Wormerine

Of course, it is a mess of a system right now. It is not ready. Purpose of the beta is for bunch of people get their dirty hands on it and break it. In the last stream Josh openly admited they are undertuning many things as they have learned people react badly to nerfs so they prefer to keep things down and tune it up rather than having to tune things down. They best understand how far it is from final product. Negative feedback can be demotivating, but those are professionals and hopefully can work past it. I didn't see any of those videos. If someone does actual analysis I would be grateful for a link. Playthrough with snarky commentary is not really something I care much about as I can make my own with access to beta.

So far my impression is that the most important stat of any weapon is penetration. Most enemies have around 10 AR making weapons with low penetration situational. I wish firearms did crush damage, as it seems ranged characters don't really have a way to effectively apprach an enemy with high piercing resistance.

Frankly what is the point of praising it at that point? Point of the beta is to provide criticism, which even if done calmly will still sound negative.

I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Obsidian must know what they are going for and they are seeing how people react and use what they already implimented. Data gathered from beta might be more useful than what we say. They certainly shouldn’t blindly follow people requests 1:1. Some of the best “early access” developers were able to take a feedback and fix the problem in ways you wouldn’t expect. It’s up to us to express our feelings and thought on the game, and for guys in Obsidian to sift through it and decide what is constuctive feedback, what is a good idea, what asks for a different game all together and to identify what really is a problem.

I can’t wait for the PoE3, hundreds years into the future when we will have six shooters.

This. That's the whole point of power progression, if you wan't scaled content, you might as well just remove leveling altogether, as the effects are the same. The power curve alone doesn't matter, what matters is the power curve relative to the monster power, and if that is a curve as well, then you might just as well flatten out the monster power and adjust the character power curve accordingly. This is just a mathematical fact: scaling monsters doesn't achieve anything. Sure, that’s why I don’t like scaling. Having kobots become just as powerful as you isn’t very fun as it negates your raise in power. At the same time I find it problematic if halfway through combat becomes a snooze fest, except one or two “epic” fights. You get to the finale to face your super-duper god infused enemy and than you kill him within seconds, not even using your full potential, because this legendary enemy was ready to be defeated 5 lvls ago, is weak as well.

Many things I disagree with but I will give you that: PoE attributes only mostly combat. Overall, PoE systems seem to support a very seperate combat/exploration/interaction design with different “aspects” of you character interacting with one of those branches, but rarely with multiple. That is a flaw of the design making those branches of gameplay feel more seperate. Probably comes from following IE games design which barely utilised your character beyond combat (with exception of Torment using stats in conversations and Icewind Dale 2). PoE expands on that design rather than remaking it.

Where did this 450 hit come from? I can't see it in combat log. Flames of Devotion were supposed to do 60DMG according to combat log.

Ambitious, not foolish. An idea that your choice of attributes should change the way your class plays rather than making it unplayable is a good one. If picking a class forces you to choose certain attributes, than there is no point of an attribute system as class already defined it. Later D&D edition made the system better, but frankly the whole thing is extremely convoluted. Never played PnP D&D but as much as I love IE games and NWN2 the system doesn't really translated well into real time cRPG. Searching for new way of doing things (even if it creates new problems) is the only way forward I can think of.

Because players like to have a well rounded party? Because seeing failure messages is demotivating in a game? Because players want to properly roleplay such popular archetypes as rogue or silvertongue? Right now we can't have either. Either you pick some skills you want and make your whole party invest only into them to pass all the difficult checks, or spread out thin and fail all of them. So basically, if you want to have a proper rogue, your whole party have to work for said rogue when it comes to skills, without investing into any skills that may be more appropriate for their class. and you can do both things. Its been a while since I played BG but even though rogues got exclusive access to pickpocket, move silently, walk in shadows, find&disarm traps, openlocs, you wouldn't be able to be good in all of those. So you create a rogue and choose utility rogue (mechanics, sligh of hand, stealth) and boom, you have your rogue. Focuse more on one of those three depending what you want to be super good at. Silvertongue - dyplomacy + maybe insight? Boom. Maybe because I am playing with unavailable options off, but without super specializing (every character usualy picks 3 skills, 2 at least) but I am passing bunch of stat checks. Usually they are around 3points, with extreme ones going up to 6 or 7 with party assist. Seems reasonable. ... and why would we made these arbitrary changes to perfectly functional system?

Why to have skill point at all, if we were to pass all the checks on all the skills? You pick two or three per character and focus on them. None of these are mandatory, but rather open new paths, just like high diplomacy or metaphysics skill. Tying skills point just to inteligence seems like a terrible idea, as int is already a strong stat. Trying them to stats seem bad anyway. The way of getting ahead is already there, and its done via character backgrounds.

Sorry but won’t happen. It is still very much IE style game - combat is very much a focus and stats like intelligence or perception are still crucial for combat. There is no “skill based” way to play as it was in Fallout1&2. In fact, Deadfire even made a special effort to separate “interaction skills” with “utility skills” to not have a clash between gameplay and role play. Skills points are fine as they are, though as person who gravitates toward “skill based” characters in other types of RPGs as well, I understand the frustration. For Deadfire it works as it is, though.

Fair enough. Post apocalyptic setting often present people settlements as tribal, therefore similarities in structure and society. However, this is colonisation era tech, so no automated weaponary. Every weapon needs to be manually reloaded. I am sure you can buy blundrebuss somewhere. In PoE2 we have access to same guns, + granades, but weapons have unique modals giving them a bit more character.

As we haven’t seen crafting system yet, it’s very much a speculation, but I think it would be cool if one could craft customised grimoires. Those wouldn’t be cheap to make possibly requiring high level alchemy and a copy of each scroll spell you want to integrate + cost would increase with amount and lvls of spells you would want to include. More of a late game optimisation idea for wizards, rather than early game “make ideal grimoire” thing.

My fight certainly tend to go for longer. I use empower often enough on my priest, not to boost spells, but replenish spellpools. I like using empower on knockdown, when I really want to hit enemy. I don’t think it’s horrible, but i didn’t find it to great either.

I feel don’t want us to clear encounters by spamming fireballs. Those big AOE spells seem to be designed to target large mobs of weaker enemies, while those tougher ones will shrug AOE due to high penetration. Some of the single target spells hit harder. Maybe it’s very much intentional, rather than a flaw? I don’t find casting time that bad now when weapons got slowed down.

That... would make sense. To be honest “second wind” seems like the best sustain ability, with high level athletics giving you pretty much second life in combat. Considering I found It almost mandatory for everyone to have at least a bit invested in athletics (even west level second wind can mean a difference between surviving and being knocked out) giving everyone second wind and scaling it based on constitution seems like a solid idea to me.

As a person so far liking change to strength/resolve I won’t argue there was clarity and elegance in “might” stat. But I would also like to see more disctinction to weapons, though luckily modals make up the fact that all of them pretty much play the same.

... Can we at least get lootboxes? Marketplace? Anything? PoE is so 90s.

I am not necessarily assuming that player is a dummy, but I do assume he/she is not familiar with RPG conventions. And if it’s assumed that you will keep every shiny item and drop common items:1) why limit you carry weight at all if you need to have enough space anyway to carry all the shiny stuff. 2) why drop common items if you are expected to not pick them up. In the end PoE doesn’t have “strategic layer” which would benefit from restrictions on what you can carry with you. In one of the other threads I made a statement I am really proud of, so I will repeat it here: A failure, perma death or permanent loss in a game is a good thing only if it’s leads to interesting gameplay, rather than cut interesting gameplay from the game. Does limiting how much you can carrry lead to meaningful and engaging decision making, or does it limit amount of customization/builds you can do or just add extra dead time between realising you should change strategy (aka. Swap equipment) and being able to do it (jog to the keep and back again). :-D it is THE game of my childhood. Tried to give it ago a while go and “wow!” My tolerance for insta death traps you couldn’t possibly see coming is much lower than it was when I was 5ve. I hope you won’t run out of alcohol before beating it;-)

Failing is only powerful, if the decision was made knowing full well risks and rewards. The example I gave wasn’t exciting it was frustrating. Playing without walkthrough should be more exciting, not frustrating. I might be scarred for life by playing Rick Dangerous as a kid on Comodore 64. You want to have a bad time, because you didn’t know what’s ahead of you? Give this a go: http://www.arcadedivision.com/classicgame27/platform/rick-dangerous.html First run through is the real experience. It’s like saying a level design isn’t confusing if you know how to beat it. You shouldn’t encourage players to replay your game by sabotageing their first experience, rather make it interesting enough and give it depth so they want experience it again/try different approach.

This argument appears over and over again, and I really don’t get it. I imagine that when you create a multiclass character you want his skills to supplement each other, not overlap. You won’t create a mage/fighter, who will focus on DPSing with weapon while DPSing with spells, rather one who locks enenemies down with fighter abilities to DPS with spells, or CC with spells to DPS with weapons, or cast magic weapons/buff yourself to DPS with weapons etc.

I am pretty sure it was confirmed that importing save will still rewuire character creation - your choices will be imported, not the character. Whenever changes are for good or bad, I wouldn’t accept “but it was like that in the first game” as a valid point. It’s different game, what was in the first game is only relevant as a point of reference. I don’t think there is something like “mechanic’s lore”.

There is a virtue in inventory management, but in BG2 you also always have access to unlimited stash. You just need to walk for a bit to get to it (or get a hold on holding bag, which is a clunky stash). The game would need to be redesigned to support inventory management (aka, Darkest Dungeon - what do you take, how much you can carry, what to do you leave behind) or admit that the whole system is a smokescreen and cut the fat out of the experience. PoE went for the second approach. do you think that the second approach is better? We‘re not designing games so we‘re just speculating, but if you were a designer about to create an rpg with stash inventory would your priority be to create quality over quantity for loot? I would imagine that James Ohlen&team did have to take the limited inventory into consideration when they created BG2. How do i design monsters, encounters? Think of the many enemies that don‘t drop weapons at all since their fighting with e.g. claws or whatever like umber hulks, vampires, mummies, ghouls, trolls, beholders, and so on. In Nalia‘s castle the guys who drop loot are the Yuan-ti fighters but everyone else afaik doesn‘t drop anything. It‘s mostly when you fight humanoid parties that you get the special loot. You simply don‘t fight that many enemies of the same kind and composition in BG2 as in similar rpgs. So i‘d assume with stash it‘s easier for the designer, surrounding the player with lots of enemies of the same kind isn‘t that much of an issue for the designer since it‘s ‚put it in the stash and let the player deal with hundreds of identical items‘.I don’t think second approach to be “better”. It certainly doesn’t make for a better inventory management. It does, however, what it’s supposed to do - give you access to weapons you found that your current and future companions might want to use. PoE had overall issue with providing a huge amount of dull, recreatable weapons. I enjoyed Soulbound weapons much more. The amount of trash items was a minor issue for me, mostly because I would loot everything without paying attention, often missing the good stuff. You are right, the way BG provided loot was more sparsely. The way you built you party was different as well. Quite often I would quickly decided who will be in my party for the entire game making keeping/ditching weapons easier as I knew who might use what. In PoE you meet companions later and you don’t really know what might be of use. I am not against revamping inventory management and item system. I am also a big fan of inventory Tetris (one thing I loved about NWN1 was how it’s inventory worked). But I believe that slapping weight restriction or removing stash without making sweeping changes to the current design would only make for a poorer experience. I don’t believe BG was much better as far as inventory goes (weapon design was). In the end you were given your stashes in a form of bag of holding and other containers to get around inventory management. I liked some minor stuff, like limited arrows - I count them among “original xcom clip ammo” mechanics: insignificant annoyances, easy to surpass and not meaningful game mechanics, which fulfill certain fantasy. However, those mechanics will be frustrating or acceptable on a very subjective level, because they are not good, interesting mechanics. Just a busywork, which you might be willing to do or not. So either make it nutritious or cut the fat out, I say.

I wasn’t trying to say that you can’t have unique items and real inventory management with tangible consequences for leaving stuff behind. However, how game is and works would work well if items could be lost permanently. After all, even when you sell them they remain in merchants inventory for later possible use. Let’s say you see a nice battleaxe of drake slaying. Nice stuff, but no one in your party specialises in axes and there are no drakes nearby. So you leave it and it disappears forever. But then you meet Jimmy the Barbarian Dwarf and he loves his axes. You also venture into the cave of drakes. You could really use this axe now. But it was one of a kind, handcrafted and now completely lost to you. Of course, you could make every weapon craftable/buyable, which would mean leaving stuff behind would have consequences but wouldn’t be that crashing. Or you could choose your companions at the start of the game, decided what they will use and not add new companions throughout the game making decision making on what to leave behind easier. Both would work for me, and probably there are more ways to do it. But PoE doesnt care about inventory as it’s not its focus. It does, what it needs to do and does it well, without enhancing or sabotaging core game.