knownastherat

It does not serve me so it does not serve everyone, but I do admit we are in the realm of semantics now.

From where I sit, he is certainly hell-bent on the notion that "balance", in single player RPG, is important. I will reiterate, for those who have not read it from me yet, that while who (vocal) majority and (vocal) minority is, is probably impossible to determine, it's possible to determine whether the majority will get to experience "balance" or not. I would guess, that majority will not, simply because the majority will be done with the game long before "balance" will be achieved. If this assumption is true, Josh Sawyer, does not have a rational argument to try to "balance" after the majority played it already. I can only extrapolate and hope that he numbers for PoE are going to be replicated by replicated by Deadfire. If that's the case, though, 80%-90% of the eventual owners have yet to buy Deadfire, probably much later. (PoE has ~1.3m owners on Steam, Deadfire 100-200k. GDPR blurred those numbers quite a bit, hence the range for Deadfire.) That might be an Obsidian specific effect (usually, games make 80%-90% of there revenue in the first 2-3 weeks), or it might mean that Deadfire is anything but a commercial success. I'm disinclined to belief the latter is the case, and if I'm right, the numerical majority is going to benefit from a proper balance introduced over time. Just checked Pillars of Eternity owner numbers here, considering that it doesn't show the first four months, there is a more or less straight line starting at less than 200k, going up to 1.3m. Thanks for the link. Owners are those who own the game*, not necessarily the same people who play the game and "Players every day" hint at this difference. It is pretty safe to say that by Jan 16 majority of all owners owned the game. --- edit: who purchased the license, which is different from ownership.

In fairness, that letter written by Sawyer is framed in a very biased and inaccurate manner. For example, he statement " Which set of changes do you think I heard more feedback about? If you guessed the marginal drop in proc rate on the soulbound item that had only worked properly for two weeks, you’d be right." is...intellectually dishonest. The dagger in question had it's proc rate dropped from 10% to 3%; that's not "marginal", that's 2/3rds of it's bonus proc percentage. But acknowledging that doesn't hep the narrative Sawyer is trying to frame, so he implies that it's a smaller change than it actually is. The whole thing is full of stuff like that; it's not an honest discussion of why Sawyer believes these things so much as it is a justification for his view of game systems. To be completely fair, this is not aimed directly at Josh Sawyer. I used to work with him as external QA and I can tell you that he's not a tyrant hell-bent on his own concept. Quite the opposite, he's very open to reasonable suggestions. I have nothing against balance itself, but I strongly believe it should be mostly completed before the title is released. Small tweaks after that are fine. Completely overhauling the game a month after it launches is just.. mean? From where I sit, he is certainly hell-bent on the notion that "balance", in single player RPG, is important. I will reiterate, for those who have not read it from me yet, that while who (vocal) majority and (vocal) minority is, is probably impossible to determine, it's possible to determine whether the majority will get to experience "balance" or not. I would guess, that majority will not, simply because the majority will be done with the game long before "balance" will be achieved. If this assumption is true, Josh Sawyer, does not have a rational argument to try to "balance" after the majority played it already. I kind of like when artists are hell-bent, have their own ideas about stuff, but I also like when they are intellectually honest about it. Also, let's not forget that metaphysics never proved anything. In other words, there is no truth about the importance of balance to be found here, there are just more sophisticated arguments and less sophisticated ones. Wanna know who the majority is? Do the research, it's pointless to argue over.

Meaningful .. well, I tend to agree. If there is no use for having a very high skill, say around 20, why have the option to increase it to 20? I can only speculate but to me it seems the developers (and not only them) are not fond of min/maxing and base balance around this attitude. This restrains variety and niche, admittedly powerful, builds. I mean if dumping stat below 10, for example, is not desirable, do not give the option. However, if there is such option, it should come with benefit and cost. This is choice and consequence, the motto, in my understanding, of PoE.

Most players wouldn't have 200-210 deflection so that extra +5 looks weak to them. If you balance most items around total stacking and power builds these items will all look unattractive to 99% of players.+10. The armor itself gives +5 right from the start and can go up to +10 with enough skill points. +10 is a great value for an armor. 200 was an extreme example. Every tank would profit from +10 to deflection from something that's not a cape, weapon, a shield or a ring. I don't think that this item is only useful for 1% of builds. It's useful for every build that has decent deflection - so most tanks. First of all, the game tooltip should state clearly how it scales. Secondly, the way I read the statement you quoted is: +5 it's not worth to bother with simply because for the vast majority of players it's inconsequential. Lastly, when I say something like: everyone profits from +1 deflection, it is an irrefutable statement. The point here, however, is that for a heavy investment one gets very little in return. Lets consider following example: Player A buys PoE Deadfire, as soon as s/he finds Cadhu Scalth, which is pretty early, reads its description: Heavy Shard: +3 Deflection (improves with Atheltic skill). S/he continues playing, investing everything in Athletics because s/he wants the improvement, only to find out at the end that with Athletics at max. s/he got 5 points extra deflection. I do not know about her/him but I would be quite disappointed, despite +5 Deflection is useful for every tank. This reminds me of the infamous "lootboxes" .. has a chance to contain this or that. It never says what the chance is because if it would, they would not sell as well as they do.

Mostly because it pretty much couldn't happen by accident. YMMV, I suppose. What do you mean by accident? Did pre 1.1 recovery on DoC breastplate happen by accident? If its possible to stack defenses so high that it makes a player untouchable, how figurines, per rest bonuses, and empower matter? I do not understand what matrix you use to determine what needs to be balanced and whatnot. Seems to me it does not have a rational base. Clarification: it couldn't happen to a player by accident. The only way a run like this would realistically happen is if the player made a conscious choice to do so, at which point you're really metagaming so intensely that you may as well be allowed to see what happens. (As a general word of advice, I would hesitate to ascribe motive to an opinion without a significant base of evidence, were I you.) As a general advice, I would hesitate to use strawman in an argument. What motive? If there is rational base feel free to present it. Cute and fun is not rational base.

Mostly because it pretty much couldn't happen by accident. YMMV, I suppose. What do you mean by accident? Did pre 1.1 recovery on DoC breastplate happen by accident? If its possible to stack defenses so high that it makes a player untouchable, how figurines, per rest bonuses, and empower matter? I do not understand what matrix you use to determine what needs to be balanced and whatnot. Seems to me it does not have a rational base.

It's not clear to me indeed, how +160 defenses is cute and fun.

Is this .. balanced?

I am a productive contributor. A contributor who points out that notion of constant tinkering, and mythical balance, will make the game more fun to play is false because it will not.

Of course not, and I did not claim it is. I claimed that: The problem, of assessing effectiveness, is as simple as observing players behavior as players will, if their number is large and number of trials is large enough, always find the most effective ways to use tools available, which is just obvious. As far as the vocal minority, out of the total number of players who play(ed), who post here. First of all, I have to reiterate the question I've been asking since PoE: What is the point of constant tinkering since only minority will experience it? Secondly, unless we will have some data, which we do not, we can only speculate how others who do not post here play their game. What we know is that players, some of them posting here, figured out very quickly what is effective and what not. Beginning with the person who speedran it in 26 mins to players who posted their Fighter/Monk/Paladin builds and we will likely never hear from them again. Lastly, that some people figured out how, in their own words, to cheese by, for example, abusing PL and poison and withdraw should not, in my opinion, be even considered as a matter requiring attention simply because who would play like that? 0.001% of players? It's not worth the time and energy to bother with. This is a game, not a timeless piece of poetry to be cherished by the future generations. I find this perspective inane. The difference between a decent game, and a great game, is that people didn't stop and say "this is good enough for 50.1% of players out there" but rather tinkered until it was the the very best version of itself that it could be. I honestly don't understand how one could love video games and not want video games to be tinkered with so they could be improved. I wish games long gone/abandoned could be tinkered with and have updated balance patches. Also, for your final quip, video games have only been around for a few decades. It hasn't had time to have the legs that poetry has had. But when we talk about board games... chess, go, chinese chess have had longer legs than entire civilizations, to say nothing about the art that those civilizations produced, and a game like chess has been tinkered with over literally centuries (did you know originally the queen moved identically as the king instead of being the most powerful piece on the board?). I don't think many people still play System Shock or System Shock 2 anymore (and the # of people who played them at the time were so low that Looking Glass Studios had to shutter), but virtually every AAA game that is a first-person-shooter with rpg-y-spellcast-y elements, story told by audio logs and an absent narrator, stealthing, with optionally a hacking component owes itself to SS and SS2 and the care and talent that was put into them, and game designers know this because they were the ones playing SS and SS2 at the time (which is why you see the code 0451 or 451 in so many genre-similar games). So let's not be so disingenuously dismissive of something that has been around for less time than, say, film. Well, I guess I am old school. Back in time, a game was released as more or less a final product. It was either a good game or not. No constant tinkering was possible due to several reasons, mainly technological. I do not believe that constant tinkering makes today's games more fun, or better, than games made decades ago. Speaking of System Shock, which is indeed and in my opinion one of the greatest games ever made. How many updates it got? Video games, unlike chess, are heavily reliant on technology which makes them vulnerable to technological progress. Some games do define genres or introduce groundbreaking stuff and such games will probably go to annals of history to be remembered, not played, by the future generations. Pillars of Eternity is not such game. It is a spiritual successor of such game - Baldur's Gate. How many updates Baldur's Gate got? Who cared about "broken" stuff in Baldur's Gate? What made Baldur's Gate so great? When I asked about the reason for constant tinkering in PoE I was told that its to polish the mechanics for future use. Well, from where I sit it did not work out all that well.

Of course not, and I did not claim it is. I claimed that: The problem, of assessing effectiveness, is as simple as observing players behavior as players will, if their number is large and number of trials is large enough, always find the most effective ways to use tools available, which is just obvious. As far as the vocal minority, out of the total number of players who play(ed), who post here. First of all, I have to reiterate the question I've been asking since PoE: What is the point of constant tinkering since only minority will experience it? Secondly, unless we will have some data, which we do not, we can only speculate how others who do not post here play their game. What we know is that players, some of them posting here, figured out very quickly what is effective and what not. Beginning with the person who speedran it in 26 mins to players who posted their Fighter/Monk/Paladin builds and we will likely never hear from them again. Lastly, that some people figured out how, in their own words, to cheese by, for example, abusing PL and poison and withdraw should not, in my opinion, be even considered as a matter requiring attention simply because who would play like that? 0.001% of players? It's not worth the time and energy to bother with. This is a game, not a timeless piece of poetry to be cherished by the future generations.

Ideally, the devs would have access to data directly from games played and make decisions about balancing with such data in mind. Regardless of what we write here, for example, whether summoned weapons should be buffed or not, the devs would know exactly whether or not players use summoned weapons. The problem, of assessing effectiveness, is as simple as observing players behavior as players will, if their number is large and number of trials is large enough, always find the most effective ways to use tools available. Of course, the dev can gather feedback by reading players reactions here or elsewhere, but such reactions are necessarily more or less biased, inaccurate and harder to decipher than data gathered in-game.

In-game description of Drugs reads: "..., but when the effects wear off, the user suffers penalty ... ". Now we can argue senselessly whether "suspend" implies "wearing off". I would say it does but that is pretty much irrelevant. The question, however, is what purpose (drug) crush penalties when hit by Arcane Dampener while under influence of drugs serve? I do understand that suspending beneficial effects has a purpose but I am not sure at all getting crush penalties after being hit by AD does. I reality, in game-play, it will force the player to rest, and buff her/himself and party. So it might happen that with such mechanic in place players will rest more than usual, being buffed more than usual, being stronger more than usual. Is this the, intended, purpose?

Off the top of my head, at work atm - Barbaric Blow damage bonus was decreased by 5% Berserker lost access to second upgrade to blood frenzy and both spirit frenzy upgrades I believe that not being able to see Frenzy upgrades is just a bug (sometimes) showing up when creating a character.

@Esajin: Berath's Blessing gives +2 only to class skills. For solo I'd use all Blessings and invest in Stealth 3, +1 from Raider, to get to 5 (have not tried it with 4) with Theifs putty, for any class. The other options are to get lucky with ingredients and craft Potion of Invisibility, Scroll of Withdraw and kite/split. The gunpowder barrel is indeed a major factor in the fight, however, I'd stealth around it simply because there is not much to be gained from fighting it.

Stars?

You will need to upgrade your ship to progress at some point. There is good and expensive gear at vendors you can afford. Depends what you are looking for

No this isn't ridiculous - it's feedback for a beta patch. Stealth should not be a requirement for an encounter that is over tuned. As an option it's fine. I've done it before by cheesing the pathing - doesn't mean that it's properly tuned. Stealth is not a requirement. People posted here about beating the encounter. Your feedback seems to be: It's too difficult for me and the reasons are: 1. its overtuned and 2. my Skald is too weak, which was proved as false claim in both cases. I do not really care about your cheesing. You claimed to play on Trial of Iron, and when failed (as expected because without prior knowledge it's very improbable) you admit to cheese the perma death with Trial of Alt+F4. Your arguments are invalid and their intellectual integrity questionable. While you can repeat your "overtuned" and call it feedback, it does not make it true. There is always story mode.

Gorecci Street quest (giver) indicates for a peaceful solution .. to help keep order .. states the quest (giver). If Ilari gets killed Savia notes this again. Overtuned or not .. just dont fight them and move on ffs. This is getting ridiculous.

I also prefer BG2. Load 3x Lower Resistances to Spell Trigger, load x3 Greater Malisons to Spell Sequencer, walk to a dragon -> trigger -> sequencer -> Polymorph Other and a dragon is a squirrel. Since its hops around -> Ray of Enfeeblement.

Of course, nerfs hit "casuals" most simply because they, for whatever reason, do not metagame but play a game. IIRC the solution for casuals, who were happy with being strong even on PotD, echoed on this board before the nerfs was: Play story mode. I bet in story mode Helwalker still owns. So instead of creating content, fixing bugs, adding QoL features, or even working on a new project, we gonna have endless balancing as this makes "someone" apparently very happy. Personally, I don't care if this or that is nerfed simply because once my character becomes too powerful I restart with another, just I cant get to my head what the problem with being strong is because its a choice.

With them awaits the Gunpowder barrel. It's doable, without hirelings, 3 skulls or not, period.

The number of skulls doesn't matter, boars are merely bodies. They have a slow attack speed, a slow attack animation, a slow movement speed and they don't have engagement, so they can be evaded and kited around. Also give Eder Xoti's chain mail, boars do pierce damage and these guys overpenetrate his saint scale armor. He can now tank 30% better The skulls absolutely does matter because it impacts their defenses and accuracy. You aren’t going to beat that fight with 3 skull boars swarming you with story companions only and a chanter PC I would have to tinker with the settings but I don’t use mods so it must have something to do with scaling - I’m about to get there in a no scaling job so we will see how it goes this time That’s a good tip for the armor type though for sure Just tried it with scaling, since I've learned this: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/101735-something-i-havent-seen-mentioned-about-new-patch/, and second try against 3 skulls with Skald and companions.