Manveru123

Ebony & Ivory!

Since I haven't had the chance to try Arcane Archer yet, I have a question: if I Imbue Fireball, will the resulting shot deal damage to my party too? How does that work?

I think this build was first created before Trickster was a good subclass

Because touching without consent is bad.

Since you went DD I'm guessing that you want to do some melee, if that's the case I recommend 4 Sorc/4 DD and the rest into EK.

@thelee For Diablo 3, constant powercreep is mandatory, otherwise people will lose interest very, very quickly. This is not a story-driven experience. Story in this game is very short and very basic. Doing random dungeons is 99% of gameplay. To mix it up and keep it interesting, Blizzard is constantly making players stronger, and does the same for the monsters. This is what the players want and expect from this game. I absolutely agree that BG2 had a ****ton of "trap builds". Some classes were pretty damn useless, while others could solo the game with extreme ease. But that's not really the developer's fault, it's how AD&D was at that point. Wouldn't call Druid a trap, though (other than maybe Shapeshifter?). If this was Deadfire, I wouldn't want the developers to nerf the strong builds - I'd want them to buff the weaker ones so that they're competitive. Also making "a party of Rogues" sounds dumb for anyone who has ever played an RPG game, so using that as an argument is silly (and I'd like to mention that a Thief with ToB talents was an unstoppable monster). Also one thing that is very important to mention here is that players not satisfied with game balance were free to install mods. There were a lot of fantastic mods for BG2, and if you used them, you didn't mess up the fun for other people's single-player campaign. If someone enjoys running around with a Sorcerer and bending realities with OP spells, why do you care? Let the guy play how he wants to, it doesn't affect you. And if you want to play Sorc yourself and you hate how strong he is, you install mods to keep him in line. And suddenly, both you and that guy are happy. @MaxQuest Yeah I can understand your point. Note that everything you mention from these other games can simply be avoided if you dislike how it works. It doesn't gimp you because other options are perfectly viable, it just doesn't make you OP. @Aotrs So first of all, I wasn't the one who asked to name anything, you might want to check who you're quoting. I don't need the game to be AD&D - DOS2 isn't, and it's a fantastic game (and it also had balance changes that were very smart, well made, AND tied to major content updates). I actually consider old D&D systems (and that includes Pathfinder) to be extremely outdated and I'm hoping that Deadfire-style gameplay is the future, because I consider Deadfire to have the best and most enjoyable mechanics I've ever seen in a cRPG game.

Blizzard.What game is that? Because if you mean Blizzard the company, they haven't released a single-player title in many, many years.I was thinking about World of Warcraft, which has seen orders of magnitude more changes than PoE. And it actually qualifies as an answer because he didn't specify that it has to be a single-player game in his question ^^ Now, if we had to add this new restriction, then I would answer differently. For instance I have played the following games (that had a lot of ongoing balance changes) as single-player: - Warcraft 3 - Heroes of Might and Magic 4 and 5 - Total War: Rome 2 - Galactic Civilizations series The last having especially a lot of balance adjustments. Generally, the games that would like to get played/completed more than twice, are more likely to receive balance updates. He didn't, but it's common sense not to compare a MMO (which always needs constant balance patches) and a single-player game. Also, none of the other games you mentioned are RPG. They're strategy games, I don't particularly care about that genre so I can't discuss. Generally, I've finished Baldur's Gate 2 27 times and never cared that it's not balanced. One can believe a lots of things and dismiss stuff with a handwave. That's too easy. Why is it bull****? The thing is that Josh Sawyer gives examples and makes some reasonable arguments in order to explain why he thinks that balancing is good for the majority of players. His experience as a designer (looking at unbalanced products in hindsight) also helps. Meanwhile the opposition of balancing fails to do such things. At least in this thread. It's all about one's feelings - but no effort is made to go into depth. You call it reasonable arguments, I call it rambling. He's the only cRPG designer who does that, because others somehow understand that this is not how you make a successful SP game - even if you consider balance to be an important part of your philosophy, you at least wait until an important content update to introduce it, not randomly shove it down the player's throats. He thinks he simply knows better. His arguments are flawed (the Unlabored Blade change was not needed no matter how you look at it, he just did it because he could). Things that he considers problems (like overpowered abilities) were never an issue for players in any of the older games (or even more recent, DOS is a good example), they're only bad for him and his personal fanbase. His nerfs are often extremely heavy-handed, and the buffs - very light, he pretty much can't balance his own work properly. I'm seriously not looking for a constantly changing experience in my single-player games, it just frustrates me if the dev can't get it right for a year. It's twice as frustrating when you realize that overall Deadfire is an amazing game (from mechanics PoV at least) and I really can't wait to enjoy it properly. Also, the last guy who advocated "perfect balance" was hit with a lightning axe by Thor. Stellaris, Hearts of Iron IV, Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis IV, Cities: Skylines (you could add almost any modern Paradox game to this list), the aforementioned Blizzard (Diablo 3, StarCraft 2 - which I ONLY cared about the single player campaigns of), X-Com 2, Command & Conquer 3 (to the point where some of the missions in the original campaign were almost impossible in the final version because they hadn't re-balanced those), War for the Overworld, OpenTTD, Fallen Enchantress Legendary Heroes, Ashes of the Singularity:Escalation, AI War... (And note all of these are good to excellent games (now), with the most mediocre, in my opinion, being D3.) Stellaris and WftO, in particular, have improved DRAMATICALLY over time. Bopth would have been rather forgettable if they'd remained on version 1.0 forever, PoE 1 had more dramatic rebalences than PoE 2 has (still a little sore they took away my per-encounter low-level spells!), and while that is aytpical for an RPG in this genera, that's only because RPGs in this genera have mostly had to be slaves to AD&D (which was, sorry, a set of mechanically crap rules, regardless and independant of how much fun people might have had with it) and latter 3.0/3.5 (which both have severe issues in core only, fixed up by supplementaty material which post-dated the games) so there as less room to wiggle to start with. Do I miss, a little bit, that in PoE 1 vanilla, my cipher could one-shot whole encounters with Mind Blades? Little bit, yeah, but by the same token, it was horribly overpowered, because I could one-shot whole encounters. Overall, I have never personally encountered a game yet whose major changes didn't make it overall better. (Try doing that on a tabletop RPG and see how long it is before your DM either a) politely asks you not to break the game, please and have a gentleman's agreement, b) house-rules the thing out, c) kills your character, d) the DM or you leave in descending order of appropriate respense.) Not only none of this are RPGs, the fact that you personally only cared about Diablo 3's campaign doesn't change the fact that this is not a single-player game. This game literally rewards you for partying up with other people. The last time I played a tabletop game in some Vampire universe, we agreed to have unlimited power so we could throw ships at each other. In single-player games, I tend to not have to agree on anything, and instead I play how I want to - as long as the developers actually allow me to do so, instead of trying to restrict me all the time.

I've seen that article and with all due respect I believe it's bull****. I'm also pretty sure we've discussed it a few times already over the last year Of course this topic is 100% hindsight and Josh can make his games however he wants to, my true contribution to this topic remains a "next time buy Obs game a year after a release" suggestion, which is what I'm personally going to do. Anything else is beating a dead horse.

Blizzard. What game is that? Because if you mean Blizzard the company, they haven't released a single-player title in many, many years. Barely anyone would complain if the changes made to Deadfire were caused by DLCs and the addition of turn-based mode. However, check how many huge balunz patches were released before we even got a single DLC..

That was not the point. The point was that some players like to play overpowered (be it through cheats or heavily overpowered items/abilites) while others (maybe the majority?) do not. And both are viable approaches to the game. There is no reason to favour one over the other, which is what Obs is doing at the moment. Don't want to play overpowered things? Don't. Want to? Do. It's as simple as that. I'm really tired of people telling me how to enjoy my single-player experience :/ As for details about Wiz spells that you asked for: Arcane Veil got its duration cut by nearly half, Llengrath's Image provides nearly 3 times less Deflection than it did (and it's 30% hit to graze used to be 50%), Wall of Many Colors had all CC duration cut between 50% and 60% and damage from all sources by 40-45%. Missiles got nerfs to both penetration and damage; especially the first change was extremely severe if you play on higher difficulties. These are not bugfixes, these are heavy nerfs. I don't mind bugfixes. I mind ****ing up my character for the sake of useless balunz. I'm actually following the Deadfire Polishing Thread. It's a really cool idea. But it kinda proves my point: the game is complete a YEAR after its release. That should not be acceptable. EDIT: I'd also like to point out that these nerfs would have less impact if we were actually "legally" allowed to do a FULL reset of our character, which includes sub-class (at least once per playthrough or something).

Arcane Veil, Llengrath's Displaced Image, Wall of Many Colors, missile spells. There was probably more, that's all I remember at the moment. If you want to balance the game without upsetting players, do a positive rebalance by buffing weak and underused abilities instead of nerfing everything strong so it's as weak as everything else. Because there are people who have that crazy idea that having the ability to cheat isn't the same as having fun. And that's what an overpowered ability is: A cheat. You have the ability to cheat. All you need to do is press one button to invoke a console. It's always available.

I'm pretty sure in Tyranny even after nerfs you get to be a demi-god if you set up your spells correctly. I remember some mid-to-late game combinations used to be awesome. Haven't played it in months tho, was it ubernerfed or something? As for PoE, this dead horse has been beaten up long enough. Even I got bored of complaining about it. Next time just give the game a year or so before you buy it, so that you get a finished product. Problem solved.

One new OP and one new flashpoint. Two new zones? Other MMOs have bigger updates in major patches, and this is an expansion :D I'm still interested tho. Need some Star Wars in my blood.

I wouldn't take advice from a group who killed the only good Star Wars MMO and is mostly now releasing Cartel Market packs as new content.

I usually lock horns with everyone around here, because I don't take **** from my games and I'm quite vocal (with my keyboard too! Loud tapping noises when I ragepost). But let's not go overboard. Borerorereror strategy is just an example, not a requirement. You don't need to do any of that to beat this boss. He's just being helpful like he always is. "Subpar weapons" is extremely subjective, because the weapons in this game were designed very well. Honestly almost all of them have an use, and you can't go wrong with any weapon type in the long run. Just pick your favourites. Just because some weapon type has an advantage in a specific encounter or location, it doesn't mean that you HAVE to have it. So again, feel free to ignore the part about modals entirely. You can still win. Finally, DOS2 is a completely different game (I refuse to acknowledge and play POE turn-based), and Kingmaker is.. NOT a better game, at least not overall. After spending 400 hours in Kingmaker I can safely say that I prefer POE's mechanics and combat. Kingmaker's story (and most characters, except Eder who I ****ing love) are way, way better though; in my opinion of course. ****, I'm defending Deadfire. What's wrong with me

Having multiple weapon damage types is common sense, not metagaming. Even PoE 1 had monsters who were immune/resistant to certain damage types, not to mention very old games like BG. This is nothing new. Also, wasn't this DLC supposed to have a recommended level of 15? I went there when I should and beat him with 4 of my party members running auto-scripts. This just sounds like you blame the game design for the fact that you can't handle POTD. Calm down plz.

Try Chanter + Ancient and cast Wild Growth on a summoned Dragon. Name the Chanter Rita Repulsa, too. I still have extremely fond memories of my Bleak Walker/Evoker. Only had fun for like a month before it was nerfed, but boi, it was great. My second most fav char was Beckoner/Evoker, back when Chanters could regen resources. And the only thing I liked that wasn't nerfed to the ground is the Bleak Walker/Lifegiver toon, but he was mostly a cool idea for a "death knight" rather than a truly facemelting build.

If we can count the console wars stuff as being somewhat similar situation to storefront exclusives, I can attest that a lot of the ill will being expressed about the storefront exclusives were mirrored in comments on USENET in the early 90s regarding console exclusives (amid the "which version did it better" debates). The best example I can think of, though, comes from 1997 when Square bypassed Nintendo's Nintendo 64 in favor of Sony's Playstation for FINAL FANTASY VII. There were Nintendo fans who swore they'd never forgive Square for forsaking Nintendo (even though we know now that FFVII was never going to run properly on N64 hardware, even with the magnetic disc 64DD add-on). So its really not changed to my eyes; I didn't really "get it" then either. Atari vs Commodore wars are even earlier than that :D

Do we know that OuterWorlds will be DRM free (no Epic required to run the game beside download and updates)? There are quite big downsides to Epic which go beyond inconvenience - for example it’s not available in all countries, I know China is one of them. Well, yeah, the most optimistic way of thinking is that Epic is buying itself time to improve their platform. I was assuming it works like Steam? You set auto log-in and it just launches when you double click the game's icon on your desktop

Epic does offer better split from each sale (12%-88%, compared to steam's 30%-70%) and. in cases were devs spoke up, offered additional financial bonuses for exclusivity. Whenever there is anything more to it then that, it is difficult to say. From consumers perspective Epic store is very barebone and looks like an inferior platform on many fronts. At the same time, with so many promising games being Epic exclusives, soon a game might look like a 2nd class citizen if it's not on Epic only. For the player it's a matter of installing another client (and using it ONCE to install the game), for the developer it can lead to thousands more $ due to better split, if your sales are good. But the players are so selfish that they don't even consider this. Just because they're too lazy to install Epic Store client. Pathetic, really. Obsidian did nothing wrong here. Remember how everyone hated Steam when it was first released? Now many players can't live without it. Epic Store will eat Steam for breakfast if Valve doesn't try to improve. The sole fact that Epic actually QA's the games, and doesn't let complete garbage on their store, is a huge green light for me.

See a group of full plate enemies? Cast create pit. An enemy caster? Cast create pit. A dragon? Cast create pit. Instructions very clear, works as described :D Basically Reflex save or bye bye. And the enemies for some reason tend to walk into the pits themselves :D

Possibly. Didn't pay much attention.

Yeah you can. It's a different kind of a pet, more like a familiar. Similar to what Arcane casters have. You activate it, it gives you some minor benefits and follows you around looking cute

I haven't tried these spells yet but tbh they look pretty damn strong. The pet is just the cutest, not that butt-ugly Owlbear thing you get early game.

Sword Saint 1>Traditional Monk 2>Sword Saint 9>rest Duelist. Although the best Bastard Sword in the game is actually two-handed.