MortyTheGobbo

The character is wearing a cloak, but it's not visible. Either it's not programmed in yet, or they've added an option to hide cloaks. Which is welcome.

So there's a very real chance of missing it entirely. This is the first Deadfire news I genuinely dislike.

The fact that crafting and enchanting does not require you to hunt down recipes first is what makes it an actually solid gameplay mechanic in Pillars, instead of a chore. Which it is in every other game that has crafting. Being able to keep my party's equipment updated in a clear and concise manner, and without relying on what I find, was very nice. I mean, not being dependent on random/scripted loot is the only purpose crafting has, other than padding content and... I don't know why people keep putting crafting in games, actually. Adding more steps to crafting an item doesn't enrich the experience or make it more challenging - it just adds busywork. It sounds cool and all, but it isn't. All it does is add extra steps - instead of finding a cool new item as loot, you find the recipe for a cool new item as loot, and then you still have to make it. Making unique items obsolete is, to me, a good thing. I don't care about the "thrill" of discovering them, and I just want to get decent equipment for my current level with minimum hassle. My favourite inventory systems in RPGs were Witcher 1, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, for that precise reason. It's a shame that Deadfire will push for making the players run on the gear treadmill.

Lack of equipment restrictions is one of Pillars' greatest strengths. Introducing them with subclasses would be a bad idea. We know some of the subclasses will encourage melee combat (like the Assassin and Soulblade), and it's possible there will be range-oriented ones too. But straight-up preventing the usage of certain items is something else. Besides, it's a terrible balancing tool, because the restrictions tend to be either crippling or irrelevant. The Beastmaster and Wizard Slayer are the two worst kits in BG, incidentally. The Kensai's restriction on protective items goes from harsh to easily mitigated, although that has more to do with AC scaling being out of whack.

The annoying thing was getting injuries when one of your squshies was going unconscious from the explosion. At least until you tick the auto-pause on "Hidden object found". You either have someone with enough Mechanics to disable them entirely, or you don't, and either slowly inch around them or risk injuries. And a lot of traps are scaled up to make them nigh-impossible to disarm, like in the temple of Skaen.

Yes, funny how they lose all that one-shot potential when it's you who places them. Besides, even if they dealt more damage/status effects, their usability would still be very limited. You'd have to place it without catching the enemies' notice, and then lure them in so they run into it on their way. Pointless. Except if they dealt more damage, all this song and dance would be too good to pass up on, particularly on higher difficulties. I suppose it might be possible to make them worthwhile, but that'd require a lot of changes. In most games that use "traps" of some sort, they're just delayed-response AoE spells. In PvP games, they're a positioning/area denial tool, but it doesn't quite work the same way with an AI.

Just as it says in the title. Do you actually use the traps that you pick up after disarming them? I don't, because I found luring enemies onto them to be too much of a hassle. Also, I find traps an incredibly annoying and hopelessly outdated relic of a game mechanic anyway. But I suspect they might be more useful than I give them credit for.

Perhaps you are right. It would make sense to use real names through (we already had 7 disclosed) in order to avoid confusion. Agreed. I find balance to be super important to me. I always try to optimize stuff, and often end up picking mostly optimal options. This means there are less options to chose from if something proves to be not viable enough. And this limits replayability. P.S. As for DA:I, even through I wanted to have Varric in the party, he just never was near the power level of Sera. Which was either OP with Thousand Cuts, or a liability. In the end I used the same party in all 3 runs: Blackwall + Casandra + Solar + Knight-Enchanter/Tempest/Rift-Mage. People mostly use this argument when they complain mages aren't game-breakingly powerful in DA2 and DA:I like they were in DA:O. Because it's single-player, so mages should be allowed to nuke everything, right? Except if you want to play a non-mage without feeling like a fifth wheel, I guess. And yes, Varric's and Sera's specializations are both pretty mismatched for being archers. My first playthrough was an assassin archer rogue. Which can melt enemies shockingly quickly. The first time I've seen it mentioned, was via MortyTheGobbo's link to this tumblr post. Although now, that I am re-reading it, "Sorcerer" term was used by the questioner, not Josh himself. P.S. Stumbled upon his article on balancing. Interesting read, especially about player feedback. While I agree it seems like an off-the-cuff example by the questioner, it seems logical that sorcerer could be a subclass name since it's already associated with wizard and I believe there's also a sorcerer class in DnD. There's a lot of names for magic users that could serve as potential subclasses for wizard. But there's only going to be three of those. As far as soulbound weapons go, I'd say that Durgan Steel and X Lash being so good as to be practically required for a damage-focused character is a problem in itself.

I think it's just an off-the-cuff example the questioner used, yes. I've also seen the balance article. I need to save it for the next time someone goes on about balance not mattering in a single-player game (the Dragon Age fanbase is very prone to that).

Double post, but we have some insight on what will make Fighters stand out in Deadfire, at least at the current stage.

Yeah, I was also unaware of a sorcerer subclass.

I suspect that Evoker will focus on the AoE blasting side of wizard. The game does still have strong D&D roots, so the name has quite clear connotations.

So, we've got a couple more names. We knew Soul Blade for Cipher, I believe, but Illusionist, Evoker and Ascendant are new. The two wizard subclasses evoke the D&D schools of magic, but I wonder what Ascendant does. I would guess it focuses on self-buffs.

Don't forget enemy wizards blatantly cheating by having multiple contingencies and spell triggers.

The AI not being smart enough to do more than attack the nearest party member doesn't qualify as battlefield control. Tactical depth in the IE games comes entirely from spells; non-magical characters have none. Which, granted, Pillars isn't so great about, either. But we kind of hope Deadfire will improve on that.

Huh. More aggressive AI is good, but I do hope squishies will get more methods of not getting turned to mince-meat. Also, that our tanky characters will get to step up their game and protect them.

I still think that the Fighter class should emphasize battlefield control, which they already get through Knock Down, Clear Out or Overbearing Guard. But defensive boosts for the other party members would work with that. Multiclassing means that every class can have a stronger identity, but they shouldn't be narrowed down to one build. Neither should a particular role (tank in this case) be limited to one class.

I'm really not sure if PoE has any 4e inspiration, except for per-encounter powers. As novel and borderline heretical a concept as actual abilities for non-magical classes was for 3rd edition D&D, it's hardly unique to RPGs as a whole. Attacks of opportunity are older than 4e too, and engagement is a variant of this concept. That being said, 4e fighter is an example of a class that manages to be a tank, while still being able to actually fight. And like you said, it's accomplished in simple, but effective ways. Of course, while we can talk about how to make a fighter a fun tank, they're not the only class that can fulfil this role. Or rather, they shouldn't be.

Yeah, I missed that. Sorry about that.

I see. I had no idea IWD2 was ever planned as an AD&D game. A lot of those kits are copied from Baldur's Gate 2, but there are also some new ones. As far as light armour/no armour defence goes... I would definitely like that, but the balance concerns people have brought up are very real. Going light already has the advantage of reducing recovery time. It doesn't offset the cost of less protection for a frontline character, but it's really easy to overshoot with compensating for it. Sounds like it happened in Tyranny, but it's not exactly uncommon for going full ninja to be the superior form of protection.

The problem with Kensai was that its lack of gear progressively ceased to matter as the game went on. At first, it was acute. Particularly so if you used mods or the Enhanced Edition to play a Kensai in BG1, in which case, God help you. But later on, AC stopped mattering as much (becoming entirely irrelevant in Throne of Bhaal), and the Kensai's offensive potential was obscene. And, of course, pairing it up with a Mage helped overcome its lack of defence. Pillars doesn't have Baldur's Gate's problems with scaling, of course, but it's still a tricky thing to balance out.

I wouldn't say IWD2 had kits the way BG2 did them, or Deadfire looks like it'll do. Wasn't it just some different orders/deities for paladins, monks and clerics? Switching to 3e rules didn't really allow for more.

The variety of resources remains the same, though. Classes that used per-rest spells divided by levels still use them - they're just per-encounter now. Classes that build up resources still do that. Fighters, barbarians, rogues, paladins and rangers now share a resource, but they already did. They all used a mix of passive, per-encounter and some per-rest abilities. That being said, I hope those five classes earn abilities at a faster pace than in the first game now. A resource pool won't help much if it takes several hours of gameplay to have more than three active abilities to use.

If you're going to get mad at games that don't let you set the attribute values you want with no restrictions, the RPG genre will be a source of constant frustration for you.

Assuming that it works like in PoE 1, yeah. So they will need to balance everything around an entirely different set of assumptions.