Wormerine

Right now most magical items seem to have a "missing string" problem. For example the Beza's Toothed Blade doesn't have a base damage attached. Almost all of those also seem to lack an icon for said item. Thing is, with PoE1 there really weren't what I would call "magical items" until soulbound weapons showed up. Any weapon could be upgraded and most of items you found, simply had some generic upgrades already implimented. In Deadfire those "magical" items are to be more unique, and receive their own look tied to its mechanics. Either way, visually it never bothered me, though I missed some of the more over the top and one of a kind weapons of BG2.

ha! Everyone has their preferences. I wouldn't treat KoTOR as a benchmark. 3rd person view made it impossible to really get a grasp on what is happening, attacks had to be manually order, forcing MMO style button smash, overall, it was rather boring. It felt like Baldur's Gate style starwars game, for people who wouldnt want to play Baldur's Gate. I am sure it is possible in Unity, I am not sure if what they build for PoE would support additional animations being inserted inbetween attacks.

I assumed you do, and I don't think it would work in game's favour. Here is why: Pillars has an issue were the game takes place here. The space which takes the most space and should provide majority of information is here. However, information that are needed to make informed decisions either aren't there, or are difficult to read. Addition of cosmetic animations to make combat look more natural would make this space look nicer, but would make it even less helpful that it is now - potentially even being misleading; suggesting your character is blocking, while he is being hit etc. Ideal situation would be to move gameplay from combat log and enemy sheet to game space. That is what Divinity: OS2 does much better than PoE. While you can check detailed enemy stats, they tend to be obvious by their character design (Oil Blob will be vonourable to air, healed by earth, firery enemy will be weak to ice, healed by fire etc.) Positioning, line of sight and distance is much more important. Creating an animation system, which would communicate gameplay in the game space would be a great addition - tank is blocking - he is not getting hit, the sword gets deflected by enemy armor - not enough penetrating etc. This brings couple problems: 1) topdown games aren't best in visually comminicating what is happening - especially with "realisitic" artstyle PoE has. 2) animations take time, and if not used as an intergral part of a system, it could clash with game rules (which is what I have written about in my previous post). Game to utilize animation in a way that would benefit the game would require art and gameplay designed to directly support that idea. Adding flavour animations which don't support or go against gameplay (communicate actions that are not actually taking place) would do more harm than good... well, maybe beside a more effective advertisements due to better visual presentation.

In Tyranny people would fly into the air and shot bunch of arrows. Not that it was bad, but Tyranny was Tyranny, PoE is PoE.

Why are you bringing up boob armour? Don't go down that road! Some men just want to watch threads burn.

Same argument could be made in favour of a boob armor. There is no mention in PoE as of yet, of a metal that would be lighter than its real life counterparts, making Deadifre's fantastical setting irrelevant. There are better uses for the "fantasy" setting than explaining why a guy can use a two handed sword like a fishing rod.

Actually I am pretty sure Deus Ex belongs to its seperate genre: "Immersive Sim", alongside System Shock, Thief, or more modern: Prey, or Dishonored. Mass Effect is a Bioware creation. An action/RPG hybrid combining popular elements of action games (Gears of War) and rpgs (conversations trees, progression). Where Diablo presented traditional RPG combat in a more active manner, Mass Effect quite literally takes and RPG and an action game and stitches them together.

Animations in PoE aren’t perfect (hands could rest much better on a handle) but more on a technical side, rateher than stylistic. D:OS2 has a completely different style, with cartoonish characters, and exaggerated animations. They are satisfying, and arguably a better choice of an top down RPG, as you can easier recognise characters, weapons, and moves, but not something Deadfire is aiming for. While in OS any kind of logic is thrown out of a window, those odd poses, and moves would be jarring. Even abilities such as leap stick out. Apparently two handers are really really heavy.

Do we know if casting time i affected by your powerlevel? It would make sense if low level spells would become quicker to cast if you “overlevel them”, keeping them handy, and somewhat competitive with high level spells.

I don’t think temeltry of how people use it has be representative of its usefulness. I have to admit to barely ever using “empower” on my non-casters, while I use it regularly with spellcasters - either to replenish spell pools, or empower a spell. It has less to do with my perceived usefulness of “empower” - I just forget about it most of the time. Sometimes empowering knockdown if I am really interested in an interrupt, but for a most part it’s just not part of my planning - possibly due to it being a new mechanic to this style of a game. Either way, I don’t think it’s working terribly well right now. While I have seen this mechanic work wonderfully in other games (will in Banner Saga) in here the game doesn’t communicate clearly enough a benefit of using an “empower” to really encourage its use. In BS you spend a will point because you want something - move a bit further, or hit for a 1-3 damage more. You what you gain, you know why you do it, and how it benefits you. If you run out of it and leave an enemy alive with 2 points remaining you regret spending it earlier. I usually use “empower” to replenish resources, because I know what I am getting. “I really could use another healing spells” Boom, here it is. But you empower a spell - now it is 2 power level higher. What does it mean? How much damage will it do? What is the accuracy gain? How much am I benefitting? I dunno.

I imagine it is the same, though I have been sticking to veteran only - if PotD still boosts stats I find it not very helpful to test gameplay around it. I am pretty sure Josh mentioned that AI becomes more aggressive. Easier levels even give player more aggressive AI by default to make things easier.

Oh ok, now I get ya. Sorry my bad. Enemies you intended to hit are dead by the time fireball goes off and other enemies are too far. Got it. I usually tend to spread my damage (which is probably not the most optimal way to play - better to kill half of enemies quickly than damage most of them through longer period of time without actually killing anywaone) but I tend to target ranged enemies (therefore standing farther) with my ranged units and take on melee attackers last. Meantime I occupy melee enemies with a figher.

How does it happen exactly? Does your spellcaster attack enemies from a different side than everyone else? From my experience enemies tend to run toward my team. Shortening a range, rather than extending it. Maybe single class melee classes are simply bad, but currently with the modded veteran, my wizard does 3x more damage than anyone else. Kalakoth's Minor Blights is really effective with 1.5 cast time - it was effecting even with a default cast time, though I am not a fan of waiting for my weapon to spawn.

Apparently naval combat is a side feature, and cost of explorations isn't nearly as bad as some make it bad to be. In order to confirm complains about the cost of food and upkeep of your crew I decided to not spawn more money in my current playthrough. For 2000 I bought enough food and water to explore the entire beta, and it is a fully staffed ship, My guess is that people who complained that they bought lots of food and run out of it forgot to move it into a consumption que in ship management view.

Eveyone has their preferences. Many people dislike Invisible Inc. for its alarm system, while it is the best thing that happened to stealth games for a long time. I am very much looking forward to the ship system, while for others it is not something they want to deal with.

Well, there was Abydon’s Hammer from White March II. It was very Thorey (except throwing and flying).

It happened 2nd time in two consequent playthroughs, and I don't remember it happening before (I might be mistaken though). While resting (or meditating) by the Shrine party seems to get injured: However, it doesn't seem to be a case, as injuries don't show up on the injrury-meter.

I did about half of a run with Beta Balance Mod. Have been enjoying it quite a bit. Spellcasting has a much better flow now. At least on Veteran, Fireball seems a bit good right now. I have been using a rather unoptimized party - base cipher + autoleveled stock merceneries for a quick start, and Wizard is outDPSing others by quite a bit. Doing AoE 70 damage seems a bit much. I will certainly continue playing around with it. You certainly know what you are doing MaxQuest

Companions in your keep still gained XP, no? I remember leveling multiple levels at once after picking up companions from Stronghold.

Unless something changed when recruiting companions your will be able to choose from couple class/multiclass options. You will be able to respec, but not change their class - so if you get Eder and make him a fighter, you won't be able to respec him and make him rogue or swashbuckler.

Dragon Age2! Just kidding. Just to be clear - I didn’t hate PoE1 dungeons, but only a few of them stayed in my mind. There is nothing wrong in combat oriented dungeons either. I do like the feel of exploration and adventuring, therefore dungeons which do those fancy exploration stuff stay with me for much longer, and I am more interested in revising them. Endless Paths had a great backstory, great visual design but I dislike replaying it. And yeah, I recognise that PoE suffers from being first in the series (lots of resources dumped into building foundations and figuring things out) and a crowdfunded game (big promises, which had to be fulfilled but would benefit overall experience more if they were cut or modified). I find perception of freedom and exploration fascinating. I found 2nd Shadowrun game really enjoyable (Dragonfall) as it skilfully created a sense of choice and freedom, even though the experience is highly limited. One of the details I noticed was how the levels were forcing you to understand the layout, and explore it knowing what you open with what item and what is your current goal. I am actually forcing my way through Divinity2, and I am not finding the design very engaging (not singleplayer at least - am convinced it would be really fun with a coop partner). Whenever it is quests or exploration, I don’t feel like I am ever going anywhere specific or interact with environment intentionally. I find quest specific items in random boxes. I feel like I am clearing an area after area, with occasional pop up that I moved a quest forward. I often find a key, not knowing what it is for, or that I want one. I often open doors with key I have in my inventory but have no idea where I got it from. There are some moments where dungeons or quest gain some momentum and direction, and I am enjoying them immensely then.

For starters: I am starting this thread influenced by series of videos titled “Boss Keys” by Mark Brown analyzing dungeon design in Zelda series: (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc38fcMFcV_ul4D6OChdWhsNsYY3NA5B2) While I played a lot of games clearly influenced by Nintendo's work, as someone who never owned a Nintendo console I found his videos on Mario & Zelda series fascinating. The only Nintendo games I played were: Super Mario Bros on Comodore 64 (was it even official?) many many years ago, and Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros, Brawl for Wii, thanks to my modest undergraduate social life. I am very impressed by design of dungeons from old Zelda games – how much clever exploration and interaction with environment can be done with low tech. As limitations of such game resembles constrains a pre-rendered isometric game has to face, I started to think, if complexity of Zelda games could be(or should be?) implemented in cRPG like Deadfire. When I think about my favourite RPGs dungeons I notice some similarities in design – unique mechanics, a bit of backtracking, multiple locked doors to open, puzzles to solve, a feeling of exploration in a linear dungeon. Naturally, adopting some of the key tricks from Zelda games is impossible in cRPG – after all our party’s skills can vary and forcing player to play or interact with dungeon in one certain way goes against what cRPG is about. Vanilla PoE had some fine areas – Roderick’s Hold, ruins in Cliaban Rilag and Lle a Rhemen but unfortunately, I found majority of vanilla PoE dungeons disappointing. While beautiful to look at the interaction with them was minimal. The most disappointing to me was the Endless Dungeon. While I was hoping for something as unique as Durlag’s Tower or Watcher’s Keep, what we got was a stretched out combat gauntlet filled generic enemies. Instead of a break from main game, it was more of the same, just with different backdrop. White March has improved so much on dungeon design. Even the most basic areas have unique features, with main path being a stand out – clearing Durgan’s Battery was a joy. For example the mines – while getting to the exit is simple, it will take some exploration to open the doors. There are couple different areas in this level, all unique – ambush in a mine, a ride in a cart, Hall of Remembrance for which we need to find sigils to disable traps, locked Workshop. A well designed, varied environment, requiring conscious exploration, interaction with environment and utilizing different branches of gameplay (puzzle, conversation, scripted interaction, combat). The Abby of the Fallen Moon only expanded upon design, combining an open nature of Roderick’s Hold with complex, multistage design of WM dungeons. Tyranny’s dungeons were really neat as well – gradual collection of wall “keys” encouraged backtracking and gradually unlocked the whole area. I liked how new paths were opened, puzzles to solve to unlock spires. Dungeons we have in the beta for Deadfire isn’t much to brag about. While combat is much more varied than PoE1, it is once again a linear dungeon consisting mostly of couple combat encounters. I am not saying it is necessarly a representation of what will get, but after WMes I would be disappointed if it was. Now with expanded “scripted interaction” system we could get some really special ones. What are your hopes for Deadfire dungeons? Any particular likes or dislikes? Do you think that additional mechanics like vertical dungeons or special hazards could improve exploration?

Removing “per-rest” abilities certainly will have an impact on a game and I am curious to see how it will turn out. Not in terms of made up “hardcore resource management”, as it never existed, but in terms of those power spikes. Spellcasters were weak and uninteresting in majority of fights, but also capable of delivering incredible spikes of power, in those few encounters. That was their biggest problem, and their most interesting aspect. From the very beginning I have been wondering how “legendary” enemies, like dragons or powerful wizards, will work in Deadfire. With spellcasters getting rebalanced for consistent use, I am worried if there will be those memorable fights. An an average fight expects players to use their full arsenal of abilities, so how do you make those big fights unique? In previous games, those were fights which expected players to use their full arsenal to win. In Deadfire devs will need to do some clever enemy design to keep them interesting.

I. Am. Trying. So. Hard. To. Resist. So. Many. False. Statements. Begging. To. Be. Corrected.

Yes, I think those "wrong" approaches to per-rest spell use on the players' side was the biggest problem. Same like hoarding consumables by the way. Yes, I encountered an issue where I wouldn't use spells majority of time. I am kind of guy who finishes old Tomb Raider games with over hundered medpacks, because they might be useful one day. I had a much better time in PoE on my later playthroughs where I knew where big enemies are, and therefore didn't feel a pressure to conserve as much as I can. Most of high level spells haven't been used outside big boss fights like dragons. I liked the wizard ability to use 1st level spell with 1st expansion, though it made them a bit too good. I am not against resource management - if PoE3 will be a thing, and it will be announced that they are doing full one per rest system, I will welcome it. However, IE and PoE were somewere inbetween, a soft resource management, which if badly managed could be fixed by simply resting. While satisfaction of doing a well planned run was real, it did encourage unintended playstyles - camping supplies were implimented, to give player an idea how much they should rest (I found 2 camping supplies to be more than enough) but didn't find a way to make players like me spend spells.