scrotiemcb

Chuck Norris killed a lich with his bare hands. When he was seven years old. Take that, Leonidas.

BG2 isn't a big deal. It was a big deal. If it was a big deal currently, we'd be playing BG2 instead of PoE. I guess I should add: whether Eternity honors its pledge to pay homage to BG2 is currently a big deal.

+3 Weapons are needed. Nope. Please explain why I would NEED +3 weapons.

The whole game is great except for the part where you actually play it.

In my previous post I originally wrote "...the per-rest abilities may as well be removed..." This was understating things. If you make everything per-encounter there isn't enough design space remaining to have 11 classes which feel district and interesting. Fixing rest is vital to keeping the per-rest CLASSES in the game in a meaningful way; if it never gets fixed, I'd say caster classes should just be outright axed, not have their abilities rebalanced.

Why fix balance if the community would do it for you? Not to mention there is almost certainly more than one enjoyable, extremely balanced design possible, each with its own target demographic? Mods. They are awesome. Hell, why even be a single-player computer game otherwise?

I tentatively disagree. First off, there is nothing wrong with the design of a class which is meant to be used more like a renewable source of wands and potions, rather than expend all resources every fight. You might not enjoy that playstyle, but that's why there are other classes which can give their all every fight. So while I could get behind an argument that SOME classes should not rely on per-rest abilities, I cannot agree that ALL classes shouldn't. Per-rest abilities should be powerful. They should be things you cannot do every single fight. The idea of nerfing Wizard spells while simultaneously making them per-encounter would just make every class feel boringly similar. However, it should be self-evident that the very core of a per-rest system is the rest system. How the game handles resting is going to have a huge impact on classes using the "living wand" concept. And in a way, it is just tedium. But that is its CURRENT state, not its only possible configuration. As it stands now, per-rest is balanced more against a tedium cost imposed on the player than it is around actual resource management (unless you consider tedium a resource). If you need to rest you just camp, without any risk of getting surprised in your sleep. If you run out of camping supplies you just retreat back to an inn, safe in the knowledge that the retreat path is safe. The current rest system is, indeed, less rational than no rest system at all. You can make any per-rest into a per-encounter if you're willing to sit through enough monotony. But I don't believe the answer is to just cut the per-rest mechanic completely. I think the answer is to put hard or soft prohibitions on retreats so the tedium isn't an option anymore, allowing per-rest abilities to be rebalanced along a per-dungeon concept. Why? Variety. Nothing more or less than having different classes feel very different from each other... yet, hopefully, roughly equal in effectiveness. But, hey, if Obsidian ever comes out saying they will never, ever prevent players from abusing the rest system, then suddenly you're right, and per-rest classes may as well be removed from the game.

Two most important things: - bug fixes - better modding Balance changes are a distant third. Modders could fix balance and add content faster than Obsidian could ever hope, if Obsidian would but open the door.

Emphasis mine. The answer is simple: variety. Different classes should feel different; otherwise, why have different classes? Balance is supposed to be the handmaiden of variety. First, you make two things wildly different, then you balance them such that both are viable. The end result is two (or more) wildly different but (roughly) equally viable alternatives. But I feel all too often people begin to believe that sameness is the means to balance, as if balance is some form of end-in-itself. Thus, in the name of balance, you have players crusading against variety and fun. Wizards shouldn't lose the books. They need the books; it is what makes them wizards. If you ask me, wizards need 3 things: 1. Prepared, rather than spontaneous, spells using the Grimoire as an interface. That's right, even more spellcasting restrictions. 2. Powerful magic. Wizards are the animancers of the setting and you should feel that power in a Wizard's spells. 3. Metamagic. Again, the Grimoire could be an interface for this. Oh, and while we're at it, Druid shouldn't get to know its whole spell list, either. They should get spontaneous casting (to be different than Wizards) but have a limited number of spells known (to be different from Priests). In general, it shouldn't be "hey, let's have the same systems for everybody." In fact, the opposite: let us have each class use radically different systems than the others.

@Concordance: Nice post. This isn't beta, so even if the community delivers good feedback (on what I consider to be a multitude of gameplay problems), it could possibly be too late. However, there is one thing which I still want to have added to the game: better modding support. Give players the capability to correct gameplay problems on their own time. After all, if we didn't want mods we'd be on consoles.

You might also be interested in Choice, Happiness, and Spaghetti Sauce, which explains why one shouldn't try to incorporate every data point of feedback into a single product in an effort to please everyone. Not quite the same topic as "what feedback is valid." For example, the first video relates to why luzarius' posts on sexuality are probably valid feedback despite their rudeness; the second, why Obsidian probably should let some other developer make "big breast supermodel" cRPGs.

we already said that it ain't. Okay. I just wouldn't want any derails to occur accidentally.Apparently I forgot about Poe's Law again.

we already said that it ain't. Okay. I just wouldn't want any derails to occur accidentally.

Constructive criticism is overrated. I do not say this as an opinion. It is scientific fact. Here's a YouTube video explaining it: Kind of long but worth it. The conclusion is this: if you ask a bunch of non-experts to provide solutions for problems as part of their feedback, not only will they give you poor solutions (they're not game designers), the thought process behind trying to find solutions will actually corrupt their feedback. If you were or are expecting the community to deliver ready-made solutions to Obsidian to fix their game, you are greatly exaggerating our role in the process. The forums should be seen as a strawpoll, not an open-mic night for game designers. Its primary function during a beta should be terse posts saying when something is good or when something is bad. Sounds to me like the backer beta people may have been a tad rude, but otherwise doing what they were supposed to: saying things sucked. The gameplay right now is boring copypasta encounter design. Dump attributes are totally a thing. PotD uses bruteforce stat pump rather than AI refinement as a difficulty increase, and the AI is burn dumb and predictable. I haven't finished the game because I can read the story on the Internet without actually having to play the game. I offer no solutions whatsoever. (By the way, sometimes I actually do post solutions. I am trying to hone my design skills. I have a sense of humor about it, and I would hope a professional would have more sense than to ever trust me or any other forumer at solution-crafting.)

The debate between Stun and Gromnir made me realize that sometimes it's not about whether comparing BG to PoE is fair or not. Sometimes it's about whether BG discussion is relevant to PoE at all.

@nipsen: I found your tale quite interesting. I would definitely appreciate any links you could provide me to beta backer suggestion threads which eventually made their way into the game, such that I could analyze the process. (Clearly I'm not a backer myself.) In general, though, I'm a disciple of Malcolm Gladwell when it comes to customer (in this case, player) feedback. If you keep things simple, like asking players to rate an experience from 1 to 10, I feel you'll get good feedback. On the other hand, if a game designer lets players decide how to fix problems on public forums, your result is going to be a bunch of amateurish slop, because players are not game designers. Heck, even properly diagnosing problems is far beyond the purview of playerbase competence. Like a patient at the doctor's office, the only thing players are collectively qualified to do is say where it hurts. As such, I am almost universally appalled at the results of community-driven design "improvements," and I feel they're responsible for many games losing their artistic vision and being reduced to a less enjoyable version of their original selves. TL;DR: Forumer suggestions are 99% trash that makes games worse.

First, it's wrong to dismiss feedback by accusing people of clinging to the past. I don't believe everyone with criticism thinks that way. I sure don't. I believe every game should be judged on its own merits. Second, although I consider this purely a marketing error (since, as I said, each game is unto itself design-wise), the game was announced as paying "homage to the great Infinity Engine games of years past: Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment." If the game isn't appealing to fans of those games, that doesn't make PoE a bad game, but it certainly makes that quote a bad sales pitch, and quite possibly makes PoE not the game which backers were promised.

Increase the difficulty, you're not being challenged enough. Act 1 is the honeymoon period of PotD difficulty. Everything is lovely and it's hard to imagine anything ever going wrong. To contrive the analogy, by Act 3 you and the game difficulty are living separately and battling over custody of the children.

Good question actually. In my experience, criticism on the game during the beta backer fase has often been harsh, blunt and sometimes personally offensive. During that fase, a minority posted polite and constructive criticism. The combination led to a mixed bag where vitriol still carried overtones. In response, the devs made it explicit that they found it hard to visit the forums in their free time and be confronted with such a large amount of negativity and spite. A strange assumption. If I was a developer and was running a BACKER beta, yet the forums were filled with harsh criticism, I wouldn't assume it's because Kickstarter backers are a tough crowd. I'd assume it was because the game had huge, systemic problems which were disappointing even the most loyal of playerbases. I mean, it takes balls for a dev to say "it's not us, it's you."

And I could add that although it may not seem that way, at all - in actual reality, Gft1ed is in fact making that statement with an acute and total awareness of the narrative flow in a dungeon, intricate knowledge of how this would affect the mechanics in the game on every level, and also in fact knowledge of what all people who want to play the game really wants. Unbelievers and apostates may perhaps feel the need to ask: "But Gifted1 - how dost thou know these wondrous things about how all things fit together?". But it is not necessary to question, because he simply knows such things. It may also seem that Poe's Law may add some level of ambiguity to nipsen's statements. But this would be unbelievable, as Gifted1's infallibility is sacrosanct.

I like Mechanics as a skill, too. But it is the only skill which feels right to me. When I see a system that's 20% right I say just gut the whole thing.

I like this idea. It would be cool to have some quests in the game that you can actually fail by leaving the dungeon before finishing. I also liked the examples a lot. I hate this idea. To me it just seems like arbitrarily limited my experience and playstyle to fit some pre-determined idea of how I "should" play. I don't abuse rest--but sometimes I get bored and want to go do something else for a while. I should have that freedom. It would also punish players who try a quest that's too difficult for them at their current level, and come back later. But that's what we want, right? To punish people for exploring without a strategy guide. Damn those casuals. It's actually something we don't want. I mentioned signposting earlier for this reason; the game should give you some form of warning beforehand. However, if this is still too much, you could adjust things so "commitment" isn't immediate, but after the waters have been tested a bit. Modified Act 1 examples: The issue is that players who heavily metagame would know where it is safe or not to return to the inn, so it would be a weaker enforcement. Still, some enforcement is better than zero. Edit: or better yet, an autosave system which actually works well. Wouldn't need to water things down at all if the game autosave when you rest in a bed and didn't overwrite until the next time you did so.

I really couldn't disagree more. Just because an ability is "per rest" doesn't mean you can't ever throw it out there. If you are having spells left over when you rest, chances are you are being too conservative with them.

If you start with 5 less Attribute Points, a level 11/12 character wouldn't feel different than one now. Of course, a level 1 character would feel noticeably different. I feel like the question of "how much should a character improve per level" might be beyond the scope of this thread. It quite possibly should be less improvement per level, but if so huge swaths of content may require major rebalance. Assuming that's a cost we're willing to pay, I think +2 Accuracy/Defenses per level (or even +1) may be appropriate. The idea that you could improve done attributes and not others is kind of absurd.

Athletics: remove, instead use Health for determining Fatigue (ex: Critical Fatigue when below 20% max Health), Health increase from Constitution does not increase Fatigue points (similar to Intelligence and friendly-fire AoE), players have more base Health to compensate. Stealth: remove, add "+1 Stealth" to Perception. (Moving fast doesn't make you sneaky, paying attention does.) Mechanics: remove, add "+1 Disarm Trap" to Intelligence. Disarm becomes an d100 roll: miss = trigger trap, graze = no effect, hit = trap destroyed, crit = trap collected. Use Attributes to modify damage, area of effect, and duration as normal; use player Accuracy to determine Accuracy. Lore and Survival: just remove. Use Attributes to modify damage, healing, area of effect, and duration as normal. Scripted interactions: use Attributes instead. Skill points: Remove and instead give 1 Attribute Point every odd level. (If necessary, give less Attribute Points at character creation.)