Matthew Cox

So, Ow2 joins a list of games where a "stealth build" / playstyle is an approved and even encouraged option. (i mean half of the intro mission is for stealth builds). And yet, there are several places in the game where you CANNOT stealth. Forced combat happens no matter what you do. (One example I can think of is the Central Command building. If you go in the front gate, there's an invisible line on the ground that just auto aggros everone inside. There's also a spot in the Monastery (the first time you see the floating green heal devices) where as soon as you walk through the door, enemies that are hiding behind the wall out of LOS instantly aggro you even if you are sneaking. Also, boss fights. Every single one of them is immediate forced open combat. The game allows players to completely skip boss fights for speech builds. So, why can't a stealth build sneak up on a boss and ambush them? How is that different from "speeching" through the boss without actually fighting them? And finally, my last issue with stealth (and it's not unique to Ow2) is I am really, really weary of psychic bad guys. The instant ONE enemy detects you, every single enemy within 500 miiles knows exactly where you are, which way you're facing, what weapon you have equipped, and what you ate for breakfast. It's like every hostile being in this game is part of a hive mind with instantaneous awareness sharing. It's silly and immersion breaking. (And again, Ow2 is not the only game to do this). As an aside to the psychic bad guys. What the hell is up with grenades in this game? Baddies are ridiculously perfect with grenade throws. Like their grenades NEVER miss. NEVER go stray. Never hit a railing and bounce away or back at them. It's like the nanosecond you aggro into combat, 3 grenades land perfectly at your feet no matter how far away the enemies are. It, too, is quite silly.

Update. So i tried another new playthrough going heavy science off the start and taking perks to boost plasma and shock weapons. It feels completely underwhelming. Takes longer to kill things than my gunslinger build did with basic damage type. Plasma's DOT effect is pathetically small. You will always kill mobs with direct damage before the dot does anything worth mentioning. Shock's stun is okay on unusually tough mobs, but 90% of the enemies will be dead before the shock meter even reaches max (WITH electro therapist perk). Overall, the fact that converting a weapon damage from basic to some sort of elemental applies a big damage reduction makes them totally not worth using. Even with the perks for those elemental types, the net effect is still weaker than basic damage.

I didn't mean to say Fo4 was better than Ow2. I said a game hasn't consumed so much of my time like Ow2 has since I played Fo4. Fo4 had a ton of issues, not only technical ones. The story had so many plot holes it would be hard to even call it a cohesive story. Yet, I'm a big fan of the franchise so I kept playing it while trying my best to ignore those issues. Ow2 doesn't really have any serious story/writing problems except for the Initiate Alva quest. (you're supposed to investigate and prove innocence but you find absolutely nothing that identifies the actual person who did the bad stuff and yet the quest just points a finger at someone no questions asked) - thought that was pretty badly set up, but aside from that. Yeah, from a story perspective, Ow2 is leaps and bounds better than Fo4.

Doing a melee stealth build and trying to ignore the utter silliness of stealth attacks with a sledgehammer. Was hoping to get online fully with a light melee weapon. So i took Vital Striker, which seems to be at least somewhat competitive. Then i found the 'menacing mask' item. I think "oh, cool. Another 10% of my sneak damage when i'm stuck out in the open." Nope. The way it seems to work is that if you equip menacing mask, you ONLY get that 10% sneak damage and the game completely ignores vital striker. Shouldn't this add on rather than replace? Though 10% is such a trivial amount of a boost it's not a huge deal to simply not use menacing mask. Sad that there's yet another worthless item in this game.

That i've played. Not saying it's universally the best since.

Just did another test. 2260 damage without monocular target finder on, 2273 with it on. It made a difference of 13 points. Was a fairly close range shot so I assume the minimum benefit was applying... but it seems like it's adding 10% of the weapon's base damage at the tail end after all the sneak stuff rather than a 10% boost to the overall hit. Though.. adding 13 damage when the shot is already hitting for 2260 seems a bit on the pointless side.

I had this happen on two or three playthroughs. If you reload a save they should resume spawning. At least, that worked for me.

Sometimes guns that I've put silencers on use the full volume sound effect when shooting. I'm sure it's just an audio glitch since the enemies don't all immediately go into combat. It is, however, kind of confusing as to whether or not i'm being quiet. I haven't noticed any commonality to when it happens and it seems to affect all weapons that i've tried to silence.

If you've got the N-Ray scanner active and you get a cinematic kill shot, it exits out of the N-Ray scanner

Adding: Posting faster than my brain can work. I wanted to add that during the dialogue, it's revealed that the player character wasn't "proving innocence as much as identifying the target". If that's true, there is nothing the player does that actually identifies the responsible party. Alva just makes an assumption and runs with it while it really does not feel as if the player's actions have anything to do with identifying WHO actually did any of it.

First, let me say that this is a great game. It's been a really long time since I played a game that didn't have multiple things about it that I found awful. OW2 is truly the first game I have played since... oh... Fallout4 that's absorbed so much of my time and held my interest. (and yeah I wish Obsidian was still making Fallout games but sigh...) Anyway, great job. I only have two very small issues that I feel like griping about this game 1) Doing a stealth melee build it strikes me as very silly that we are better off "backstabbing" with a giant 2 handed hammer rather than a light melee weapon. IMO attacks from stealth should be MUCH better off with a stealthy weapon than a monstrous hammer. (especially if said hammer tends to explode on hit). The big 2h melee weapons should be for out of stealth. In stealth, the knives should be able to function without having to use a sledgehammer to backstab a tough mob. It's just immersion breakingly silly. Reminds me of the old D&D joke about "backstabbing with a ballista". 2) the Patient Step armor is hideous. IDC how good its stats are. I can't use it because those hideous green gloves give me nightmares. (also not sure why an armor set that's great for TTD would have a medical theme and not something more ftting to a gunslinger but /shrug) So yeah, if one of the things I am griping about is the aesthetics of an armor set and the list only has 2 points, you guys did an amazing job.

So I've done the Dorado quests repeatedly on multiple playthroughs so far and I have yet to see anything that even remotely suggests the Proctor's involvement until Alva makes her initial accusation. DId I miss something somewhere or is this just kinda handwaved along rapidly without having any canonical support the player can find outside of that conversation? Even the dialogue acknowledges this sort of slapdash blame with the one option to say "Definitively proved may be a bit of a stretch" or something of that nature. But it really feels like something is missing here. Alva just says "Svoboda did it" and the player has no recourse but to just nod and go along with it. Did this questline get cut short for time constraints or something... or did I miss the smoking gun that points at Svoboda being the responsible party?

Hi all. Beat the game once so far on normal and I have 3 other builds into the Praetor/Cloister phase. Currently playing a VH attempt, which is on Dorado. Anyway, so i've run several characters, at least one of which had maxxed out science skill. And by and large, because every mod (plasma, shock, corrosive, etc) lowers damage by so much it feels like I am better off not bothering to use any of them. Plasma has a DoT, okay but the target dies to normal damage so fast the dot doesn't matter. Shock can stun, sure, but the target dies to normal damage fast enough where a stun doesn't really matter in most cases except for a handful of very tough mobs. I have not tried to use explosive. Corrosive I tinkered with a little, not as a mod rather the burst goo pistol on the first planet which did seem to work really well on Montelli. But yeah, regarding shock and plasma... am I doing something wrong or is there really just not a reason to use them? In both cases they feel like an overall downgrade.

Okay, after beating the game once on normal, i'm going through it again on VH. While leveling i'm trying to figure out what would be the best order to take the perks i've selected for the build. Was trying to decide between space ranger and keen observer as the next buy. So i decided to do some testing to see which one had more effect. I'm on Dorado atm, using a silenced sniper rifle. Crouched, not moving. I line up a shot on one of the Dunsany brother's heads to use him as a test dummy. Fire a shot before buying a perk : 1509 damage. Reload game, select space ranger. Fire a shot: 1719 damage Reload game, select Keen Observer Fire a shot: 1509 damage (the same as not having Keen Observer) So it seems like Keen Observer is not doing anything insofar as boosting weakspot damage. (additional note, i'm using the monocular target-finder helmet, and I did some similar testing with it on and off and it sometimes seems not to add any damage. I get the same damage wearing it as I do without it when that should not be the case if it's giving any bonus to weakspot hits.)