[Sexual Archetype Force]

Is it not? I chose to develop few fetishes over the years - I deffo wasn't born that way... that would be abomination

[Sexual Archetype Force]

I played FPS game yesterday, I felt offended because shotgun sound was too manly. I mean what is this? 1920? Its 2020 for christ sake, why are we still tormented by macho sounding weapons. Someone should get to the bottom of this and people responsible should be punished. #FREETHEPOWDER2020! #RIDUCULETHESHEEPLE

[Sexual Archetype Force]

Not taking the bait here  Bitches, gays and transmogs do not belong in fantasy realm, they are reality. If anything it would be offensive to put emphasis on those minorities in fantasy game because why what you imply then? That their indentity is a fairy tale to you? huh? Outrage 

[Have isometric rpgs lost its way? Is there hope PoE3 will have remedy for that?]

Last few days I've been thinking about why I actually dislike Deadfire overall.

I got into some balance, mechanics discussions in Deadfire and about why Deadfire sales were not so good and I'm coming to somewhat simple conclusion that isometric rpgs, especially nowadays stopped being RPGs at its core. So what are they you ask me. Well they are dumbed down combat games. Let me expand on that statement by talking about classes design.

We got all sorts of generic classes like rogues, fighters, barbarians, priests, paladins etc. All of these classes, multiclass or not are homogenised to be combat viable, all have some sort of damage, cc, single target, aoe, some sort of healing, damage mitigation, some have higher mobility than others (thats probably the biggest factor that differentiates classes). But all of these classes have no class unique soft skills nor ways to be rewarded for them in game. What I mean why that? When Im thinking about my idea of approach to isometric RPG and its classes I'd focus on RPG element of the class and invent ways to reward player for roleplaying his class. Let's say you're a priest? Ok. How about we throw some cursed items into the world so that when someone from party touches them they have some nasty debuff and only priest can help to remedy that, or bless some items. Or if you enter some area devoted to some deity, your party isn't very well off with that God and you get insanely debuffed and some fight breaks out in that place. As a priest you can actively pray/profane (as a channeled ability) to chosen deity to shield rest of the party from negative effects - this way you both roleplay a priest, he's doing something useful for combat, even tho its not strictly combat oriented ability like a buff,debuff and your party have to actively protect you from interruptions, otherwise you loose your protection and opposing deity throws balance into enemy favor. Such simple idea but for some reason void in nowadays rpgs. A priest in PoE, Deadfire and few other games that came out last few years is just a mage with spells that have more of sunshine animations. 

This could play into another class lets say rogue... you got this nasty place watched by a God you're not on good terms with, well you have a rogues and give lockpicking, sneaking, pickpocketing to them as unique class skills. Then have him open that secret passage that bypasses that room or sneak him in to steal Idol of the God and then profane, bless it with priest to loose its power. Examples multiply...

Wizards - give them teleport spells etc

Basicly whole game is about simple combat that is closer to hack'n'slash number crunching than RPG, the only RPG element is dialog which doesn't even have that much importance in the game - I mean the only time dialog options actually have any meaningful impact in the game is if you're paladin/priest and you have to follow your disposition, but even then it matters only for combat as it gives you some numeric advantage - you are not stripped of your beneficial powers as paladin for comitting crime against your god, you're not hunted down as a false priest. Dialog boils down to flavour and sometimes offers a way to grab XP without fighting and that would be fine if you had to be diplomat char with high charisma but no - you don't really need diplomacy to avoid combat most of the time. Actually most soft skills in Deadfire, Intimidation, Diplomacy, Religion, Arcane, Metaphysics function as placeholder dialog activators for non-violent quest resolutions and as a steroid for items. 

I'm wondering if PoE3 if it ever comes will find its way to be real RPG. PoE1 wasn't much better when it comes to the above but it was a first release and at that it actually had some atmosphere to it, dark catacombs that felt vile, cruel lord that hanged people on trees, some really dark quests. I always thought sequel to PoE1 would expand on RPG elements for combat like examples above, instead it tried to be more complex character builder, combat sandbox but ended up as a game without much RPG substance. In a way I'm glad it failed because maybe they will revise and turn into more oldschool RPG oriented ideas for next game. 

What do You think folks?

 

[OP Classes]

4 minutes ago, thelee said:

in addition to brilliant being extremely good - as argued extensively here - i think it's understated just how unbalanced it is. for a martial class, a top-level ability might cost 4 resources. it would take 24 seconds of brilliance to get that high level ability back. a caster can get a level 7-9 spell back in 6 seconds. i think it would actually help a lot if brilliance actually had to account for this somehow. if a caster had to wait 24 seconds to get back a powerful high level spell, that would go a long way to balancing brilliance on its own. but that's well past what can be done with modding i assume.

True but it wouldn't change much, already grindy fights would just become 4 times grindier as it would still be just about locking down SoT into infinity. 

[Sexual Archetype Force]

9 hours ago, ekt0 said:

One day, Tekehu decides to ask me if my main character dates anyone. The question is fine to me but what I think is too much is that the options I am provided to answer him. I cannot even tell him that my main character has straight sexual preference. I cannot say that he is not my type, or whatever. I can only answer him that I date Xoti, or someone. Furthermore, after I had told him I was currently date someone, he says something like he wishes the god should have made me look at him sooner. I think this dialogue has crossed the line. I think it is sexual harassment.

It's only annoying You because its more dialogue options than You'd have in real life or there is a catch somewhere? Sorry couldn't help myself :D:D

[Sexual Archetype Force]

9 hours ago, ekt0 said:

Personally, I consider it to be sexual harassment.

Firstly, I think that the game gender diversification does not comply with real world statistics.

I'm sure you can build a case here and bring into into Supreme Court of NPC Rights somewhere in Neverland.

About the second thing - that's why it's a fantasy game - I mean there are no Dragons IRL where do I compain about that?

[OP Classes]

3 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Problem is that solving Brilliant OP isn't good with the current status of Megaboss fights. And yes, I think these encounter design could have been better. 

We shouldn't go down this path - not fixing one broken thing because it would highlight other flaws 

But despite the above I think it should be prio to fix mechanics that are usable for the whole game and worry about optional content for 0.1% of playerbase afterwards. (Not to mentiont that if You have content for 0.1% of playerbase then its already some sort of fail itself but I'm not sure about this one, could we wrong)

I got a feeling tho that a lot of us here focus on solo aspect of the game despite that Deadfire was designed and balanced for party play. In that regard I think we shouldn't really defend mechanics that open up / allow solo play as it simply wasn't the goal, like, ever. Mega bosses aren't really that big of a deal without broken resource regen / immortality combos if you play as party (as the game was designed to be played).

 

I'd get rid of whole resource regen mechanics what so ever and instead implement more items that give +X casts of spells of lvl X or range of X-Y and make it possible to change items in fight triggering recovery, this way you'd need to actually have knowledge about game and equip accordingly to have enough resources that you know you need for the fight and think about tradeoff aka "Do I rather equip items that give me few more SoT uses or I need to keep my immunity X ring - heck lets go for few more SoT and hope for reflex save this time". 

-As for brilliant I'd change it into some pure powerful casting steroid

 -for bloodmage i'd change his active to make % spell damage heal for duration

-wall of draining - i'd stick to its name and steal buffs from enemy (probably longer intervals to make it useful) / drain hp / stats 

[OP Classes]

10 hours ago, Raven Darkholme said:

I'm not sure if you are ignoring me intentionally, but in case you don't one more time:

Wall of draining by itself is more op than brilliant by itself. Brilliant is only op coupled with other stuff like SoT or wall or if it is up infinitely via Tactician (this is a lot less op than wall without brilliant tho.) Wall + anything that makes you invincible is enough to win any fight with a bloodmage cause all you need is press blood sacrifice, brilliant only makes fights easier and is onviously very op in the early game before one even gets the wall, but your point about brilliant is wrong, the only thing op by itself is wall, SoT is useless without brilliant and brilliant without duration extenders has a lot less options (still viable but calling something only true op if it is in fact less op is just a wrong definition.)

Haven't seen You quote or address what I said per se, I've  seen your point and honestly you somehow disagree with me but in explanation why, You agree with me lol. I mean I don't know what's more to dissect here - you summed it up pretty well - Brilliant is key buff that opens up OPness of otherwise not really OP stuff. Wall of draining + bloodmage is more or less the same mechanic but copy pasted under different name and rearranged  Sure we can disagree for the sake of e-peen and turn the cat upside down saying "Yea, no, Brilliant is ok but SoT is op"... I mean sure resource regenerating skill would not be OP without OP resources to regen to begin with and in turn OP skills would not be OP if their effect could not be indefinite - thats not really productive, we both know the drill so I guess you're right. Derp.

Ofc its a mix of skills vs encounters design. 10 sec SoT is not OP in fights that last 30 minutes, it would be in fights lasting 10 seconds but it's a whole different subject but there is a reason Brilliant was removed/nerfed to the ground initially when Deadfire launched - because it was plain broken and then it go rereleased in form of Brilliant Tactician and Bloodmage +Wall combo when mega bosses came out - they re-released bad design skills (when the knew beforehand they were ****) to justify bad design encounters (even tho they are small portion of the game) without care that it damages the whole rest of it.

I'm sorry if that upsets You somehow but I can't be a fan of that. I mean if I was then I guess I could be sold anything, including giving me DLC item that gives "godmode" and pass it as legit. 

Anyway In the end if it passes as fun then its alright... I guess.

 

[Worth replaying PoE 1 for the import decisions or is the generator enough?]

PoE1 is worth replaying for single fact its much better game than Deadfire. 

[OP Classes]

To sum it up;

Brilliant is the only true OP as it simulates consoling yourself to "godmode".

When it comes to Ultimate tho, the only fights that you probably can't pull off without broken infinite resources are mega bosses because they are made too grindy health sponges. Rework them to be hard tactical encounters and voila! you can remove Brilliant completely. Honestly I never even touched Ultimate because it was apparent from day1 its gonna be totally dominated by moronic builds based on SoT and/or Brilliant. I refuse to play this garbage skill and I encourage others to boycott that even tho its probably too late. I mean atleast if you wanna play Brilliant consider yourself cheater and stop pretending to be smart and/or achieving anything 

[OP Classes]

I personally dislike all OP that comes from just abusing brilliant to become immortal with endless resources. I mean why would you even pretend you're playing legit this way and not pop god mode with console - pretty much same effect. Brilliant buff is hands down most ****ing moronic implementation in PoE. I feel it was added to game just as an excuse for making insanely boring, grindy fights with mega bosses.  Whenever someone posts a brilliant buff build im like "no, **** off with this bs, bring something creative instead of this copy pasta cheat build"

I like OP factor if it comes in a form of combos that require mixing synergy between classes, talents and items - then it functions as a reward for putting it together unlike ****ing brilliant which is just console "godmode" in disguise really, don't convince yourself otherwise, you're wrong and you should be whipping yourself as bodily penance for spreading **** ways to play the game.

Im sorry that I'm triggered but I feel I need to mock, flame on this design just so that no genius at obsidian find it a good implementation for PoE 3. 

[Why has PoE2 been sold so badly?]

On 5/14/2020 at 10:22 AM, AeonsLegend said:

I don't think personal complaints have much to do with this. If you look at online reviews and steam player reviews this game is stated as awesome. This is what drives many people to play a game. Anything else is marketing. You have to reach your potential players and make sure you send them the right message. I myself don't rate POE2 as an incredibly good game. It's a fairly average game overall. It does a few things really well and a few things really really poorly. But opinions like this don't affect sales because I would only know this when I play the game, meaning after I bought it.

Well you'd be right if you talk about preorders only. After release tho a lot of people checked youtube, listened to personal opinions of people who bought it and decided based on that and it affected sales in following weeks, months etc. Not to mention about less legit side of PC gaming, a lot of people rather try it for free torrenting a cracked version and buy game only if they find it good, so all in all I think if good was legit GOOD enough more copies would sell. I dunno what exactly feels off about Deadfire but for me its a mix of meh combat system, meh setting, a lot of things too meh to go cult about it. PoE1 was much better in that regard somehow.

[Why has PoE2 been sold so badly?]

I mean marketing fail for release day is one thing but shouldn't sales pick up after a while if game was good enough? My take on why Deadfire was less succesfull would be:

-PoE1 was really first serious bg2 successor "worth" title in years so a lot of people starving for that kind of game jumped on it, with Deadfire some people might have burnt out of the genre with first one and original sin 2. So bad timing and increased competition.

-Setting is god damn awfully offputting for "average isometric rpg fan", take it with a grain of salt but I only came to Deadfire knowing PoE1 had this gritty, dark theme and hoped for more of that in PoE2 but if I only saw azure seas and ships sprinkled with yoho and a bottle of rum that radiated from trailers and previews I wouldn't touch this game with a 10foot stick. I'd say it was too "merry adventure" for most isometric rpg fans. I mean with PoE1 ur first town you are welcomed by a hanging tree and a guy hinting you might be next. If that ain't welcoming I don't know what is.

-Game was super easy and imbalanced at first - I guess people youtubed that **** and went like "ok its a flop" and never checked back. Hype died down and thats it, then you had pathfinder and other games, seems isometric rpgs got revived as a genre and it takes much more effort to grab attention even among genre fans.

[Taking custom item request]

Well honestly I think game is overall so imbalanced that you don't really need to worry too much about making items too strong. Make them fun. I used hand and eye of vecna and wand of orcus only, whats most OP is the fact those items give you perma top tier buffs/immunities which imo is fine but not when you can have it for gold. 

From the list above I'd like to see your take on Invulnerable Coat of Arnd (maybe Mythic from the start, with +4 PL for paladin/priest and damage shields) 

Wondering if its possible to make Staff of Magi that allow you to cast high lvl spells from different classes with charges that replenish after absorbing enemy spells with % chance to do so?

 

[Taking custom item request]

Would be nice if some of these items in OP version were hidden between some encounter tho or atleast could be stolen with high sneak/pickpocket - what makes items OP even in current version is that you get them with just money.

[Taking custom item request]

I would love to see Robe of Vecna - magic resist and massive recovery casting speed.

Sword of Kas - some nice mechanics on its description:

https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Sword_of_Kas 

Or maybe this list: https://screenrant.com/dungeons-dragons-most-powerful-artifacts-ranked/

I wouldn't mind if you made a version that is OP aka gives effects more or less the same as in lore with intent to match with difficulty mods for deadfire.

 

[OP Classes]

2 hours ago, Walden said:

To max RES would make this a very attribute heavy build. You would want intellect for buff duration and area of effect, might for healing, dexterity for action speed and perception for accuracy. You could max resolve, but would only be left with 10 points for the rest of the attributes. How would you spread it out?

No, illusion spells dont quite cover build to be OP. You need to max out on deflection in all ways possible. 

Max resolve, you really need ****ton of deflection to get any damage from this build as its damage comes from defense. You can go dump con because you're not getting hit much. I went high per, left dex at 10 and increased might and int to balanced values, you don't really need that much int for durations as buffs you have access to have long base durations, if anything int is good to futher buff Will save (you get dampened and you become instantly both wet noodle and squishy with limp 2h **** in your hand = they don't miss you don't counterattack/riposte = no damange, with high Will even if you get hit its mostly graze and last very short time) and also to get more aoe range. You might wanna time your escape but not to escape (you still want to be surrounded when you get that +50 deflection to get few extra guaranteed counters/ripostes) when you see enemies charging some potentially facemelting abilities that target deflection 

When it comes to gear its also all deflection focused - Casita Semalia, Intimidation stacking etc

[Probably Unpopular Opinion: The Last 20% of Deadfire is an Unfun Grind that Prioritizes Pedantry and Obsessive Micromanagement]

On 11/19/2019 at 12:19 AM, Ontarah said:

I will add that at the moment that I wrote this, I had just had an unusual strain of bad luck.  The events proceeding it went something like:

1. Try a couple of times to fight the jumped up god imp (can't remember his name) and deciding to come back later with better gear as I was already maxed out levelwise.

2. Find a megaboss and try to fight it.  Realize what it was and go "**** this" and go off to find something else to do.

3. Start the Beast of Winter encounter with the dracolich.  Get it down to bloodied status twice only to run out of things that Interrupt and it getting off Llengrath's Safeguard.  Deciding to also **** off and come back with better equipment and a different party line up.

4. Go off to Forgotten Sanctum and proceed in such a way that pretty much the first thing I fight is that bull**** suit of animated armor that keeps summoning 4 animated swords that always materialize in the middle of your party.

It was at that point where I wrote this post.  Having swapped some people around so I could get the Arcana check to insta-win against the stupid armor and proceeded deeper into the Sanctum without constant agony, it does appear I got an unusual string of bull****ty fights right in a row.    

It seems you got annoyed that game actually surpriced you. Most of those encounters you listed can be solved with a lot of things tho. It seems you got pissed off because at max level you realized you don't know jack about the game actually which I imagine is annoying - you expect to be rewarded for getting max level and not punished with ever increasing complexity and thus difficulty of the fights. All in all I think PoE does a poor job "tutoring" its mechanics and hides a lot of combat options from players - I mean you could have things like rogue NPCs bantering in The Gullet about "this poison that every mage fears... I heard they're running short in the row" kinda things to sneak in some game info to lean on when you hit the wall.

I myself spent twice as much time reading forums, researching builds than actually playing the game - because frankly I didn't find learning stuff on my own very enjoyable in PoE 2. I don't know why but despite its projected complexity PoE 2 boils down to very simple game plan - stack on your main strength and abuse it because stepping down from a beaten path will punish you 99% of the time. Also PoE designs make difficulty curve very unfun to experience - you try one encounter with given setup at level 8 and you get wrecked, you spend 3 hours trying to min/max the **** out of your setup and you cut it close but decide to come back when you're one level higher to save some consumables or just don't want to feel like you uber lucked on it - so you come back 1 level later and you suddenly faceroll it because getting at 3 more deflection with levelup and access to new deflection spell now made enemies unable to hit you and your riposte tank destroy half of them before your backline gets even buffed.

Things like these are the most annoying for me in PoE design. Especially when to get that level up you just had to walk down from Periki to Berth doing fetch quest. I guess I needed that sense of achievement with easy victory after such glorious adventure. But honestly I don't know what to expect from this genre anymore - I don't want isometric rpgs to turn into tactical crossover between XCOM and some storytelling hiccup but at the same time I don't think I'd enjoy simple system that fails to bring constant sense of achievement -  I used PoE 2 as a char building simulator replaying different builds up to like half game with no desire to finish the game or throwing  enjoyable setups at demanding endgame because I know they will fail and require meta game tuning making them innevitably much less fun. 

[OP Classes]

It's hard to define op in this game - you want a build that CAN do ultimate or rather a build that is explosive OP but needs support? or is immortal but feels like wet noodle when it comes to damage and overall "feel" 

Anyway...

Builds that beat Ultimate probably - Tactician/Skaen if I recall to get brilliant buff that regens resources forever and casting priest buffs to be immortal - fun right? Yawn

Most answers you'll get tho will be builds that are tailored to beat Ultimate which are builds that exploit a fishy mechanics of some buffs / item procs like brilliant or wall of draining making it OP using same boring combo each fight. Keep in mind these builds are OP at high lvl and level up using non-violent quests because they are useless before they go online after unlocking their gimmick combos so if you're not after some autistic achievement and want to test these builds for funzies i'd probably advice to just console your way in. 

If we talk "normal" game and not masochistic autism fiesta which is Ultimate then I'd say Wizard as single class because empowered last tier nukes - you probably won't solo mega bosses as wizard nuker on potd tho - not sure. 

I currently play solo trickster/steel garotte 2h riposte build on potd - it's pretty op.

 

[Looking for ideas for next playthrough and mods question]

Hey guys. 

I soloed potd pillars 2 when it launched so I never touched dlcs nor mega bosses.

Recently I came back and went for roleplay duo - Vecna and Kas - using some probably op but fun mods like unlocked 8th 9th abilities for multiclasses and items / class mods like funnening series. Now I play a solo death knight of a sort (riposte trickster/steel garotte with wotep 2h build) - it demolishes regular encounters like crazy so far and I'm wondering if there will be any challenge there considering items I got from mods (Eye of Vecna, Hand of Vecna) / class tweaks. So what you guys think generally about playing with mods like these? Are they most of the time packed with some OP **** that is very easy to abuse to make game trivial and if so isn't vanilla game same way actually? 

I'm thinking about starting a full min/max modded playthrough with full party on turn based using classes that I couldn't be arsed microing in RTwP like glass cannon rogues, some speedy archers maybe. I'm clueless about turn based tho since durations of buffs / debuffs are not based on seconds how do you prioritize stats? 

[The Ultimate discussion thread]

On 5/9/2019 at 6:52 PM, JESUSSSAYSNO said:

Bloodmage's passive heals you out of combat, and the class has infinite spell slots. You have access to a plethora of HP sustain spells, defensive buffs, nukes, CC, etc as well. BM's out of combat regeneration makes it so incredible. it lets you wait out a bit of regen without Resting.

Gl playing caster without seeing numeric values and no pause, slow. I feel this challenge will be mostly tanky monks with nice scripts written. Oh yeah mby scripts will do it for casters but i doubt any1 will share anytime soon.

[Solo, Does this game support such a thing this time?]

I do tend to make things hard on myself, in POE 1 when I completed POTD solo I killed everything I could that posed a challenge, I didn't take the quickest route to the credits screen.

I hold off on leveling because it's a tactic I learned from the first game. I also hold off on buying/selling anything until I know that I need to. This play-style doesn't afford you to do unnecessary actions.

I fully understand that I'm playing the game in a way that most people wont play it but this is the way that interests me most and the idea of doing it the "normal" way is a concept that bores me because it's too easy. I don't get the same sense of accomplishment. I like to outsmart the game design, AI, and find clever ways to proceed. I just wasn't sure if Obsidian was supporting my way of playing this time. If there is no achievement like there was for the first game, it certainly would seem like they've shifted away from my play-style... I just didn't feel it was unreasonable to expect to be catered to this time when I was catered to last time. I streamed my entire playthrough and killed everything in POE1 and just wanted to do the same here in the sequel. Doesn't sound like an unreasonable expectation to have.

 

First game managed to make things work for both play-styles, what's fun or isn't fun is opinion.

Last game supported both, evidenced by the achievements offered, so, not unreasonable to expect the same thing again this time around.

 

You get completionist challenges in form of god challenges that you have to put up with. I'm sure it was stated somewhere that Steam achievement or whatever equally meaningless thing will be released once all dlcs and content is out. 

 

First game wasn't supporting solo... it was just oversight in game development that made certain classes borderline op solo and using multiple characters just made game trivial (although first run thru poe 1 is probably harder with party than solo because you have to micro much more, your attention is divided between many, mostly less geared chars, even tho you got more resources overall than solo char to beat the game) - you played wizard just as I did (completed trial of iron solo) and it had nothing to do with outsmarting the system when 95% of the fights were about getting to the narrowest choke point you could find after pulling, buffing up to survive alpha strikes and then just blasting with aoes... wow what an achievement - I derp on myself too because I used to feel it was a big achievement while in fact it was pretty shallow really when you think about it. Solo achievements were added to PoE 1 after release once they realized some classes are quite easy to actually roll through the game solo - it wasn't a design choice tho. 

 

PoE 2 was initially super easy, now its made harder to provide reasonable challenge for full party, which in turn makes your solo early pretty dicy, but just like in PoE 1 you get thru it by learning what you can do at what level and what you need to shelve until you get some item and/or level. 

 

You say you like outsmarting AI - well im here to disappoint you, both poe 1 and poe 2 is about looking at enemy stats, stacking yours to make rolls atleast even between you and ur enemy and then utilizing choke points, bam you beat the game. AI is dumb as **** and there is nothing to outsmart in those games. 

 

That being said poe 2 is soloable by many classes... certainly you got more ways to trial of iron poe 2 than you had in poe 1 (Think I haven't seen any fighters nor rangers get that achievement in game one). I personally got equivalent of toi tcs in poe2 on wizard/fighter multiclass and softcore tcs on priest/monk (pre nerf). 

[Optimal stats for a wizard (blood mage)]

If you go for party potd i'd build more offensively than defensively - the difference is that with offensive party you will micro to kill enemies fast and around alpha strikes, with defensive setup you micro around staying alive because you kill too slow. That being said in a long run going much more defensively will be safer as you go higher level and stack enough defenses that can't be penetrated while all meaningful buffs last - much more boring tho imo. 

[Critique my 5-man squad?]

I have an idea how to improve it, kick 4 customs and play solo as bloodmage/tactician