Wormerine

I find straight boost to be simply boring - you do more penetration, you are more accurate, you do +2 more damage. Those a boring upgrades. They make character more efficient making me as a player less involved. They don’t give you new tool to use and apply, it just either becomes meaningless due to enemies getting adjusted to new boost of power, you need to worry less. Modals, while not perfect, are more interesting and limiting and removing malus would be a shame as they would simply become numerical boosts. It seems that unlike many, I found at least some modals useful. Staff defence boost for my wizard when she gets engaged in melee and het goal is to survive. Mace’s -1 armour to allow other allies to do more damage. Those a situational, and that is their role - give proficient character (and therefore a player) an extra tool to use, not just make the kill faster. While on in love with proficiency system, at least during lvl up I look through those to see if there is something my character could use, instead of blindly dumping points into weapon I use to get better rolls.

I do agree that spellcasters system feels like an odd modification of old system, and isn’t designed from ground up to support the new rules. Way ciphers or chanters worked was great and was more intuitive. I soundly mind seeing a set pool of “mana” to spend per encounter, with higher level spells having higher cost, or having mana passively grow through the encounter. It is certainly too big of a change for 1.0, but potentially an upgrade to consider for expansions? After all, the biggest design obstacle would be to decid how much mana spellcasters need and how much spells should cost. Once the game is out it will become more clear if the current system is serviceable.

Or Thor and his hammer! oh...

Really. Old casters made easy encounters mentally engaging. By spamming autoattack? In IE and PoE there was one, and only one decision to make: "can I win current fight without using spells" - and in most cases the answer was "yes". PoE already improved over IE as casters didn't just stand around missing sling shots, but: "mentally engaging"? pffff. Resources could be recovered with no trouble (I don't think I ever had to abandon dungeon to get supplies) so there was no resource management. It is hardly a resource management if you can regain all spent resources by pressing a button. The only real resource management was happening thoughout single engagements only - curiously the same as it is now. It is as if Obs looked at game mechanics PoE actually had, and fleshed them out more, instead of keeping a pretence of bigger economy. How one can claim that new system is less "mentally engaging" because you are encouraged to use tools at your disposal instead of spamming autoattack is beyond my understanding. Current system has just as much resource management as previous games had, except it is happening in every encounter, instead of every 10 encounters. It's not about "do I cast a spell" but "what spells do I cast". While previously you would go ham during one fight, now you have to select spells which will help your situation best. Maybe creating genuine resource management using old system would be better received by many long time players - maybe having to complete dungeons in one go, or something like that. Than I again, I feel that if players actually had to conserve spells with potential consequences I am willing to bet that there would be a push back as well.

key shortcuts are still in (hover over desired skill and press shortcut like "Q"). They will shop up right above the main bar.

@Osvir, I wouldn’t put much faith in the Wasteland3 demo. It looks like an upgraded presentation of concept rather than genuine gameplay. If final game will look nearly as look as this demo I will be impressed. A more serious reply to OP. If they were to implement that kind of stuff it would better be intergral part of a system rather than cosmetic. Animations take ingame time to play out - what if you parry two enemies one after another? Does the game slowdown to play out two animations? Does system forbit to enemies to perform an attack at the same time? Can you only block enemies in a cone in front of you? Does blocking influence you recovery? I think there could be a very neat combat system designed with that in mind.

I think JOSH said that the AI will influence aggressiveness of AI and how many skills they will use. Whenever there is a AI gap between veteran & PotD or if PoTD is veteran + stat boost remains to be seen.

True, but you wouldn’t be casting fireballs or other high/medium level spells in majority of fights, would you. As matter of fact, you wouldn’t cast many spells at all, except 1nd or 2nd level one, you could use every fight later on and spend most of the time spamming main weapon. Than you would go to final fight, or the one you knew you will rest, and you would use your arsenal of spells making spellcasters a god class outperforming every other one. Now we can cast less spells but every fight. Result - casters are just so much better than everyone else. So you nerf them with action economy so they can’t spam those powerful spells all day long. I still find fireball targeted at a group of enemies highly effective, dealing 30+ damage to most of them (playing on hard). I am glad I am not the only one finding spellcasters fine - they tend to still be good damage dealers when they are build to do so. Just a question - people who complain about casters - are we all analysing caster as a part of a team or are we judging casters performance in a solo run environment? Because I can see how caster could be useless in solo runs, but than again, it is a party based RPG so classes shouldnt be judged in that environment. Just like Gromnir, I found that my spellcasters cast quite a few spells before combat is over, with exhausting a lot of spells in major fights. If certain multiclass options break combat so much, that they roll over enemies in a matter of seconds (which is what people stated multiple times) it seems to me like those require closer examination more than spellcasters. Having every class be capable of killing enemies in less than 5 seconds just doesn’t sound very interesting.

I dunno. KOTOR made it look like kids beating each other with toy lightsabers. Than again, so far Jedi Knight only did lightsabers well.

Time a ferret and I might consider it (doesn’t have to be space one)

From what I gathered he used to be active here, and than decided against it. It’s an anecdotal knowledge, I myself didn’t join the forum until Deadfire crowdfunding.

I have expressed my likes/dislikes regarding ship systems before so I won’t repeat myself. I didnt test melee combat much outside boarding, I am not even sure if anything changed. Yesterday stream with Josh clarified a lot of mechanics of ship combat, but those need to be communicated better ingame - how your positioning affects your stats (evasion, defence, chance of “crit”) + what are the chances of doing damage to specific part of a ship (haul, sails, crew) in addition to general hit chance. “Special events” like gunpowder explosion or loose cargo could use a better “alert” - something to communicate that an event is taking place, not just flavour text.

They have threw out nothing. The last time I checked PoE1 is still in pretty good state. It seems AssCreed way of releasing the same game over and over again is desired by many. So 1.0 will be a bit of a mess. So what? They will release expansions, with time hopefully it will be better. Maybe in the end it will be better than PoE, maybe worse but at least it will be a bit different. A reason return to PoE and PoE2.

Yeah, being based on a rollbased, tabletop rules, I felt like the combat never really translated well into a digital setting, with actual space and positioning. Building your character is fun, but combat itself isn't very engaging and forces you to stare at the combat log, instead of the battlefield. PoE improved on IE game system in that respect, and Deadfire has a potential on improving on PoE, with bigger focus on positioning, and making space for your characters to do their thing. Still, I don't expect it to be too rewarding, and if I return to it, it will be for the writing and story rather than combat.

https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/170909698336/we-just-saw-that-brandon-adler-is-game-director-of Most of the things we knew already + ciphers will be given some extra love.

https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/170559585501/how-would-you-feel-about-having-a-customizable

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa-qgRasdvc

Happy to see more skill points for single classes. With passive tree getting expanded they will be needed. I was worried that investing into passives with singleclass characters will be too much of a loss, making multiclass even more useful. As it is, multiclass will still have a bigger flexibility due to dual resource pools. Josh will not be one buying and playing his game, I imagine, so listening to feedback is a smart thing to do. He seems to know what he aims for, and changes Obs made are tackling some of the issues PoE1 had. Deadfire had a benefit on being a sequel to a game inspired by IE games - they can move further from the source now. I found PoE1 to be the best in story and mechanics when it was exploring its own ideas, instead of trying to recreate what was good in 90s. It’s dangerous for creator to rely on his point of view, as it gets skewed during lengthy work on a project. While he quotes fan feedback as a reason for change a bit too often for my taste but he gave good, logical reasons for said changes as well. With B.B. we still pretty much have the same build we had months ago - I do sincerely hope that what we get in April will be much better. All the changes should work on paper but in B.B. they are off in BB.

It doesn’t seem there will be additional drastic changes to ship2ship combat, however, most of the things I requested are in the game, but they are either bugged, or not communicated properly. It certainly isn’t a system which will steal a show, but that’s potentially good, depends on how frequent the encounters will be. I am not sure how I feel about critical damage being done when shot from bow/stern. I would like a better view of my stats and what my chances are for doing specific damage (hull, crew, sails, special events). With some automation (flee, board) it might be fine. @Sedrefilos yes! Shanties! Ship combat will be part of bounties, and factions - enemy factions will become hostile, probably will become friendlier with enemy factions of a sunken ship (a bit like in New Vegas). Being able to “fool” factions by wearing false flag is neat. You might want to raid a ship or two on your way to your destination to pay for the trip. We will see. I like that the ship is more than a cursor on a map.

Ah! That’s interesting. I was wondering how people find time to watch their characters wait through recovery, with all the craziness that is happening. In solo runs it makes so much more sense. It reminds me of NWN1. I got stuck in a fight with spider where we couldn’t hit each other, so I went to make some tea while my character was swinging at the enemy occasionally hitting him. They were still swinging when I came back.

Josh never encouraged importing save games from PoE1. While it is a feature, he always stated you will be able to start a new playthrough configuring everything that matters to your preferences. It has never been said that you will gain a bit of “advantage” by playing PoE1 first. There are no “golden pantaloons” for example. As far as spoiler goes - Josh said the save creator will allow you configure main choices (end state of the world, companions etc. Would be my guess) and optional advanced options with smaller choices that get reactiviry. Let’s be honest, how much reactivity can there be - if there will be 20 references to minor choices from PoE1 I will be impressed, and that would be easy to set up within minutes.

What are you on about? “Iron man” has been a thing in RPGs since I can remember (rogues&likes, wizardry8) but it isn’t a “benchmark” or a definitive way to play. It’s a singleplayer RPG - you do you, let others do their own thing. I imagine that implementing a system which tests your skills with an already implimented ruleset is easier to do, than designing and balancing an entirely new one. In Deadfire there is something like “Beraths Blessing” which on consequent playthroughs we allow players to add some bonus challenges or bonuses to vary things up. It might do it for ya.

I found it informative enough. Couple information regarding changes, and explained a lot of current ship mechanics.

Good news. It was a big complain during in-house testing as well. Yesterday during stream Josh confirmed that they will remove it and you will be able to move/change spell without loosing your resource.

If that is what you think, then, no, you are not starting to understand me.Joe I “love” how you respond without actually having anything to say. That wasn’t a guess, but an observation. I can see you have no interest in discussion. G-bye.