Wormerine

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.

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."