Madscientist

Thanks Wormerine, you gave me a lot of things to think about. I definitely agree on two things: - The end was kind of underwhelming. You have a ship fight, and optional boss fight, the fight agains a pathetically weak group of soldiers and a conversation with Eothas. Plus you never learn what the wheel actually is or what the destruction of the machine will do. - You are loved by all factions until you destroy their headquarter or kill their leader. Ok I managed that the Huana queen does not like me before this point, but you have to work real hard in order not to be loved by everyone. The game is very good from a technical point. I like the class and stat system. I also like the way most quests are. But often I have the feeling that something is missing in order to make the game not just good but really great. I cannot tell you what it is exactly. I liked the BoW and especially the FS areas more than the base game. I think FS is extremely good. You have excentric wizards, mad cultists and tentacle monsters. It is funny, creepy and serious at the same time. The Witcher 3 is a good example for a game that kept me engaged from beginning to end. I explored everything and made every quest and it never became boring. I think its one of the best games ever, but I cannot say what exactly makes it so great.

I think now I understand what my problem with this game: I have the feeling that the game has two different focusses and I have the feeling that both have little to do with each other. - There is the part with the factions and your other quests for different people. If you ignore the gods, this game is very similar to New Vegas. Make tons of quests for different people and join a faction or screw them all. Your choices here have a big impact on the world. - The part with the gods where the main char can do nothing but observe and comment the things that will happen in any case. I think I have a problem with the god part. Usually RPGs can be divided in two types: - The choices of the main char have a large impact on the world. ( like the faction part of the game) - The game is linear (no choice) but the main char does something importent. (All those games where you save the world from the bad guy, like most JRPG) The idea that the main char is only an observer to something importent may be OK for some books. But in a computer RPG I want to do something importent myself, I don´t just want to watch things happening all the time. There are many moments in games where you have to watch things happen. Usually it is when the bad guy destroys your home or kidnaps your friend. But then you can defeat the bad guy eventually, after facing some challenges.

I did not like the scenes where I have to report to the other gods. They just talk whatever they want and I can make a comment every now and then. Does it have any effect what I chose in these conversations?

Thanks for clarification. - OK, I thought the machine IS the wheel. Looks like I was wrong and "the wheel" is the process of soul rebirth and the machine is a device that controls this process in a way that it takes away some energy from the souls to empower the gods. Somebody asked Josh about this and he answered: "Think of the souls as a river and the wheel (I guess he means the machine) as a dam. If you destroy the dam after some millennia the river will not be the same as before." Looks like this was meant literally and the dam is a power station to empower the gods. Josh said that Berath tells you this, but I did not see these words in my recent playthrough. I did BoW, but in the end I said to Eothas: People should forge their future for themselves and you should inspire them. - You say that the other gods could not stop Eothas because they did not have enough time. In BoW we can see that Eothas knew that there was a bomb under the bridge but he went there anyway. He wanted to show the world that even gods can be destroyed and people should not depend on them too much. This did not turn out as he wanted it so now he attacks the machine.

I have just finished the game again and I liked it, but I have a problem with the main story. Here is the short version of the game story: - God of life posesses gian statue and almost kills me. - God of death brings me back to life and orders me to follow the statue and find out what he is doing. - I follow him and see how he destroys the wheel. - end Why do the gods need me to follow Eothas? Its a giant statue walking around and bringing chaos and destruction whereever he goes. Nothing could be easier to find. So why do the gods need me? Why do the gods think that Eothas will listen to me? Because he destroyed my castle? (No, he destroyed the home of many other people too.) Because Ikind of survived when he stepped on me? ( No, he does not walk around to kill people.) The best comment about the gods came from Eder in Ukaizo: "Gods are not parents who care for their kids. They are a bunch of kids playing around while the parents are gone." If the gods want to find out what Eothas is doing they could just talk to him. It should be very easy for them to find a giant statue. The other gods talk to each other, even when they do not like each other. So why don´t they talk to Eothas. Because they blew him up? Well, Ondra killed Abydon once, but today they talk with each other. Why should a god listen to a kith more than he listens to another god? So if the gods had some commen sense, they would talk to Eothas, he tells them that he wants to destroy the wheel and there are 4 possible outcomes: - The other gods convince Eothas and he stops his plan. - Eothas convinces the others and they let him continue or they help him. - They cannot agree on something and the other gods try to stop Eothas. The other gods have a bigger chance if they work together to stop him. Their attempt to stop him can succeed or fail. So maybe the game is not about about the watcher being the hero of an epic journey. Its a story about gods who are dumb, incompetent and who cannot agree on anything. In a moment where they become half aware of their incompetence they force a kith to do their job. The watchers mission is doomed to fail because (s)he is unable to stop Eothas from destroying the wheel.

Sorry, I do not have a save from the moment I took this image. I have won the contest of the survivor and then continued playing, overwriting all my saves.

I have played FS the last 2 days. The game crashed at least 3 times, all of them in FS areas. - I started the game and pressed continue. My last save was in a FS area. I saw the loading screen for some minutes and when I tried to press a button I had the message: Windows found a problem and stopped the program (or something similar). - I was in the scriptorium for the first time, coming from the archives. When I walked to the center of the room it crashed. - The game also chrashed in another FS area when walking around. All crashes (except the one at the initial loading screen) happened during normal gameplay when walking around (not during area transition, not during combat). I restarted the game and then I could play the same area without problems. There were no crashes outside of FS areas. I have windows 10 and play the game with gog galaxy. There were no other serious bugs during the entire playthrough.

That should just be a matter of implementation. FF X itself had turn delay powers that were really important to mastering the combat system and if I recall, they also had limitations so that it was impossible to delay turns enemy turns for ever. In the case of Deadfire, it’s really easy to envision a clear limitation: knockdown delays an enemy’s turn, but once an enemy is knocked prone and already lying on the ground, they can’t be knocked down again until they get their turn and get back up. You can still shut down casters, but you can’t permanently deny turns to any target. You are right. Maybe I went a step too far. In the Trails series you can equip items that add deleay to normal weapon attacks and you could spam AoE delay/interrupt abilities all day long. The most powerful enemies are immun, but even some bosses can be prevented from having any turn at all. Inn FFX its a special attack against a single enemy that costs some MP and it takes some time until you learn it. In PoE2, it would be fine if it is a rival to other class resources. Should I used ability A that stunns the enemy for x seconds (cannot act, easier to hit, but no damage) and targets fort or ability B that targets def, does some damage and lets him act y seconds later. Just remember that it can ruin your game if you implement it the wrong way. ( Which is true for everything in a game.)

No, Interrupts stay in. You can only interrupt while enemies cast a spell. I do not want to push enemies back in turn order during their recovery time when they do nothing and just wait for their next turn.

OK, I think that turn based combat will always be slower than real time unless you select absolutely every auto pause option in rtwp. Torment Tides of Numenera was slow as hell. But that was not only because it was turn based, but also how they did it. FFX was one of the faster turn based games, even most boss fights were rather short if you knew what you are doing. This was because: - There were less units involved. You had up to 3 characters and up to 4 enemies. You could call a summon and it would replace all party members, not fight together with them. - Most enemies could be killed with one hit. Even tougher enemies could only take a few hits. With the right tactics ( attacks with multiple hits, exploit elemental weakness ) you could kill bosses very fast. Often I did not kill all enemies as fast as possible so that every party member gets exp. ( You could switch party members during combat and only party members who did something during combat get exp) - The game did not have combat movement or positioning. Yesterday I fought the bosses of BoW and SSS in rtwp mode. In rtwp it took lots of hits to kill a boss. This was OK because all my chars were attacking at the same time I used summons who also attacked at the same time. I also used attacks that hit several enemies or that hit one enemy several times. In a turn based game, you (and the enemy) need much less attacks to kill the target. In most good turn based games I know you can kill normal enemies with about 2-4 normal attacks. Special attacks or attacks that target their weakness can one shot them. If it takes more than 5 hits to kill something or there is a high miss chance, combat can take forever and become boring. A bad example is Wild Arms 3, where some bosses ( especially the optional ones) have tons of hit points and you just repeat attacks and healing forever. result: Going from rtwp to turn based is not just about how to translate real time combat to turns and how to determine turn order. You also have to change damage of attacks, HP of units, what some abilities do and the number of units. Else it will become very slow and some stats or abilities will become useless or OP. Adding turns is not enough, you have to balance everything almost from scatch. One more advice: Do not add delay attacks. These are attacks that push enemies back in turn order or make them skip their next turn. They are OP in the Trails of cold Steel series (and maybe some other games) where you can prevent most enemies from acting at all. Hard CC so that enemies cannot act on their turn is fine, but please no stuff that messes with the turn order itself.

total agreement with protopersona. As I have written in my initial post, one difference between turn based and rtwp is, that in rtwp several things can happen at the same time while in turn based combat one thing happens after the other. Regarding this issue it does not matter if time in a turn based mode is measured in global rounds or with a continous time. PoE measures time in seconds, not in rounds. If you translate PoE rtwp to turn based, I think it is easier to translate it to the FFX system than to a system with global rounds. A rtwp game whose game mechanics are still based on rounds ( e.g. Pathfinder Kingmaker or the IE games) you can easily translate it to turn based with global rounds. The result would be Temple of elemental Evil.

https://imgur.com/a/ACWb6l3 I have finished SSS. After doing the 3 areas on the world map on the arena island, I did all those fights and then I fought the champions of the slayer. Then came the battle were I fought both other groups at once with lots of scripted interactions. Then I went to the beyond and solved the issue with the 3 spirits without fight. Then came the battle with the huge crocodile and I allowed the slayer spirit to posess the beast. Then I did the last 3 quests were I have to find items all over the world. When I look at the pool, I can do the contest of the survivor. I won this fight and got the reward. expected behaviour: After chosing to be champion of one of the faces, you should not be able to fight the other groups. I think this fight appeared only after defeating the crocodile on the list, but I am not 100% sure.

The IE games were based on DnD. DnD is turn based and 1 turn is 6 seconds. So every ability is instantanious or it has a duration that is a multiple of 6 seconds. Turn based combat is alwas slower than real time combat [citation needed]. In order to speed things up, the IE games kept the 6 second as turn, but chars kept on doing what they did (attacking, moving, . . . ) until you gave them a different command. Pauses were only needed when you wanted to give them new commands every round. PoE is inspired by the IE games, but it is not based on DnD. The devs ignored the 6 second turn unit and gave abilities whatever duration they wanted in seconds. Going back to turn based messes up everything. In PoE each point of something gives a linear bonus (e.g. 1 point int gives +5% duration). If we go back to turn based from this, all these small influences become irrelevant.

The reason why I chose a system similar to FFX is the following: In PoE the duration for abilities is dependent on lots of things, such as intelligence, action speed, power level and so on. If the basic time unit is a turn, increasing or decreasing int or dex does nothing unless it increases or decreases the duration by 1 turn. This means in many cases that changing int, dex or power level will have no effect at all. And this is what I see in many comments here in the forum. People complain that some stats have almost no effect and they discuss something like 1 turn for and ability feels to short but 2 turns feels too long. We avoid these problems if we keep the besic time unit as seconds, because PoE was designed for it. Yes, FFX combat means that we play the normal rtwp mode with an auto pause every time a party member has finished an action and the units act one after the other, not simultanously.

First of all, I think we should not make it more complicated than nessesary. Pathfinder uses its very complicated PnP rules (e.g. instant, swift, standart and full round actions), you need to read tons of rules if you want to play it and since the last PoE update the forums are full with: "Add turn based mode to PK too." regarding your suggestions: - Ok we could let you act after shooting with reloading weapons and then you can chose if you want to reload, change weapon or do something else. But you have to reload the weapon if you want to fire again. - About wait to interrupt: Shadowrun dragonfall had such a mechanic. When you have AP left and a weapon that can be used (melee weapon or loaded ranged weapon) you can chose to end your turn and prepare to interrupt enemies. If an enemy moves into weapon range while you are in this mode, you will attack the enemy and the enemy will be interrupted. OK, PoE is based in the IE games who are based on DnD and such a mechanic did never exist there. (OK, in Pathfinder you can ready your spear and if an enemy charges at you he will get impaled. I am not sure if such a thing is in the computer game and if it already existed in DnD.) It would be possible to add your suggestions in principle, but at the moment I do not think they are absolutely needed.

I have not read every thread in here, so maybe somebody already suggested something similar. FFX is turn based (each char acts after the other and you have all the time in the world to select commands) but it does not have global turns. Each char has a speed value and chars with higher speed act more often. Each action has a recovery time that depends on the type of action and the speed value. Spells have a casting time and a recovery time. FFX does not have movement during combat. I suggest if you move from A to B during your turn, the time it takes to move that distance is added to your recovery time. Advantage: Durations for things can remain unchanged from rtwp mode. Recovery times, casting times and effect duration can stay as they are. Give an initiative value to each char. Once a char has its first action, turn order is determined by action/recovery/casting/movement time. I think initiative should be determined by dex value and armor, as it is now. All chars start their first action at the same moment, initiative only determines who acts first in this starting moment but time stands still until each char has acted for the first time. So the game still counts everything in seconds, not rounds. Each time the recovery time for a char ends, time stops and you can select what this char should do until his/her next recovery time ends. You could do several very fast actions in a row or you select a very long action and enemies can act several times in the meantime. Regarding interrupts: If you get interrupted, casting time ends, recovery time starts and you can act again when recovery is over. One more thing: The recovery time in turn based mode would be recovery+action time in rtwp. So if you attack with your weapon, you can act again once all other chars have acted who could act in your action+recovery time. There would be some differences to rtwp: - Several chars cannot move or act at the same time. - You cannot cancel an action and select something else at any time - Slow weapons could have an advantage. You still have to wait longer until you can act again compared to fast weapons, but you hit at the beginning of your attack time, not at the end.

https://imgur.com/a/zWNCisv OK, I found some answers. Pallegina had Magrans Favor equipped, an axe that gives +2 power levels for fire abilities. When I unequip it she has the same duration as Eder (-17%). The char with -13% is a mage/assassin with 1 point of alchemy. Xoti (single class priest with 12 alchemy) has +45% duration. Aloth (single class mage with zero alchemy) has -13%, equipping the firethrowers gloves (+1 evocation) gives -9% Both Aloth and Xoti have the prestigue talent (+1 power level) The tooltip of the damage shows the same % numbers as duration. expected behaviour: - Usable items should not have a duration/damage/other effect below the base value.

In my party there is a different duration for Eder (lv20 fighter/rogue) and Pallegina (lv20 paladin/fighter), both have zero alchemy. Eder: 37.5sec (-17%) Pallegina: 40.9sec (-9%) I think it did not change when equipping int or res items ( I am not 100% sure) None of them uses equipment that reduces duration of things. Sorry, I do not know why things are like this or how it should be for this item. This is an item from SSS, so it came after version 2.0. It should be there since 3.0 I guess.

https://imgur.com/a/U4P9IBg This is the bubbling charlice. It has a different duration for different characters even though they have the same alchemy skill value. It may be different because chars have different resolve value, but I am not sure. All characters are level 20. Most potions show the same value for duration or healing when they have the same alchemy skill. It never shows a red number and the value is never below base value. ( If they do not have an effect that reduces healing, I have not tested it with effects that could reduce healing or duration) expected behaviour: - The tooltip for potions ( or other things that are influenced by alchemy) should show "alchemy" as reason for the increased effect, not "level". - If the effect or duration of an item or skill is influenced by resolve it should be shown in the tooltip. - Resolve should not lower the duration of beneficial effects ( as it is for most potions with duration) - Only hit points, acuracy and defenses should be influenced by level. Abilities can be influenced by power level, which is something different than level. A tooltip should not show "level" when it is not influenced by level. - If something is influenced by several factors, the tooltip should show them as separate things, not combine them and call it level ( In my example the duration is influenced by alchemy and something else, maybe resolve but I am not sure. I have not tested this for most items and I am also not sure what to expect if an item/ability has both positive and negative effects or if an item/ability can have effects on allies and enemies.

https://imgur.com/a/OCqdb0T I explore the drowned barrows. There are nagas in the forge area. All of them are hostile exept one. I cannot interact with it and the cursor does not change when I put my mouse over it. There was no conversation or cut scene when entering the room. I just walked inside and killed all other nagas. expected behaviour: It should attack us together with the other nages.

https://imgur.com/a/hkyi80K In the drowned kingdom (Beast of Winter area) when I use a portal all of my chars are invisible for some seconds. They were also invisible when I talked to the spirits after the first portal. They become visible after some seconds and I can control them normally, but this feels irritating.

I have not played turn based mode, but I see another issue in these images: In most games higher initiative is better and higher speed is better. But armor makes you slower and dex makes you faster. Plus armor increases only recovery and reload time while dex influences everything (attack and casting time too). In the thread about game mechanics we already discussed that everything should be normalized to be either duration (e.g. "each point dex reduces attack and recovery duration by 3%) or speed (e.g. armor reduces recovery speed by 35%). Since the status screen and the description of items and abilities shows use, attack, casting, recovery and reload time in seconds, everything in this game should be shown as duration. When there is duration for some descriptions and speed for others, it can be confusing to find out if +10% of something is good or bad. The complicated formula for attack speed and also for damage does not make it easier. Thanks to double inversion the % numbers are hard to understand when you have several penalties or if you have bonusses or penalties at the same time. Adding numbers will give you false results unless you have only bonusses or you have exactly one penalty and no bonusses. Anyway, I agree that it makes no sense to show initiative in rtwp mode.

Yesterday I had the same problem, for all grimoires, both I found in version 4.01 and those I got new in 4.1. When I played today they looked normal again. With version 4.1 the game created new saves (quick saves and auto saves). I have deleted the old saves (quick and auto) from version 4.01. I do not know if this has anything to do with this bug.

The steel garrote paladin says: 15% of damage as healing when attacking afflicted enemies. I was always asking myself afflicted by what? And what does "attacking" mean? - Does it mean that the enemy has any affliction of any attribute, so its similar to the rogue requirement for sneak attacks? - Does attacking mean weapon attack or is it any damage, for example a wizard/paladin throws a fireball at enemies who have an affliction? It may not be enough to keep you alive alone, but when you use it on a char who has several regeneration effects already it could be useful. Maybe something like a paladin/chanter tank with the regeneration aura, regeneration chants and regeneration equipment. This one should have a high defense, call summons and/or debuff enemies and is hard to kill.

I have been looking here after a long time. If you still add builds, could you please add my fast assassin as well: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/93566-class-build-the-fast-assassin-dual-wielding-rogue/ It is not only a char I liked to play, there is also an interesting discussion about damage calculation in this thread.