Wormerine

I'm on Path of the Damned, man. I don't feel very damned at the moment.Also: What do you think you can achieve with that nitpicking? You are not argumenting, you play wordgames. Nah, there is a merit to argumenting with an academic accuracy. Not that I feel like doing research, posting stats and doing lengthy analysis to post them on the forum (and I doubt anyone would be interested in reading them). Not, while I can make wild, hyperbollic claims to make a vague point.

Yeah, played almost every RPG there was - combat tends to be crap in many them - too big and ambitious game, with too little brain power and hours to make it happen. Can the game get by with merits other than gameplay? Of course. Fallout 1&2 combat is a boring slog and stupid companion AI was really annoying. Arcanum overall felt unfinished. Torment combat for the most part is avoidable, thank goodness. Those game could be made better with improvement to combat, redesigns and balances. I still dream of a Gothic2 game, were combat wouldn’t be such a clunky garbage. Even so, none of those game are so combat focused as PoE is. And ideally, combat would enhance worldbuilding/storytelling/character building of the game, instead of distracting/interrupting it. However, I do understand your frustration. The game should spend some more time cooking in the oven before release. Luckily for me, I blasted through it before patches, and now I am waiting for more rebalances to dive back in. While I can stand behind an argument “don’t release the game until it has tighter balance” I can’t support the “don’t fix what doesn’t work”. I am quite surprised by Obs approach, as Josh mentioned before how badly people react to nerfs. And yet, they released the game in a state when multiple nerfs are quite needed. I am 100% that Obsidians goal is to make the game more fun. PoE3.5 is the best version of PoE there was and it’s more fun than the previous builds. I know a few people who made a successful will save and are waiting for Deadfire 3.5 (or equivalent) to buy and play it.

It failed to provide any challenge no matter whom you fight. That's simply hyperbole. That's not accurate. Like, did you literally just set to autoattack on every enemy, every time, throughout the entire game? Did you autoattack the Kraken without ever using an ability? Did you autoattack every vampire fight throughout Splintered Reef? Did you literally clump-autoattack the dragon at Ukazio and then never interact again until it was dead, while you read a book in the next room?Like seriously. That's just not an accurate statement. I understand your making a point, but so am I: people are making inaccurate statements about this game and then treating those statements like their actual literal truth. That was indeed a hyperbole. I did allow AI to autoattack to death Lava Dragon with scripts off. I used abilitites when fighting Kraken and Ukaizo Dragon (I have heard that Kraken fight can be decent. Was way over level at that point and scaling didn’t work). I died in the game three times- when fighting Steel Preacher straight after leaving Port Maje, when fighting Vampires in cave, and I got sunk once. The couple early game bounties which I talked way before my level are the fondest memories I have from 1.0 encounter experience. Not because my balls got busted, by they were memorable. I remember Steel Preacher as I had trouble penetrating his armor and his priests would burn me to death. I remember fighting guys protecting Woedica’s mace, as I had to depseretaly hold the choke to survive, running out of healing spells and consumables. I remember fighting Fampires as they took control over my ascendant cipher and did some serious damage. The other ones are a bit of a blur.

What are you talking about? What does it have to do with Deadfire difficulty problem? Deadfire's issue wasn't that some fights weren't difficult, or that it allows you to outlevel certain encounters. It failed to provide any challenge no matter whom you fight. I don't need random shmucks to challenge my experience pirate party, but facing a late game dragon and snoozing through the fight is a bigger letdown than having to quit for a day and try another time. Smacking an enemy you faced earlier in the game and had issues with is satisfying. Killing a mighty dragon without even trying is... anticlimacting.

Baldur's Gate has a benefit (?) of being very obtuse. Playing it without learning D&D rules first was punishing. Goodness me I spent hours to beat some fights in the past. Not so challenging, if you actually know the ruleset.

There were also some in Oathbinder's Sanctum.

Ok, there is something here I don’t understand: Yes, PoTD players are a minority, as achievements for PoE1 show that a small fraction of players completed game on PotD. That minority isn’t happy with the level of difficulty, which they crave when choosing PotD. Because majority of players won’t play PotD, they should patch the veteran and PotD difficulty because...? I looked through balance changes to classes, and is there anything which will make a difference on classic&below? I can’t imagine that any of the nerfs have any noticeable effect on those levels, therefore they shouldnt really break any builds. Charge is not as ridiculous. So what? On classic it probably still won’t matter. The only issue i can see is if someone started a casual game on PotD and now isn’t able to change.

I dont want to be able to kill a dragon with an autoattack. A classic, "default" difficulty of the game should engage players with its full range of mechanics - I don't think it should be too punishable, but on classic difficulty players should think about inspirations, interrupts, armor etc. Playing on veteran the only think I was looking at was: what is the lowest defence and armor of an enemy I am attacking. I engaged with 1/3 of combat mechanics. That's bad, really really bad. That's what relaxed should be: I am not really thinking about what I am doing, and I occasionally feel resistance. I rarely healed as enemies weren't capable of doing decent damage, I allowed half of my team to run on auto. I killed some of the most powerful enemies by allowing AI, with disabled scripts to just autoattack. Yes, PotD should be really hard - that is what it is there for. I expect veteran to keep me on my toes, while giving space for mistakes. Classic should be engaging while not difficult enough for players to get stuck. Difficuly in 1.0 was simply way way way too low, allowing players to ignore majority of game mechanics.

Didn’t play the newes patch, so I can’t comment on changes made. However, 1.0 was in dire need of rebalancing and difficulty change. The game on Veteran provided no resistance and I intentionally didn’t use any of the really overpowered combos. With the wide power gap between various classes/subclasses/abilities creating s proper difficulty is nearly impossible as you either: 1) balance around more effective builds making many options simply wrong choices on higher difficulty 2) balancing around the weakest classes asking the player to create their own restrictions (engage with character creation and create weake builds) in order to have fun. Modding is a nice option, but it is not a substitute for game design and balance. Fans shouldn’t spend their time fixing game they bought. It happens, but it’s not a proper solution. Josh commitment to improving his games is something I respect and value a lot, and a reason I am fairly relax about the horrendous state the game launched in balance wise - I trust Obsidian will be working those. If you find changes too punishing, you can always lower the difficulty. If on Veteran/PotD game plays by itself you can’t do much without redesigning it yourself.

Trailer didn’t give me RPG vibes. But it’s the first trailer, and we didn’t even see any gameplay. It looks pretty and more colourful that I expected but I won’t hail it as GTA clone/best game ever or whatever else. We really don’t know much more than we did before.

Bg&E2 + Skull&Bones are things to keep an eye on. Hopefully they won’t be too Ubi. No Splinter Cell? With the original Sam Fisher tease I was hoping for a true SC game. Not to be, apparently.

I can’t figure out whenever they are brilliant or are trolling fans who wanted the sequel for so many years. For me Michel Ancel is all I need to be excited.

Spent some cash on gog. Finally got the digital copy of HoM&M3. Didnt play it in a long time. Probably, will still take some time before I get to it. Bought all expansions for Tyranny and wrapping up another playthrough soonish. As gog transferee my copy of Banner Saga from steam I decided its a good time to pick Banner Saga2. Planning to do BS+BS2 (maybe even BS3?) playthrough after I am done with Tyranny. I really enjoyed the 1st one, but somehow had a hard time forcing myself to get the sequel. Too demanding/depressing stuff I suppose. Oh, got into Hot Lava beta (and will get full game once released apparently) which was a nice surprise. So it’s sort of a buy, but with no cash spent. Gave it a go - seems like Mirrors Edge but more to my taste. EDIT: Oh, I also picked up Sexy Brutale, which has been a disappointment so far considering good things I have heard about it.

Uh.. did you miss Fallout: New Vegas? Because if you did.. boy, do you have something to look forward to! I have a deep deep dislike for Fallout3 as it kept me from playing New Vegas for too many years. I must say that I wasn't an Obsidian lover until post Project Eternity kickstarter. I played couple of their games (Kotor, NWN2) and I saw them as creative but unpolished Bioware wannabe, oblivious to the time constrains and bad deals. Going through they catalog and learning more about them was quite a ride. New Vegas is probably my fav RPG in many years and a showcase of what Obs is capable of. From what I understood: yes. They said you can play it solo but they didn't say you can play it offline. From what they showed the game seems to be focused around competion/coop.

Just watched Bethesda presentation. Good to see 2nd Doom in works - I heard great stuff about the reboot. Too bad they didn't show anything just yet. I am curious about Fallout67. I am yet to enjoy Bethesda RPG (Oblivion and Skyrim bored me to death, I finished Fallout3 due to IP only, didn't touch fallout4) so added multiplayer doesn't ruin anything for me. However, being able to play with friends might add some major incentive to play if its done right - the same way I didn't enjoy Divinities but had a blast playing with a friend. Knowing Bethesda's bugginess and tendency to poor gameplay design I am worried if it will be a multiplayer experience worth dipping into. Very curious about the space thing, don't really care about ES6. Do we know anything about Starfield? I wish for a ship based RPG, but that might be too much to hope for.

I wonder if the difficulty issue is tied to the "per-encounter" change. It's difficult to design a tactics/strategy game, in which player and computer play on same rules, which provide a decent challenge. Good PvE games I can't think of are highly asymmetrical. This "imbalance" was to some extend provided by "per-rest" mechanic, as while enemies could cast whatever spells they could, player was encouraged to pull back. That is also why "rest-spamming" was an issue - using skills at your disposals without restrain would overwhelm the enemy making it for an easy way to push through fights without mastering the system. The question is then: how to make fights difficult? Seems like there isn't much to play with now, except of raising stats to give enemies an unfair advantage, which can be not too fun.

It seems to be an Obsidian thing. Pillars was undeniably hardest in the early stages of the game, Tyranny peaked at the end of Act 1 and was downhill from there, and Deadfire is little different. Maybe the majority of their effort is on the early stages of the game? (...) So, while I don't expect big things, I do expect that Obsidian wouldn't make POTD trivially easy on release (which they did), and I do hope that they will go further than what they did with 1.1. Ha! You know what, we are so spoiled. I remember starting PoE1 and thinking to myself how much better it is than IE games where you had one real difficulty and other ones were awkward stat changes. It took me couple playtrhoughs before I started to be critical of PoE1 difficulty, as it was so much better than games that inspired it. That said. Yeah, it can be better. I am diapponted to hear that later fights don't keep the difficulty. How are the "epic" fights"? (dragons etc.) I hope for something on the level of Adra dragon.

This means literally nothing, because there is nothing clear cut about what souls are. You can say that all magic comes from waffles, and everyone can have waffles. It's same as description of Magic missile in D&D - what is the spell about? Well, it's magic. missile. Magic alright? So you don't need any more explanation. Yeah, just like Force in SW, magic in pretty much everything that has magic in it, nanomachines in MGS. I am not saying that makes it good - as I have mentioned before, I treat those moves as an abstraction. Are they? I honestly don't know, and don't really care. Magic in PoE always felt to me like "because D&D had magic". This whole: how do priests/wizards/chanters channel their magic - I am not really interested in that.

I don't think there is a way to dismiss anyone. Murder his butt.

The problem was that PoE1 wasn’t properly balances for team play. I also remember Josh saying that they don’t balance the game around solo players. It would be my selfishly motivated opinion, but I would rather have an RPG well balanced for intended sized party (aka. 5 in Deadfire case) rather than poorly balanced RPG to allow you to play however you want. If you are good enough with the system to break it to the point of playing solo - cool, but why damage entire game?

That’s interesting, because the impression I got was that unlike in Dragon Age, for example where rogues and warriors cannot use magic and thus their moves are just abstractions, in Pillars the idea was those moves were literally happening, being accomplished by the use of magic. I don’t know, I may be wrong.I never digged deeper into the lore beyond what is in the game. Reading ability description it could be assumed that characters are literally doing what we see them do. At the same time ability descriptions could just describe what will happen in game. Never bothered me too much, never gave it much thought until now. I find a lot of gameplay elements in PoE to be highly abstract, maybe too abstract in some cases (attributes for example.) Granted all magic in Deadfire comes from soul, and all characters have soul. Melee fighter could channel their soul power to do some physically impossible stuff, but using “souls magic” to do Jedi stuff does seem a bit lame. Moving large, living, physical objects across the battlefield do seem to be near the level of what wizards can do.

Nimnok would do.

As PoE is a heavily abstracted game, I don’t take the moves literally. Rogue “hides in shadows”, fighter charges or pulls enemy toward him. They do it the way they do it, because it makes for clear and snappy gameplay. I never imagined Eder teleporting through the air or magically pulling enemies toward him. I do remember being somewhat surprised when Barbarian’s leap was introduced in PoE in WM1. However, gameplay advantages did overshadow the need for suspension of disbelief. If that’s too much for you to get over it, well... I am sorry to hear that.

Sounds like the highest praise there could be. You know what is even better? Glass of whiskey and PoE. Yes, exactly, it should be taken as praise because it's meant as such, but the problem is that I don't feel myself gripped by the game, clamouring for more, like I would for, say, a glistening pint of my favourite beer, or some fried chicken.I would make a joke about your unrefined tastes but good beer and fried chicken are nothing to be sniffed at. I think I know what you mean - I found it difficult to play PoE1 or Tyranny1 for longer than an hour before getting distracted/exhausted. Personally, I didn’t have this “issue” with Deadfire and I found it easy to binge with “one more quest” attitude. I found pacing to be excellent, and it’s possible that the low difficulty which lead to mindless combat on launch helped with minimizing mental exhaustion. It took me months before I made my way through PoE1.

Neketaka is a place to find stuff to do. Any content you will find outside will be a part of Nektaka quests except some optional late game content. Grab some quests from the first district and head out to the sea again.