MaxQuest

Deadfire Polishing Thread has been opened for 3 weeks by now, and we gathered enough feedback for a dedicated poll. And the idea behind this poll is to filter through the community-originated fine-tuning suggestions and cut those that didn't make it past a certain threshold of unanimity. After that, the resulting list could be used as some sort of survey data, and maybe it will get attention from Obsidian, or it will be of use for modders (if these suggestions are moddable) Deadfire Polishing Poll (link to google forms) (google login is required to keep 1 submission per person account) (your emails are kept private and not shown to other participants or poll owner) P.S. Results will be posted in this thread. There is no set end date for now. But approximately the poll will last 7-10 days unless otherwise noted. Edit: the Poll has ended. You can check the RESULTS: HERE Or if google analytics is opening slowly, here are the screenshots: General stuff: Classes: Keywords: Bugs:

I went and actually just tested these. 0.5/0.0 feels like a little much, even with the reduced duration I've initially read this as: "0.5/0.0 still feels a little long" ^^ Definitely. I just feel that buffing/cleansing others should not be that fast. An enemy spent 3s+4s casting a stun/paralyze/dominate that was going to last 8s, and you just remove it in 0.5/0.0 doesn't seem fair unless there is a hefty price attached. Paladin's exhortations cost 2 zeal and that's like 1/5 of their resource pool. Imagine if priest was consuming 2 spell usages per prayer. P.S. If prayers/litanies feel too weak, I'd rather see their effect being buffed instead of speedified. This way a support/buffer can become a solid archetype by itself, instead of: this is a damage-dealer with several get-out-of-jail cards. On first pages. Additionally either as a separate thread or here as a separate post. But ok, I'll reset the questions ordering, for them to start from 1. "This should change but not in these ways" option - is kinda same thing as "Other" Ok, screw it, I'll just add the Other option to all questions. And if someone doesn't have a strong opinion regarding some of suggestions they can just leave the answer blank. I'll add a related reminder in the begining. I'm neutral on this. But it's not hard to add this to the poll and see what we'll get.

Yeah. I don't quite understand how a regular player would make a connection between displayed 5% and:- the actual change in his attack resolution - the relative dps increase without calculator and notepad.

I have checked, and yeap it's possible. I will add it if you want. But keep in mind, that the idea is to use the polls responses and aggregate the most voted options. And if someone will write a nice suggestion in "Other" it won't be visible to others to vote for. That's the reason I've gone with this thread and all preliminary stuff in the first place: to collect the possible response options; and additionally let them come through 'community review' in order to decrease the amount of situations when a suggestion looks nice on paper, but has some deeper issues. Hmm, I don't really like this. I totally understand why you would want this action economy. But I think this would overlap with paladin's field of expertise: i.e. being able to quickly remove an affliction from an ally. And paladins pay a hefty price for their exhortations: 2 zeal to be exact. Thus I would leave 0.5/0s only for a subset of self-buffs. Regarding fixes vs polishing: I was thinking about adding the fixes section, but it looked so obvious to me that they need fixing, that it looked like Section Obvious) Although I haven't made my mind on this yet. I've made this intentionally. Preliminary list #1, contained points p1 and p2, but they were later removed due to feedback. I can make them start from 1 if it is confusing. But it will make it harder to compare the poll options with those preliminary lists. What you say? Ok) Will add it to the list. Ok) Personally I find spiritual weapons (maybe with the exception of Woedica's gauntlets) as subcompetitive provided the possible alternatives. Yet I remember a thread were this view was not shared at all. And since I am not using priests as phys damage dealers, I just avoid using these weapons, and the topic altogether. Yeap. Uncanny Luck results in a really pitiful dps increase. Lets take a concrete example: - you have accuracy by 15 points higher than enemy deflection - you have 10% hit-to-crit from Dirty Fighting - and 15% hit-to-crit from that ring i.e. -/25/50/100+ attack resolution shifts: - from 24% chance to graze, 50% chance to hit, 1% chance to crit - to 9% change to graze, 50% to hit, 16% to crit (due to +15 acc) - and there are also two hit-to-crit rolls: > 10% hit-to-crit: which changes 50% to hit, 16% to crit -> 45% to hit, 21% to crit > 15% hit-to-crit: (which triggers if above didn't trigger): and changes 45% to hit, 21% to crit -> 38.25% to hit, 27.75% to crit Now we also take Uncanny Luck for the 5% hit-to-crit, which has a chance to trigger if above conversions didn't, and we get: 36.3375% to hit, 29.6625% to crit Yay! we have an extra 1.9125% chance to get +0.25 to damage coefficient, +0.25 to duration coefficient and x1.5 PEN. On average that's like what? a ~0.2-0.45% damage increase? The thing is: it's hard to tell what magnitude for an effect X, developers originally intended, when part of changes to underlying mechanics was done after certain entities (encounters, talents, abilities, effects, etc) were added to the game. Not to mention that devs: - don't always track the possible ripple consequences; like in the case with Riposte and graze range change for TB - are not always aware of underlying mechanics themselves; for example: when asked how do crits work in PoE1, Josh answered multiplicatively; even through there was an additive +0.5 damage coefficient. Another example being how recovery in PoE1 is calculated. Or Blunted Criticals in Deadfire. - do occasionally shift their philosophy towards how powerful certain effects should be. for example at release majority of items had stronger enchants, perhaps in order to provide an ompf effect. But Obs quickly found some multiplayer-guy who severely nerfed that stuff in v1.1; which is not that bad per se, but we get some players like Red Knight whining about equipment bonuses not progressing strongly enough. - don't always know what the exact values should be themselves. Or even what an attribute should do. They often rely on iterative approach and sometimes on player's feedback. And such approach makes evaluation of 'vanilla intent' kinda moot. I also remember Avellone (although a writter and not a dev) mentioning:

Guys, I've finally assembled the poll. You can take a preliminary sneak peek here: Would you like to see any last moment changes? If yes, write them right now. If no: I'll post a new link tomorrow morning, and the poll shall begin.

Two requests here: 1). Add possibility to remove an ability. For example: I want to remove existing Soul Annihilation (which is of WeaponAttackAbilityGameData type), and add a new one (of GenericAbilityGameData type). At the moment, if I just edit the type of existing ability, then it breaks SA of already created soulblades, and works fine only for newly created characters. 2). Allow to specify for an ability, attack and status effects, what kind of bonuses it can benefit from: all, only_weapon_bonuses, only_spell_bonuses, just_pl, none. For example: there are weapons that have spells bounded to them. These spells should not benefit from weapon quality enchants. Also it would allow to attach a spell proc to a weapon, and prevent it from benefiting from "physical" modifiers like sneak attack.

^ Sure P.S. Usually online tools are somewhat atrocious in this regard. But with that one, I had like 30% of portraits not needing the extra manual "magic wanding". P.P.S. Although best transparency results are probably achieved using these guides: - one - two

Can't check this atm. But when I was using Hunter's Claw with dual-warhammers, I was getting: +1 accuracy per ability usage. +1, +2, +3, etc.

Was using a somewhat similar workflow With minor exceptions: - sometimes used Normal or Overlay instead of Multiply. It was depending on portrait itself. Some are looking better this way. Some that way. - was usually making the transparent background in Paint.NET (don't laugh) and only after that opening in Photoshop. And there is also: https://www.remove.bg/ - and lastly: exposure and cooling filter is something new to me. Was just playing with transparency. P.S. The biggest trick was to get the right size of the head ^^

1. Do agree on XP-Sharing. I do mostly find it as: "do not switch your party members" thing. And while I always plan my party composition for subsequent runs apriori, it's a slight nuisance in the first play-through (that is usually solved by AddExperienceToLevel X, right before main character is about to hit next level). Although, maybe it is somehow related to RP aspect? Like companion Z can't be as experienced as Y because he didn't fought that much? 2. I actually like being able to enchant weapons without being gated by character level. If I want to dump all my current money at level 7 into a superb weapon instead of a ship,.. well why shouldn't I be able to do it?) Although enchanting armor is closer to gray territory because of how important AR is.

What is the spawning creature name convention? For example Dorudugan has CharacterStats with DebugName: CHA_CRE_Construct_Helfire_Ironclad And I can spawn him via: SpawnPrefabAtMouse CRE_Construct_Helfire_Ironclad At the same time there are skeletal creatures with the following names: But they don't spawn via: SpawnPrefabAtMouse CRE_Skeletal_Ranger And neither via: SpawnPrefabAtMouse CHA_Skeletal_Ranger SpawnPrefabAtMouse CHA_CRE_Skeletal_Ranger Why?

Well, they are looking for local applicants only. Btw, what really caught my attention is "Experience with Unreal Engine 4" listed as a plus. Not Unity and UE4, but just UE. Did they tire from Unity enough that it was cheaper to retrain the team? Is UE that much better? Or do they focus on Outer Space only?) - Don't recall, it's possible. - Only one ranger with hunter's claw. - So far I've only had this happen with beasts. I've built up huge accuracy stacks against wilder and some other creature type (haven't played with it too long). It could just be a coincidence that it was beasts and there was some other trigger (like killing blow like you suppose). I was looking for something that could make the buff think that it is of different origin)But hey, have easily managed to replicate your save-reload scenario. And confirming that it is possible to go beyond +20 accuracy, all buffs combined. I was expecting that yes, it would fix it. But have made a quick mod... and nope.There was no difference at all between StackIfAlreadyApplied and StackWithAllSimilarDataEffects. I've gone further and tried RemoveExistingIfAlreadyApplied behaviour. Still (!) no difference. And I am sure that the changes from the mod were applied (because I've increased the +acc per hit exactly for that purpose). And this is weird. RemoveExistingIfAlreadyApplied should clear all existing status effects with the same ID, before applying a new one. Here are the docs. And here's the code:

^ Regarding shifting as Ancient: you could shift to cat, enable cat flurry and unshift.

Well... it was acknowledged as an issue by QA (source). And we were told that it gonna be remedied ASAP. Just let's see what's Obsidian's definition of ASAP is; and hope that it's not correlated with infamous Valve Time))

Hunter's Claw is not that simple. It's WeaponAttackAbilityGameData that: - applies Hunters_Claw_SE_DisplayOnly to hunter himself (this SE has 0 duration, and it looks that it does nothing; it's probably used for ability description modal) - tries to apply 6 transfer status effects to the target on each hit: Hunters_Claw_SE_Transfer_Beast, Hunters_Claw_SE_Transfer_Kith, and so on. - Hunters_Claw_SE_Transfer_Beast is applied to the enemy, only if it is a hostile beast and hunter is not affected by: Hunters_Claw_SE_Accuracy_Kith, Hunters_Claw_SE_Accuracy_Vessel, etc - once Hunters_Claw_SE_Transfer_Beast is successfully applied to the enemy, it is auto-transferred to the ranger. This triggers Hunters_Claw_SE_ApplyOnEvent_Beast which applies Hunters_Claw_SE_Accuracy_Beast. - and Hunters_Claw_SE_Accuracy_Beast has infinite duration and stacks by up to 20 times. Now this is repeated for the other 5 creature types (races). Subraces are not checked. So no, there are no 2 kinds of beasts from Hunter's Claw perspective ^^ P.S. Here's an excerpt for beasts. It contains: ability data, display SE and 3 beast related SE. And the total json would also include 3 SE for kith, 3 for vessels, and so on. P.P.S. I am looking at Hunters_Claw_SE_Accuracy_Beast and it has ApplicationBehavior: StackIfAlreadyApplied. And according to documentation: - StackIfAlreadyApplied: A second effect will be applied if trying to apply this effect to someone who already has it. Different origin effects will stack separately. - StackWithAllSimilarDataEffects: Effect will stack with other effects of the same game data type, regardless of origin. So maybe changing StackIfAlreadyApplied to StackWithAllSimilarDataEffects will fix it? The thing is: with those transfer and onApply effects, one could think that the final accuracy effect "should think" that the origin is hunter himself. But it seems that it's not the case, and the game still checks for creature "ID"? Btw @thelee: - could it be that your fifth Hunter's Claw attack was a killing blow? - do you have only 1 ranger with Hunter's Claw or there were more of them attacking the same enemy? - or it happens everytime you attack a different subtype of beast?

I've just checked this in game, and Greater Lay on Hands' healing and duration does scale with PL for me: Both 20hp/3s and inspiration's 10hp/3s. But (!) keep in mind that it is a rank 3 ability. So it gets a lesser benefit than regular LoH. For example my lvl 17 herald Pallegina is getting +15% from PL for Greater LoH, because: (6 class_pl - 3 ability rank) * 5% But if it was unupgraded LoH, it would be +25%, because: (6 class_pl - 1 ability rank) * 5% So my assumption is: you took Greater LoH when you had 3 class_pl (i.e. sc lvl 5-6 or mc lvl 7-9), and thus have seen no PL bonus right of the bat.

True that. And even less in Deadfire where that notice/paragraph didn't make it into class' description that a player can see during character creation. Yet I doubt that the class' lore changed overnight. Probably an oversight) Won't argue with that) Charm bot is indeed suboptimal atm. And do agree that current soulblade is really repetitive. Hmm, you have a point here. I'm re-reading the class description, and I don't see what would prevent cipher from targeting Amplified Wave on an charmed/dominated enemy instead of centering on ally only. But here's the implementation problem: atm there are only 4 targeting types: - Hostile - AllyNotSelf - Self - Ally Your suggestion would require a dev to add some new HousedSoulNotSelf and FriendlyHousedSoulNotSelf types, and after that adjust all powers accordingly. Technically this might be dll modable.., but it is very time consuming, wonky to maintain and is outside from the polishing scope. That said, I'd like to see these targeting types in PoE3.

Yes, I don't think that cipher being able to cast Valorous Echoes on himself would make VE overpowered. Driving Echoes aside I don't think that making them self-targetable would result in sensible alteration of balance; assuming you have only 1 cipher in party. And if you have 2 ciphers: then from balance perspective, imho there is almost no change at all, because we could cross-cast anyway. That's a separate issue. Because +10 focus per 6s is a joke compared to 1 spellusage the casters get (which can go for from Chillfog to Meteor Shower) Heck even martialists get +1 guile/discipline/etc, and that's around 10% of their resource pool. And cipher with 220 max focus still gets 10. +1 PEN was my initial suggestion, but I later abandoned it in favor of lash only - which is simple, effective and doesn't collide with Devout's field of expertise. Ok, in the upcoming poll I will separate the keywords in more categories, rather than putting them all in a single question. Regarding cipher targeting himself: while I do agree that making powers able to be cast on self, won't make stuff like Valorous Echoes, Pain Block, Echoing Shield, Ancestor's Memory, Amplified Wave and Soul Shock overpowered at all; and also while I do salute any QoL improvements especially cipher related, I am actually quite hesitant towards this suggestion, because: - being unable to target self with this stuff, is a quite hard blow for a solo cipher. And I have really hard time imagining that this was an oversight from game designers, rather than an intentional thing, because of how OBVIOUS this is. - cipher's class description explicitly stated: Source 1, Source 2, Source 3

Ehh. What I liked about PoE1 Pallegina and missed in Deadfire Pal, is that she wasn't so zealous nor she followed her orders blindly.

Tbh I am not aware of such thing like encounter level. I do know though that everyone has baseLevel which is adjusted according to specific table rules, if you have scaling enabled. Also, I've seen a post on these forums somewhere, that this adjustment happens when the creature is added to scene for the first time. I remember wondering: so I can have upscaling on, but visit the locations of interest as soon as possible; and thus prevent their upscaling when I come back later? I suppose that when adding enemies via console, the game doesn't check player's level properly, and maximally scales enemies up. And in unmodded game the upscale limit is +4 levels; thus they get +4 levels. P.S. There was a post here by giftmefood, who had Dorudugan with +12 extra defenses and +1 AR. Turned out he was spawning him via console.

Makes sense. Plus there are enemies with constitution / body resistances. It doesn't stack with itself. Also as a note: DoT starts with 2 damage, and gets +4 for each tick. It has 15s base duration, so it's mostly good on enemies that don't have high resolve and preferably: are enfeebled (although Toxic strike is mutually exclusive with Perishing Strike), and are affected by Cleansing Flames. That's reasonable) Point taken. Provided that there is little unanimity related to this, I think there no need to address Stoic Steel atm.

These changes are symmetrical and affect both: player characters and npcs. And the idea is: - to make it slightly easier to hit the disabled enemies. - to make it slightly harder for those who have high reflex/deflection and just don't care if they are immobilized/paralyzed, because enemies miss a lot. - a slightly higher incentive to take a dedicated debuffer. As a big fan of cc-parties, was kinda often catching myself thinking that my Deadfire party would get stronger with an extra sturdy-dps instead of debilitator. I forgot to remove stiletto change from the list) As for Warhammers and War Bows, upon longer examination, I think their profficiencies are ok. > War Bows have a very thematic overdraw, which literally takes longer, and penetrates harder. Additionally there are warbows that have enchants that have a 50% chance to skip recovery onCrit; and this helps to alleviate the total action time increase. > And regarding Warhammers, I came to conclusion that I don't really view them as dps weapons. Because they are kinda super-seeded by maces/clubs and spears in this department. Plus there are enough ways to lower enemy AR. Thus I do view them more as utility weapons; and for these am ~ok with recovery increase. Do agree that Accurate Empower is in practice strongest between those options. My initial intention was to bring Potent and Lasting to the level of Accurate Empower. But don't mind lowering Accurate Empower neither. What about Warhammers and War Bows? They a ok? + I prefer to leave alone stiletto, since it's a fast weapon and Recovery penalty don't hurts bad. I don't know why these changes are being proposed, because mathematically +2 PEN for +50% is a no-brainer tradeoff for any PEN vs situation of -2 to -4. The fact that swords are able to get +2 PEN for no recovery time trade off (similar to Estoc) is an advantage that swords have that is diluted by these changes. So I still think the changes in 7/7b are unnecessary. I've forgotten to remove 7b. As for sabres... Yes, going from [-4 PEN -> -2], [-3 PEN -> -1], [-2 PEN -> 0] would for sure be worth some +50% recovery time. But: - sitting at -2 is still bad for a damage dealer (unless he is using Battle Axes and doesn't care for AR at all). - I don't think I would go even for [-2 PEN -> 0] with sabres; because why tolerate that +50% recovery when you can switch weapons? After all there are very few enemies that have slash AR lower than their pierce or crush AR. Specifically: Nemnok/Imps, Krakens, Soul Collectors, Darguls, Bats, Hounds, Dank Spores and Vines. And these are not that heavy-armored. - additionally players can lower enemy AR by 3 (via flanking, blackened plate aura, mace modal) and by 4 more by Sunder Blow / Rust Armor. That said I'm not sure there really is a situation where I would enable sabre modal, unless I have sabre in mainhand, something else in offhand, and use full attacks. The proposed suggestion at least would provide a -15 deflection malus which I can't evade, but am actually ok with. Plus... might start dual-wielding sabres. That's a kinda blurry topic. From one point of view it might be considered as unintended effect that goes like a ripple from the attack resolution change in TB. From another point of view, current riposte is not a result of coding error, and it does precisely what it's description tells it does. It's still slightly closer to a value tweak/adjustment in my book. But I guess it all comes to the definition and personal perspective. Yeah, it would make sense for Obsidian to do something about it. Although looking at some other bug-reports that weren't addressed for a long time, exasperation doesn't feel productive enough) That's sad, provided that a solid part of listed QoLs/fixes are out of reach for modding. Also I do understand your general aversion towards unofficial tweaks. And partially do share it. But at the same time, do dislike the current state of a quite an array of things. To name the most personally striking ones: Haunting Chains, Defensive Mindweb, Soul Annihilation, Dragon Thrashed, Stag Carnage, Sacred Immolation (if without duration shenanigans) and a bit Resonant Touch / Blade Turning exploits. At the same time I can't usually just mod these for myself and enjoy the game. I'd prefer the changes to be endorsed by enough community members (as a sign that the changes are in check), or addressed officially. And that's probably a psychological thing ^^ Do agree here. And also there is kinda a difference between "weapon is out of fire" and "weapon is dealing fire damage". In the first case it makes sense to attach "burn" keyword to the weapon and it's attack (think of firebrand). In the second only to it's attack. This is also partially related to stuff like Essence Interrupter being unable to deal pierce damage to enemies immune to shock keyword. Or pierce damage benefiting from +1 Shock PEN from Heart of the Storm. P.S. I have just went through Phenomenum's list. And he suggested to add elemental keywords to: - Iconic Projection: Restoration, Condemnation >>> Restoration, Punishment, Frost (Health recovery, deals Freeze damage) - Sumbol of Wael: Inspiration >>> Inspiration, Punishment, Frost (Grants Inspiration to allies, deals Freeze damage to enemies in AoE) - Antipatetic field: Shred >>> Acid, Shred (deals Corrode damage) - Soul Ignition: Shred >>> Fire, Shred (deals Fire damage) - Wildstrikes: Add corresponding keywords (Frost, Fire, Acid, Electricity) - Great Maelstorm: missed Frost keyword (also deals Freeze damage) Do some of these keyword suggestions appear broken to you?

Those Skuldraks do indeed have base level 9. They would be level 13... if your party was level 13 with upscaling on. Or if your party was level 9, with upscaling on, and you spawned them via console. So most likely it's the problem with those skulls.

Obsidian already tried the cost-reduction path. But at 1 zeal, the upgrades are a no brainer. That's why I am advocating for the buff route. Something small, like the already mention +20% healing taken; or increase the base healing (e.g. 20 -> 25) per Taudis' suggestion. Yeah, that 'eliminates' situations when you could get a longer self-damage DoT due to low resolve; or viceversa reduce the self-dot duration to minimum, and even enable a second Immolation before the first one expired. But also wanted to know if you feel that 12 base duration is enough for 4 zeal cost. Makes sense. How about the upgrades? Enfeebled and that corrode DoT are both quite potent. But at the same time, both come with caveats: - you can't have enfeebled right now - the corrode DoT builds over time. And although it's most needed vs high-hp targets, such enemies usually have higher resolve. I feel that Pierce the Bell is the weakest upgrade among those three, because the +20% damage bonus is kinda small for a rogue with sneak attack, deathblows, quality weapon and +25% innate ability bonus. Lowering enemy physical armor by 1, such that party could benefit from it, looks to be more useful. As for Stoic Steel - am neutral for now. But have seen Ensign's suggestion and wanting to gather more opinions on this.

There is a check for specific upgrades: Dragonwing Sails and Blackwood Hull. Also you need a rank 3+ helmsman and rank 3+ deck hand. P.S. It doesn't matter what ship to use.