Wormerine

I much more concerned about readability of combat than if it looks realistic. As a top down game it’s last concern is if it makes sense but if attacks are visible, hit/miss is easy to spot etc. They still have lots of work to do.

Ok. Just as a heads up, the only character I have created and tested so far was unarmed monk, occasionally switching to dual hatchets and kicking some serious butt. So I am mostly listening to feedback rather than providing with informed preference. So from replies so far I have gathered two arguments: 1) Using weapons without fighter perks seem to be not good enough, thefore using other classes that rely on weapons seem bad unless you multiclass with fighter. In that case I would say the issue doesn’t lie in extra perks but rather in base balance. My impression is that Obsidian want player to be able to use any combination of weapon effectively without spending talents on it, while fighters get even better at it because, well... fighters are boring and they don’t get the cool stuff. 2) people don’t care that much about balance and what factually works but care about RP. “I envisioned my character to focus on those weapons so I want to pick a talent which makes him more effective with that weapon”, even if upgrade is minor and if he can use this weapon anyway. Naturally both arguments are completely valid in consideration. I will have to mess around with beta a bit more and see if Paladins/cypher really feel as weak with their use of weapons as suggested. Personally I am gradually warming up to it. It does feel like Deadfire goes for a more defiened class system, which PoE1 felt more like open character creator with classes adding some unique mechanics on top of that. Here it’s opposite with classes being a big defining factor in what your character does. However, if you build a priest and put him in armour and have him fight in a front line - isn’t he a priest/fighter? Isn’t it more natural for player to multiclass fighter (class which focuses on using armour and weapons effectively) with priest (guy who believes in gods and cast spells with his faith) than using perks to make a priest into a fighter?

I have a question: What is exactly the problem with Fighter having access to perks which make him able to make a better use of his weapons? Is it a really "possible built" limitation, or what we percieve as a limitation, because if I won't pick a perk for two weapons combat that means using two weapons is impossible? If remember correctly usually "two weapon" proficiency was focused around being able to use two weapons - you would get heavy negative rolls making dual wielding bad, unless to took perks which would reduce those penelties. In Deadfire however: That is certianly good. Does it mean however, that you can't use pure Rogue with dual wield without this talent? I don't believe so. He will attack slower than trained fighter, but rogues get some really strong distruptive skills to make up for it. In a similar way: It makes fighter with this perk a bit more efficient with two handed weapons, that lets say a Palladin, who gets his own set of benefits. The same with shields: and one handed weapons: My point is: I saw post asking for those base "buffs" being available to everyone, and even further bonuses for fighters only. Does that really make sense though? You can still equip one handed weapon and shield on your other characters and they will benefit from it in the intended way. You can still have dualwielding rogue, its just warrior is a bit better in it. Didn't they just skip one step forward making all those combinations available for EVERYONE without a need for a special perk and gave additional talent boost for fighters? And if you create a mage, or rogue or palladin and want him to be very very good in handling weapons, doesn't it make sense to dip into fighter multiclassing?

Isn’t it their point? You are not supposed to use them all the time, but each weapon brings its own utility? Someone with just a bit higher AR? Use mace to bash it down a bit, allowing othe characters to strike with higher damage. Someone is stunned and vonourable? Switch on lower /high damage to maximise profit.

I am pretty sure ship combat will be done va scripted interactions. The only “combat map” will be boarding.

Should it though? Dark Souls works but death is part of Dark Souls. Same in XCOM, Darkest Dungeon etc. Problem with IE games is that you don’t really want companions to die. Because they are written companions. They are kinda important. So since KOTOR2 RPGs move away from it because perma death in the kind of RPG is kinda stupid. In BG if your companion was torn to shreds and unfit for resurrection you would reload. You just would. So you were given Health/endurance which made dying possible but easily avoidable. He same is with current health system. Once you add that kind of resource management, tangible risk/reward it becomes different game entirely. A game I still like, but a game where putting lots of resources into creating and writing companions, developing relationship system is just misguided.

if PoE2 cypher is anything like PoE1 cypher I am not loosing that much. The only regret I have is that there is no ferret to pick as a pet. Supported animal companions don’t really fit my ex-merchant, forced to be an adventurer Orlan from Old Valia.

Yhhh, I am pretty sure PotD takes hard and cranks everyone’s statistics up. It was hard which took normal and added more enemies/harder compositions. Either way both worked well.

Because the archetype I want is the rogue who attacks super fast with 2 weapons but is still a rogue. I don't want to multiclass and take all of Fighter (which I want 1 single passive out of) and lose out of a ton of Rogue abilities (as opposed to 1-2 if the talent was universal or I had some other way to get it) just for that.Although right now, if the system doesn't change I probably will make a Rogue/Devoted. That's exactly what I wanted, and exactly what I did. Turns out a devoted/streetfighter is a total badass. Great, sounds like the problem is solved!!!! As a bonus tip you could make a Monk/Rogue and use Swift Strikes to get increased attack speed. Not really. A devoted/streetfighter is a total badass, but it's not a duel-wielding high-attack-speed rogue. It's a fighter/rogue. I'm having fun playing my devoted/streetfighter, but it's *not the character I wanted to make*. It's just a decent substitute. A duel-wielding high-attack-speed rogue was totally doable in Pillars...but not in Pillars 2. In Pillars 2, the best you can do is a fighter/rogue to *simulate* that. I was worried about my imported cypher - with new system I won’t be able to improve his firearms and reload times while being a pure cypher. So at the end of my run I bought 7th lvl companion to try cypher builds. I made ranger/cypher... getting all basic cypher spells I wanted and nice long range accuracy, reload boost. I am kinda loving it. He also has an antilope running around.

It is a crowdfunded game. It is also why Obsidian is doing this beta and listening to feedback. The sales pitch was on fig. That said new system seems to do what it was designed to do. It provides more or less the same utility health/endurance did but with clearer UI and easier to understand system. Personally I do find it awkward but more I played less it bothers me. It’s not really winning me over (I still think previous system worked more naturally) but it stops bothering me.

Just beat my first playthrough on veteran. Beginning was tough as I was figuring mechanics but by the end I was rolling through enemies. I created a monk character (glass cannon subclass) and rolled with premade and preleveled companions. I found warrior’s mace modal very useful (lower armour). My main difficulties didn’t come from gameplay itself but from unfinished UI - people loosing health and me not noticing it in time, difficult to see what’s going on. I wonder if one handed speed made it too easy for me - my monk was ripping through everything. Still, all of it looks very promising. I like unrestricted casting, battles feel much more involved and reactive than before. Injuries sometimes felt cheap, but it is something I could get used to. I like how grimoires work, though I am looking forward to having a wider choice of spells with next update. Stealth works well, allowing you for some sabotage before combat. I found rogues’ upgraded “teleport” which makes next attack paralyse enemy a bit OP. Love it though.

Ignoring the issue of a more limited classes I am liking more and more current system. Skills at your disposal seem to be much more impactful than they were before. Muticlassing allows you to freely mix skills of two classes of your choose, but I wonder how much items could bring into class building. I finally beat beta, and I think I found at least two items, which gave wearer a skill from other class. I found boots which granted leap, and gountlets which granted ability to graze hits (with abilities like that and spells buffing allies with ability to graze, do we really need deafault graze mechanic?) I wonder if there are some cool builds which could be achieved my mixing single class buffed with well chosed additional skills. If there is a shop with items like that (so you don't have to find them at designer's choosing) it could be very cool. I am slowly warming up to it. I would welcome a pool of shared skills, but I would rather prefer them to be as impactful as base skills rather than bunch of small boosts.

At this point we might as well return to health/endurance. The point of injury system is to make things more readable and easier to understand not a complex web if major/minor injuries, with different penelties and "death door" points. The main focus of the game is on adventuring, not healing. It ain't Hospital Tycoon.

The specific downside of Godlikes is that they can't have helmets. They have some pretty cool racial skills, not getting helmet bonus is your penalty for being the cool kid. Fire Godlikes would melt helmet anyway. Deathgodlikes love to show off their beautiful faces.

I believe there was upgrade system in mind when pitching it. There is also combat, crew system. We know crew can starve or rebel. How exactly it will work - we will have to wait till it’s implimented in backer beta.

Yeah exactly, resting meant something in the last game even if the system was not that great. There were good times to rest and there were good times not to rest. In this version game it really is best to just rest after every injury, there's no incentive not to other than the loss of resting bonuses but then food also gives bonuses. Maybe if they made removing injuries harder as in it requires specific recipes to heal specific injuries? Also make it so only specific recipes give decent bonuses or just no food bonuses. The problem is you are adding mechanics and expending part of the game which doesn’t interact with the rest of the experience. You have to rest, because if you don’t in the next fight kicked out partymember wont get up. So you rest. I would advocate going as far as removing resting entirely and create entirely different “punishment” system for getting knocked out. Maybe not for Deadfire, but at this point we are moving so far away from IE games that it might be worthwhile for PoE3 to go back to drawing board and do things from scratch. New protagonist, new rules, new systems. At this point, old ones don’t really seem to glue all that well anymore.

D&D style resource management feels most natural if choices you make are irreversible. Decision “do I push in, in spite of danger or unoptimally rest now” is also an interesting choice only in a situation in which that decision made can’t be altered.

I do find combat very difficult to follow though it might be a result of my PC not handling glory of unoptimized alpha gameplay. Whenever there is bit AOE spell casts game stops for couple seconds calculating results.

So far my impression is that changes “gameplay wise” are,for the better. Classes are more distinct, they nicely complement each other in combat. All of them bring something unique to the table. Creating characters is fun - choosing between subclasses, multiclassing, thinking how you can combo strengths and mechanics of both classes. What is not fun though is levelling up. It feels to me that after choices made in character creation there isnlt much to do afterwards. Our paths are pretty much laid out for us. Multiclassing doesn’t seem like an expansion of what was possible in pIllars1, but rather a more clearer but more limited rebranding of PoE1’s system.

rest mechanic doesn’t feel all that good to me in this iteration. I do like individual changes (food used for camping, food replacing supplies, resting flexible but with diminishing returns, spells per encounter not encouraging not using them) but as the result resting mechanic (and therefore injury system) seems to be in the game only because is has been there before rather than fulfilling intergral part of the gameplay. In PoE1 rest would interact with many aspects of the gameplay - replenish health, refill spells, remove injuries, set right bonuses before tough fight. In PoE2 it’s just remove injuries and replenish “empower points” - which so far I am not using all that much - it might be me being new to the system, not fault of the system itself. Bonuses from resting seem nonspecific so far making them general choices (more healing for tank, more health for squishes etc.) rather than tailored for next encounters. While I wasn’t a fan of how KOTOR didn’t punish getting knocked out in any way, PoE2 injury/resting system seems to be there only to punish getting knocked out. It’s not terrible but feels more artificial than before. I got annoyed with traps giving injuries but at the same time I do like that activating trap does something tangible now.

Eye color in isometric RPG... sure why not. Nah, I get it... but its still funny.

Yes, and it doesn't seem to be the case with all NPC. But most of NPC text boxes display for far to short.

THat is odd. I am pretty sure two beatles joined the combat.

Beta isn't feature complete. Quite a few mechanics are missing.

This “lootbox” micro transactions never work for me. I stopped playing Heartstone as I always felt I am catching up to other players and wasn’t able to catch up without spending money. I would rather pay set price and get access to all the content than have to grind/pay every few months to stay on top of things. That said I don’t have a problem with that as it is Free to Play. It’s just not a model I see myself returning to anytime soon. I have no problem with Overwatch model, though for purely selfish reasons: this model abuses players who care about cosmetics. Content I care about is given out for no additional charge. Still I feel rate at which you acquire lootboxes is enjoyable and it doesn’t overshadow gameplay. While getting EVERYTHING is expensive, so far I managed to get every skin I liked without playing beyond I feel like playing. While I don’t believe Blizzard needs lootboxes to be in the game I don’t believe it hurts the experience. It did open gateways for other publishers with less integrity, however. Any interest I might have in Shadow of War, Battlefront2, New Need for Speed disappeared after seeing what they did with lootboxes. I am sick of buying incomplete games and with games designed to milk as much money throughout their lifespan it seems they might never be complete, always making you feel like you need the new, overpriced stuff.