Wormerine

I don’t know what games you have played but there are some Games, especially Obsidian’s, with some really neat characters, storytelling, pacing and tension building. Way more engaging that “TROLL SMASH” followed after 20h of grind with “ME SMASH”.

@Tigranes Thanks a lot for detailed post. Its always interesting to clearly learn of other peoples' preferences and interest. I would say that in short what we want is a different experience. I want PoE to tell me a story and adjust its quests to fit the story. When I run into problem with end game lvl being to easy, is not "inconsistency" of the word, but that the gameplay is not supporting the story it is telling. I find it interesting that you bring example of Witcher3 as a game which you can't beat higher lvl enemies and Gothic as ones you can. Because in my experience it was completely opposite. I was able to defeat enemies on way higher lvls than I in Witcher 3, because it has a skill based combat, and you can avoid getting hit by pure skill only. At the time lvling in Witcher3 was trash and together with equipment the worst part of the game. Also it got way to easy in later half due to XP bloat. It would be much better game if there was no lvling. Gothic on the other hand... for all the love I have for the game, its worldbuiling and yes, using static lvl to create a dread and bring statisfaction of killing enemies which murdered you 20hours ago... combat sucks so very very mucho. Yes, you can beat enemies on higher lvls, but usually by abusing bad pathfinding and poor AI. Which personally I found to be very unsatisfying. It felt like defeating a boss, who got glitched out. Man, I need to finally get myself a pad and play DarkSouls one of these days. From what I saw of it, I want Gothic style game with THAT combat. But yeah, we won't reach consensus on how lvling should be done as RPG as we value other things. From Deadfire I would probably want a mix design - one which would allow me to explore the world and have fairly good gameplay experience, while keeping some tough areas thougher to fit the lore and give something to work towards.

Yeah, but there are plenty protection, debuff spells to use, which don't benefit from resolve. In case of summoned weapon mage Investing in resolve is benefitial, but so is dexterity, perception, intelligence and constitution (the least in my opinion) and that is the goal no? Similarly, every specialized build will have a dump stat. I don't think the goal is to make every stat important to every build, but to have every attribute interact with the class in a way that makes it possible to build around said attribute with said class. The problem with resolve is that spellcaster just didn't benefit from it at all. Whatever you wanted to do, it was a dump stat. Still, my worry stays - do classes have enough variety in them to support both str and res builds.

I think this is all entirely subjective, as to me the new system is more simplified - not less. While it's true that weapon-summoning casters are going to need both Strength and Resolve, this is going to be a minority of character builds. This is because (a) it's already a little bit of a niche concept to begin with and (b) it's now discouraged by the mechanics as inherently having to split between Strength and Resolve makes you more divided and likely less damaging strong than a pure caster or a pure melee/ranged weapon guy - unless they make summoned weapons crazy strong, but that's also not a good approach to game balance. Therefore you now have a system where nuanced builds slip between the cracks for a lot of people, as they lack power, and 95% of builds will be dumping one stat or the other. This has now removed a complication from character building, and by providing a dump stat weirdly it allows for you to have a greater effective pool of character points to easily play with in character creation - which has far reaching implications for overall game balance when you think of it. I think objectively they've made a lot more problems for themselves than they realise with making the change, though I guess that's maybe why they're beta testing it so they can get a feel for how these changes play out. Do you need resolve for weapon oriented wizard build? Deflection helps, spell damage isn't needed (I might completely miss how mechanics work with this update but summoned weapons aren't affected by resolve, right?). Staff is long range weapon allowing to attack from behind tanks, there is also a ranged AOE summoned weapon. which is really effective. I do feel some balancing need to happen (too long summon time for weapons) but it works. I do believe str/res make characer building more convoluted (figuring what your class will benefit from most when doing damage is more difficult to figure out now) but it does bring new possible depth to tactical combat. That statement is made assuming that what we have is first concept test rather than a working system. If Obsidian would commit to stick to str/res some serious rebalancing is required. I find idea of str/res especially apprealing with presence of multiclassing. My worry regarding str/res is not if its worse and better, but if current ability and class design can handle that change. Are classes benefit enough from both str and res to favour those abilities. Does str wizard have enough spells to make him interesting (combined with int based spells I would say yes). This system plays more into how I plan my party. If I build my wizard around hard hitting spells I probably won't plan on using him as a weapon DPS - its just not his role in the party. I am confused by people who are upset that their battlemage won't be hitting hard in melee AND hitting hard with fireballs, because it is not how I would design my character - those are two seperate roles which overlap rather than compliment each other. But that's just a way I think.

As may it be, it caused confusion. I saw multiple people claim that might represents “strength of your soul”. I am not sure where that came from - I assume pre release explanation. Those are sort of issues which come up when you try to appease everyone - everyone will find some issue with the system because it is not fully committed to anything. I like might as a combat system and over all, I agree but because I am a pain in the butt I will have to try and make a correction: might was more elegant and clear. But it wasn’t more customisable. Strength/resolve gives character building more nuance by separating physical and ability power. It allows you to create character which is strong in both AND differentiate each other (he is spiritually strong priest and can heal a bunch but not strong physically in combat). As such I would say strength/resolve has more nuance and gives more character possibilities. Whenever the advantage it gives is worth the change to strait forward system of PoE1 - I am not so sure.

Ah, so now we know where “double VO” budget will go - Mercer tax

I have been interrogating my cat for 2 days now, trying to make her rat out who scratched her nose. Still nothing. I am doing good cop/good cop routine.

The only real problem with “might” i had in PoE was that game itself was inconsistent in what it is. All of the above is fine. I am fine with might representing mystical capability of the character whenever it is using melee, ranged, guns or spells. I am fine with potent magic requiering physical strength of a wielder. But if the second is true, present mages as such, rather than traditional D&D bookworm, only sourounded by books, stuck in basements, without much light or excercise. It’s not that “might” wasn’t a stat I was expecting to see (I found character creation straightforward and satisfying). I just count figure out what the stat represents and it seemed like game wasn’t convinced either. There was inconsistency between stat discription, how the stat was utilised incconversation and how high “might” NPCs were presented.

No, I fully believe in 1) and don't consider it extreme, and wish it were simply common sense. Ok, good to know. But wouldn’t that require a pretty much linear game? In case of Deadfire, yeah we opened up the world but if you go in any other direction than we plan for you to, you die because only this location is at your level? On the other hand, if you open a lot of content for lvl 1-5, than once you ge past that point those areas won’t be fun. In addition if the world is very open you risk spending a lot of time going to different places, getting killed and looking for a place you actually can complete. For a story driven RPG seems like a big misstep. I get that some creatures need to be powerful, and some need to be weak. But how about human robbers, bounty hunter etc. Does their relative “lvl” to each other really matter, if their only role is to create an obstacle for you alone?

I think you forget PoE is based on popular old RPGs, based on the popularity or reputation of Obsidian. I can't think of any positives that outweigh the confusion and frustration new players experience when confronted with attributes. They are only part of the game because of popular tradition and consequently popular demand of old school hardcore fans. I think the overall idea has merit, even if wording is slippery slope. Gromnir made a compelling post regarding devs following players wishes. I will let his own writing speak for itself: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/95407-deadfire-failing/?p=1968377 Of course, ignoring freedback of your audience is arrogant and silly, but it is devs responsibility to make a game and they should follow their guts and personal vision. I like Del Toro’s quote that he hopes each of his movies will find their own audience. Problem is it doesn’t really work like that with crowdfunding. You already have an audience who funded the project. You should care to make a game that will satisfy people who backed it. Few people will be open minded enough to appreciate released product, if it won’t fit into what they have invisioned when they backed the project. Or it will deliver something else they didn’t know they wanted.

Are they real though? If they have been created by people should they have that influence over people? Is,their positive influence enough to justify cruelties done to gain their favour (roderick). The finale leaves a lot of doubt and raises questions and I can’t wait to see how Obsidian will delve deeper into the subject in Deadfire.

I am pretty sure Mercer is back. He recorded voice for e3 demo. I am not sure how much those gaming voiceactors can barter. Sure he did Overwatch, but does it make him a star? Will putting "one of the companions voiced by McCree" bring an Overwatch in? If that's the case, hiring him should be borth extra expenses. It is more likely he can negotiate better pay as he did well in PoE1. Dunno. As far as we know he is in. He did trailer, he did demo, would be weird for him to not do actual game.

Are we really getting stuck on single words? Yeah, generic doesn’t have to be negative, but it can be used to bring attention to unoriginal or uninteresting of a nature of an item which by design should be unique like “a generic action film”. My stance still is the same - choosing from one-of-a-kind handcrafted weapons is more interesting than choosing from weapons which are easily recreatable and interchangeable with each other.

And that would be perfectly fine, if the game would recognise that connection. It might be preconceptions brought with me from IE games but design of NPC spellcasters still very much played into D&D bookworm stereotype. If Obsidian would want physical and spiritual “might” to be connected, it’s all good.

I think that even though we don’t fully really believe in the following, we tend to argue in favour for three extremes: 1) there should be no scaling, legendary enemies should be tough as balls and demand from players to lvl up to them, lvl of enemies should be consistent with world building and reflect creatures power within that world. 2) getting a bit overpowered is fine as it shows your progress throughout the game. Scaling enemies contradicts your raise in power, making lvl up meaningless 3) game is still a game, challange should be constant and content should always match players lvl. All of the above statements do represent what people like from their levelling system but I don’t think they necessarily have to exclude each other. On a contrary, all of the above should be a part of a good lvl & scaling system. First of all, it would be a mistake to scale every enemy to your level, or scale every enemy the same way. Like a narrative needs a clear arch, direction, tension building and releasing of said tension, gameplay needs combat and other checks to be varied. You constantly provide tough challenge and player will get frustrated and narrative could get stuck. On the other hand, you provide no challange at all and player stops being engaged with systems. Ideally you want them to be on their toes, but not struggle all the time to allow quests to flow. If you go to the area and it is scale up to your level, difficulty of the enemies you face should be consistent with the quest design - unarmed peasants be peasants, while on the other spectrum big Dragon, sea monster or challenging rival pose a challange. No one asks for every enemy and every area to scale up. Kobolots be kobolts, revisiting earlier areas filled with weaker enemies both by design and lore and wiping the map clean can absolutely be part of the experience. Similarly, legendary enemies can still be part of the game, waiting for you to lvl up, or kick your butt by acting as a late game challange, reflection of your growth or gateway organically blocking access to areas devs want you to access later. As far as scaling contradicting lvling up... that would mostly be a testament to a weakness of the design. It usually happens when lvl up only rises your stats (health, DPS, accuracy) but doesn’t expand gameplay in an interesting way. Skyrim had this problem. My lvl 20 character played the same way as my 1 lvl. character. He had more health, but enemies did more damage, he hit harder but enemies had more health. He didn’t get defined much beyond where the game started and gameplay didn’t get expanded. If we get access to unique skills and expand what our characters can do, and how they can interact with each other (we are talking about a party based combat after all) we did grew beyond numbers and stats. Even giving enemies a little stat boost to force player to not sleepwalk through the engagement still should showcase his superiority thanks to skills and combos his party possesses, special advantages provided via equipment and tactics learned. Overolling dice rolls is the most dull way you can represent your party’s growth.

haha! Getting immersed in Divinity 2. ha! My money is that they are going full VO. Making a deal out of it if its anything less would be silly because... well D:OS2. As long as Deadfire will have writing worth being read/heard I am all for it.

My biggest problem with weapons in PoE was that they were generic and recreatable. Picking weapons was uninteresting, because weapon you started with was probably (due to upgrading system) better than what you are picking up. Crafting system wasnt't too fun either, giving you weapons which simply hit harder and hit harder vs certain enemies. I missed those cool weapons which I would remember and use from BG2 like Celestal Fury or Silver Soul - weapons with unique low persantage ability. Soulbound weapons brought just that: A bot that essencially shooting lighting A two handed sword which summons wilder to fight at your side Breastplate which powers you unlock by mimicking deeds from previous owners life. A basic dagger made by an amatour which get worse and worse with every upgrade until it gets really really good. That's what I want from my weapons. As a matter of fact with new weapon design I hope for more memorable weapons to find, so the choice will be: which one of those cool weapons best suit my characters, rather than "I will use those interesting weapons only because other are generic." I can't say much about the balance, but I remember people complaining that Soulbound weapons aren't as good as maxout regular weapons and reply that that is very much by design with soulbound weapons being more unique/situational rather than overall better than anything else.

Yeah, the weather effects and some ability effects tank the frame rate. Beyond stopping me from playing more beta I wouldn’t worry too much about it right now. Little sense in polishing early builds and subject-to-change effects.

Oh no, in that case quickly to “might” related forums and viciously argue in favour of strength/resolve.

Game is really unoptimized right now and it is still much better than it was before patch1. They mentioned multipletimes they want it to run on pretty much the same hardware PoE1 did. How close will the reach this goal we will see once it releases.

Everyone has their preferences. I for one really like them. They were unique, momarable, had their own story and flavour. Possibly the new weapon system will be so good, those won't be needed, but for PoE they were a welcome addition to add something interesting to very dull regular equipment.

Or at least "buff" "debuff" icons to clearly show that character is "buffed" and "debuffed" so we know what to look for.

The problem is that "kill" means "make killing blow", not "make some damage contributing to killing by whole party". This essentially means that the one with such soulbound weapon should remain alone for each enemy he wants to kill while the rest of the party does nothing (except occasional healing) not to steal the kill. That would be true if combat were sparse. and I am pretty sure the example I gave was from a two handed sword. The more "supprty" weapons had other requirements. They generally were tied to whatever theme of the weapon was. I don't remember even seeing a requirement that needed player to not take advantage of weapons main function, though it is true some unlocks took longer than others.

Yeah. Stolen from the thread: Ship "Defiant" fires its cannons at ship "Black Pearl". Similar to the example I gave but avoids the problem of stating the sex of the subject. Smart wording as I said.

Speaking of which... Where can I get that thing? It does not show up on my GOG account. At least not for linux. (It's patch 3.07 I'm looking for, isn't it?)) https://www.gog.com/game/pillars_of_eternity_deadfire_pack