indeed not miss those silly anti-choices one bit. When I choose a character and pick a path for its development I prefer 5 choices that matter to 15 choices that are token and cosmetic. I wouldn't mind more choices in character-building, as long as they have been tested, provided for, and don't lack meaning. In the case of Deadfire, 55 multiclassing options and 3 specializations (more for a couple of classes) for each of 11 classes (or no specialization) is far, far better than having general talents which change next to nothing. A major source of irritation I had in PoE was that formally it was a class-based game, but in reality the eleven classes could be grouped into four groups (the four core D&D classes, fighter, mage, thief, cleric) and within those groups they played largely the same. I am glad this problem has seen attention.
  4. I also wanted to add something, since save scumming was mentioned in relation to my suggesting that the player saves more often to avoid injuries. It is strange that we should automatically assume that we have failed if one of our characters has been injured. Getting injured is by no means such an issue that it should require a game load. Take example from this guy, who did the first twitch stream of the Beta. Look at 6:46 (hrs:mins) in the stream. He is playing very inefficiently, probably more inefficiently than most people reading this thread. And he is playing on Normal. Notice how he is able to make it through the fight on the second attempt, even though most of his characters have two injuries already, and one has even three: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/201324163 So my point is, don't take getting an injury too hard.
  5. I don't think save scumming, as well as rest scumming is a good game design choice. Sure, rest scumming can be alleviated by making food scarce, but then people will just save scum alot. I think this problem may be solved by properly balancing the game, because right now in the beta even relaxed difficulty felt like potd at times (personal opinion). If the game is properly balanced then getting an injury shouldn't be too common unless a player makes some big honest mistakes.The player ultimately can choose how he plays. If I get annoyed by having to save-scum, I'll drop the game for a while, or consider the dungeon is too difficult for me right now and move to something else. Having your health regenerate for free, or allowing you to easily reset your party to an unspoiled state as if nothing happened to you during that combat which you barely survived, involves no choice on the player's part, it is forced on the player. Loading the game is at least an option, which happens if the player decides to do it. You are right about the player's ability to configure the difficulty, and for the developer's ability to do the same on his end. So there is yet another solution - if you are getting too many injuries and are running out of resting supplies, and don't want to load a savegame - drop the difficulty.
  6. Well, 25% per injury is too steep. I hope it's just one of those unbalanced beta things. Right now it feels like playing one the early Souls games where player almost all the time was afflicted by some perma health reduction until boss was defeated. Rest spamming is bad too. As for the priests, why the heck not? They are already integral part of most parties, and healing should logically heal injuries as well. Maybe make it a higher level spell? I don't feel it's too steep, only that it requires the player to be more careful and save more often. Priests or any other class should not feel like a no brainer choice, especially when the party is now limited to five members.
  7. Aha, I see. But I never made a point for debuffs that happen at certain health levels. My point is that not only health ceiling penalties from injuries are fine, but what damage has been taken, shouldn't regenerate. In the case where you have 100 health and were knocked out, that would leave you with 75 health after the combat. If your health dropped to 50 but you didn't get knocked out, you will remain at 50, but will be able to heal up to 100. I do understand that the point of auto regen is that you don't have to heal them manually But I prefer to have a cost to my negligence which has lead to my party taking damage, instead of only having to worry if they've been knocked out. Auto regeneration of health has always seemed like a cheat to me. Even Call of Duty removed it. I get it that you dislike it too. I agree that respawning enemies if the player backtracks is the same as making him start from the beginnig if he dies/runs out of rests. At least nearly the same, if you take into account the passage of ingame time (in case that is important), and the money spent on rest and resupply. If I had a choice though, I would take respawning enemies on my backtracking to blocking me from backtracking. The latter feels more artificial, and more overtly breaking the illusion of choice. If you are allowed to backtrack, you still have some choices to make before you return, even if you will find all the enemies respawned upon returning.
  8. The first point has been tried many times, especially in PnP campaigns, but it creates the so-called "Death Spiral" where if you are going down then the encounter is already difficult and since the game piles on more and more debuffs on you it becomes outright impossible to turn the battle around. While I understand the sentiment it just doesn't really work well in practice. The second point will work, just without respawning enemies, it creates a grind-fest like Dark Souls where you are struggling with a boss, but the game constantly respawns mobs on you that you've already defeated and you are just going through the motions, mowing them down without any thought and it simply wastes your time. My point of reference isn't PnP because that's a completely different ballpark from a videogame, even if the videogame is inspired by PnP as an experience. For a number of reasons, it can never begin to feel the same (mostly because you have a human being on the other end in PnP). In PnP the DM can always reconfigure the difficulty on the fly, because he can determine it, so that the party gets the impression that it's making progress and overcoming difficulties. Taking the IE games as a reference, having no health regeneration does work, and it works great in the IE games. You have a number of ways to heal yourself - temple, casting healing spells, drinking healing potions, using scrolls. When convenient, I would go to a temple, the temple was a limitless source of health points. During combat I would normally use potions first because the other two methods consume more time, and I'm already in combat. Casting healing spells and scrolls I would usually do after combat, when I'm continuing on into the dungeon. There is choice - should I heal at all, or should I conserve healing means for later? If the means of healing (spells, scrolls, potions) are insufficient, who should I keep most healed up? There is also obviously a cost to each healing method. Having all your damage heal up after combat is done removes all those considerations. My point was not to suggest all the methods for reducing resting at once, just to list possible methods. Refilling the whole dungeon with enemies would be fair IMO, if the player is also allowed to backtrack to town and refill all his powers, items, supplies, etc. As for spawning a small encounter, just enough to prevent the rest, I imagined it as more of a cosmetic feature, as opposed to simply opening a modal with a message "you can't rest here". Injuries still carry their negative effects. In addition to that, each injury reduces your health cap by 25% If priests could remove injuries, that would make them a no-brainer choice for a party member.
  9. The injury system is just fine. It adds cost to your characters getting knocked out. That's the point of the system. If people are complaining, this only means they are feeling the cost, hence system is working. The two things I dislike right now are: 1. If you are left at one health point when combat ends, you get back all your health. If you lost that last health point, you lose 25% of your health ceiling. That's stupid. If there is going to be a cost for losing all your health, there should be a cost for losing every 0+n health point. That cost can be introduced if health regeneration is altogether disabled in Deadfire. 2. My impression is that there is too small cost attached to resting. Food is abundant enough to allow resting fairly often, if a player stocks up on food before going into dungeons. This can be solved in a number of ways: - Make one rest heal only one injury per party member. - Increase the cost of food / make food more scarce - Make backtracking respawn enemies in the dungeon - Make resting in dungeons have a chance to spawn a random encounter. It doesn't have to be a serious encounter, but it should prevent the rest, and possibly prevent the rest and expend the food used for that rest. - Etc....
  10. You have misunderstood. The penalty is for getting knocked out. What I am saying is that 1pt of HP to be making the difference between this penalty and getting all your health back is bad design.
  11. The injury effects are still there, but each injury you survive also reduces your Hit Points cap by 25% a fourth untreated injury kills you permanently.
  12. "That" being which statement:1. The fact that your health regenrates to full, if combat ended when you were at 1HP? 2. Or the fact that you get a 25% penalty to max HP if you were knocked down? 3. Or the proposition that HP should not regenerate?
  13. It's simple. (we kill the batman) If at the end of combat a party member is left at 1 HP, he will suffer no penalty for losing all his other HP. But if at the end of combat a party member is left at 0 HP he receives a penalty for losing all his HP. One HP difference brings a penalty that's worth 10 times or more HP. Not really fair or balanced, is it? The solution - retain the HP cap penalty for knockouts, but stop giving health for free at the end of combat. Instead, let the player choose if he wants to heal HP damage after combat, how much, and through what means - healing spells, potions, temple healing (lacking in the game currently).
  14. I checked, and you are correct. The confusion was on my part. You could pile up healing effects and not go down in PoE too, as in in the IE games for that matter. Isn't that the point of nealing effects? How come it's an "exploit"? I share your opinion, and I like your profile pic.
  15. 1. You are NOT required to take a full rest after one character has been injured once.2. What you are incentivized to do by this system is to preserve your party members, so that they don't get knocked out in the first place, and take special care for those who have been injured. Keep them in the back line. 3. The health/endurance system in PoE was an attempt at something, and that attempt failed. It was aiming to make players conserve their resting supplies for the moment they were low on their long-term health. In reality, there was an abundance of camping supplies and you always had the ability to backtrack to an inn for the resting bonus. There were the added issues of confusing many players by having two health pools, and of the fact that all damage you took was substracted from both health pools at once, after which you short-term pool regenerated. This lead to situations where your supposedly "long-term" health matters more than your supposedly "short-term" endurance, because if you go into combat with less health than you have endurance, you could be permakilled for running out of health before your endurance has actually ran out. This system is much better than in PoE, 25% loss of max health has enough bite to provoke a reaction from the player and force him to alter his tactics, and I like that, and it serves the purpose that health/endurance was to serve.
  16. The narrate introduction to a chapter of the game is one thing, but I'm finding out that narrated cinematic sequences can have an amazingly strong effect in setting the tone and atmosphere of an adventure. All you need is a well crafted text, a skilful narrator to play the role of a Dungeon Master, and a slideshow of images. Nothing more, please - no need for actors, no need for mass scenes. Things like this are timeless:
  17. This is a bit of a crazy idea and too late to implement, but here it goes: How to combat rest-spamming, proposition: Implement a formula to calculate abstract "party power", hidden from the player. It can take into account party health, number of injuries, amount of available not yet used up per-rest abilities, other factors can be brought up. If the party wants to rest and its abilities are not sufficiently exhausted, penalize them - maybe take away some XP, maybe add some random malus. How does it sound to you?
  18. I've mostly used map notes in the city districts of BGII to mark the place of some NPC which I might otherwise lose. It's a convenience feature, sure.
  19. I'm not sure if description images won't be in by default. Just remembered for them during the watercolor portraits discussion.
  20. 1st, I think that these fractions of a second are there because of balance reasons. 2nd, do you really calculate these things while playing? Come on. Re 1st - balance is still achievable, just no need to have such fine grained durations. A player has an easier time picturing a length of half a second than a length of 1/5th of a second. Re 2nd - If I do, so what? If I don't, then what's the point in them being there? That's my point.
  21. From my personal list: Ammunition for ranged weapons. Weight carry capacity on per-party member basis. The ability to add map notes when in the area map. The ability to split the party between non-party-required areas (there was a technical limitation to that in PoE) with some party members being in one area and others continuing alone in another. Even better if certain quests require that. Separating stealth from trap-detecting mode. Ability to give names to owned mundane items once they reach a certain level of enchantment. Not really a feature request, but I would like more information on the history and interstate politics. Setting the game in a pseudo-Renaissance provokes association with the Machiavellian politics of that period, I hope this theme gets more developed in PoE II Please let durations/recovery times be based on a more human-readable scale, which is easier for mental math. Either a full second or X.5 seconds. Please no more of that "7.3 s", "0.9 s". Ability to mod in item description images.
  22. I think the system being "game-y" and non-simulationist is a core concept in PoE's design, but your idea is interesting.
  23. Please allow us to mod in item description images, if PoE 2 won't feature such images from the start. And even if it will, please still allow us to mod them I remember a discussion during the PoE beta where someone asked for item description sketches, in the style of the IE games. It turned out that this wasn't feasible within PoE's budget and time constraints. Me and my girlfriend (by now, wife) were curious how much time would such a sketch take if she tried to draw it and it turned out she can produce them fairly quickly: Finally, I would take item description images over watercolor portraits for NPCs any day, but that's just me.
  24. Ammunition for ranged weapons. Weight carry capacity on per-party member basis. The ability to add map notes when in the area map. The ability to split the party between non-party-required areas (there was a technical limitation to that) with some party members being in one area and others continuing alone in another. Even better if certain quests require that. Separating stealth from trap-detecting mode. Ability to give names to owned mundane items once they reach a certain level of enchantment. Not really a feature request, but I would like more information on the history and interstate politics. Setting the game in a pseudo-Renaissance provokes association with the Machiavellian politics of that period, I hope this theme gets more developed in PoE II Please let durations/recovery times be based on a more human-readable scale, that easier for mental math. Either a full second or X.5 seconds. Please no more of that 7.3 s.
  25. I'm of course completely uninformed saying the following, and it's totally subjective. My worry is that the watercolor portraits as shown, look too rough, too mundane, too basic to be really giving any more characterisation that isn't given through dialogue. And in that case, I don't see a point in having them, in the effort of doing them. I'd rather have half or a third of the quest givers having high quality portraits than all the quest givers looking like "random human mage #347".
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