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amazeing4art

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Everything posted by amazeing4art

  1. I don't mind at all if the weapon artwork is unique for the soulbound and unique weapons, even glowing or with auras. What I do really hate are GIANT WEAPONS that look so huge they belong in kids cartoons... for example, St. Yedwins Redeemer the PoE great sword... it looked awesome, except it was too huge, which kind of spoiled it a bit. It didn't look like anyone could easily wield it, it was too large. Would have been better to give it that unique artwork but keep it the same size as other great swords. Same with Nightshroud... the metal ball at the end of that mace would have weighed 200lbs... the unique artwork was fine, but it was too large. It's almost like the artists/developers felt like they needed to make these items artwork over the top to convince people the weapons were good or something. But there was no need for that, in my opinion anyway.
  2. I think an injury system as proposed could be great... but I would recommend that the injuries not be "all or nothing" things that have really bad penalties right from the beginning. So what I mean by that is, for example, there ought to be different levels of 'burn'... mild burn, burn, strong burn, severe burn... with progressive penalties. Same with sprained ankle, or concussion, etc... And there should be lots of different types of injuries, many more than exist currently. It might be interesting if different weapons and creatures were more likely to cause different injuries too... so a xaurip wielding a dagger, or an enemy archer, ought to be very unlikely to cause a concussion, but maybe very likely to cause a slashing or piercing wound. And actually, what I would LOVE to see is that simply resting in an inn or around a fire for 8 hours is not enough to fully heal and cure all characters of all their incredibly severe wounds. I always thought this was pretty silly, most games do it but it's silly and just too easy to implement I think. Maybe you have to rest several days, or visit a temple or healer, and drop off a badly injured character there for a few days so they can heal up. If you want to continue without them, or substitute some other companion for them for several days, or wait for them to get better, that would be up to you. But I would really like to see that... especially because the idea of you and your band of characters and companions limping into town after spending a week in the wilderness and delving in ancient ruins, everyone all injured, and needing to rest up is really appealing to me.
  3. I have no interest in this game including PvP, and I think it would be a mistake for developers to include this and devote resources to it. With multiclassing and 10 classes that is really something like (Sigma) 1-10 or in other words 1+2+3+4 ... +9+10 which is a total of 55 possible class choices (like Paladin/Wizard or Rogue/Barbarian or plain Chanter). Trying to balance PVP so that all of these class choice possibilities are viable, if played correctly, against every other correctly played combo would be a nightmare. Either it would take enormous time and resources (if done right), or it would lead to a real dumbing down of builds and spell/ability combat mechanics if done the "quick way". Neither way would likely ever work well. And this is not even taking into account character levels, do we want it to also be balanced so that every level 10 build (if played correctly) has an equal chance against every other level 10 build? That would add another whole dimension of complexity. The only way to do PvP in a game like this would be to ignore class balance and say things like... so what if every Wizard, Druid or Wizard/Druid can always kick every ranger's and rogue's ass with ease, every time? But then, what is the point of PvP? it would really not be much fun for the rangers and rogues, or the Ranger/Rogues, ever. So that's a very strong No vote from me.
  4. I agree the in-game descriptions of many spells and talents in POE1 left a lot to be desired. When the description for something like Ironskin is so vague and misleading, it leads to players making bad decisions about whether or when to cast it. Because the description made it sound so weak... "+8 DR until hit..." which basically would mean... since you are incredibly unlikely to get any benefit from the extra +8 DR for grazes at all to begin with... that it gets applied only once when you actually need it, and then disappears. So for the longest time I totally avoided that spell, assuming the description was accurate. Most spell and talent mechanics won't be too complicated and can be fully explained in a tooltip. But if the description of mechanics is too complicated for the casual gamer, it should still be available ... the hardcore min-max players interested in mechanics can click a "more details" link or something. This would be infinitely preferable to dumbing down the actual mechanics of all these interesting spells and talents, I think that would be a huge loss and mistake. Don't oversimplify spells and talents just so they can be explained in a single brief sentence... keep the mechanics deep, interesting and well-thought out... like Ironskin probably is, in reality. So many other things needed better explanation too... weapon lashes and whether they benefit from abilities like Secrets of Rime, and especially how the effect is reduced by enemy elemental DR... I still have no idea and I've been playing this game for a year, off and on. On the face of it since most enemies have enough elemental DR to absorb 25% of almost any total weapon hit (that's the strength of the elemental lash) it would seem than the lash damage would always be less than the enemy elemental DR and thus, the lash is generally kind of useless. But this is not how it works I think. But where do you learn how it works in game? I don't think you can.
  5. Like a few others may have posted already, I think it might be quite effective and interesting if armor types had a default bonus or penalty to stealthing. Like shields do with accuracy; equipping a large shield reduces your accuracy by 8 and that is just part of what it does. Every kind of armor, from clothing to leather, chainmail to breastplates and up to plate mail, could have a default standard effect on stealth. If you want your whole party to be stealthy, equipping everyone in plate mail might severely detract from their ability to do that. Optionally weapon types could have this property too -- having a two handed sword in one of your weapon slots (whether selected as the active weapon or not) might just automatically reduce a characters stealth by some amount. This would probably be easy to implement actually; each weapon type would have this as a property; and there are not a lot of weapon types really. In POE 1 some special items already did this by adding to stealth skills. If it worked this way it might be an interesting trade off, a game mechanic like shield size and accuracy that players get to try to optimize, either for their standard armor set or for specific missions. The problem to deal with in implementing either weapon or armor effects on stealth would be how to prevent players from stealthing in leather with daggers, but then pausing the game right before breaking stealth to attack, and instead equipping plate mail and large shields. Solving this problem would require a carefully thought out game mechanic.
  6. Yes ... and the Great Unification seems to happen around when the game developer makes a post about how we are focusing on multiplayer now and how great it will be to play against your friends in the really great combat arena, but before we do that we are rebalancing all 12 character classes so every class is equal to every other because of... you know... the needs of Multiplayer Awesomeness.
  7. I'd like to write about NPC reactions to the player characters actions (especially stealing or aggressive actions), and how in a lot of even really good games the dynamics of this have been disappointing to me. And give some suggestions and hear other peoples thoughts. First, I often find it frustrating and amateurish when all NPC's of a certain faction immediately attack you when you do something too aggressive. Even in amazing games like BG2 this happens; to me it seems in some degree laziness on the part of developers. Or lack of time to implement something more interesting. For example, this is bad design to me: when you fail a pickpocket check against an overweight, old merchant NPC in a large town, and he turns red and immediately attacks your party of amazingly well-armed adventurers in full plate mail. He just suicides. His friends suicide too! And all the women and children in the room run at you to impale themselves on your spears as well. All unarmed and wearing colorful shirts. A little better would be the merchant shouting... "help, guards! thieves!" and then you have to run away before the guards arrive. If the guards catch up to you (i.e. get close enough) then they say "come with us, you are under arrest!" and then you have to decide... kill the guards and really have that whole faction hate you, or agree to be arrested and be transported before some official. Where you must pay a fine, or be imprisoned for a day, or who knows what interesting situations might arise. It could all be done with cut-scenes and a generic small "courtroom" that is used for this purpose no matter where in the game world you are (other than wilderness areas of course). Stealing could affect your reputation generally with that town/faction, and specifically that merchant might not ever sell to you again. Perhaps even better would be: If you fail to steal or pickpocket, or do something too extreme in general... you don't always get caught immediately. First, maybe usually (if pickpocketing, say) you just don't get the item and can't try again for some time. But to avoid the "reload game" response to failures in pickpocketing, stealing, or any other aggression... you could find that even after you successfully pull something off, maybe three days later suddenly guards accost you the next time you enter that area, "you are under arrest, we have 3 witnesses who saw you steal from that merchant!" Then you have to decide what to do and how to handle it. If you want to reload you really can't do so easily, because too much game time has gone by, so now you have to deal with the consequences. The same could occur if you publicly kill some innocent NPC. Rather than guards coming to get you immediately, or the entire town turning red and attacking you, maybe 3 days later you find yourself in trouble with the town guard; the forces of lord so-and-so whose merchant you just killed. Ten well armed guards say "come with us now!". Reload would not work so well there, you have to deal with the consequences. If you steal from someone in the wilderness or far away from a city, they should only attack you as a last resort, and only if they think they can beat you (and have a chance). Otherwise they should run away, or stop talking to you after accusing you, etc. I know all this is extra work but it might make stealing, pickpocketing and other "aggressions" actually work. In BG2 for example, pickpocketing was a joke, if you succeeded it was free loot, if you failed, you just reloaded and tried again, because the consequences were so severe and immediate, and not nuanced at all. Also, unrelated to stealing... I would love to see only armed guards or competent people rush to attack you, no matter what you do to some other NPC. The way a lot of games work it would be like, six guys walk into a bar with swords and kill someone, and then everyone who is unarmed at the bar just instantly and collectively decides to rush the swords rather than run for the exits. Most people run for the exits unless they are well armed and well trained, id like to see most NPCs and even some creatures (xaurips working in a mine, for example) behave this way too. It would make killing more realistic and would also mean a lot less meaningless slaughtering of weak NPCs.
  8. I would like to add my 15 cents here too: I'd love to see stealth be more realistic. Although I know this is a lot of work and complicated to implement. I find it quite silly, and kind of frustrating to immersion into a game world, when your whole party in full plate mail, carrying giant glowing swords, can walk down the middle of an open road in full sunlight right up to a bunch of enemies and surprise them at close range. It just makes the game world seem a little lame and extra-artificial. Stealth should be hard, it should require rogue-like training, get bonuses from light or leather armor, and yes huge penalties for carrying giant 6 foot long glowing broadswords. It should be easier to stealth at night, easier to stealth when near other objects in the game world (trees, bushes, crates, structures, etc). Sight-cones are good too, or hearing and sound checks from enemies. If all this means the rewards for stealthing (better sneak attacks, access to rooms or buildings others can't easily get to, etc.) have to be stronger, because fewer characters can stealth easily, that would be ok with me.
  9. I have to reply again as it seems some people are really fixated on "I need six characters to play this game!" Or "every party needs two frontline melee and a priest and wizard always"... or, etc. 1) You didn't need six characters to play POE1, even on POTD. The first time I played POTD yes I used all six slots. But the most fun I've had is later playthroughs all the way through with just two characters, killing every encounter but the dual Llengrath dragons. It's fun and not even too hard ( for example) to go with just a paladin and wizard, or a paladin and chanter, all the way through POTD. You sometimes actually want to use potions and scrolls and food too 2) I think some of the people who say they need six have nostalgia for Baldur's Gate and BG2 and want to re-experience the Awsomeness that was BG in new games. Heck I do too, BG2 is the gold standard. But thats no rational reason to be inflexible about everything. 3) Anyone saying stuff like... "I must have 6 because encounters demand two tanks and one melee dps and oh, a priest and wizard and that only leaves one slot"... you don't know what you are talking about at the moment because POE2 does not exist yet When it does it will be balanced around five and will succeed or fail based on how good a job they do creating encounters for five characters. Until the beta comes out or the game is released, there is nothing to worry about in my opinion. trust the devs they created an amazing first game let them do it again.
  10. Deep breaths everyone. I think you will be ok with 5 multiclass level 20 characters. Every argument here that "5 sucks we need six!" could just as well be applied to 6 characters if PoE 1 had originally allowed seven. Would you be now clamoring that "6 sucks we need 7" in that case? Or 8, or 9... or maybe we need 10, one for every class? Five will be fine... and the new game will be designed around it so the encounters will be balanced for it. Deep breaths.
  11. If animancer is a class background like 'Merchant' then maybe it should be Mechanics +2. This would be a really valuable bonus so there could be some sort of downside to being an animancer too... maybe certain people in the game world react negatively to you.
  12. Personally I would like to see more randomization of the special enchants on the unique and powerful items. I think this would reduce the tendency to metagame a character around a single late game item in repeat playthroughs. I.e. If you didn't know whether the 'Axe of Awsomeness' that drops at a certain level 16 location will have legendary accuracy, stunning, extra corrode damage, or spell stealing you couldn't really plan a whole build around it. Maybe the axe is always in that pirate chest on every playthrough... but you still don't know exactly what it will be enchanted with. If I recall there was some such randomization in Pillars and White March, I think? Tidefall I thought was slightly different on playthroughs... speed vs wounding and such. I suspect valid arguments against enchant randomization exist too maybe some people want to metagame... perhaps that could be addressed by making sure that all the different major types of awesome enchants are represented on late game weapons... you just didn't know which weapon would get which enchant. So, in the example above... if the Axe of Awsomeness didn't get legendary accuracy (it got something else), the loot tables would ensure that legendary acccuracy was placed on one of the other late game one handed melee weapons. Could be implemented by simply making tables of late-game powerful weapons and enchants (by type... one handed, two handed, ranged, etc) and then shifting the enchant column up or down randomly. All the types of enchants would be represented on an appropriate weapon for your metagame character build in game... you just wouldn't know where they would appear.
  13. Boeroer, I agree totally with your thoughts. My disappointment at the Blade of the Endless Paths was helped by WM 1 and 2 with the presence of soulbound weapons and the other interesting unique weapons. I agree, make the rare and hard to find items (soulbound or not) come with unusual enchants that are powerful and interesting, and the problem Is solved. White March made great strides in that direction.
  14. I take your point that people are mostly using unique items, but actually that doesn't negate or contradict what I wrote about being disappointed that I could enchant my own crappy weapon to be almost as good. People would probably use unique weapons rather than their own enchanted ones if the unique weapons were just 1% better, or even the same probably. Since you find a unique weapon for free, and have to pay for your own enchant. But in any case, my feeling of disappointment when I realized the Blade of the Endless Paths was nothing very special compared to what I could enchant myself is just what it is. You can't really argue against someone's feelings, or tell them they shouldn't feel that way! I like rare and magical weapons to be something special... particularly ones you have find in pieces and have to bring to blacksmiths. Otherwise where is the fun or mystery? Where is the lore and story? What if Bilbo had found Sting in the Troll barrows and everyone in the party just said... "oh thats an ancient Elven shortsword, made in Gondolin during the First Age... but it's nothing too special! Bifur can craft a sword 85% as good as that right by the campfire tonight with some berries and gems!" Er... no thanks I won't be reading more of that story.
  15. What's the latest news with character migration to Deadfire and general reward talents? Has Josh or anyone spoken lately about being able to keep things like Gift From the Machine, Dungeon Delver, Song of the Heavens, Mental Prowess, etc? Personally I think it would be really great if you got to keep those earned talents ... would be a minor perk for those of us who played through the original Pillars all the way. And be nice for continuity of your character. None of those talents are class specific either. I suppose carrying them into Deadfire could be restricted to importing from POTD playthroughs, possibly.
  16. I voted for slightly less but let me explain... I wouldn't mind lots of 'trash mobs' if they are part of the story and it feels like they fit into the world in an active sense, like they belong in that environment and are actually *doing* something and interacting with the world, moving around. For example, if you get a quest from a town mayor to clear out an abandoned mine full of xaurips, I wouldn't consider all those xaurips to be trash mobs, especially if they were working the mine and filling up carts with ore and such. And if the workers fled while the guards attacked you, and then eventually you find the boss foreman etc. That is not trash mobs, that is a compelling game encounter. What would be useless trash mobs Is when you were going through a wilderness area and to get through it, you had to fight lots of different small groups of xaurips, and each group was just standing there in a circle with the xaurips staring at each other and patiently waiting for someone to come attack them. And there was no real reason xaurips belonged there in the woods, they weren't doing anything to interact with the world like forage for food, or raiding and robbing travellers on the road, etc. They just stand there, in perfectly sized groups that are perfectly balanced to make them the perfectly appropriate challenge for the X number of characters you control. What a coincidence! And how boring. Unfortunately most RPG games, including pillars 1, often handle most 'trash mobs' the latter way. I would vote to greatly reduce that, except perhaps for the occasional wild beast you meet in the wilderness. Which ought to be 50% likely to flee in terror rather than just suicide against a well armed group of adventurers. Even if it was powerful enough to take you on. So if you want a fight with trash mobs all the time, you would sometimes have to actively pursue them and start the fight yourself.
  17. I have to disagree with most people here... I think a ceiling is a good idea. Why? Because it seemed very silly to me that some crappy unenchantd mace you pick up in the starter ruins of Cilant Lis can be enchanted so it's basically 80% as good by the end of the game as any other (non-soulbound) mace in the game. I still remember the massive disappointment and frustration I felt after finding all the pieces of the blade of the Endless paths, going down a dozen dungeon levels, and then brought it to Dunstan to be forged... and found out that it's nearly the same as any other Estoc I might enchant myself. Sure it has speed or whatever, but those enchants takes up space too. It was so disappointing to realize that as I leveled, I could just craft out of thin air, at a moments notice while sitting half dead in a frozen riverbed, with no special blacksmithing or enchanting training, weapons that are nearly as good as any others anywhere in the game. What happened to skilled blacksmiths, hard to find enchanters, etc? The weapon enchant system at first was incredibly boring and uninspiring to me. They fixed this quite a bit with soulbound weapons, happily. But yes, let's go even farther. That crappy driftwood staff your wizard is using at level one, yes give us lots of interesting ways and options to find better things as the game moves along. Please do not leave us automatically upgrading it over and over as we level, with no training or special enchanting skills or meeting legendary wizards needed!
  18. I have to agree with the OP... basically in this game every wizard or priest or Druid that casts strong spells has to look like Conan the Barbarian, because they use that same might to bend bars (such as at Raedrics) and other things. I think it's a good system from the point of view of stat balance and 'no dump stats', having Might work for both spells and physical strength does achieve this. So I understand the motivation. But the end result is slightly comical -- in my imagination at least... I just picture all casters as Conan with little pointy hats and wearing a colorful robe/dress. This could be solved by changing the text in scripts so that if a wizard is at raedrics, it would say 'try to use your strong magic to bend open the gate' or something like this. However the entire idea of having only physically strong characters being able to do certain things, which I think is a good, common sense idea... like bend bars or bash down a door, is kind of defeated if anyone else with 'magical strength' can do it too. Then there really is no physical strength check in the game at all (like there are for athletics, survival, dexterity, intelligence, etc). Also I thought there were stat balance issues with casters in general, I always maximized might and intelligence for wizards, priests and druids and that seemed to be clearly the best choice on POTD anyway. So everyone had high might, except maybe the tanks in plate armor. Which if you think about it is totally funny and backwards... the big guy in 75 pounds of plate armor getting repeatedly crushed by giant ogre clubs is the one guy with the least physical strength in the party. No amount of fancy argument can make that understandable.
  19. Hey I have what I think is a great idea after listening to one of the interviews about Deadfire with the developers. I think it was Josh who said he was thinking about what happens when your keep is destroyed and your character is left almost lifeless, back to level one. He was speculating about whether class or race would be carried forward to Deadfire. And it sounded like he favored race not changing, but you could change your class. My idea: no matter what new class you choose, have your Deadfire character start with some trace fragment of your old class talents! You are a watcher after all, so it makes sense that after being pummeled by a god your soul essence might still remember something from your past class. As an example...In practice this might mean: if you played a paladin in PoE 1, maybe one of the abilities your character starts with in Deadfire is Lay on Hands. Or chain healing, or a paladin aura. Perhaps you could even let the player choose from a restricted set (restricted in the sense they have been vetted for Deadfire game balance) of Pally abilities, which pally skill they will get to bring into Deadfire as one of their watcher type abilities. Even if they decide to be a rogue, they would have this old memory and old class talent. If you played a wizard in original PoE maybe you remember Arcane Veil or blast or some such wizard skill. If you played a Druid maybe you get a shape change. Details of exactly how strong the talents are in Deadfire could be adjusted... getting a full power level 16 class skill starting at level one would probably be unbalanced. But that could be worked out. To make it simple and more easily balanced the devs could pick just one talent from each class that carries into Deadfire (whether or not your character actually picked it back in PoE 1 or not). Maybe everyone who played a pally in PoE 1 gets a smaller version of Chain Heal, which scales in power as they level up, as a starting ability in Deadfire... whatever new class they choose. Comments, reactions? I love this idea, if I do say so myself!
  20. I wholeheartedly agree... achievements are just the easiest way to try to make a game more replayable. Much better ways to make it replayable are varied game content depending on your choices, an adaptive world, non-linear gameplay (explore wherever you want, etc.) smarter AI that is fun to try to beat using different main character and party class mixes on later playthroughs... the smarter the AI the more different the same fight might be, depending on whether you are a wizard or a paladin. Also dynamic world and not the "dead world" RPG curse of zones being totally empty forever once you clear them. Etc. things like this. Achievements are kind of cheesy. I don't see any reason not to do them (might as well) but for me anyway, I wouldn't be fooled that they actually make the underlying game any more interesting or replayable. And if the underlying game isn't super interesting, personally I just move on, why play a boring or generic game over and over for achievements?
  21. Food tied to resting now, ok that sounds great, sorry I missed that! Would deal with alll the issues I raised... thanks for the replies.
  22. I would love to see really good AI for creatures and your opponents as a real stretch goal. Good AI is hard to do ... but it can make a game amazing. The difference between Baldur's Gate II original AI vs the SCS mod... night and day! Really good AI means the game is vastly more replayable I think...especially on higher difficulty levels... learning the intracacies of how to use different classes to defeat smart opponents makes for a great game, again and again. Slightly stupid opponents, on the other hand, means that brute force alone (DPS behind your shieldwall, for example) is all you ever really need, no matter what classes are in your party. Even on POTD in current Pillars, the shieldwall/DPS strategy is mostly enough, with a normal size party anyway, and you don't have much fun with that after very long. I know smarter AI like SCS is not easy to do though. But I'd love for Obsidian to try
  23. I don't care too much about size... I'd just like to see dungeons with a story and puzzles and historical/lore context. Endless Paths had enough story and all of that for like 7 of its levels, all the rest seemed just added in to make it larger (to me anyway). I would also really love to see dungeons and ruins that you cannot just clear at a certain level and then be totally done with. It would be great to have dungeons that you first encounter at level 3, for example, to have some secret passage that leads to a whole deeper area/rooms/level, a secret passage you would only discover with level 10 mechanics skills, or after reading a history book about that dungeon site, a book located in a far-off library you won't get to until level 10... etc. Or maybe opening it requires an invocation you learn from a distant wizard later in the game. Or maybe you meet a tired old adventurer in a tavern at level 12 who offers to sell you a key to a door in that dungeon. The possibilities are many. This kind of dungeon would be an easy and complication-free way for the devs to make the story feel less linear too, because you would not just blast through the dungeon and then never see it again... it would be your choice whether and when to go back to it.
  24. I'd urge the devs to be cautious about going hog-wild with additional stretch goals regarding expanding gameplay mechanics... adding multi-classing and subclasses I suspect will be creating lots of gameplay balance issues already! The original system was really great and decently balanced. So many sequel games I have seen that cause problems by messing with what is already a good thing in the core mechanics. Would suggest that additional stretch goals add actual content to the game, great content. Fulvano's travels is that kind of thing, that is awesome. Personally I would love stretch goals that make the world more dynamic too. I really hate the 'dead world' aspect of most RPGs... after you clear an area its totally dead and there is usually no reason to return. If you do return, its either totally empty (e.g. wilderness or dungeon area) or there is no reason to talk to anybody anymore (towns). I love to see stretch content that makes cleared areas more dynamic... like if you clear a dungeon of a necromancer, maybe three weeks later a tribe of xaurips takes it over. And there would (perhaps) be a quest from the nearby town's mayor to go deal with them. Kill them and you get some small amounts of gold, maybe a few minor items to sell, maybe some town reputation, etc. Nothing too powerful as a reward. But the idea is that these xaurips would not be a one-time thing that is pre-written into that dungeon and happens by plan when you kill the necromancer. Maybe spiders take it over, or maybe local miners from the town move in and start working it. If it is xaurips that show up and you kill them, maybe one week later some earth blights take hold of the mine. On and on... so its a dynamic mine area. Given how the XP mechanics work, you don't get infinite XP from killing xaurips or spiders or anything else over and over anyway so leveling balance issues are less of a concern. But it would make the world seem so much more alive. So I vote for more dynamic world stretch goals
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