Wormerine

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.

So, are you suggesting that the enemies should just all detect magic being cast outside of their range of vision/hearing and come running to attack you if you try to prebuff before entering a combat scenario? The problems with your "solution" aside, your entire argument is about how restricting buffing is fundamentally bad for the game, but when confronted with the problems pre-buffing introduces (which you've finally, finally directly addressed here in the quoted portion), your solution is to make the pre-buffing okay by restricting it with some kind of hostility threshold? Do you not understand what people have been saying this entire time? I think what Goddard wishes to see (and please, correct me if I am wrong) is a game, which focuses on mechanical simulation of the world, and which pushes simulation, AI reaction further than what BG did 20 years ago. He wants to have access to unrestricted system and see game react to it in a more realistic way. I do think it is a bit of a pipe dream. Technology got better, but not nearly better to simulate human reaction. Just like with graphics, the closer system comes to behaving like intelligent person the more weird and noticable it becomes. It would be nice to have NPC react in a believable way, when you create mayhem, or steal. In his example enemy NPC would try to run away if you are too powerful (or prebuffed) rather than run at you and die. I think what he wants is a game, which will give him some of the awe BG gave years ago. Personally, to me that was Witcher 3. As far as simulaton is concerned Space Citizen seems to have those ambitions with "intelligent" systems, and "believable" AI behaviour and entire economy running. And that's sad. I would be completely happy with solid single player campaign. If we ever see it released I doubt it will be any good. Though I still hope something good will come out of it.

If your intelligence penetration is smaller than enemy resolve you get 30% of duration, huh? ) Joking aside, I do like the idea.

and I still stand by all I have written. Still, even though I normally wouldn't care for a walking animation (I am playing through free copy of Watchdogs Ubi gave away - wow this game has a nice walking animation... and I have never used it again after first 15 minutes of gameplay), I am really happy to see it in for people who fought so passionatly for it. We all gained in our own ways.

That is true. From what I remember of BG, the difficulty of the battle was to figure out how to hit enemies. Once hits started to land, combat was over rather quickly. As far as the complaign of Deadfire enemies being HP sponges. Not from my experience, especially on my second playthrough. On veretan difficulty once I figured ways around the AP enemies tend to die quickly. A lot of "one round" enemy deaths. I personally wouldnt want Obsidian to "hack" the hit rolls, with tricks like "first hit always hit" or "everytime you miss your chances of hitting increases."

I will go no scaling on first playthrough. I might scale everything up on 2nd and see if it works as advertised.

And that was a always the case. Sadly magic side of combat was always much more robust and cool than traditionalists. In PoE spellcasters get all the spells AND access to a wide generic pool of talents and both are chosen using separate sources. Now when passive weapon skills will be available to everyone that discrepancy might end up being even bigger. I feel fine about fighters for now but I do feel like never picking a ranger - I would like to see wider range of weapons available to them and a more interesting cooperation between rangers and their pets, as it seems to be defining feature of that class. As far as buffing those classes go, I am not sure if adding bunch of active skills or remaking passives into active is a good choice. I would put “there aren’t enough skills” with “they were lazy and didn’t come up with new ones”. Dragon Age1 had plenty of active skills for everyone and it... well sucked. When you add skill it should give said class visible utility and role, and so far they seem to work well.

Balancing open RPGs is a ticky thing. On one hand you don't want to make critical path too difficult as to not force sidequests is players aren't interested. However, if you do balance critical path to allow for straight playthrough, than someone who will do some or all the sidecontent will be way overleveled for the story. Even so its easy to do some tougher quests earlier and get ahead of the difficulty curve. Deadfire obsidian offers couple options for scaling: Scale everything, Scale just critical path + scale only up (no downscaling) Hopefully, it will help in giving players who want it constant challange.

Rogues should have access to Two-Weapon fighting, no? O don't necessarly see why? They can pack a pair of daggers, they can pack a single dagger, they can pack a firearm or a mace. With current system there is no need for two-weapon fighting talent, rather they have abilities to make most of their two-weapon fighting style. Two-weapon fighting rogue will work differently than two-weapon fighting fighter. I don't think there is a requirement of "rogues have to be equal in direct combat with fighers." As a reply to OP. I did find Katarack21's argument regarding Palladins compelling, even though I don't 100% agree. As of now, I am not really fond of giving ALL classes access to those enhanced weapon skills. However, yesterday I had an idea - what if we have multiple sets of shared, passive talent trees? WARRIOR TALENTS - talents designed to boost efficiency with weapons, representing people who spent their lives as warriors, mastering their craft and deadliness Barbarians Fighter Monk Paladin DISTRUPTOR TALENTS - Yhhh, you know, those classes I don't know how to categorize. I can't really think of a set of abilities which would be useful for all of them. Chanter Rogue Cipher Ranger SPELLCASTER TALENTS - talents for classes focused around spellcasting. Druid Priest Wizard Those talent trees would also be a subject to "power level". If you multiclass Fighter with Paladin you still stay within "warrior talent tree" which means you will have faster access to higher ability tiers and be able to access highest level of boosts. If you decide to multiclass between those categories you get access to a wider range of talents but will gain them slower and won't be able to access the highest tiers of those trees.

I believe that the issue isn’t that paladins or barbarians aren’t good in close combat. Their class skills and starting statistic make them good. It seems some people have a desire to be able to pick talents which directly reflect their character’s training with arms. That is true that on th basic level paladins are as proficient with weapons as mages, even though the lore doesn’t really support that. They are better than mages is combat due to their class skills being more directly tied to that, but the desire to accent their character’s commitment to martial arts is there. I personally don’t have an issue with that, nor that my PoE1 cipher isn’t recreatable in PoE2 system right now. It’s been 5 years. He didn’t get much practice with firearms being a land lord and all. Or he adopted a baby bear to not feel lonely in Caed Nua. Either works.

Bwahaha, on my second playthrough I sneak killed both champions away from their camp and than blew up all the othe xaurips by sneak casting bouncy fire ball thingy into barrels. Seriously, powder barrles are way more effective than a fireball.

Tyranny did something like that (and that is what the current system seem to get some ideas from.) If you got knocked down you got injury, but you would also get injury if you received too much damange and some special attack could give enemy and injury. I really disliked this system. Unlike PoE health, which is imply a resource, getting an injury in Tyranny always felt bad making your characters less effective and it felt like I had little control over that. At least, currently in PoE2, when I get an injury it feels deserved.

Ah, and I was looking for it. With so many reports it gets tricky to see what was posted and what wasn't.

How is armor penetration? If your penetration is below enemy's armor rating you will automatically do 30% of the damage (the change is already annouced for the next patch)

So what is the final choice of Josh about this subject ? We know ? General pool or reinforced pool for each class ? Moreover, we agree that the estoc, sword and the rapier on the best modals ? : p It is perhaps the bigger problem, you quickly take the same weapons each time... I like mace - lowering armour. Not as effective per person as estoc but you debuff enemies for everyone. Might not be helpful if penetration gap is bigger than 1, but with new system it should be always a boon.

It is quite different as BG as your life regenerates and you spring back to life with an injury after falling in battle. Like many new mechanics it's just different and take getting used to. Doing my second playthrough in beta and resting is non issue. I am halfway through and I rested once. Again, issues with UI and not seeing when someones health is getting low is a bigger issue than system itself. Getting injured by traps is the most annying thing so far, but at least gives traps some role in the game. You can avoid it by saving throw, but if you get hit you get injured. Talking away regenerating health is not really an option. I doubt many people will hate this system in a long run.

On the second level of eng. ruins I engaged spiders with my fighter and pallading in a doorway. Palladin got permanently stuck (saving a reloading didn't help). It happened during combat, she could attack if enemy got close to her, but she can't move at all.

The floating damage numbers don't seem to correspond with combat log. I saw multiple times after an attack a damage number over 30, but when I screen combat log I saw no attack doing that much damage. I have been keeping an eye on the floating numbers and combat quest log and there seem to be discrepancy between the two.

-1100% a bit much? The same says the buff discription (but its in red). I don't think the effect is really there though. After casting the spell or shooting the recovery time seems to be the same as before.

Sure, but character were competent with weapons even without a need for a talent. But roleplaying aspect is important to keep in mind. Even if character didn't HAVE to pick a talent to use certain weapons or certain weapons combinations, if in majority player's head it felt bad to use dual wielding daggers on their rogue without picking dualwielding talent it is important, even if mechianically it was completely irrelevant. I am surprised Josh came around so easily. Looking forward how it will all work in later patches.

Thank you OP! I was thinking about doing post like that but you really well summarized my feelings. As an experiment I am currently doing a run with a Paladin to see if those "no weapon focus" complaigns are really is a thing. He seems to be doing very well. She is DPS focused, with two handed weapons (estoc/morningstar) and she is doing really well. Her abilities get boosted from Paladin unique skills (sworn enemy, flames of devotion). Does adding a perk (20% more damage) really is needed? Like OP I feel that what will happen is enemies will get rebalanced around everyone performing better with weapons, and I hope for fighter's skills to get ugraded, which pretty much puts us in the same place we were before the change, except everyone is restricted to weapons they picked at the character creation. If you want to dual wield you can, you don't need a talent for that in current build. Between PoE and PoE2 priests got hit the hardest. They got their priest abilities for free, meaning they could spend their talents on what was pretty much multiclassing. However, if you want to be priest and frontline fighter I think it is reasonable to ask players to multiclass AND it makes more sense for first time players. Something I don't like and hope to see improved is that fighter seem to be really married to melee combat and rangers to range combat. I am fine with fighter being weapon focused class, using them more efficiently than everyone else, but I wish they would have more freedom as to their role. Similarly ranger could use universal "melee, range" skills rather than heavy focus on range.

I will add to that that "out of screen" portraits don't seem to display correct portraits:

I wouldn’t worry about “Deadfire” getting dummed down. Obsidian has already responded to some of the concerns, and even now system isn’t nearly as restrictive as it seemed at first. Comparing it to Tyranny or DA:O is just not accurate. While I prefer old health/endurance system the new injury system does pretty much the same thing but with clearer UI. Frankly as it is right now, it looks pretty solid and I hope it will get better throughout beta.

Thinking about it now... arenas use to be RPG thing for a while... I haven't seen those in a while.