basketofseals
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Posts posted by basketofseals
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I don't understand why they removed accuracy from perception at all? Is not missing really OP? I feel like missing in just an annoyance rather than anything related to difficulty.
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Even the biggest monster needs 3 hits to kill 3 skeletons, but he might kill your phantom in 1 hit.
yeah, but in my experience the skeletons all immediately get murdered because they move around on their own and get hit by a ton of disengagement attacks. Phantom is much more preferable.
I dunno, I use Pause (space) and move (left click).
It's not like a I don't pause, but I also don't always immediately react to them spawning. Still, potentially wasting your invocation is pretty bad considering how infrequent you'll actually use them.
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Even the biggest monster needs 3 hits to kill 3 skeletons, but he might kill your phantom in 1 hit.
yeah, but in my experience the skeletons all immediately get murdered because they move around on their own and get hit by a ton of disengagement attacks. Phantom is much more preferable.
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I'm not expecting romance, but I was surprised there wasn't even an opportunity for any sex. I mean Hiravius even explicitly offers, you just can't say anything in response.
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I REALLY don't understand this trend of MMO style patches in single player games. If an ability isn't completely useless or horribly breaking a game, does it really need changing? I can adapt and change to patches easily, but I can't really say my experience has been improved by any patching.
Not sure that's actually what's going on here, even if the actual gameplay kind of feels somewhat MMOish at times. It's more like they are fixing issues that weren't noticed or simply not commented on as much when there were way less people (beta) playing the game. Or there were things that they didn't feel were quite right just prior to launch, but didn't have the time to fix yet. I don't really see it so much as a "nerfing" a class into the ground and more like actually bringing them closer in line to the other classes, so they aren't always the "obvious" choice for most situations.
I'm pretty sure what basketofseals pointed out is exactly what is going. This feels very much like the changes MMOs make: they're nerfing things which were powerful and buffing things which were weak in an effort to get more abilities to be close to average. I don't like it at all, but I've given up on any hope of the game being different in this regard. Despite having mechanics that are similar to Baldur's Gate 2 (six person party, real time with pause, etc.), the philosophy behind combat in this game (balance, items, etc.) is completely different from that of BG2 and is in fact very similar to that of MMOs. This patch is merely the logical extension of this philosophy.
Why act as if we are living in 1998 still, where one-and-done was about all you'd get? Do you honestly believe that if BG and BG2 had been developed just now that they wouldn't be getting similar treatment? Bioware has progressively been doing this with their more recent games as well.
Both of your posts just come off as whine posts, because you seem to enjoy using blatantly much stronger abilities to get you through the game and you don't want there to be parity among classes. Even with these changes, you still have classes like the Chanter, Ranger and Paladin. Would you rather they remained as bad as they are, just so you can keep playing with the same "broken" abilities?
Balance has nothing to do with competition in this case, aside from the fact that there are multiple classes vying for your attention. It seems to me that you would be fine with having just three or four classes in the game that are super strong, instead of having nine or eleven that are comparatively strong. The former sounds super boring to me. Plus, why did they even bother creating the other classes if no one is going to care about using them? This isn't like the previous IE like games where you had a very large pool of classes to draw from. Even if a handful truly stunk, you still had a wide selection of those that didn't.
I would like to state that I am on PotD and using cleric PC, Aloth, Eder, Kana, Hiravius, and Sagani. I am in no way using super OP abilities/classes, and I stated that changing outliers was fine. What I merely stated was that I feel that doing incredibly nit picky details such as nerfing stag horn damage is waste of development which should go towards fixing the problematic classes like Ranger and Palading.
What's wrong with Chanter?
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I REALLY don't understand this trend of MMO style patches in single player games. If an ability isn't completely useless or horribly breaking a game, does it really need changing? I can adapt and change to patches easily, but I can't really say my experience has been improved by any patching.
Not sure that's actually what's going on here, even if the actual gameplay kind of feels somewhat MMOish at times. It's more like they are fixing issues that weren't noticed or simply not commented on as much when there were way less people (beta) playing the game. Or there were things that they didn't feel were quite right just prior to launch, but didn't have the time to fix yet. I don't really see it so much as a "nerfing" a class into the ground and more like actually bringing them closer in line to the other classes, so they aren't always the "obvious" choice for most situations.
Most of these changes are actually improvements to classes anyway. In the case of the Cipher; they already far outclassed most classes at everything other than tanking anyway. Even with their changes, they're still going to be one of the "must have" classes for a group. This game isn't balanced around solo anyway.
Yes, but as a single player game, what does it matter to me how "balanced" a game is? I'm not competing against anyone, so what does it matter?
I'm not talking about changes to things that are completely over/underwhelming and making them less so, but things like nerfs to fan of flames and stag horn are really the kind of nitpicky things that I feel design time would be spent better elsewhere.
Also there is no "must haves" in this game. The game is easy enough even on hard mode with the default companions. I also roleplay pretty strictly, so I'm even leaving a ton of sidequests/XP/items behind, and it's STILL easy. If people are worried about heavy min/maxing, they're gonna blow through the game with no problem even with minor nerfs.
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I REALLY don't understand this trend of MMO style patches in single player games. If an ability isn't completely useless or horribly breaking a game, does it really need changing? I can adapt and change to patches easily, but I can't really say my experience has been improved by any patching.
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poorly - more often than not
The biggest issue is most of the time the rest of my players going mental about killing him/her though. I also hate that I can't heal a dominated character. WHY NOT? Is my god suddenly telling me I can't heal my friend who's temporarily enslaved under a flying insect? However, for no apparent reason whatsoever, I CAN and WILL heal the Troll that I've temporarily confused, which will turn back to it's previous favourite passtime of dwarf-kicking in an instant. Why... whyyyyyy *sob*
It bugs me that the game's AI just isn't smart enough to know the differences between real enemies and team mates who have been charmed, etc. Members of the party should be smart enough to NOT blindly attack charmed team mates, at least without a direct order from the player.
And it should be possible to heal charmed team mates as well, I suppose.
What they SHOULD do is follow the "no auto attack" option we can toggle. From what I can tell, this either does absolutely nothing, or is very spotty as best.
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Was I playing DnD wrong? How was magic missile overpowered? You only gained one extra missile every other level.
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"He is useful in combat" sounds like a good roleplaying justification.
Equally, Durance has a mysterious past. Is your character not in the least curious?
I'm not the LEAST bit curious. In fact, I don't think I could be LESS curious.
I just escaped a town with a giant murder tree on display with two new friends who were both about to be murdered by the town residents. I want nothing more to put some road between my new pals and some dude next to a burning statue who rants about gods.
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I'm a little depressed how important everyone is making Durance seem. I really couldn't think of a roleplay angle why I would possibly want to take him a long.
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Not that I've found so far. Just give them a range weapon of any kind. You're gonna encounter mobs you don't really want to waste spell casts on anyway.
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edit: This is to Luckmann
You're all over the place; Eder losing a couple points of intellect because a couple of his fighter abilities lose duration is breaking the character and a travesty but Durance gaining a couple points of intellect which increases the duration of basically every spell he has is breaking the character and a travesty. I'm not sure you're looking at this fairly.
You're not reading his point right. Moving any stat points from character RP vision to satisfy their mechanical needs (Eder more tanky. Durance more aoe-y) is travesty against the RP.
Not said that I agree with it though, as for me the attribute distribution of companions is more of a testament to the fact their stats were set before attribute changes of post-v435, not because of RP only. So they do need minor tweaking. But some stuff should not be touched (eg. being Durance's 19 resolve which crucially ties to the way his character behaves).
From RP point I don't mind Eder losing some Int, he has his wisdom but in the end he is a bit of a half-wit farmboy.. Nor do I grieve after Durance losing some PER, not really what determined him as a person, being perceptive.
I disagree (obviously); Durance is actually quite perceptive, but he doesn't care for the arguments or merits (or de-merits) of the issues. He calls them as he sees them and is adamant as to the solution and direction. This might not be entirely true, at the end of the day, considering his clear crisis of faith, but it is how he presents himself and it is.. well.. his character.
The fact that he has problems dealing with these things is precisely because he's not an intellectual, he's a firebrand.
The same goes for Edér; he's not an academic, but he's clearly a person that does think a lot, and sometimes comes across almost as a philospher, wondering if it was all worth it, and considering what could've been, and so on. The exact thinking that Durance absolutely do not convey, at least not at first, and at least he has a harder time dealing with it.
The Attribute System should've been fixed, not the characters compromised.
Keep in mind that intelligence in this game is a combined wisdom/int RP wise. I see no reason why Durance gaining more into is breaking character.
Hiravias's current int score goes against his character, and his new stat spread fits him better. He was formally trained in a circle of druids, why would his intelligence be one of the lowest?
Sagani's new stat spread make her a more efficient ranger, which is something she is. Her new perception I feel matches her alright. She can see the details others gloss over, but she blinds herself when she believes something she suspects is false.
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First, the game is designed to be spread over 20 levels. If it doesn't work over 10 of those, it is poorly designed, regardless of whether or not you, personally, like to play at those levels. The game comes with a list of spells, if you have to gut that list to make it balanced, the list was poorly designed. That you can choose to not play at certain levels or with certain aspects of a game does not reflect on it's balance, it reflects on the patch job you can do after the fact.
Also, quick notes: There may or may not be SoDs at low level, without cheese, but there are Save or Suck spells that will do just as good of a job at invalidating encounters. Also, I don't have these problems with my group, but we don't play D&D either: it's a rather poorly designed game.
You're thinking too narrowly about a wizard's capabilities as well. They don't need to escape from fights, they can just use a nightmare to astral project into the material plane to fight with impunity. Look up some of the discussions on breaking wizards, I don't think you have a good grasp on just what the class is capable of.
How fun a game is to play with your group of friends isn't relevant when discussing how well designed the game is, because you aren't actually discussing the game: you're discussing your friends. Nearly any game can be fun to play with a good group. If you use that as your standard, you'll never be able to say anything meaningful about game design, because you won't even be talking about it. Tell me what 3.5 and it's wizards let your group do that a more balanced system or a system that's more focused on wizardry, rather than trying to balance it with more restricted mundane combat, can't do better. Where do the mechanics stop being a hindrance and start helping?
I never said wizards need to be underpowerd, but the chassis they're using is poorly designed and it will continue to cause problems. Spells that are balanced per day, by necessity, need to be stronger than abilities that are balanced per encounter. However, there's no real way to predict how those spells will be spent, so if a player can hold off using them, they'll just curbstop any relevant fights by dumping a full days worth of power into them. At the same time, because a wizard has all these really powerful abilities, they don't have any other powers; so they're really boring to play when you're not using your crazy powers. The fact that resting is basically unlimited and at will in PoE just exacerbates this. One of the things devs can try to do to limit this is reduce the power and/or the scope of the spells wizards have available, but this tends to result in the truck loads of useless spells you commented on.
In this game, you can't act on a per day scale, so abilities shouldn't be balanced on that scale, but that's exactly what the wizard is trying too do and there is no good reason for it.
The game is not designed to be spread over 20 levels. The framework for those levels, monsters, and encounters are there, but never even in my longest campaigns have I ever gone from level 1-20. If you want to argue that's poor design, that's fine, but that's a difference of opinion. I see it as just another playground. I'm sure there's plenty of people who have fun with their all wizard duels at levels 15-20, but I'm fine in my 3-10 sandbox. That's offering a variety of experience and catering to different crowds. I feel like that's good game design. If you're basing whether it's good design or not based on the highest of levels with the most broken of strategies, then we simply don't look at DnD the same way. For me, DnD is a framework that my friends and I can play pretend with. It is NOT a game to be beaten.
If that doesn't convince you of anything, then let's simply agree to disagree.
Now you say that wizards are problematic based on their per day spell casting system. What do you think about every other class? Druids use the same system, but they do far more damage than a wizard can pull out early game, and I would argue are more useful all game. Not to mention they are unstoppably strong in the early levels with their spiritshift, and naturally higher survivalability. Ciphers can cast repeatedly and are resource based. Is that better designed? Personally I find ciphers too strong.
Druids and clerics can access their entire spell repetoir while the wizard is limited to 4 spells per level AND he needs to find access to these spells. Shouldn't a wizard's limited palette mean he should have stronger tools?
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If you're finding a wizard consistently overtaking your non-magical classes, then that's simply a problem with your DM. Your campaign is either lasting too long, your starting level is too high, or you're not having enough encounters per day. Perhaps you need more non-combat problems within your campaign too.
Of course a wizard will be broken if you have two or three fights per day and they're at the level where they can drop twice as many fireballs, but the strength of your non-magical classes is that they don't quickly run out of steam. Save or die spells in particular were quite high level the last edition I played.
What DnD boils down to is having fun though. If you don't enjoy wizards in your party, that's fine, but a lot of people do find them fun. I'm a cleric/druid person, and I love having wizards in my party, and none of my friends who prefer warriors/rangers/barbarians ever have any complaint.
I also don't see why this means wizards have to be not so great in this game. The truly ridiculous stuff I've seen come from wizards is stuff that has to go through the DM. The caster classes in this game, although DnD inspired, fit more typical RPG roles. There's nothing to stop them from giving wizards in this game a balanced tool kit.
Are you beggining by declaring the upper half of the game unplayable because of wizard scaling? That really doesn't help your argument. Neither do appeals to enough fights. Wizards have spells that let them control how many fights they get into, assuming they're even bothering to attack from the same plain of existence. Also, Fire ball is one of their more balanced spells, it is not the problem. The problem is there SoDs and SoSs, because they don't need to play the damage game.
Your second paragraph has nothing to do with the mechanics of the game. It's completely irrelevant to how well the class is designed.
The wizard in D&D being terribly designed doesn't mean that the wizard in this game has to be to, but if you base the wizard in this game on that wizard it's going to be, because you're basing it on something that's poorly designed.
There is no "upper half of the game" in Dungeons and Dragons because the players decide the scope of the game. You don't need be saving the world every campaign. If you don't like save or die spells, then you should play in a campaign where you won't get to them. I don't believe there are any low level save or die spells, but if there are, please tell me. My knowledge of DnD is most likely out of date. If you really hate them, you could always just ban them, or choose not to use them yourself. If your party members are making the game that unfun for you, perhaps you should seek a different group?
Wizards can indeed escape from fights at their leisure, but the campaign should have some fights that you CAN get away from, but shouldn't. If your party is on the defense, such as defending a town from a bandit raid, then escaping means failing your objective. Same for assaulting a location in order to kill/rescue a certain person or to obtain a certain object. Escaping from one of those means your objective will likely not be there when you return.
I would say what I said about them being fun IS relevant to how well its designed. Some people DO like wizards how they are, and DnD isn't a competitive game, so I see no harm in them being unbalanced. My experience with DnD is improved with wizards simply existing, so I believe them to be well designed. Is there any reason I shouldn't think of it that way?
Wizards don't need to be underpowered in this game because they're based on DnD wizards. Your main problem seems to be their ridiculous spells that simply bypass mechanics completely, but this game doesn't need to have those. Wizards in PoE are just simply filled with too much junk spells. Almost every buff spell is unusably bad either by undertuning or just bad design. Plenty of damage spells are horribly undertuned as well. Wizards have the traditional fantastically bad early game without the carrot on a stick that is their usual higher level repetoir. This is especially noticable by everyone because the first companion you get is a wizard with one usuable spell. I'm convinced at this point that wizards are just bad druids.
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The yellow part of the cone doesn't deal friendly fire damage. With high intelligence, you can actually make the yellow part pretty big. I find myself fan of flaming through my front line and hitting all the enemies that cluster around Eder.
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The best advice I can give you is to murder shades before they get to do anything. If you have a druid, a cipher, or another wizard, you can position yourself so that you can immediately AoE them down when they get into range. If you can't burst them, then I'd suggest coming back later.
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As of todays new patch none of Wizards t1/2 are that good tho, making his progression far more underwhelming than release version.
Druid/Cipher were already a bit better, now they are more so.
Fan of Flames and Chill Fog are still top tier 1st level spells. The patch didn't even touch the former. Eldritch Aim also a great spell, but mostly for higher difficulties.
2nd-levels though, have always been a bit underwhelming. Merciless Gaze and Fetid Caress are the only ones I ever find myself using.
Is chill fog not great anymore after the patch?
What other spells are good? There's so many spells that are disgustingly undertuned like necrotic lance.
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You get more spell levels as you level up, which means you also get more casts. Once you reach a certain level, 1st and 2nd level spells become per encounter instead of per rest. also there's items and talents that can increase the number of casts you have per spell level.
What level is this?
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If you're finding a wizard consistently overtaking your non-magical classes, then that's simply a problem with your DM. Your campaign is either lasting too long, your starting level is too high, or you're not having enough encounters per day. Perhaps you need more non-combat problems within your campaign too.
Of course a wizard will be broken if you have two or three fights per day and they're at the level where they can drop twice as many fireballs, but the strength of your non-magical classes is that they don't quickly run out of steam. Save or die spells in particular were quite high level the last edition I played.
What DnD boils down to is having fun though. If you don't enjoy wizards in your party, that's fine, but a lot of people do find them fun. I'm a cleric/druid person, and I love having wizards in my party, and none of my friends who prefer warriors/rangers/barbarians ever have any complaint.
I also don't see why this means wizards have to be not so great in this game. The truly ridiculous stuff I've seen come from wizards is stuff that has to go through the DM. The caster classes in this game, although DnD inspired, fit more typical RPG roles. There's nothing to stop them from giving wizards in this game a balanced tool kit.
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"To be fair. D&D wizards do represent many, many, things wrong with class design."
D&D wizards represent the awesomesauce of class design. They are perfect the way they are.
I'm just going to assume you're trolling.
I don't really see what's wrong with wizards. They're a pretty cool class, and I enjoy seeing the silly hijinks my more creative friends get into.
If Pillars of Eternity had romances
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
You're comparing a well written romantic partner to an image to fap to. Of course you have no clue why someone would want a ROLEPLAYING outlet in a ROLEPLAYING GAME