MortyTheGobbo

Dragons use plenty of abilities that player-controlled characters can't get, so I don't think that'll change much. In fact, we might see an increase in enemy-specific abilities. As for wizards, I can't say I'm going to particularly miss wizards, clerics and druids always being the biggest threat on the battlefield. Oh really ? Unless you consider your post as an absolute truth, and irrefutable by anyone. And since I don't claim mine as such, I don't see any rebuttal, worth the try though. Sooo... your counter-argument is "nyeh, nyeh can't hear you", basically. Okay.

Parts of this post may have been remotely correct if the per-rest and per-encounter abilities had been spread evenly across the classes in frequency and power. See my post above yours for a full rebuttal.

In order for per-rest abilities to be remotely viable and healthy for the game, every class needs equal access to them and they need to be equally powerful. But of course, per-rest abilities for classes other than the "big three" were few and far between... not to mention frequently underwhelming. Like... a rogue can stab/shoot someone to weaken and fear them. At a level where a wizard can do the exact same thing, except in an area. If three classes have powerful abilities that can only be used a limited number of times per day, there's just no earthly way to balance it. Particularly since enemies use the same spells and powers as the player-controlled characters do. Then there's the issue of what the spellcasters are doing if they're not casting spells. Should they be weaker than the non-spellcasters in that situation? That makes them decoration for any fights in which the player decided not to bust out the big guns. Should they get to contribute? Then we get the situation from Pillars, where the "big three" had plenty of solid per-encounter or even at-will abilities (radiance, interdiction, spirit-shifting, spell mastery, blast)... making them on par or close with the other classes in addition to having tactical nukes.

The "larger picture" of per-rest spells mostly consisted of trying to win an encounter without spells, reloading if it failed and trying it again with spells. If you knew what you were doing, spellcasters had plenty of ways to contribute without casting spells... while also having the option to nuke an encounter by dropping them. I can get behind the desire for more long-term attrition of resources, but per-rest spells are just a terrible way of doing that. Particularly since whatever tactical decisions they enable evaporate on a replay, or after reloading. An inexperienced player will agonize over how to ration their spells and an experienced one will know exactly when to drop them and which ones, trivializing many encounters. There's a reason Pillars had a very sudden shift from "I struggle with each encounter" to "I'm a destroyer of worlds". So once again, per-rest spells just introduce extremes. Then there's the way powerful per-rest spells make enemy spellcasters by far the most dangerous enemies, seeing as they can drop all those powerful spells on our heads without worrying about later fights. And, of course, how it made tactics revolve around spellcasters in general. Not to the degree D&D-based games have it, obviously, but uncomfortably close.

If more spells is good and fewer spells is bad, why not give every class access to every ability on their list? Why should only priests and druids get this treatment? The only reason they did to begin with was because that's how D&D had done it. I'm also not sure how this removes choice... it adds choice where there was none. Now you have to actually build a priest or druid, rather than getting all spells on a platter.

Whatever they do, they had better not bring back per-rest spells. That would be enough for me not to buy the game, I feel. But they seem well aware of why that'd be a bad idea...

Yeah, from a marketing standpoint putting the ship rules front and centre makes absolute sense. I've just never been big on management and leadership parts of RPGs. Though it kind of feels like single-player RPGs are gravitating towards including those...

It's funny, really, but none of the hype Obsidian invests into the ship mechanics interests me one bit. It's not that I don't like it, or think it will be bad. I'm just absolutely indifferent. Which, I suppose, should concern me a bit more than it does, given how major it's shaping up to be.

Something tells me they were going to do it anyway, and made a poll for the lulz and hype, as they knew the players would pick that option anyway.

I feel like the question of exploding barrels is a pretty difficult one to answer without context, which we don't really have. Unless they plan to balance it based on which is picked.

The "decline", if we can even call it that, has nothing to do with consoles. Both of BioWare's flagship products of the last decade were on all sorts of platforms since their inception. Whatever changes they've undergone and troubles they encountered are completely unrelated to consoles, as people have repeatedly pointed out.

The reasons DA2 and DA:I had problems selling are many and mostly unconnected to being "casual", whatever the hell that even means (in case you're curious, it means nothing). Correlation doesn't imply causation. Dragon Age Origins was also released on consoles, anyway, and its combat system is absolutely dreadful... but those two have nothing to do with one another. Besides, POE2 isn't being simplified in any measurable way. Nor is it undergoing any other chances we could logically chalk up to a console port, so... why are we even discussing it in the first place?

Obsidian is running a business. If porting to consoles lets them reach out to a broader audience and earn more money, they can use it to make more, better games. That's a win in my book. As long as it doesn't negatively impact the PC version, which we know it hasn't.

There's power gaming and then there's "I fight with two weapons so of course I have to pick the talent that helps me do it" and "stuns suck so I'll take the talent that makes me more resistant to them". They're not optimal options for dedicated players to find, they're just no-brainers.

I think it's entirely likely that a category of obligatory picks will emerge soon, so the variety will be mostly illusory or if someone doesn't care much about optimizing.

I wonder if all the new passives will go on the class passive budget, the proficiency budget or both. Or if they'll bring back a separate talent budget.

This is a very versatile meme.

Even if we're running an RP-oriented character and pick something we like, balance is still important. Because there's few things worse than finding out the character concept or ability set you like means you've picked hard mode for yourself.

I agree that the placement of White March in the story was awkward, for all the reasons listed. It was similar to Tales of the Sword Coast this way. Personally, I also found the difficulty to be very severe, when I first played it. Later on I managed to blaze through it with an optimized party, but as a more casual player, unfamiliar with proper tactics? I got mulched.

This thread has certainly been a magical journey. On some level, I have to admire the passion that it must take to be relentlessly outraged about made-up numbers in a made-up video game. On another level, seeing threads consumed by it gets a little old. Concerning the actual topic, I agree that there will be post-release patches and that they're a good thing on the whole. Games have always had features that needed changing - the difference is that today the developers can quickly and easily deliver fixes. It becomes a problem if the game is evidently not finished on release and the early purchasers are effectively playtesting it. Which, to be fair, we've seen many examples of, so I won't blame anyone for being concerned about it.

Hmm. From one point of view I agree with you (since the listed methods require either some experience, or availability of worthy hard cc spells). From another, not quite sure. A new or inexperienced player will unlikely play on PotD, or upscale content, and it will take more time for his squishy backline to fall under the pressure of the enemies that have rushed through (which are also less in numbers). So dunno; am neither convinced, nor have any concrete stance on this matter. At least not yet. Do you have any suggestions regarding taunting? Personally only the following come to mind atm: - plain and simple taunting: enemy is forced to attack the taunter for x seconds. Although it's unclear what if player wants to cast an AoE or CC; and what if enemy taunts the player. - more abilities with stuck and immobilize afflictions - some abilities like blink, that would hobble everyone around the starting points - intercept abilities: e.g. a fighter can rush and intercept the next n blows directed at his ally I feel like more abilities to slow down, immobilize, push and pull enemies by fighters and other "tanky" classes would work best. But, well, I'm not a game designer. I don't think straight-up forcing enemies to attack a particular party member would fit the game Pillars is, and the devs are on record agreeing. Something along the lines of Take the Hit could work, if it was more practical. Or perhaps slapping enemies with penalties to attack party members other than the tank? I have no idea if the latter is even doable with Deadfire's tech. But I generally think that looking to 4E D&D isn't a bad idea, especially the fighter class. It manages to be an effective, sticky defender without using taunt mechanics.

Well... that's what hard-cc is for) Also you could try the following: - body or door block if possible - unstealthing your front and midline before your backline often makes shades teleport to someone of them, instead of going straight for your squishies. (note: enemy special abilities do have cooldowns) - designating a dedicated scape-goat. Take someone (usually a moon godlike), make sure that he has lowest deflection and freeze DR, and place him in midline. He'll serve as a magnet for those with LowestDamageThreshold and LowestDefense preferences (like shades and enemy barbarians). The idea is to disable them all via AoE cc effects, once they flock to the target. And you get bonus points if the goat has Swadling Sheet cloak, and Fenwalkers boots. Note: you could technically equip also stuff like: Malina's Boots, Gyrd Háewanes and Raiment of Wael's Eyes for the defensive procs, but you might need an additional disabler, since there is a high chance shades would switch to target with lower defenses. None of this really helps a new or inexperienced player whose backline keeps getting ganged up on and murdered. Taunting and provoking enemies is a crude but workable patch for the fact that there's only so much you can do with an AI. It wouldn't really suit Pillars, but I think we do need some better tools for stopping enemies, and I hope Deadfire provides some.

My general rule is that whenever you try to make a sweeping, authoritative statement about historical weapons... you probably shouldn't. There's a lot of variance across time and cultures, plus things we simply don't know. To say nothing of the perils of applying historical accuracy to a video RPG. Anyhow, it does sound like the problem with shields is the same as in PoE. Passive defence just doesn't cut it if you have to sacrifice offensive power for it. Which you do by taking the accuracy penalty and giving up the increased damage of a two-handed weapon or dual-wielding. You can take more hits, but you will take more of those hits, because you can't kill enemies dead as quickly.

I would like to remind everyone of the saying about playing chess with a pigeon. No matter what you do, it's going to knock over the pieces, crap on the board and fly away triumphantly. So there's no real point.

How is adding a few LGBT characters any different than making sure we've got at least one member of each class and race in our team? And from several different cultures, including a dwarf from the White that Wends. Warriors and rogues are likewise more common than ciphers or wizards, and yet we've got a cipher and a wizard but no rogue before White March. And when we do get a rogue, she's an animancy-powered construct who just so happens to be a survivor of the religious purge that still hangs heavy over the Dyrwood. Crazy coincidences all around. "Forced" and "shoehorned" are vague enough terms that they can be applied to just about any minority or female character, when someone wants to complain about them without outright saying they shouldn't be there. Recap of what I've said so far: Few of LGBTQ characters in the game is totally fine. Lots and lots of LGBTQ characters is improbable (because they're a minority), unless devs ofiicialy say that in fact yes, their world actually is full of LGBTQ characters to begin with. "Lots and lots" of LGBT character is not and has never been on the table, as far as Deadfire is concerned. Or any other mainstream (or close to it) game, for that matter. Most likely we'll get a few gay and bi love interests, and hopefully some LGBT NPCs, so that our team isn't the only place LGBT people actually exist. Talking about how too many LGBT characters would be unrealistic seems like a slippery slope fallacy to me. Implying that if we introduce some, clearly we'll be crawling with them before long. But right now, we're at a point where adding any LGBT characters to a game is enough for a very loud subset of players to accuse its creators of participating in a SJW takeover of gaming.