Novem

Good thing you can in fact board the enemy ship then. Obsidian has already made it clear, as far as I know, that the ship combat is optional.

Burn the witch.

We've been bamboozled gentlemen, should I get our pitchforks ready?

Guess I was just wrong on that point. Thanks for the correction!

I like the idea of the Troubadour but the execution leaves a bit to be desired. What I wish is that the Brisk Recitation Modal let you stack up phrases faster than a base chanter, so that you have to decide between incantations and passive effects on a constant basis. Right now, and I've played Troubadour in both of my playthroughs of the beta so far btw, it just doesn't feel like a very interactive class and the fantasy I had in mind for it isn't really being met. I really dislike the negative they chose with all invocations costing +1 to cast, and I'd prefer them making all OFFENSIVE invocations cost more (even if it's +2). I'm super jealous of the Skald because their offensive invocations aren't locked off to them, only defensive ones, but for the troubadour every single invocation in the game has a significant hurdle in the way. It makes playing a supportive chanter a lot less satisfying than it could be. One thing I will say about the chanter in general is that I wish the cast time changes didn't apply to their summons. I'd rather have to stack up more phrases to make a summon then how it is currently where it takes several seconds to summon something. It feels like there's two separate barriers between me and summoning something and... ehhhh.

Well from the way he put it, you'd only get the chance to miss friendly abilities if you dumped the stat. So you'd have to opt-in. I think it's a fairly decent solution, but the problem I see is that I don't see how that would be an appealing stat for martial classes.

I don't think that argument works, because when you make an attack you have the ability to weigh your chances of hitting, and whether you miss or crit the impact and it's effect on combat is clear, relatively consistent, not too overpowering, and predictable. Random empowers would not be, because it's totally dependent on whether the skill that gets empowered is actually useful to empower or not. Either way, that's not an argument for introducing another element of randomness to combat where it doesn't belong. The game isn't so uninteresting that it needs another layer of randomness to play around, especially one that's so completely volatile from a balancing perspective. It's also not interactive and doesn't impact the way in which you play the game, so what exactly is the purpose?

"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." But it's not an interesting choice to the majority and as such it doesn't address the actual problem. Resolve still won't be an appealing stat, especially for martial classes. People aren't going to pick a maybe advantage over a definitely advantage unless the maybe advantage is so powerful that you can't pass it up. Plus the bigger problem with these random empowers is that you don't know which abilities are being empowered or when (meaning it could empower an ability which doesn't really benefit from it), so it's effectiveness will vary wildly from absolute garbage to ludicrously overpowered based completely on luck. It needs to be able to turn encounters in order to be an appealing choice, which means the bonus you're getting needs to be good enough to be worth the investment, but the second it is it becomes a stat which makes every combat encounter be about luck of the draw rather than skill. This does in fact make it impossible to balance, no thin line here. Either it's so bad that it's useless, it's so mediocre that the other reliable options are more appealing, or it's so good that it breaks the game completely and encourages save scumming tactics. If it is going to be in the game, and I'd really, really prefer it doesn't make it, then IMO the player should be deciding on how to use the empower rather than it just randomly triggering. At least then it's a slightly interactive mechanic that takes skill to utilize effectively, and is as such not impossible to balance around.

That's a way better solution than my idea that's for sure, but that's what you numbers guys are for, hue hue Personally though I still think the best idea is tying Resolve to movement speed, since it's the only important stat you can't influence in character creation. It's important to all classes and has the possibility to create some really fun builds. It hurts when you dump it, but not so much that you absolutely need it. It allows for characters with more diverse playstyles. So I've decided that's the idea I'm getting behind.

Personally, I don't like statistical bonuses being tied to roleplaying choices at all. They've made such tremendous strides forward in this department with the new split skills system, I don't know why they're so committed to retaining this particular element. I'd rather just have the points to distribute the way I want to.

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?

There's no need for any random chances. Just give X points of Resources for Y points of Resolve and balance the resource costs of the spells around those changes.

Well for stuff that stacks up like wounds/phrases, maybe you could increase the rate at which you gain them or increase the upper limit of how many you can have at once. I don't think it would actually be too good, especially when it comes to spells, because of the action economy. But if it's something to be worried about, maybe you'd only get the extra resource points when combat lasts a certain amount of time? Also I believe we're already getting phrases at the beginning of combat as a Chanter ability. At least according to one of the Q&A's where Josh said people liked Sirin's ability to hold phrases between encounters and it's likely there would be a similar feature in Deadfire. Movement speed/Stride isn't.

Just for people who don't read my whole post, my favorite of my ideas was actually increasing/decreasing movement speed (or Stride as it's called in POE2) through Resolve. That stat is useful for every class in the game, but as far as I'm aware there isn't a way to directly impact it except through abilities. I honestly think even if it isn't applied to resolve that Stride should have it's own attribute, or be folded into Dexterity. Other than that I also really like reducing the effects/severity of afflictions, if duration isn't what Obsidian wants to go for. Percentage damage reduction per point also doesn't sound too bad. Other than that I think my ideas are mostly trash, haha

I find that the best way to brainstorm is to throw as many ideas as possible at the wall and see what sticks. So that's what I'm gonna do. I also think my perspective will be pretty helpful, considering I'm really not a numbers guy so I only really think in terms of raw game mechanics rather than how it scales. That also means most of these ideas will probably be bad (plus I'm going to try and make some pretty out there ideas just to stretch the exercise a bit). But that's okay, even if we can't come up with anything or the devs ignore it and revert the changes back to POE1, it's still a lot of fun (at least IMO)! Everyone can join in. Throw all your ideas out there no matter how out there they seem. Feel free to expand on my ideas as well - The Tyranny route, where Resolve reduces the duration of afflictions. Personally, this is my preference. - Move healing specifically from Might to Resolve, rather than that and spell damage, while increasing the bonus. - Reduce damage received from disengagement attacks. - Reduce recovery penalties incurred from equipment, and/or consumables, and/or reduce the penalty for weapon and grimoire switching during combat. - Increased length of beneficial effects (or is this already done by Intellect's duration bonus? it probably is, if so ignore this suggestion). - Increased Armor and/or flat percentage damage reduction (IE, X Resolve means you receive Y percent less damage after all other calculations). - Decrease the effect of injuries, and/or increase the number of injuries a character is capable of receiving before dying permanently, and/or a random chance not to receive an injury when they otherwise would. - A random chance for the character to get back up automatically after they fall in combat. - A random chance to cancel a harmful effect or downgrade an affliction. - A random chance to absorb the impact of a blow without taking damage. Maybe even one that you can use at will. - Reduced negative effects from Modals/Stances which are a trade-off. - Increased number of resource points for abilities. - A random chance to gain an empower, rather than a random chance to have an ability empowered. - Reduces the damage incurred from critical hits, or a random chance to convert a crit to a normal hit. - Increased passive effects from resting (consuming food). - Increased duration of effects from consumables. - Some type of powerful bonus when an ally falls in combat (as an aside considering the companion relationship system, it would be cool to have some mechanical benefits from people being closer to each other during combat, kinda like supports from Fire Emblem/Bonds from XCOM 2 War of the Chosen). - Reduced ingredient requirements for crafting (I said some of these ideas would be out there). - Increased bonuses from equipment. - Increased movement speed and/or reduced movement penalties. - Increased damage-type specific bonuses from equipment (IE, if a piece of armor gives you X armor rating against Y damage type, the rating will be higher from a bonus from resolve). - Bonus points for all your Skills (IE Mechanics and History). Okay, so that's everything I could possibly think of. Hopefully there's something that sounds useful in there, xD

I just wonder how this would feel when combined with the changes to cancelling. I feel like interrupts are going to be a lot easier to play around when you can see them coming thanks to the ability to instantly cancel your abilities mid-cast, so the numbers should be balanced with that in mind so that people who pay attention and people who don't are rewarded and punished appropriately.

I think some testing with the numbers definitely needs to be done, but I like this a lot more than the random empowers idea. Of course I'm not the best judge. I'm not entirely clear on how the new concentration mechanics work just yet.

By the way, on the roleplaying side, I'd just like to mention I liked the split between Might and Resolve for roleplaying reasons and I hope that in interactions our mage's aren't going to be doing strong man stuff. I think one way to resolve this outside the attribute system would be have Strength and something related to spellcasting power or knowledge used instead in the passive skills system. For all I know this might already be a thing of course (I've only played the beta through twice and there are only a few CYOA sequences). I just felt the need to point this out.

I don't like the random element of it. I'd rather it just straight up give you extra empowers, maybe through spells casted, so that I can decide which abilities to use them on. Though your suggestion of making it predictable based on how many spells have been casted is okay as well.

Several things about this system are quite unclear. Specifically, I am unsure when and when I am not able to move and I am also unsure as to what affects my chance to hit with my cannons. So, overall, clarity is really my only complaint. Otherwise, I found playing around with this to actually be very enjoyable. It could use some more flair though, and a wind indicator (assuming that's even an actual mechanic, which the game makes it seem like but personally I am unsure).

Hey, just so you know, I actually went back and watched my VoD and Issue #2 I listed actually shows up at 2:27:56 after I wipe in a fight and reload the game. From that point forward, my wolf companion is replicated and even when I equip a pet later on, I still retain a fully visible second wolf as my pet. And no problem on streaming the game! It's great, I've gotten more traffic on my YouTube channel than I've had in ages. I'm very interested in reviewing the game when it comes out.

Ah I see, I see.

@Boeroer: All gucci my friend. But they said from the very beginning of development that they wanted to make the game slower. So why would they make the game faster in it's very first iteration? I haven't heard anyone argue it's faster than POE1, just that they want slow mode back because it feels too fast. Yes it's better if the gun is balanced for that reload speed. Yes, your reload speed is longer, but not only is the reduction on reload speed greater the longer the cooldown goes, if it's balanced to be more powerful because of that cooldown extension you are ultimately getting greater impact from the weapon. You're focusing too much on the reload speed, and not enough on the actual damage and impact of the shot. I play POE1 in slow mode and it seems noticeably faster to me, incredibly so even. @KDubya: I'm reloading. Isn't there a penalty for switching weapons mid-combat? If that mechanic is not discouraging that type of behavior, then that's a problem with the weapon switch penalty. Of course, I don't even think that's a bad thing anyways. As long as you still need to reload the weapon if you switch back to it, I seriously doubt firing one shot is going to be winning you fights or something. I could be wrong of course. This is just my perspective.

Was the sarcasm really necessary? Anyways, the combat speed isn't faster in Deadfire. Obsidian went into developing this game with the intention of slowing the combat enough that slow mode wasn't necessary. The combat isn't faster, they just made the reload speed faster. Anyways, just because something else is better doesn't mean one thing isn't really good. That seems more like an argument to nerf War Bows than to buff firearms. And even if it was, again I think that if you're going to buff firearms, it should be done in such a way that deepens their niche. More damage, more interrupt, more accuracy. Not faster reload speed. By the way, you should also realize that the existence of such a fast reload speed makes those buffs to your reload speed actually worse. If guns were balanced around a longer reload time, those items would be more effective since percentages scale upwards in effectiveness. In fact, I'd say that your argument ultimately actually supports mine, because if reload speed is so fast already that using all of those items in combination doesn't produce a noticeable enough effect for them feeling powerful and significant, then that investment feels worse by it's very nature. I didn't know that last part. Must be my faulty memory, my bad. I'd like it if they did do that though as I think that would fit with them thematically, seeing as a gunshot hits with so much force that it would distract a person more than an arrow (even more so if it breaks into shrapnel). Especially against armor where that increased force distributed across a greater surface area would create a much stronger effect.

According to what I can find on google, reloading a musket takes at least 20 seconds in real life. In POE2, it seems to take about four, maybe five seconds. I understand cutting down on reload speed for gameplay reasons, but I think they've taken it too far. I think firearms should be similar to what they're used for in real life, slow but extremely high-impact. I like the feeling of firearms in Pillars of Eternity 1 because it felt like every shot counted (or, at least, that was the idea). It also, again, differentiated them from bows which had low interruption chance but a much higher fire-rate making them safer and less reliant on strong positioning. So, can you please elaborate on your disagreement a bit? I don't see what I'm wrong about here. Honestly in my opinion the minimum reload speed should be 8, maybe 7 seconds (that's stretching it) for guns to feel realistic. Right now it doesn't feel like I'm being punished for re-positioning during reload much if at all, and the shots don't seem to have as much of an impact either. Firearms had a unique role in the first game that they don't seem to have in Pillars 2. Considering the importance of lengthy spellcasting in POE2, it also would make that niche they filled more noticeable. I would prefer if they pushed them more in the direction they were taking in POE1, rather than pulling back on it like they have and robbing the firearms of what I felt was their identity.