Purudaya

This is a confirmed bug, it happens on level up. Not sure if it's fixed yet in the patch, but they're aware of it.

It's not just a "nerf patch," there are several abilities that get buffed and/or have their costs reduced. Nerfs to backstab and cipher probably weren't necessary, but others definitely were and thus far appear to have been well-implemented. They managed to make Swift Flurry and Cleaving Stance no longer game breaking, for example, while still keeping them fun. Also: it's not the final product. They specifically released it in beta first so that we could offer our feedback. People talk about patches so fatalistically, like they're permanent decrees coming down from on high or something - a lot of the suggestions being implemented in the patch were derived from these and other player forums. If there's a nerf you don't like, head over to the beta forum and make a case against it. I know I did.

It needs to be action-point/turn-based, otherwise it's just an arcade style joke. I can't stand turn-based, personally - real combat isn't turn-based and playing a CRPG shouldn't feel like a board game. Still can't bring myself to enjoy the Divinity series because of the combat...it just looks and feels ridiculous. It's how I played all of the IE games, and how I was comfortable playing PoE, so it's a bit of a sticking point for me. The reason I stress the timing of the autopauses so much is for two reasons. Firstly, the current timing doesn't provide much information about your action's result. Second, I think it's the simplest solution to a more complex problem. As you've likely observed, normally, when you issue a command, the GUI gives you several indicators that it has registered, notably a little icon in the "what am I doing" circle on the left of a character's overhead/top left of their portrait. However, there seem to be a multitude of junctures where the action queues up, but the GUI will not acknowledge it until a bit of time has passed, leaving a sad, empty little circle. This gets especially bad if the action fails to queue, which it does at times, or in the case of movement, where even the green crosshairs will fail to appear when you first click. In general I feel the game does a very poor job of affording me a comfortable level of tactical control. Now, it looks like I could get around a lot of this through use of the fairly robust AI system. But I'm really pretty uninterested in the game playing itself, so ... yeah. YMMV. I guess I'm just not experiencing what you're observing with the GUI. Maybe ask in the tech support forum for some clarification on what causes hangups in the queue - if it's identified as a bug, great, but even if it's not maybe enough other people are bothered by it to justify a new patch feature or something.

Only if you're thinking of might in terms of muscle mass. If you think of it more in terms of ferocity, then you can RP it just fine - a little creative flexibility goes a long way. Barring that, you can still create an extremely powerful caster with 10-12 might by buffing perception instead. Higher might = more damage, higher perception = more spell hits/crits instead of misses/grazes. Especially on higher difficulty levels, the latter might be the more powerful approach.

Quick, somebody mod in a golf club unique

Does anyone now if they fixed the bug with Rogues losing Invis with DOT in this patch? thanks I've tested it (albeit not extensively) and it appears to be fixed. At the very least, DoT effects from poisons and deep wounds no longer break invisibility.

It sounds like you're using auto-pause after every resolved action - are you trying to simulate round/turn-based combat? If so, that's why it might feel a little clunky (I don't have enough experience with that style of gameplay to compare it to PoE1, so I can't really offer much insight there). On PotD, I play with auto-pause on trap detected, enemy sighted (for stealth), and combat start only. With combat speed turned slightly up, I then pause manually about every 1.5 - 2 seconds to issue commands/check results. So far, this has flowed really smoothly for me - you see actions happen fast and can then pause as soon as a spell/ability is done firing to queue up a new one or reposition. Alternatively, maybe your playstyle would benefit from turning combat speed down? Would give you more time to identify whether the action indicator lag is the result of the game or some state your character is in. Keep in mind that being interrupted prevents you from completing/queueing an action and does not show up as an affliction (interrupts can be found in the combat log). I totally agree with you about afflictions being awkward at first, but you eventually get used to them. It would be nice if they implemented an icon or color-coded system to these so that inspirations and afflictions could be more easily countered. There's actually a decent-looking mod that does exactly this: https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/32

This. I agree that the idea of DoTing the enemy and hiding is kind of silly. Everyone was freaking out about it, though. Now, those abilities have upfront damage bonuses to boot. So, even though I think backstab takes more work to succeed I think I understand this more. Now DoTs arent breaking stealth, or not as much anyway. You get damage bonuses on all the Actives, plus sneak bonus, plus backstab bonus, and you can DoT and hide. That is a lot of bonus damage even if they shaved some off of backstab. I'd have preferred DoTs kept breaking stealth, and rogues had to chose between stealth and DoTs. However, now everyone is going to ignore all upgrades without DoTs except maybe Confounding Blind, and that is only because CB can cause an enemy's deflection to hit the floor fast when combined with some focus fire. Everyone will get Arterial Strike, Pernicious Cloud, etc use them and stealth away. Before you could chose between burst and sustain damage. Now it might be muddled. I dunno. I see both sides of this, and am of two minds about it. I think it is a damned if you do, but damned if you dont scenario. I think they did this with some of the powerful solo multis in mind, forgetting how much it limits options for players who use a party and/or don't abuse stealth mechanics. I agree that stealth+DoT+stealth+walk away is still a use case for backstab, I just don't think that's how most people play (it's also not terribly fun). Given that so many rogue abilities grant stealth+movement, it seems clear that the developers intended an in-combat stealth build path focused on backstabs. It was barely viable before given the management needed; now it's severely underpowered imo. A backstab should be in devastating blow/soul annihilation territory – if it takes extra management or patience to pull off, it should feel satisfying when it hits.

I actually agree with most of the nerfs and changes in 1.1 (been playing on PotD and the difficulty is significantly improved); I just don't know why backstab - an ability that hardly defines powerbuilds the way swift flurry and cleaving stance/mob stance did - would need to be nerfed. 150% or maybe even 200% feels about right given what you have to go through re: micromanaging and combat time to get it. Right now, there's little reason not to use finishing/devastating blow (or most other full attack abilities for that matter) instead. I agree that the class does more damage overall, but the stealth aspect seems to have suffered. From a DPS standpoint, why take a single class assassin with smoke veil/shadowing beyond/other stealth abilities when you can run a streetfighter/devoted focusing on full attack abilities instead? Single class rogues were lackluster with a sizeable amount of useless abilities (withering strike, coordinated positioning, sap) to begin with - they didn't need their buffs to be balanced out with stealth nerfs.

Edit: double post

It looks like backstab has been reduced from +150% to +100% in the latest patch beta. If anything, I would have expected it to be buffed slightly given the following mechanics: 1. Using backstab with a single-class rogue as a combat opener is a considerable risk given that enemies tend to swarm the player afterward, typically necessitating the use of smoke veil/escape. 2. Using smoke veil during combat and setting up a backstab requires time you would otherwise spend building toward an auto-attack, so the net DPS gain is already less than it appears. 3. Smoke veil breaks engagement and often causes enemies to run off and engage another ally, further increasing the amount of time not doing damage as you either chase that enemy in stealth or position against a new one. 4. Now that it looks like a lot of the full attack rogue abilities have received a 25% damage bonus, the difference between setting up a backstab mid combat (primary attack) for +100% damage + 1x sneak attack isn't much better than using confounding blind and dual wield (full attack) against a flanked enemy for 2x +25% damage and 2x sneak attack for the same guile cost. While giving rogues a damage boost to full attack abilities helps them hit harder outside of stealth (which probably wasn't necessary), attempting to balance that boost by nerfing backstab reduces the incentive to use it within combat and hurts the flavor of the class (especially for assassins). Respectfully, either backstab should have a significantly larger increase to crit chance or be made innate with a subclass-modified bonus that increases with power level the way sneak attack does. Otherwise, I don't see much point in building a stealth-oriented rogue vs., say, a streetfighter at this point.

There really need to be more of these. Unique, unlearnable spells are one of the few motivators for regular grimoire swapping.

Very well said. I think some folks may enjoy Deadfire on their first playthrough or for its first dozen hours, but the game, as constituted, lacks the depth of the original in its combat/dungeon crawling experience. There is a lot to like about Deadfire outside of the combat, don't get me wrong. But, so much of the game and the character building revolves around how you perform in combat and dungeon crawls. And, that stuff just doesn't exist at the level of previous classics of the genre. I think as players attempt second playthroughs and witness how the game plays after the DLC's and likely increased levels, more and more folks will come around to seeing that the combat and the dungeons are just a shallow experience in Deadfire. I really hope Obsidian learns from this in a possible PoE3 (or, my ideal, a separate Eora set RPG). What's to say that the DLC's won't address the lack of dungeoneering rather than provide more of the same? Josh Sawyer is on record saying that he wished they had gotten more deep dungeons in the OC before release and the DLCs seem to point to single-location adventures. The first one takes the party into The Beyond, which doesn't sound like a whole lot of skipping around the Deadfire completing short quests. Given that DLCs are usually designed to provide players with experiences not offered by the base game, I would be extremely surprised if they didn't introduce one or more multi-level dungeons. I just hope they learned from endless paths that 15 levels are only impressive if there's something actually in them.

It's not a working game as there are many, many people who cant play it. That doesn't mean that it's broken for you personally, but as a whole, the game is broken. Every single PC game that has been released in the past 20 years (possibly ever) has had customers that couldn't run it. Go to any developer forum at release and you'll see various thread variations of "Can't run the game!" with people trying to help. The percentage of players who can't run the game is what speaks to problems of optimization/QA. I would probably guess that that percentage is higher for Obsidian games at release than for other developers, but unless you have some data showing an inordinate amount vs. the whole (Mac users were patched in the hotfix), then "broken" is hyperbole. It's not broken for me, for most of the users on these forums, and (as far as I've read) a single reviewer. I'm sorry you're having a negative experience and your perspective is valuable, but the relentless aggression really isn't necessary for making your case.

BG2 had this problem as well - they put in a fixed gold requirement to progress to chapter three, but it only took 2-3 side quests to achieve and it made no sense narratively to do any sidequests whatsoever afterward. I just use some headcanon - when Eothas tells you he'll meet you at Ashen Maw, I take it to mean that he's either literally waiting for you or has a ton of adra pillars to hit on the way. Hopefully once the difficulty is fixed the ships around the island will be level-prohibitive in their difficulty and encourage more side-content/levelling as well. It's still messy in terms of story-telling, but you can't have an open world with an urgent narrative and good side content without some narrative compromises.

I wish you wouldn't have to try so hard to make mutiny and other negative ship events happen. Given how easy ship management is, it should have something to do with the personalities you bring on board instead of just morale.

Maia's companion has the same problem, so I don't think it's an ability specific to the lion.

PotD gets much easier after around level 8-10 and is basically a cake walk after around level 14 (arguably earlier). As you get better passives and better gear, it should feel a lot less punishing. In the meantime, use resistance/immunity consumables and summon idols to better control engagements. As for ship boarding, try to find and recruit as many sidekicks as you can in addition to the main companions. They'll appear in the fight against the opposing crew.

That's...pretty neat actually. I never saw any clues in the game that a luminous adra potion could serve as a blood replacement for fampyrs - is it in the potion description or did I miss it in one of the quest dialogues? Also, would've loved to sneak out but my goodie two-shoes watcher has to save those captives. Interesting that they didn't turn hostile in your playthrough - we even had the same quest giver. Maybe it's disposition/reputation related? Either way, I'd really like to see this quest tightened up a little bit, especially given how all the other factions seem to have quests relating to it. RDC even asked me to "clear out Crookspur" several play sessions after I already did.

Definitely shouldn't be able to rest a screen away from a bunch of baddies without any chance of ambush. Doesn't make a lick of sense. This is the main thing that bothers me. It would be more immersive (even if it wouldn't do much for strategy) to at least restrict rest to maps without active enemies on them. Cleared dungeon levels, inns, the ship, the on-foot map, etc.

From what I've seen, all of the ranger pets currently fail to autoattack properly - you have to manually direct them towards a target each time their current target dies or breaks engagement. I would be surprised if this hasn't been tagged as a bug already, but if not you might want to report it in the tech support forum.

Exactly. If I'm buying a game with an M rating, I get upset if I don't see some FF nudity, hard drugs, gibs, and gratuitous expletives. Preferably at the same time.

There just aren't enough good spells at each level to justify a lot of grimoire switching - maybe on PoTD once it's tuned and spells need to be chosen more situationally, but otherwise players are going to pick their favorite spells at level up without too much influence from what's in their grimoire. Given that there are only 2 casts per level, they're probably not going to do a whole lot of experimenting with spells they didn't pick either (I know I didn't). If more grimoires had unique spells not available at level up or if they allowed you to cast the two spells from the power level above your current one, it would be a totally different story.

When you have a stash that can hold infinite items, players will assume that it can hold infinite canonballs. Easy fix would be to just prevent players from purchasing beyond the cap - it doesn't interfere with the goal of requiring resource management and it saves a headache for that one player who decides to buy 20k cannonballs at once thinking it will save him time.

What's really disgusting me is how freaking *many* of these "There are women doing things that I don't like women doing in this game!" so-called reviews have been showing up lately.Really makes me question my self-identity as a "gamer" when I see what's up with parts of gamer culture these days. I just don't understand why of all games it's this one that's getting ragged on for these reasons. So far this is like the least "political" game I've played all year. RPGs seem to be particularly vulnerable to this stuff for some reason. The worst I've seen was the Beamdog forums during the release of Siege of Dragonspear a few years ago. The devs included a minor NPC with two lines of dialogue about gender fluidity and gamergate launched a weeks-long review bombing campaign knocking the metacritic and GoG scores down to 3 (meanwhile: 7.5 among verified Steam purchases). The developer downsized and hasn't released any OC since. Yet it's somehow the "SJWs" who are still charicatured in the gaming community as the unreasonable value crusaders. Goes to show that gamergate was never really about combating censorship in gaming so much as fighting cultural change and representational diversity. I mean, I get it. When games have been made with no care for any demographic but yours for the past thirty years, it's hard to adapt when the industry *finally* notices that other people want to play too. Same thing is happening with comic books – a female Thor and a black Spiderman are always going to cause some people's heads to just explode. I was actually one of the people that had a problem with SoD. Now THAT was just virtue signaling garbage. It was embarassing. Don't get me started on the state of Marvel comics. It was two lines of dialogue + a cheeky Minsc bark. The rest was imagined by gamergate conspiracy theorists and has since been roundly debunked – I won't sift through it again here. Regardless, no team of developers should have to go through something like that over something so minimal. Go back sometime, read the **** that was said to and about Amber Scott, read the metacritic review spam, and honestly defend that reaction as proportional to the "offending" content. Gamergate has become everything that it claimed to hate about so-called "SJW's" — driven by victim/outrage politics, unreasonably prosecutorial, and finding cause for offense under every rock and behind every corner. OP practically wrote a manifesto on how a game that features cosmic space pigs and drug-addled monks is on a mission to emasculate him, FFS. That's not normal. Gamers should be able to criticize content they don't like without assuming a pervasive and malicious agenda behind every creative decision. This culturally aggrieved conspiracy mongering has been out of hand for a while now.