Insidous

I think you are right in that there are many new tools to strengthen the alpha strike like assassinate, empower, or explosives and luring enemies into their own traps. On the other hand a lot of the encounter design of the beta makes it hard to rely on those. When being ambushed by sand scrubs, in random encounters or by scripted titans stomping about you do not necessarily get those benefits. So I would say if the encounter design is equally good in the main game, this won't become a problem

With that suggestion, do you think there should be per rest empowers, as there currently are, as well? I feel like rest spamming might negate the effectiveness of resolve if there were. I like the idea under the condition that the ai (enemies and programmable companion ai) would learn to use empowers too. Without ai implementation debuffing enemy resolve wouldn't have any effect and people who like to rely on companion ai wouldn't get the bonus. In general resolve would be a "good player's" attribute, as you need to use empowers and know how to use them best. All the other attributes affect primarily passive mechanics.

Sorry, but crits and grazes work only when you have a dice roll for hits ( acc - defense + 1d100). In PoE1+2 all friendly abilities are auto hits. If you change this it would be possible to miss a friendly char when you want to heal or buff them. This would be so frustrating to many players that I doubt any developer does ever consider it. There are some games where you can get a critical heal (World of Warcraft is the only one I can remember at the moment), but I do not know this from any single player RPG that is similar to PoE. If you graze or crit is determined by acc and the only attribute that influences acc is per. If per gives acc to hostile abilities and res gives acc to friendly abilities (well, kind off) you make things more complicated without having a benefit from it. Right now res gives a bonus to healing, so chars focused on healing will have lots of res. If res can give grazes and crits to healing it will buff this in two different ways. Chars with lots of res will have more healing and a high chance to heal critically on top of that while chars with low res would have less healing and a chance that their already lower healing gets halved. This effect could be achieved easier if you just double the healing bonus from res ( 3% -> 6%). Now res would give a different bonus for friendly and hostile spells and you have to start balancing everything again. So from my point of view this does not make much sense. First of all: I didn't talk about misses. Those would be frustrating, but I think the chance of grazes (that can only occur with RES < 10) is fair. Then, just like with the change Josh mentioned, there would obviously be a return to might governing spell damage and healing. I was thinking about a roll of some kind, but yeah those should target a defense and it would require so many mechanical changes that'd be difficult to implement and could just make things complicated. My suggestion would ideally work very much like the random-empowers, but only for friendly target spells to prevent random-empower + crit spikes and to give something specifically to support and self-buff characters, since I think there should be a niche for that in the attribute system. Calling them "crits" and "grazes" is to prevent intervening with the empower mechanic and something new players immediately recognize, since everybody knows the concept of critical. If people confuse it with the accuracy based critical hits, call it empower again Attribute thoughts for a priest with the proposed changes: Might: good for damage and healing Con: good for survivability Dex: decent for all actions: damage, healing, debuffing and buffing Per: decent for damage and debuffing Int: good for buffing and debuffing, low occasional impact on damage/heal Res: decent for survivability, healing and buffing This would make Res somewhat of a counterpart to Per. Where Per is universally good for offensive actions, Res would be good for defensive and supporting actions. Since both influence a chance based system, I thought it might be elegant to have the critical-support-hit system. It wouldn't be the must have stat for martial classes, but the deflection combined with chances of longer frenzies, swift strikes or better constant recovery is not so shabby I think.

My suggestion: Friendly and self targeting abilities get a +4% chance to crit (like +50% healing/duration) per point, or graze (-50% healing/duration) for each point missing Issues adresed: - No "stacking randomness" like random empower + lucky crit resulting in absurd damage - Pretty straight forward and easy to understand: crits and grazes are already in the game - Affects casters and supporters the most, who on the other hand usually don't profit as much from the deflection part of resolve - From barbarians with frenzy, over constant recovery, to wizard self buffs: each class uses at least some of those abilities - Support focused characters don't profit much from Perception, so they get an additional strong attribute choice Possible issues: - Still random, no reliable effect - Overlap/synergy with duration bonus from int (exists for the random-empower mechanic too, but to a less obvious degree maybe) - Buffs friendly and self targeting abilities over-proportionally It's not perfect and one moth before the release probably too late to test, but I thought it might be worthy to share. Especially since there doesn't appear to be a perfect solution everybody agrees on.

Yeah on fireballs etc. it did. It's very inconsistent, over the top on some abilities and useless on others - what I think might be the biggest problem for the new resolve mechanic as well.

Not a bad idea! The interaction with perception might become weird though, since they synergize so well with each other. Maxing, one while dumping the other could result in a bad build. Another merit the empower version has, that it affects support characters like healers, too. I think for RP reasons they want to make resolve important for priests, paladins, etc.

Again that depends on the frequency of occurrence vs. impact. You can roll a 100 and crit on a basic attack, then try to use your one Gaze of an Adragan, roll a 5 and miss.. Luck is part of pillars, sometimes it has a low impact, sometimes a big one. Why invest in perception you might say, while still being able to miss? Let's say you have 18 resolve and the encounter takes 40 seconds, every 5 seconds you do an action: (40s - 10s) / 5s = 6 actions that might get empowered. 18 resolve means 24% chance of empower: Likelihood of and least one empower: 1 - (1 - 0.24)^6 = 81% So it is likely to happen in a fight, while being unlikely to happen for your favorite spells. But if you can't rely on your favorite spell to crit or even hit at all, I don't see how this is somehow resulting in more wildly varying results. After all a +5 PL buff to a spell is just a nice buff, not really more impactful than a crit. Now the profit for martial classes wouldn't be enormous, but since every class uses tons of abilities certainly there. Combined with the deflection bonus it is useful for paladins healing and using FoD, or tanky fighters using knockdowns. Much more at least then the current resolve

That sounds super difficult to do for these very different resource mechanics. How do you give monks extra wounds, or more focus to ciphers? They would have to change how much guile and other basic resources people have because even a bonus of +1 is huge when the basic value is like 5 of something. How would it scale with a growing resource pool after leveling up? Basically a redesign of core mechanics of all classes and even then the impact of resolve is very difficult to balance between those. I'd reckon this is something for a sequel, since even an expansion would hardly change this much Just give a fraction of a point per point of Resolve, like 0.25 per level. When the fraction reaches 1, you give 1 more point. You don't need 1-to-1 on points. You could balance it differently for each class and have that difference reflected on the character sheet. These are rather simple calculations, I don't know why you're making them sound so much more complicated than they actually are. I legitimately don't understand why people think the Resolve changes with random empowers is a good idea. I think people fundamentally misunderstand why these Resolve changes are necessary in the first place. Not enough people are taking Resolve on casters, right? Especially because Concentration is a binary now, right? And switching Spell Damage to resolve just created the opposite problem where Resolve isn't important to martial classes. So you need to give them a compelling reason, and when everything else is a reliable advantage and you have this one which is a possible advantage, people are going to choose the reliable advantage basically every time. Why would I choose a random chance to empower my abilities on a caster over just increasing the AOE, duration, accuracy, and base damage? Why would I choose it over action speed, damage, and health on a martial class? If you give it a fraction each level there would be many situations, where +x resolve doesn't have an impact. It would be the only attribute to do so and then there will be situations where a +2 resolve buff on a helmet would be very good, then you'll level up and because of rounding the helmet suddenly wouldn't do anything. With Balthazars solution as a wizard with access to level 3 spells, there wouldn't be a difference between having 6 or 13 resolve. So how could you balance it of being comparable to monks having a decreased wound threshold or ciphers getting more focus? I don't think the random mechanic is necessarily the best way to go, but if the chances of occurrence become high enough and the impact isn't huge or unexpectedly different from the regular outcome, it is fine to me. Random-Empower-Resolve needs to be balanced to the point where the expected damage increase for high impact spells like fireball is about the same as the damage increase in might. Secondary effects like bonus duration, penetration and the bonus deflection make it ideally worthwhile over might if you rely on those spells, if your damage comes from auto attacks as well you'd prefer might. It's a thin line to balance, but I don't think it is impossible and the reliable bonus vs. spiked bonus is an interesting choice to me

That sounds super difficult to do for these very different resource mechanics. How do you give monks extra wounds, or more focus to ciphers? They would have to change how much guile and other basic resources people have because even a bonus of +1 is huge when the basic value is like 5 of something. How would it scale with a growing resource pool after leveling up? Basically a redesign of core mechanics of all classes and even then the impact of resolve is very difficult to balance between those. I'd reckon this is something for a sequel, since even an expansion would hardly change this much

Doesn't it depend on which ability? I thought that, for example, the various Minoletta Missile abilities got extra projectiles but their damage per missilt remained the same, and for summoned weapons I know for a fact that damage is unaffected. These are the default PL scalings: "DefaultMultiProjectileScaling": { "DamageAdjustment": 1.05, "DurationAdjustment": 1, "BounceCountAdjustment": 0, "ProjectileCountAdjustment": 0.5, "AccuracyAdjustment": 1, "PenetrationAdjustment": 0.25 }, "DefaultBounceScaling": { "DamageAdjustment": 1.05, "DurationAdjustment": 1, "BounceCountAdjustment": 0.5, "ProjectileCountAdjustment": 0, "AccuracyAdjustment": 1, "PenetrationAdjustment": 0.25 }, "DefaultEffectScaling": { "DamageAdjustment": 1.1, "DurationAdjustment": 1.05, "BounceCountAdjustment": 0, "ProjectileCountAdjustment": 0, "AccuracyAdjustment": 1, "PenetrationAdjustment": 0.25 }, "DefaultWeaponAttackScaling": { "DamageAdjustment": 1.05, "DurationAdjustment": 1.05, "BounceCountAdjustment": 0, "ProjectileCountAdjustment": 0, "AccuracyAdjustment": 1, "PenetrationAdjustment": 0.25 }, "DefaultFallbackScaling": { "DamageAdjustment": 1.05, "DurationAdjustment": 1, "BounceCountAdjustment": 0, "ProjectileCountAdjustment": 0, "AccuracyAdjustment": 2, "PenetrationAdjustment": 0.25 }, So yeah Minoletta Missles get 0.5 additional projectiles per PL, but also get additional damage and pen buffs. I'm still unsure what exactly applies to full attack abilities, I guess stuff that adds a plain damage value profits from the "DamageAdjustment": 1.05, but is your basic attack weapon damage also increased? So FoD for example would scale with your equipped weapon and PL? That would make that ability much stronger in the late game with the lash and "DamageAdjustment" bonus multiplied. There are also following lines: "AbilityBaseAccuracyPerAbilityLevel": 2, "AbilityBasePenetrationPerAbilityLevel": 0.5, "EmpoweredWeaponAccuracyBonus": 20, "EmpoweredWeaponPenetrationBonus": 5, which definitely apply on empower, but don't apply to your basic power level. When it comes to the penetration value I think only the "EmpoweredWeaponPenetrationBonus": 5, has an impact. I can't test all this right now, so I would appreciate if someone knows more. Other notes: - Yeah summoned weapon spells only scale with 5% bonus duration per PL, quite bad - I don't know for which spells the "DefaultFallbackScaling" is used

Yes the variance is huge. Also some stuff is still unclear, for example how it affects attack abilities. Most of those don't really scale with power level, but get a bonus of 20 accuracy and 5 penetration when used with the current empower. I would imagine you'll get a +10 acc, +2.5 pen bonus with this version, but we don't know yet. In general the impact is biggest while being low level and casting a multi projectile spell. Damage spells healing get a decent boost as well, attack abilities only when it helps you overcome high defense or armor and cc spells/buffs are hardly impacted at all.

A chance to refund the resource used for an ability maybe? Like 4%/point to gain 100% back, or 4%/point-missing to double the cost (after cast and only if available). That means wizard have a chance for more a high level casts, but all classes have a reason to take it if they use abilities. In contrast to the empower thing a resource refund chance is still very random, but the impact is less flashy and hardly noticeable for enemies. In any case, I really think RES should affect ability use mostly. RP wise it fits with all hero characters, but I would say mostly with paladins, priests and wizards.

It's worse than that. An appropriately built Orlan can start the game with 20 Resolve. Then with an Inspiration they can hit 25, so 45%. That's before any bonuses to Resolve from equipment or non-Inspiration buffs (what does Crowns of the Faithful do with Resolve currently?). By the way, what exactly does the negative chance from going below 10 Resolve mean? Would it mean an X% chance to have the power level of your ability reduced? I am really glad that it is only a +5 PL empower. This is still a lot if you are low level, but by the later stages and especially when fighting strong creatures you'd hardly notice. And yeah he made it sound like depower will be a thing too. If you dump resolve there would be 21% for -5 PL. Not a huge thing for some abilities, but I wonder how projectile spells work with negative PL. Some mostly auto attack based barbarians for example could still dump res and might endure an occasionally -25% duration frenzy. I'm starting to like this idea, curious how it plays out

I'm curious what he means with going back to the pillars 1 resolve. I can't imagine they will revert concentration and interrupts this late because they have so many abilities and mechanics designed around the new system. But without that, back to beta 1 with Resolve: +1 deflection, +2 will? I still hope they find a good new solution, but personally prefer the beta 3 version over the beta 1 version

Voted, randomness in Res might be fun for player, but is not too fun when used by enemy. A high level dragon with a high power level itself profits less from increased power level than lesser creatures. Let's say the dragon is level 18, meaning his power level is 8 (assuming creature progression is like single class progression). He uses a 50 base damage spell: basic 8PL: 90dmg empowered with empower mechanic, 18PL: 140dmg empowered with my suggested resolve-based-empower numbers, 11PL: 105dmg I think it all depends on the numbers they are choosing, the player would hardly notice the difference between 90 or 105 dmg, but 140 would be indeed devastating and frustrating. Also the relative impact is bigger for low level characters and creatures which is weird Edit: never mind, it seems to be super saiyan like...

I think this new resolve mechanic highly depends on the implementation. A low chance for a big spike (or drop) in power level would be pretty bad. A medium chance, like 5% per Resolve point for +- 3 power levels could be decent. I think the default scaling for spells is +10% damage, +5% duration and + 0.25 penetration per power level, which would mean that a single point of resolve increases the base damage of spells by 1.5%, the duration by 0.75% and has a slight chance of upping your penetration level. These numbers are obviously just a guess, but I like the concept of having resolve benefit ability and spell impact in contrast to might affecting all damage, including auto attacks. Edit: Just saw this, so don't mind my numbers. And they seem to go with lower chance, big impact...

My GPU broke recently so unfortunately I can't test and play for the time being.. Before that I was working on a mod myself, it's really brilliant how easy it is. The main feature other than balancing some spells, focus gain and weapon damage was making all level 0 abilities scale with power level, e.g. sneak attack from +50% damage to + (25% +5%/PL). Didn't make this much of a difference in the beta and the tooltips don't work properly with small fractions (like a +0.02/PL addition to the soul whip multiplier would be rounded to 0.0 in the description), but I thought it was a decent approach to balance martial multiclass combinations. I also tried to make the "scaling" attribute of weapons scale with power level, but that turned out buggy.. It would be possible with a scaling +weapon accuracy and +weapon damage secondary spell effect to summon weapon spells, but that is not so straight forward. Still I think it would really benefit balance and gameplay. Using an Empower on summoning spells wouldn't be a waste then and single classed casters were not too inferior with these weapons

This is the first screenshot of the new "Reputations" page in the Character sheet as far as I know: It's featured in this Gamestar article: http://www.gamestar.de/artikel/pillars-of-eternity-2-deadfire-die-fraktionen-und-was-sie-von-fallout-new-vegas-gelernt-haben,3326192.html The only real news in the article is that the player can actively influence the development and alignments of the factions

I don't like it. While I don't mind the pace of the fights, high recovery means you are not able to react as fast. Can be frustrating so watch your character do nothing for 5 seconds while being rushed at. I would like them to slow down movement speed even more, but revert the recovery changes

How do you know it is too much of a money sink? If there is one thing the beta can't simulate then it is a realistic economic situation. We don't know how much money the player really has. Considering all crpgs I played I was swimming in money half way through, I don't assume that suddenly doing side content and exploring will cost you more money than you'll find. If anything tying exploring and traveling to your funds makes exploration much more natural, as the ideal way is going from port to port. I expect restrictions loosen up naturally when you get more money, better ships and crew in later stages of the game. If it wasn't for a system like this people would just start in the top left corner and like a lawn mower farm up the entire world's content. Developers need tools to keep players somewhat on track during the more story driven parts of the game

I am actually really impressed by the ship fights Boarding seems pretty underwhelming though. The approaching ship always takes a few more shots and even if you decimate most of the enemy crew members they are somehow still in the boarding fight. Also crew members knocked out in a boarding fight seem to be killed instead of injured like they get from cannon balls. Maybe get way more loot from boarding? Or the option to keep/sell the prize?

My encounters usually take much longer, but maybe the time I spend paused is misleading me. So I never felt there is not enough time to make use of it, but I definitely agree that it feels meaningless for many and especially melee characters. So far I think I only used it once to empower a spell, very often to give priests or paladins more resources for another heal and once to give my rouge more guile to escape. I very much agree that using it on a single spell is high risk, low reward. Since the accuracy doesn't scale with power level you are just as likely to miss which feels terrible. Getting some more resources in difficult fights is nice though I'm not sure if overall I like the feature, maybe if I spend more time with the same party I'll learn how to make use of it for every character.

I think the slow cast times for most casters are a nice contrast to the faster melee combat. But I agree that the effects of many slow cast spells are too underwhelming. Are fireball that takes 6 seconds to cast is awesome if it then really crushes four foes. Simply reducing the cast time makes it very generic

I agree on points one and two, even though I always found interrupt rather underwhelming in PoE1 I don't really see how the third one is an argument against perception. So cc reliant characters shouldn't try to buff their accuracy at all? I am very happy for any bonus that I can still get. -10% chance to miss for +10% chance to crit equals an expected increase of 24% in cc duration

(from this thread : https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/94949-should-might-stay-multiplicative-or-return-to-additive/page-4?do=findComment&comment=1960507 ) So that's . . . 2.1% damage increase for the additional point of Per on PotD, still below the benefit from Might or Dex. Try the beta on potd, face the Lagufaeth chieftains, broodmother and redfins on level 7 and see if you can manage without attacking a defense 30 higher than your accuracy with all your characters. Or the named Engwithan Saint. Sure a high might char might kill those skeletons in the Engwithan Saint fight faster, but you need a char with decent perception against the saint. You need to apply cc and actually hit him. The toughest enemies, single bosses, dragons, whatever we will see in the full game do have very high defenses and not necessarily an easy weakness that your character can exploit. A rouge cannot simply attack toughness all the time, a fighter has difficulties to do anything against high deflection etc. Even with level scaling single bosses will (hopefully) have considerably higher defenses than your accuracy and that is when perception still shines. Again it is these fights you want to be most effective! That is precisely why perception is still so important! The lower the accuracy is the bigger is the impact of extra points and since you can't buff yourself as much anymore your accuracy will be lower and you can't overcome a critically low accuracy as easily.