Zoso der Goldene
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Posts posted by Zoso der Goldene
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POTD players are a minority. That's a fact.
Not if you normalize by playtime.
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I think where obsidian went wrong with this update is increasing enemy stats at the same time as nerfing. If suddenly you're under penetrating & your enemies are penetrating the game suddenly became twice as hard. Add some nerfing on top and suddenly "my class is unplayable"
Pretty sure a good part of OPs issues are not just because of nerfing.
IIRC enemy stats were tweaked only on Veteran and PotD.
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Ok, there is something here I don’t understand:
Yes, PoTD players are a minority, as achievements for PoE1 show that a small fraction of players completed game on PotD.
That minority isn’t happy with the level of difficulty, which they crave when choosing PotD.
Because majority of players won’t play PotD, they should patch the veteran and PotD difficulty because...?
I looked through balance changes to classes, and is there anything which will make a difference on classic&below? I can’t imagine that any of the nerfs have any noticeable effect on those levels, therefore they shouldnt really break any builds. Charge is not as ridiculous. So what? On classic it probably still won’t matter. The only issue i can see is if someone started a casual game on PotD and now isn’t able to change.
"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.
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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.
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Ok, there is something here I don’t understand:
Yes, PoTD players are a minority, as achievements for PoE1 show that a small fraction of players completed game on PotD.
That minority isn’t happy with the level of difficulty, which they crave when choosing PotD.
Because majority of players won’t play PotD, they should patch the veteran and PotD difficulty because...?
I looked through balance changes to classes, and is there anything which will make a difference on classic&below? I can’t imagine that any of the nerfs have any noticeable effect on those levels, therefore they shouldnt really break any builds. Charge is not as ridiculous. So what? On classic it probably still won’t matter. The only issue i can see is if someone started a casual game on PotD and now isn’t able to change.
"Casual game on PotD"?!
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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.
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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).
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In the end this comes down to a debate about what's more fun; challenge and difficulty or face-stomping and feeling like a badass. For me, the difficulty of Deadfire on Classic was exactly right; I was challenged in various fights, but was able to feel like my character was powerful and gaining power, as well. Part of the problem is that some people want every single fight to be a difficult, challenging, painful encounter where you have to plan and use tactics and work out what your doing; for these people challenge and difficulty are the primary generators of fun. For me, that makes me feel like my character isn't advancing, doesn't become more than he was; I *want* my character to become so much stronger and more powerful that by the end of the game I'm face-stomping most enemies. For me, that makes me *feel* like I've become, over time, one of the most powerful people in the game-world. Plus, I'm easily frustrated; when I have to replay this Ogre encounter seven times, I don't feel like I'm having fun figuring out the puzzle of this combat; I just want to throw my keyboard and scream "****" over and over.
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.
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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.
I regret that my words evoke resentment.
If someone is upset by my words, I'll forgive forgiveness. But my opinion on this issue will not change.
This topic has a different purpose, this is clearly not a discussion about my attitude to the issue of excluded content.
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.
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The company received a lot of money on Kickstarter to create the game, and it continues to make a profit from every sale.
And this attitude with 'cutting content' to the fans be is bad.
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.
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As far as I understand Josh Sawyer is at least partially in charge of overseeing the balance changes, as he was on PoE1.
He has on multiple occasions made it clear that he strongly believes that balance matters, even in singleplayer CRPGs.
If you want to make your opinion heard or vent, please go ahead, but know that more balance changes (both up and down) will come.
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.
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As far as I understand Josh Sawyer is at least partially in charge of overseeing the balance changes, as he was on PoE1.
He has on multiple occasions made it clear that he strongly believes that balance matters, even in singleplayer CRPGs.
If you want to make your opinion heard or vent, please go ahead, but know that more balance changes (both up and down) will come.
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.
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I would make a joke about your unrefined tastes but good beer and fried chicken are nothing to be sniffed at.
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.
Sounds like the highest praise there could be. You know what is even better? Glass of whiskey and PoE.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.
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100% action increase means twice as fast, right? So in terms of recovery speed it should yield -50% recovery, not -100%. Same with 33% increased action speed. It won't yield -33% recovery, it will instead divide your normal recovery by 1.33. That means 1/1.33=.75 original recovery, which is -25% recovery time.
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.
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For what it's worth, I think that this (lack of) difficulty issue is also related to the open world nature of the game. I don't think that this is in dispute.
While I think that it's fairly obvious that an overly linear game (like IWD2) is less appealing for replayability, even if it is easier for programmers to control enemy difficulty, I wonder if it would be possible to come up with a middle ground between completely open and totally linear.
Think of it this way. Say that the story took place in 3 different large areas, each in succession. Once you completed area A and moved to area B, you could not return to area A. And so on. But when I say "area", don't think of a single little map. Think of it as a large area like Deadfire, then go to Valia, and then to Rauatai (just to use 3 examples). And within each of those large areas, the developers could have an easier time of scaling the difficulty, because they'd know that you couldn't be in "Valia" until you'd reached a certain range of levels. And you couldn't reach "Rauatai" until you've reached an even higher range of levels. And so on.
Do you think that this model would make the setting of difficulty easier for the developers, knowing that you couldn't reach each region until a certain point, a certain range of class levels?
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.
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I does not make sense to think of "realism" in a fantasy world. I see it a bit like the OP, but from the other side. I don't like magic and mages and prefer non-magical abilities and reasoning for people with weapons. But in the soul based PoE world it makes a kind of sense when anybody has some "magical" abilities. The pure mages are just the most gifted.
Beyond that, let it be. A world of swords, firearms and magic it is. Don't even think about what would happen if a humble farmer with a pistol would confront a mage who needed several seconds to let loose his mighty earthshaking spell ...
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.
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As long as they don't touch my Soul Blade with Charm+Dominate, I'm happy (nearly the same combo I've played in PoE1 and just as fun).
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.
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3) Ectopsychic Echo is very easy to use once you get the knack of it and consistently useful even at high levels, excellent power.
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.
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Yeas, it feels like that, but that's because the physical damage you do with your weapon's Primary Attack (when executing Soul Annihilation) generates focus - which will then be immediately dumped into the raw damage of Soul Annihilation. The raw damage itself is not multiplicative but only gets calculated based on the focus you have after the physical damage had its hit roll.
It's kind of unintuitive.
That's the reason why you should not wait with Soul Annihilation until your focus is full - because then you will waste the focus that is being generated during Soul Annihilation itself.
When you have Draining Whip you can usually use Soul Annihilation all the time (as long as you have 5 focus min) because you will generate a lot of focus with Soul Annihilation itself before dumping it into the raw damage.
However: That was the case in beta3. But I don't think they changed the mechanics at release or even in 1.1.
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.
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Things like Nature's Mark (eg) also seem to be totally inconsistent with ability description: should last 42 secs "with int modifier" , but is lasting anything from 18.9 secs to 50.4 secs when applied to the same group of npcs, each mob is getting a different time?
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.
I don't understand the difficulty setting for PoTD at all, Eder is getting one shot by a single skeleton pistoleers in the starter area ffs (and mouse over stats do not match this amount of damage ??? ... tweak the game difficulty by all means, but be transparent with your changes... have the mouse over update to show those changes )
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.
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I suggested this easy solution several times now:
Instead of giving Backstab a percentage-based bonus of 100% (or 150% or whatever) it should get a flat damage bonus (maybe raw damage). Basically like Soul Annihilation (without the focus part). This way you would decouple the dmg bonus from weapon base damage. This would mean that every weapon type would be viable. With such a flat bonus it would also be easier to include Power Level scaling.
This would also prevent that certain multiclass combos (Flames of Devotion + Backstab = multiplicative lash dmg which gets boosted by Backstab = one-shotting stuff all the time) are too strong. No need to nerf FoD further. Stuff that works like Soul Annihilation (flat dmg bonus as raw) just adds to the FoD damage and doesn't get multiplied.
The amount of flat bonus can be easily found out by using the average base damage of all weapon types - for starters. That is the same as 100% weapon base damage - just averaged over all types.
And if you want you could still give different dmg numbers for different types of weapons.
I don't understand why this hasn't been the preferred implementation in the first place...
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.
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I think you can thank the youtuber that posted the oneshot backstab build Paladin/assasin two-hander.
He speced for max backab dmg with flames of devotion.
Guess that made them to the nerf.
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).
I think you can thank the youtuber that posted the oneshot backstab build Paladin/assasin two-hander.
He speced for max backab dmg with flames of devotion.
Guess that made them to the nerf.
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"
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I really hope they change it to work with dual wielding in the final 1.1 build, in which case the percentage reduction would make a lot of sense.
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, ...
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The one thing that bother me with backstab, is how it encourage two handed instead of dagger/stilleto. Since the beta you see build with arquebuse and other two handed weapons. They should change backstab to have a different bonus based on the weapon used. The lowest bonus for 2 handed, mid for most one handed and a hight buff for dagger, stilleto (rapier? Pistols?). BAckstabbing in my opinion is about precision stike, aim at the weak spot of your enemy, something hard to do with big weapons.
About DOTs, most of them are pretty low dps divided in lot of abilities that don't self stack. Spamming ring of the bell with one handed don't increase the dot. I think we're far from apply dots, hide and wait for enemies to die. I would prefer to see them consolidate DOTS in 1-2 buff ability that apply a dot with all your attacks instead of 5-6 different active attacks & dots.
Another problem with rogue choices/upgrades it's often about DOT or affliction. But there is a bug how affliction work, and often they cancel each other (like persistant distraction). Death blow is one of the rare DPS upgrade in the rogue tree. They should allow to stack different affliction of the same attribut, or keep track of each affliction source so they don't cancel when one effect wear off.
example : you blind a target and you engage it with persistant distraction. The game keep track of both blind & distraction, but only blind is applied because it's stronger. If blind wear off, the distracted effect is used, but if you disangage when the enemy is still blinded, you remove the distraction (inactive) without touching the blind affliction (active).
About shadow veil, I didn't tested everything, but didn't noticed a dot that break it. But an ability/item that create an AOE field will break the invisibility. The incandiary grenade initial aoe remove the invisibility, but when the AOE end, the burn dot don't break it.
Your argument calls for a penetration bonus on backstab for lighter weapons.
Two handed swords? Whispers of the EP
in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
* 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?)