Zoso der Goldene

* The cone is not foe-only (or did that change in 1.1?). * If you attack only one foe, you hit twice (that was supposed to go away with 1.1, but for me, it still does - maybe that's different in a new playthrough?)

POTD players are a minority. That's a fact. Not if you normalize by playtime.

IIRC enemy stats were tweaked only on Veteran and PotD.

"Casual game on PotD"?! Given that on release PotD was the only difficulty with even a potential of being difficult enough that you can't alt-tab out of all combat and let the party members auto-attack everything, that isn't as ridiculous as it might sound. EDIT: And I'm not, in general a PotD player. I played mostly on veteran in Pillars of Eternity and struggled. Struggled the right amount for the most part too. I'm not the guy who wants that "You need to sweat/cry/bleed bucketfuls to complete the game"-difficulty anymore. But I do want a difficulty where I have to pay some attention. Preferably enough that I can't alt-tab out and win everything. Agreed, but being able to alt-tab out and have the party members auto-attack everything is the very definition of casual. So it's not exactly ridiculous, but rather made me grin.

From where I sit, he is certainly hell-bent on the notion that "balance", in single player RPG, is important. I will reiterate, for those who have not read it from me yet, that while who (vocal) majority and (vocal) minority is, is probably impossible to determine, it's possible to determine whether the majority will get to experience "balance" or not. I would guess, that majority will not, simply because the majority will be done with the game long before "balance" will be achieved. If this assumption is true, Josh Sawyer, does not have a rational argument to try to "balance" after the majority played it already. I can only extrapolate and hope that he numbers for PoE are going to be replicated by replicated by Deadfire. If that's the case, though, 80%-90% of the eventual owners have yet to buy Deadfire, probably much later. (PoE has ~1.3m owners on Steam, Deadfire 100-200k. GDPR blurred those numbers quite a bit, hence the range for Deadfire.) That might be an Obsidian specific effect (usually, games make 80%-90% of there revenue in the first 2-3 weeks), or it might mean that Deadfire is anything but a commercial success. I'm disinclined to belief the latter is the case, and if I'm right, the numerical majority is going to benefit from a proper balance introduced over time. Just checked Pillars of Eternity owner numbers here, considering that it doesn't show the first four months, there is a more or less straight line starting at less than 200k, going up to 1.3m.

"Casual game on PotD"?!

From where I sit, he is certainly hell-bent on the notion that "balance", in single player RPG, is important. I will reiterate, for those who have not read it from me yet, that while who (vocal) majority and (vocal) minority is, is probably impossible to determine, it's possible to determine whether the majority will get to experience "balance" or not. I would guess, that majority will not, simply because the majority will be done with the game long before "balance" will be achieved. If this assumption is true, Josh Sawyer, does not have a rational argument to try to "balance" after the majority played it already. I can only extrapolate and hope that he numbers for PoE are going to be replicated by replicated by Deadfire. If that's the case, though, 80%-90% of the eventual owners have yet to buy Deadfire, probably much later. (PoE has ~1.3m owners on Steam, Deadfire 100-200k. GDPR blurred those numbers quite a bit, hence the range for Deadfire.) That might be an Obsidian specific effect (usually, games make 80%-90% of there revenue in the first 2-3 weeks), or it might mean that Deadfire is anything but a commercial success. I'm disinclined to belief the latter is the case, and if I'm right, the numerical majority is going to benefit from a proper balance introduced over time.

I have this as well, starting with Patch 1.1. Steam, Windows 7. looks like a "use after free" exception in some C++ part (I can provide more information if required).

I agree that on Classic, it should be exactly like this. On PotD, it should be a challenge. Leveling up to me feels more rewarding the more challenging it was to get there. On TCS, it should be near-to impossible. I never felt as engaged in a game as when doing the Ultimate in PoE. But I see how these goals might be mutually exclusive, to some degree.

I regret that my words evoke resentment. No worries, just pointing this out. And it doesn't really affect your argument regarding cut content. Small to medium studios are far more fragile than one might think, if I remember correctly, PoE as a Kickstarter campaign was a last straw attempt by Obsidian, bc something else fell through on the Publisher side and they had to lay off staff - or were even close to closing shop entirely, not sure.

For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure the backer money (btw FIg, not Kickstarter) didn't even get close to covering the costs. How much was it? 4m, 5m? That's long gone.

In fairness, that letter written by Sawyer is framed in a very biased and inaccurate manner. For example, he statement " Which set of changes do you think I heard more feedback about? If you guessed the marginal drop in proc rate on the soulbound item that had only worked properly for two weeks, you’d be right." is...intellectually dishonest. The dagger in question had it's proc rate dropped from 10% to 3%; that's not "marginal", that's 2/3rds of it's bonus proc percentage. But acknowledging that doesn't hep the narrative Sawyer is trying to frame, so he implies that it's a smaller change than it actually is. The whole thing is full of stuff like that; it's not an honest discussion of why Sawyer believes these things so much as it is a justification for his view of game systems. I have to disagree, and you prove Josh's point about feeling losses more than gains nicely in a way. The 10% to 3% proc rate reduction would be a major thing only if that was the only attribute. While Firebug is a powerful effect, it's by far not the only thing this weapon has to offer, and the he also points that out. The 20% attack rate increase basically increases all damage you do by it by 20%. Being a mythic weapon on top is reason enough to pick it.

And I agree that making it balanced is a matter of making it fun for everyone (not only PotD heads like myself). A game that's not a least bit of challenging is no fun, as is a game that you can't make progress in. Add into the mix a semi-open-worldedness, and it becomes a pretty tricky thing to get right, i.e. to create surmountable challenges for everyone. Difficulty levels help, as does level scaling, but only to a point. I agree that this sometimes can take extreme form, like the Resolve/Perception redefinition and Defender nerf in PoE1. Ultimately, though, it was required as otherwise, a two-tanks-four-glass-canons party was all it took to overcome any challenge without even thinking about it even on PotD. BTW While I wasn't arguing from a PotD perspective, I'm pretty sure that the ratio of backers in the PotD crowd is significantly higher than in the non-PotD community. I agree with the OP that we're a minority, but were slightly less insignificant than the numbers make us out to be.

Sounds like the highest praise there could be. You know what is even better? Glass of whiskey and PoE.Yes, exactly, it should be taken as praise because it's meant as such, but the problem is that I don't feel myself gripped by the game, clamouring for more, like I would for, say, a glistening pint of my favourite beer, or some fried chicken.I would make a joke about your unrefined tastes but good beer and fried chicken are nothing to be sniffed at. I think I know what you mean - I found it difficult to play PoE1 or Tyranny1 for longer than an hour before getting distracted/exhausted. Personally, I didn’t have this “issue” with Deadfire and I found it easy to binge with “one more quest” attitude. I found pacing to be excellent, and it’s possible that the low difficulty which lead to mindless combat on launch helped with minimizing mental exhaustion. It took me months before I made my way through PoE1. Funny thing is, I experience the same (and with PoE 1 as well) everytime I made character I ultimately didn't want to play. Small and inconsequential details usually, sometimes the overall character concept. Had to go back and make a new one, with a clear idea how I wanted them to be, and that feeling was gone.

You've hit upon the correct formula. Which is why the tooltips for attack/recovery speed when you view your weapons is never the #s they give in their base descriptions. About the only thing that seems to be 1:1 is armor reducing recovery time, -35% recovery time from your armor is always listed as that in the tooltip. But then you get into the Armored Grace effect and things get squirrely again. Ultimately it's like I said, things function the way they are supposed to. But the descriptions don't reflect the actual things in the attack speed/recovery tooltips because of the formulas involved. It's time versus speed (as wRAR already pointed out above), so the tooltips are correct, I think. Tooltips also show the correct labels, so I don't see a problem.

You essentially just described the original game, for the most part, with Gilded Vale, Defiance Bay + Dyrford, and then Twin Elms. And still, the range of levels in the middle or end sections are huge. E.g. you could get to Dyrford as early as level 4 (maybe even 3, haven't really tried yet, but it's not inconceivable), or you could get there after doing all of Defiance Bay, basically level 7 or 8. DLCs further complicate matters, especially when they can be played in parallel with the OC. The only real solution I see involves level scaling to some extent, but that's a lot trickier to get right than statically designed encounters.

I generally agree. I do think, however, that striving for a little verisimilitude in the confines of a fantasy worlds can be a good design principle, i.e. try to avoid inner contradictions. For everything in the world, if you can come up with a reasonable explanation, that might make your world more immersive. As far as game mechanics go, however, that's by no means the only consideration.

Wasnt Soul annihilation nerfed to ground? I don't think so, maybe a bit. My lvl 12 assassin/soulblade still does 150- 200 SA damage regularly, on top of weapon damage. And with Whispers of the Endless Paths, that's AoE damage. BTW Whispers of the Endless Paths was supposed to lose the second attack when attacking a single target, but it still hits twice.

I second that. I have my two multiclass ciphers (MC and Serafen) use it at start of combat on Eder who uses Charge to get to the High Value Targets. Followed by a little positioning and Frenzy and it's easily one of the highest damage AoE powers/spells in my arsenal. The area you can cover this way is just insane.

Not sure. It's not an integer number, either, which I would expect it to be if it was 1:1 focus - except if they calculate focus as float internally, as it's based on damage - would make some sense, I must admit. I sometimes do more than twice my maximum focus of Soul Annihilation damage (at least a.t. the combat log, and also counting the Soul Blade bonuses to Max Focus acquired over time), like ~100 weapon damage and ~250 raw damage with ~130 max focus. Wait a minute, maybe Soul Annihilation ignores the max focus limit for the attack itself? Because it resets focus anyhow later on? BTW: Some most likely obsolete beta screenshot here, > 400 raw damage with 100 focus. I guess there was some fiddling, just not sure when.

Durations gets changed by Resolve on NPCs, explaining why NPCs might have a duration more or less than duration on skill description. In addition, additional effects can graze and crit, reducing/increasing the durations relative to standard hit. No idea what is up with that... I haven't found any inconsistencies with indicated damage rolls and actual health removed. Regarding different duration for the application of an AoE spell like Nature's Mark, holding shift over the respective entries in the combat log should give that information in detail. Please note that for AoEs, you have to expand the main entry to see how it's resolved individually.

Off-topic question (kinda): Are you sure Soul annihilation doesn't get multiplied? I havent't seen any details of how it's calculated yet, but I had instances where I did ~100pts of weapon damage and >250pts of Soul annihilation damage (with ~100 focus) - feels like it's multiplied with something.

Similar things happen with Soul Annihilation. And you can use it on an AoE attack like on Whispers of the Endless Paths. Plus, they have quite a lot of telemetry data on the most devastating things, e.g. Empower and Meteor Shower (that's why Empower is being nerfed from +10 PL to +5). It's Obsidian mistake to allow backstab with two handed. In every games backstab is often restricted to dagger like weapons. I've no problem with allowing two handed for rogue for sake of diversity and multiclassing, but they can make backstab work like Ring the Bell and have a different bonus depending the weapon. For sneaking, poison etc... weapons like dagger, stilleto should have an advantage. Not be mandatory, but more optimal. I know magic is op right now, but in a better balanced game I would love to see a magic ambusher passive that allow to use backstab, sneakattack & deathblow with magic. Only a small % bonus, perhaps restricted to touch/cone spells. At least they don't allow siege weapons - reminds me of "The Gamers"

I don't think so, and it would make dual-wielding even more OP than it already is. From stealth, you already get a almost-no-recovery attack on top of a back stab, and that's worth way more than 100% additional backstab damage. You get to apply effects, you get a second chance to hit or even crit, you get another chance to sneak attack, ...

Your argument calls for a penetration bonus on backstab for lighter weapons.