Wormerine

I am really not sure how experimenting with attribute spread has anything to do with appealing to the mass market. It seems pretty in line with what they wanted from PoE system and in line with ideals Josh presented in the GDC talk. From his presentaton: Pillars' Goals: * six atributes - check * class abilities are not explicitly associated with attributes - check. * Influence statistics of importance to all classes linearly - check * Primary goal: "no bad builds" - need to see the beta build but seems like a check. Some multiclassing might get awkward with bad attribute spread. * secondary goal: ensure that dumping stings - check - it seems that in support of this problem the change was made. I certainly wouldn't say their games didn't have clear direction, but they tend to feel like they lack polish.

Did you play recently a PvE version of multiplayer game? I like Starcraft. Blizzard is a big, talented company with lots of cash to spend. Playing unscripted game of starcraft against AI isn't an engaging experience (though its much better than it was years ago.) The AI isn't up to snuff to analyze your behaviour in sensible way and react. You write as if AI was capable of thinking by itself. It's not. And its a game we are talking about. Simulating natural human behaviour and reactions will be much tougher to achieve. So lets say the game would allow prebuffing, and would make certain creatures recognize danger - beatles would attack you no matter how prebuffed you were, merceneries might decide to run instead, if they "sense" you are too prepared for them. So... how does it work as a game system. What does this system add to the experience? It is supposed to make you prebuff before "more inteligent" enemies to avoid combat if you wish so? If that's the case how do you limit resting to make sure players won't prebuff before every fight. What useful tool does this system give designers when creating quests. Is it a clear and engaging system for players to interact with? Will enemies running away will be satisfying for players. Won't they miss key loot? Do devs write dialogue to support those behavours? How variations does it need to become predictible and boring. Are those behaviours hand scripted or generated (it was supposed to be a tough fight but you have 5 mages in your party and they all prebuffed and you have no more spells but the game thinks it can't kill you so they just leave.) What does identifying items have to do with anything? So yeah, you had to identify an item before using it, or pay for identifying them. Its a cool system. But neither BG or PoE have an economy to balance that. Money is a non issue. So what is the gameplay purpose of identifying things? "you need inteligence to indentify an item!" "What if I don't have enough inteligence?" "Well, nothing really." "So what's the point?" "Well, it was in Pen&Paper. Doesn't really do anything in this game, as you can leave whenever you want but we still implimented the system. Seemed like a good idea at the time but we really don't know what to do with it" I am still trying to figure out what game you want to play and I can't figure it out.

Only Obsidian folks can speak for themselves, but I would imagine they would be toughest critics of their own game. As a studio, which never did a sequel just yet, copy pasting same systems into sequels might not be in their bloodstream. I am to surprised by how much the system is being altered, but I for one am more excited for sequel than disappointed. I am planning to play through with the same single class orlan cipher, and all those changes mean that the experience will be quite different. For better or for worse - we will see. Why do a sequel if you are afraid to change things?

Would you mind elaborating a bit? I have never done much of multiclassing but from what I saw and tried it works the best if ones combines abilities of both classes to enhance each other, rather than doing everything at once. Let’s take fighter/wizard. With new system it will be difficult to build a character who focuses on dealing damage with weapons and spells. But you wouldn’t do that right? Casting fireball from first raw of combat is risky as you can get interrupted. It is more likely you will buff yourself with magic to get better protection or better damage or debuf enemies. You won’t need resolve for that. You can also create tanks damage dealer - you engage enemies and lock them with you, and use spells like fan of flames to damage enemies.

https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/935691812353667072 see Lol

But... I like this change. I think. Let’s give it a shot in an actual beta built. There are a lot of changes coming, and it’s kinda difficult to guess how it will really influence the game.

There were people walking, but from what I saw there was a set of static NPC who never moved, and set of “static” more reacting to weather walk-ing NPC.

I find it less bad than mage of PoE who would cast the crowd control spells, followed by powerful damage spells, followed by talking out weapons and wrecking enemies with his high might. As we will be rather picky regarding what spells we pick we could go for high intelligence, high strengths mage using debuff/crowd control spells and weapons, especially with multiclassing. I think example of cipher given earlier shows why it might end up being a good change. For cipher every stat has its function. Depending on what of his abilities you want to focus on you favour different stats. It probably need some tuning but it could be alright. And as some people already mentioned, PoE stats aren’t that big of a deal. Minmax or not, changes to how character plays and performs are minimal.

My thoughts exactly.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ln_plWALAoI 4:37 When Deadfire was pitched one of the features mentioned was a more “living” world. NPCs would have daily routines they would follow. Beyond obvious visual boon, that would play into quest design with areas getting depopulated, various opportunities opening at different times of day. There is a trace of such behaviour in the sidequet available in the beta, where one of the NPCs changes his location throughout the day (home to work to crime scene). However, he doesn’t walk anywhere but rather teleports when not in view. Also he mentions that he goes to the beach at night because no one will se him then, but the beach is just as full as it is during the day. I don’t think I have seen NPCs react to weather either. Do you think NPC behaviour has been seriously downgraded during the development or do you think those are just placeholders and said mechanics are coming back in full game/later beta updates?

I liked THAC0. It took me two playthroughs before I read manual and figured out how hit is calculated and why better armours have negative bonus. It made me feel smart.

I don’t really see a benefit of restricting weapons with min stat requirements.

Here is why: they don’t want to make specific attributes key to certain classes. And yes, if you want your mage to focus on powerful damage dealing spells you will want resolve. But it is not the only good build possible. Intelligence is also quite important for pure spellcasters as it influences AOF and duration. Resolve might also influence other classes non weapon based abilities.

You're right. Don't know how much of kickback power those old guns had though. Could dislocate your shoulder or leave a bruise. Using gun with low strength should give you a chance to gain injury with every shot.

I didn’t mean to suggest your reservation is unasked for or wrong. This change has wide implication. Mechanically I liked old system - it was quite elegant as every stat worked in similar way for every class - and therefore was usually useful for every class depending what built you went for. My biggest problem was with might checks in dialogues and scripted interactions. As least in my case it comes from my stereotypical mage character, who was supposed to be tough spellwise but not tough physically and he was usually the best party member to do might checks and move stuff around with his strength. I found inability to differentiate strength from magical prowess frustrating. I do find it weird that guns rely on strength. I think if guns had a set damage and strength wouldn’t be a factor it might have been an interesting “amateurish” weapon for non combat oriented characters. In my personal experience I found firearms to be most useful as opening act and used other weapons for main fight.

I personally find it to be a very refreshing approach to sequels. So often you see same game being made over and over again without an attempt to fix its issues. Obsidian does seem to be interested in solving problems PoE1 had. That might mean they will introduce new ones. I am really surprised people dislike this change as combining strength and magic prowess seemed like an odd decision to me.

Yayyyyy!!!!!! I have no idea how it will turn out in practice but at least might isn't a stupid, confusing, "why is my mage lifting boulders with his bare hands" stat. So will resolve now also be used for active abilities damage? So spellcaster will low might and high resolve will have good spellcasting, but poor performance with weapons, and viceversa. I like that. Now I wish for more passive stats for spellcasters so I could consider building passive mage... though not that I would. It's interesting. I don't know if its the best solution, but in my mind its better. And better is good.

It’s as if making game more open and giving players more influence over the story makes it more difficult to write coherent and fluid narrative and characters. One of the reasons fallout1&2, while great, don’t have particularly engaging plot or deep interaction with characters (narrative wise). That’s also possibly highlighting a huge storytelling issue games have aka. Relaying on storytelling techniques of other mediums (films, books etc.) rather than developing their own. As it happens Mass Effect2 is also a pretty good example of that - storytelling comes from writing and movie-like cutscene/conversation direction while actual gameplay feels more like in between distraction or a smokescreen (dialogue). Pretty much the reason why Brothers: Tale of Two Sons is so extraordinary using gameplay as primary medium of communication.

https://youtu.be/2OsRePNS4pk

But what is this supposed shift in design philosophy? You keep talking as if BG was the big, open, interactive game while it was a complete opposite compared to RPGs that came before. KOTOR didn’t change design philosophy, Mass Effect didn’t change design philosophy. They all strived to do the same thing - somewhat interactive tight, well paced stories, with better and better visual presentation and mechanics to boost said story. Did I like BG more than those titles? Yes, but not because Bioware’s ideology has changed, but because BG was this odd child of niche RPGs trying to reach out to mass market. Later games they further distilled what people cared about and didn’t care about. At some point they become games I didn’t care about that much. But it was always what those games were. I wasn’t happy when Mass Effect2 became more of an action game than an RPG. But that was what Mass Effect really WAS. It was a hybrid marrying RPG with 3rd person action game. If, like me, you liked RPG elements... that’s cool but they didn’t really work in ME favour. Feel the same about BG and PoE. PoE gets rid of things which BG had due to it being an early adaptation of paper RPGs, but which didn’t work well with what BG was trying to be. If you want more of an unrestricted do-what-you-want-RPG, think Divinity2 is more like that (can’t say, didnt play it yet, but it seems to be going for it). I love Pulp Fiction and dislike later Tarantino movies. Not because he has changed but because I don’t really like what he goes for. As he kept pushing the envelope he lost me, while Pulp Fiction’s early, more quirky than shocking, Tarantino worked for me really well.

I do get “role playing” argument, though I am much more interested in mechical side of combat, and would happily trade obvious and meaningless choices for a smaller set of interesting ones. But how does it help to distinguish your roles? I imagine you will get weapon focus on all of characters, as it won’t cost you nothing (you don’t need more that two weapon proficiencies per character) which means you paladin trained with shields will be just as trained as mage whom you have a shield to boost his defences. Unless, of course you handicap yourself due to role playing reasons, which is cool, but still gives us a pretty bad system.

So right now Fighter is more effective with weapons, and ranger has more reliable DPS with ranged. I don’t know what barbarian has access to but I trust you that so has he. Cool. Three classes who rely on their weapons to do damage and contribute are more effective using weapons. Wizards, Priests druids rely on spells. So know they hit with weapon oriented classes. Normally you would combine a bit of both, depending on your preference in a party. If you go all fighter, well you will need extra damage to compensate for lack of spells. I probably won’t make my main a rogue, but frankly in beta rogues seem super powerful. Easily moving around battlefield, disabling, interupting and killing squishy backliners. There seem to be a notion of multiclassing being evil. You want priest or rogue who go toe to toe in direct combat? Well, multiclass with a class designed to do that.

So if those are so irrelevant, what is the point of needing them in order to define your character? Where did idea of weapon accuracy buffs from PoE1 coming back to Deadfire came from? Has there been new details revealed? From Josh’s original post I understood that they will simply make existing passive weapons talents available to everyone. I think one handed weapon style had increased accuracy if I remember well, but all the other had different effects.

Personally, I am against adding additional enemies while the fight is in progress (unless summoned or added via visible and predictable mechanic), especially when planning out use of your abilities is a thing. I might also have flashbacks to DA2 endless spawning enemies trying to make combat exciting. BTW. Loving your portrait. Shadow Tactics was such a delightful surprise.

Because shooters did that and it ruined the genre:-P.