Loren Tyr

And I suppose you have actual, verifiable data on this? Of systematically processed forum threads on game-specific forums, quantifying the relative degree of complaints on games being too easy versus too difficult (as well as assorted relevant confounders that would need to be corrected for, of course)? Or is this 'evidence' really more your subjective, unsystematic impression? And even given such data, how do you get from there being a preponderance of specific (lack of) difficulty complaints, to the conclusion that people are not buying the game because it is too easy? Even if it is predictive, that hardly makes it the cause. Certainly, at best it would be the perceived rather than the actual difficulty (since by the time you experience the actual difficulty you've already bought the game), but indeed it also clashes with the common observation that most players don't play at the highest difficulty anyway. Most potential players therefore would have an easy remedy to get the level of difficulty they desire, and having to turn the difficulty knob up a notch seems unlikely to be a prohibitive barrier. Sales figures of games are influenced by any number of factors, many of which don't even relate to the gameplay itself, so the notion that sales of DOS2 vs POE2 can so easily be reduced to a single factor (which so happens to coincide with your particular views and preferences when it comes to games) just doesn't track. You'd need a whole lot more evidence to even remotely make that stick. I would also point out that the observation that most players don't play at or near maximum difficulty contradicts your earlier claim, in this thread and before, that players "want to be terrified", etc. You keep making these kinds of claims without much to back it up, and given the quite likely possibility that lots of different players have lots of different preferences and things they seek in games (as evidenced by the very poll in this thread, as well), any claim to the effect of "(all/most/the majority of) players want X" are almost certainly false for any non-trivial value of X. Finally, I also do not see how this actually relates to the actual topic of the thread, which relates to the different ability/casting systems in PoE 1 vs PoE 2. Although it can certainly be argued that PoE 2 is not as difficult as PoE 1 (certainly PoE 2 at launch vs PoE 1 in its more polished later iterations, though that would be a rather unfair comparison to make), it doesn't follow that this is because of the system used. The difference in difficulty is only pertinent if this is inherent to the difference in systems, if a PoE 2-like system simply cannot be made more difficult (which again would seem only relevant to players playing at the maximum available difficulty setting, which is a minority). There is no particular reason to believe this is the case, nor have you given any arguments to that effect. In fact you have actually said very little about PoE 1 at all, instead comparing it to an entirely different game in DOS2 for no clearly discernable reason. The closest you come would be your claim that a PoE 2 ruleset is next to impossible to balance. A very ambitious claim but sadly lacking any kind of supporting argument, since the two calims you cite as the cause for this are themselves not supported by anything, nor are they so evidently true that they have no need of further support.

It should work with Disintegrate, which can still be useful to get it to actually stick on high Fortitude targets. But in general, it's just not going to interact well with Cipher abilities, since essentially all their AOE effects are of the 'single target + surrounding area kind. The game parses that as separate attacks, and if the primary attack causes the assassin to be unstealthed by being loud or causing enemy damage, Assassinate will just cease to apply. It's fairly easy to predict from the spell descriptions what it'll work for in that sense. Wizard do have some spells it works well with (Druids too of course), enough to make it a useful combination with Assassin. But Cipher's I'm afraid just isn't ideal for this (though I'd argue, +25 ACC on things like Disintegrate can still be quite useful).

It's not as if it would actually be that difficult to pull off an ambush like this. As long as your would-be attackers have a decent idea of where you're heading it'd mostly be a matter of picking a good spot, having their crew strategically loiter about looking inconspicious (or just hidden), and springing their ambush as you walk by. Especially since in reality the streets would be rather narrower and more crowded and littered than they are depicted in the game, with all sorts of nooks and crannies and obstacles and a whole vertical dimension to use to the ambusher's advantage. This would be difficult to render in a game engine so the depiction may not be ideal, but other than that it's hardly unrealistic. I would also argue that in a game where, for example, characters can shrug off getting repeatedly shot at point blank range with firearms etc., it seems a bit of a stretch to claim that these kinds of scripted ambushes are what push the limits of suspension of disbelief. Or for that matter, since you mention it: party formation. Would you actually expect a group of people walking through a city with no particular reason to suspect any kind of imminent danger to be maintaining some kind of tight formation? They are hardly likely to in any situation, let alone in an unthreatening urban environment.

No, not hard at all. Confirmation bias rarely is, though.

Except that we have no clear evidence that the community *is* split in half. Unless you define 'community' as 'the active participants of this forum' perhaps (though even then it's questionable whether the poll participants sufficiently approximate a random sample of this community). But I highly doubt whether the preferences of the people posting in threads like these is representative of Obsidian's target audience and/or the average PoE player. So catering primarily to the preferences of a vocal minority here is probably not the best design (or business) approach. Especially since, as the poll seems to indicate, there is no consensus on which way to go anyway. In addition, I would say 'split in half' is rather overstating things. Reading through people's comments in this thread, it's not nearly so binary. I see various comments to the effect of 'I somewhat prefer X over Y', indicating that those preferences are not actually that strong either way. But the absence of something like an "I'm largely fine with either system" option in the poll invites people to pick one (or not vote) even if they're not that bothered either way. Similarly, there are various comments criticising specific elements of one or the other system (or PoE implementation of said system anyway), which cannot be read as a wholesale rejection of that system. So as with any source of empirical data, polls like these can't really be interpreted quite so straightforwardly (though to the perennial frustration of statisticians everywhere, they oh so frequently are; particularly unfortunate if they happen to be called a referendum, of course).

I'd say the fun isn't so much a property of the game itself, but rather people's experience of it. What someone considers to be fun of course ties directly to their individual preferences, and how well a particular game (or anything else) caters to those. Though I'm certainly not denying the fundamental importance of having fun when playing a game, because indeed why play it if not to have fun? For me a game feeling unbalanced would detract from my enjoyment of it, in part because it tends to rather constrain viable playing styles and options and such. How a game being/feeling too balanced would for others reduce their enjoyment though, I don't quite see; hence my curiosity (complaints about insufficient energy having been spent on other things or post-release rebalancing I get, but then it's not really about being 'over-balanced' as such).

How is it relevant whether it's an achievement or not? Personally I couldn't be less interested in TCS if I tried, but anyone who actually enjoys that sort of thing can do that already. What's a bit of fanfare at the end going to add to that?

There's nothing for them to figure out if they don't agree it smells bad in the first place, though. So you'd have to be rather more explicit on why balance-oriented design is a bad thing to convince them. Although I must say I don't see it as anything other than positive, good balance is of rather fundamental importance to the quality of (almost) any game as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, all firearms only have piercing damage (except for some uniques), which is indeed a big drawback compared to the other ranged weapons (all dual type except Wand, which also only has piercing damage).

Frankly, I barely remember Mazzy; other than "some variation on standard paladin character template", she barely left an imprint on my memory in that regard. But this is rather my point, this applies to most of the characters in the BG series. To me they felt as just that, variations on stock characters and tropes. There is never any sense that there is an actual personality to them; motivations, quirks, likes, dislikes. Whereas in the PoE series, by and large, it feels to me like there is. Through their interactions with each other and the main character, their interjections during story events, their overall tone. Which applies to non-companion NPCs as well, actually. Metaphysics aside, the PoE world in many respects simply comes across as more realistic and believable. It's of course less of an over the top fantasy setting of course, and doesn't have nonsensical alignment systems (which very much feels like in BG is part of the problem with characterisation), though that in itself isn't a deciding factor given that Planescape: Torment also had actually memorable characters with depth to them as well.

When characters in games/movies/tv annoy me, it is rarely because they are well written, to be honest. And even if it is... it's still annoying. That is as a rule not a good emotion to be evoking in your audience, certainly not on a continual basis. To me, almost all of the BG2 characters (NPC and otherwise) always felt entirely one-dimensional, stitched together from standard tropes. Yes, Keldorn had some a-typical sidestory for the genre, but that didn't make him any less of a cardboard cut-out; hardly going to get invested in the problems of some random fantasy stock character. They just never felt even remotely like they represented an actual person in any way. The ludicrous D&D alignment system obviously doesn't help there (is that still in modern D&D?), especially with evil characters. Some exceptions, Imoen always did feel fleshed out. Jaheira also had a well-developed personality as I recall, a bit unfortunate that it was incredibly grating as well. I enjoyed the game mind you, and many of the NPCs were certainly amusing (though just as many quite obnoxious as well). But there was rarely any depth to them, or reason to care about them.

Nah, Fallout 4 is better.

The point is to have a build that's fun to play. Some builds and especially (support) abilities are only useful with a party. Are they all pointless aswell when posting a nice build? Well i'm a bit different. I want to play on the highest difficulty and still be able to kill most of the enemies easiely. Ah, and of course if something doesn't fit *your* playstyle and preference, there's just generally no point to it at all. Obviously.

I agree with the premise, but it feels like often in... exchanges such as these the 'exchanging' part tends to get snowed under quite quickly. In my view, that actually requires actively trying to understand the other person's point of view, and engaging with it. Whereas often, people tend to remain stuck in their own perspective too much. That is, when someone says "warm weather is better than cold weather" we should ideally react more along the lines of "why does (s)he think that" rather than "that's wrong" (though in this particular example of course, cold weather is objectively superior and no discussion is really needed or possible ). The internet isn't necessarily ideal for this of course, anonimity and distance doesn't help empathising with another's point of view. Though clearly it is quite embedded in human psychology, all too often you see relationships of all sorts fall apart simply because of poor communication.

This is an age-old discussion, and if you get more deeply into it, you'll realize that it's not like you said. Besides, we're not talking about ranking everything here. We're talking about two important titles in a niche genre, and I think it's a perfectly valid discussion. Or, if it doesn't seem valid for you, it's very simple to stay out of it. There's an argument to be made for the idea that "everything is just opinion and that's it", but then, if somebody really tried to claim that The Shaggs is better than The Beatles, or that James Patterson is better than Hemingway, or that Plan 9 From Outer Space is better than The Shining, I'm pretty sure that essentially everybody sane would question their capacity for reasonable judgement. So when you get down to it, it's not just opinions -- there are reasonable arguments to be made for why something is or isn't good. In my book, both PoE and BG2 are definitely good, even very good. It's just that BG2 is a couple of notches better, for reasons I've described above. Even with the examples you mention, I rather doubt it's quite so clear cut. I'd expect if you were to ask James Patterson fans (going by sales figures, there's a fair few of them) whether they prefer Hemingway or think Hemingway is better, the answer by and large will be 'no'. How you would then conclude from that that their ability to reason was impaired, I'm not sure. The problem that quickly arises in any of these discussions is that "what is better" supposes a set of criteria by which that is defined. But those criteria are rarely very explicitly articulated and people tend not to fully agree on what criteria ought to be used, yielding the frequently acrimonously and largely unproductive kinds of 'discussions' so common on the internet. I would say, reasonable arguments certainly can be made to an extent: given a largely agreed set of criteria, discussion of which work is superior can be quite fruitful. Or similarly, discussion on which work is superior in some particular aspect. And perhaps also discussion to an extent on the relevance and weight of specific qualities, given that more general criteria are more or less agreed. But where people fundamentally disagree on what qualities make a work good, such as we might expect to see with for example Hemingway afficionados versus Patterson fans, there isn't really any further norm to appeal to. They may well consider the other's treasured books to be trashy pulp and pretentious snobbery respectively, but it's essentially a stalemate; and anything beyond 'agree to disagree' and just enjoying whatever books you want to enjoy isn't going to get you anywhere. Which isn't going to stop these kinds of exchanges from happening, clearly. But I always wonder what people hope to accomplish with it. Sure, they can dig in and passionately defend why X is objectively (or at least very close to objectively) better than Y. Rally like-minded people around the argument, have a good verbal slugfest, maybe even 'win' the discussion. To what end, I do not know. A false sense of superiority perhaps. Personally, I would say: maybe people should try an actual discussion instead. One that is about actually exchanging ideas and opinions and arguments. Where the aim isn't to 'win' (whatever that means), but to actually listen to what other people are saying. That is rather more fruitful in my experience, anyway. But fundamentally, that really is just about individual views and opinions; informed by and based on all sorts of objective facts and agreed-upon norms no doubt, but at bottom for the most part still just that: opinions.

No, it doesn't reset the reloading. If you interrupt the reload to do something else, then once you get back to reloading it continues where it left off (not sure what happens with weapon switch though). So it's not that the time will have been wasted if you cast a spell or chug a potion halfway through reloading your arquebus or whatever.

Because all weapons have a range of different strengths and weaknesses, and reload vs recovery is only one of them. How important that actually is for a caster is very much going to depend on how you build the character. It's hardly like it is of complete and utterly overriding importance that all casters must be able to instantly respond to things with spells (as also evidenced by the fact that plenty of people have casters wielding melee weapons).

It's intended, reload takes the place of recovery for both firearms as well as crossbows and arbalests (everything that affects recovery time also affects reload time btw, good or bad). So yeah, that is very useful for casters and other characters that may want to be able to respond to things immediately. Though it'll also depend on the play style you're going for with a caster of course, not all of them will need to be able to fire off spells that quickly (and of course dual-wielding wands is going to get you very short recovery as well, to similar effect).

Currently, when I hover the mouse cursor over the class abilities icon on the menu bar, a tooltip with the class description etc. pops up. It obscures the ability bar and a fairly large chunk of the screen, and although it goes away once you move the cursor up a bit onto the ability bar it is still really annoying. It also doesn't serve any purpose, since surely once you've started the game no reminder of the general role of the class is needed anymore (certainly not constantly).

The effect of Alchemy skill on potions and drugs seems to have been completely absent, except for duration. The bonuses of the potions, that previously scaled with Alchemy, just stay at their base level. This applies to Poisons as well, for which the damage does skill but the additional penalties do not. It's not clear whether this is intentional or a bug, since nothing is mentioned about this in the patch 1.2.0 update thread.

Yes, very much this, it's absurd. Can't even use non-damaging AOE attacks, either. I had some Binding Web going on a bunch of thugs that waylaid me, random peasant casually strolls into the middle of all this, gets tagged by the web and goes immediately hostile (well, yellow circle anyway), and is instantly blown apart by a nearby rod blast. Ugh. I mean, that we shouldn't be throwing around Crackling Bolts in the middle of a city, sure. But at least give those NPCs the brains to either run or at least cower in place as soon as they see the melee going on.

Yes, damage per second. For which we need the following components: - the rate at which we attack, the number of attacks per second - the change that attack will actually connect and do damage - the amount of damage dealt by the attack if it connects Quite clearly, accuracy is going to affect the second component. Given that we have three different types of hit with different damage amounts, accuracy will also affect the third component. As, for that matter, will things like hit conversion effects and penetration. And yes, as should be quite obvious, the damage you will do per second is therefore dependent on the attributes of whatever you're trying to damage. That doesn't change the fact that you can just ignore factors like accuracy like you are intent on doing, and be left with a meaningful metric. But maybe let's reverse this. How about you explain to us what use the DPS value you are proposing is to anyone? In terms of practical application, what can I actually do with it? I'd also be quite interested in why you are so hung up on averages here. Almost invariably, even with your simplified DPS, you're going to end up using averages. Because let us suppose we're using an axe, just the standard 13-19 damage range with no penalties or bonuses. And suppose we are attacking with this axe at a rate of one attack per four seconds. What, according to you, is the DPS in this case; and how is that not an average?

As a rule I would imagine people are much more interested in DPS in the sense of the damage rate they will achieve, or could achieve in a specific scenario, not the damage they did previously (which, by the way, also requires a bunch of specific assumptions to get you to a meaningful number). This, by definition, will actually have a statistical distribution rather than a single value even if hits were guaranteed, unless the attack always does the same amount of damage rather than having a range (and technically it'd still qualify as a distribution even then). So even taking the need to actually hit out of the equation, the DPS numbers that people will cite are almost always not direct values either; they're the expected value of the damage distribution. You seem to be ignoring what DPS values are actually used for by people. One obvious and common application is to compare different weapons or weapon types with each other, compare abilities, compare boosts to different stats. For any of these comparisons, defining DPS just as (attack damage) / (duration of attack cycle) is not particularly useful. If attack 1 does 10% more base damage than attack 2, but has five fewer penetration and -20 ACC (with everything else identical), then clearly under the vast majority of circumstances that are likely to arise attack 2 is better. But the DPS as you propose to define it does not reflect this, so then what good is that definition? It's certainly of no use for this kind of comparison, and I struggle to think of applications where it would indeed suffice.

Hadn't noticed that before, my guess is that those refer to the separate friendly AoE and foe AoE (even though they are the same). In practice though, it's just the area around the caster as shown on screen when you hover over the ability. The problem with among others Holy Radiance is that these descriptions are automatically generated off of the status effects they apply, and sometimes this goes a bit wrong. You can see the same thing with Xoti's level 1 Blessed Harvest spell, which lists a 120 base damage but actually only uses that when the target is at least Bloodied (as per the textual description), it's I think only 20 base otherwise. Parsing conditional effects in particular seems to be a bit wonky. Can definitely recommend carefully reading the text as well to make sure what a spell or ability is meant to do. This is also what makes the second Holy Radiance effect confusing: this only applies to Vessels (eg. Revenants, Skeletons, Constructs, etc.). To other enemies it doesn't do anything. Unfortunately it only says this in the text (and fails to capitalize Vessel, which also doesn't help). As for the dispositions, I'm not sure. It could be that this actually changes the base damage, but I haven't used Priests much myself so far (only Xoti). Presumably others here will know, though.

I agree that a cooldown system that just results in a scheduled sequence of abilities, as Boeroer describes, would not be desirable; I don't think that is an inevitable conclusion for all cooldown and cooldown-like systems though. It can be a useful tool. Ultimately what is needed (as I see it anyway), is a situation where at (pretty much) any given time the player has an actual decision to make on what to do next. Which firstly I think requires there to be more and more varied abilities available to a character (so as to improve the range of options in general), but also that they have more pronounced downsides to them. Stuff like this, as well as cooldowns that apply to a class of abilities rather than individually, would help remove the "using your top ability the moment its cooldown ends" kind of problem (by things not being as clearly 'the top ability', and multiple abilities becoming available again simultaneously). Having said that, I think the better alternative is still a switch from rather binary systems like (finite) per-encounter resources and cooldowns to a more gradual approach, as have been variously suggested already: resources that replenish over time (akin to chanter phrases, though it'd help to scale them to higher counts to give more flexibility); resources that accumulate due to action (like focus and wounds); negative 'resources' that accumulate with specific ability use, which accrue negative effects and dissipate over time (and are unlimited, making considerations of how often certain types of abilities are used an actual decision, and giving more value to low-penalty abilities like auto-attack variations); having accumulating penalties in a more specific sense from overusing the same abilities quickly (ie. you -can- spam magic missiles, but there are natural incentives not to); and in general, having more downsides to everything in addition to their benefits, such that again there is more to weigh in using them than "has it cooled down yet" / "do I have the resources for it"? That'd be my general assessment anyway .