Matthew Cox

In theory, yes but in practice no. Bethesda's "learn by doing" skill raising system just encourages degenerate behaviour. (e.g. getting an auto key presser and going afk while you jump against a rock to raise athletics) or other scummy thing. People exploit them rather than play the game. And if someone doesn't want to do the degen thing, they're still going to feel like they're suboptimal for not doing it. For that reason I think spending skill points each level is the better choice. (and I played Wizardy 8. Granted, I was a kid at the time but I still played it. Remains in my memory because of some of the weird things you could do there, like make a fairy ninja character.)

After that other company stripped everything good out of Fallout for #4, hearing that Obsidian potentially got the rights back to make the next Fallout game gave me hope. For whatever it's worth, here's what I would like to see: 1) bring skills back. 2) perks that matter more than just combat. 3) actual builds. E.g. a stealth focused character won't be built to properly pick up a heavy weapon. 4) Don't throw power armor at us in the first 10 minutes. It should be rare and powerful endgame stuff if it's in there at all. 5) please don't do the thing from Avowed and Outer Worlds where the open world isn't really open but rather corridors disguised as open terrain. Go back to how New Vegas was in terms of the world. 6) allow real stealth. Not the "you can only stealth where we allow you to stealth with this special grass" nonsense from OW and Avowed. 7) did i mention bringing back skills already? Yeah. that. 8) please try to recapture the specific sense of humor that made Fallout FALLOUT. E.g. Fo1 and Fo2. I still remember a quote from the end credits of (I think it was F02) - "Bring in Marketing. I wish to taste of their unsavoriness as well." Tragic cards, etc. That other company sucked the life out of the game. (along with destroying almost all of the RPG aspects of it) 9) Please do not do the "Omg my baby is missing I have to go find my kidnapped baby - after I do these 4200 side quests" thing. There's no need for the main story arc to be super mega urgent time crunch. 10) please do NOT do the b-soft "level scaling" thing. When everything is always the same level as the player it absolutely destroys any feeling that you've advanced or made any progress. It eliminates the RPG side of the game and just turns it into an action shooter. Maybe i'm old, but I like it when you try to go into an area, get your butt handed to you and realize you're not high enough level for that place yet... then go back later and get revenge once you've caught up. That is fun. Everything always being your level is samey, generic, and lame.

You assume my attempt to use the dodge button didn't result in me simply jumping straight up where i was and becoming an easy target. Again, whoever decided to put jump and dodge on the same button should probably not be allowed to make design decisions without adult supervision. (note I had zero problems doing a melee character in Tainted Grail, where dodge was its own button) And while the mage did use spells more frequently toward the end game, I still found myself using the wand quite often even then. Obviously much worse at the start, but yeah. The "wizard" doesn't really feel like a spell caster. That might also be due to the relative lack of variety in what the magic does. There's nothing really neat or cool about the magic. The spells are all various flavors of "blow something up". The shock ball that bounces around is probably the best spell in the game because it never ends up targeting empty space (or the player) and being wasted. Even pillar of ice, while it does hit pretty hard, it still doesn't do the same amount of damage a gun can do on a primary attack... which can be spammed. All in all it was okay. Not thrilling, not bad, just... okay. Maybe i was too harsh on the upgrade thing locking into a build. But for example when I decided to abandon the bow since it was underpowered, the unique pistols were still common quality after I had upgraded the bow to superb. There's no way to recover that and get common weapons up to superb at that point. I honestly prefer finding new stuff and being able to upgrade/use the new stuff rather than being forced to march on a brutal grind treadmill to upgrade an item i found within the first hour or two of playing. As far as my comment on character class being something the game (NPCs) recognize and acknowledge, it isn't strictly necessary to make the player pick a hard set class if the devs want versatility to be a thing... just consider the character the "class" of whatever they have the most points spent in. Or define classes based on spreads. E.g. someone with roughly 50/50 spread between fighter and ranger trees would be a 'duellist' or something. But yeah, it really kills the immersion if a character with all their perks in wizard and high intelligence gets talked down at by npc wizards who don't acknowledge that they are also wizards.

So I am late to the party. I just got the game last week due to a combination of it being on sale for cheap and being bored with nothing else I wanted to play. This is a personal opinion and not necessarily a critique but the reason I waited so long to try it is twofold: one - I loathe guns in a fantasy game. I feel they are jarring and out of genre when I want sword & sorcery. Everything I saw about the game when it released showcased using flintlocks and arquebuses and that alone was enough to make me go 'nah' and pass. Secondly, the little skull faced mascot graphic for avowed gave me more of a "what the hell kind of game is this" vibe and I found it confusing enough to where I didn't bother to look deeper in. Past that, I'm bored and wanted something new to play and saw it was on sale. I've recently finished a first playthrough (though I have gotten four other playthroughs into act 3) to try different character builds. Speaking of that, it is nice that we can respec our abilities and stats so easily, but it's not terribly useful since the game is SO STINGY with upgrade materials and there is so much focus on upgrading gear. You upgrade the one weapon and one armor you're going to use and that's that. Everything else is going to feel subpar by comparison. If you're doing a bow ranger and late in act2 early act 3 realize that the devs really hate bows and want everyone to use a gun, you're kinda stuck and have to start over since you've burned so much of a very limited resource on upgrading a bow that ultimately turned out to be weak. Next major gripe - stealth is nonfunctional. I don't know why developers lately have such a hate on for stealth in games. Either let it work or not even present it as an option. In Avowed, you are OCCASIONALLY allowed to get a stealth ambush on ONE mob, which instantly aggros everything else nearby. And that's only if you are using a melee weapon. I found attempting stealth shots with a bow to be functionally worthless. It was no different than shooting something in open combat. Either support stealth (let the players who like taking 15 minutes to clear 5 mobs with careful maneuvering instead of 30 seconds to steamroll over them without stealth) or do not support stealth at all and admit that stealth is not an allowed playstyle. On to RPG stuff. Is this supposed to be an RPG? It doesn't really feel like one. More of a looter-shooter style game where the looter aspect of it is just this tedious upgrade system where you find "the weapon" you will use and then you spend the rest of the game picking flowers and searching every corner of everywhere looking for materials to upgrade that one thing. Where are the skills? Where is the FEEL of being one class or the other. I had a "wizard" build with every point spent in wizard abilities and a high intelligence and I still got called a "layperson" by the archmage. No ranger recognizes the character with most of the points spent in the ranger tree as a ranger. Versatility isn't necessarily a bad thing but it sucks all the flavor out of the character. No matter what you do, you are "generic adventurer 002". And lockpicking... i mean the best thing I can say about the lockpicking in this game is that there's no tedious minigame associated with it. But I am SO freaking sick and tired of lockpicks being treated as a consumable item or flimsy things that break if you breathe on them too hard. I miss the fallout 1 & 2 thing where lockpicking was a skill and you could either open something or not if you were properly trained for it. If we have to keep buying or finding lockpicks they're functionally the same thing as buying keys. They're not lockpicks. They do not have a skill feel or a class feel. (e.g. if you were playing a rogue you could've opened that door, but you're a mage so you have to take the long way around). There's none of that feel to this game. It's just generic. Magic - My "wizard" spent 90% of combat using a wand. If i wanted to stand there and spam "primary attack" to kill things with a ranged attack, i'd be a ranger with a bow or pistol. People choose wizards to cast spells. The essence system is too limiting. And most of the harder hitting spells like blizzard or meteor storm or the lightning storm are a nightmare to target. more than half the time they either land directly on my head and do nothing or they overshoot and go off behind the mobs where they, again, do nothing. The Lords of Nevermiss - so, so, so sick of games where the mobs NEVER miss. There will be a mob in deep foliage so bad that I can't even see them but their arrows or thrown spears unerringly hit me no matter what i do. If a mob winds up a melee charge attack, it WILL swerve and hit me no matter what. And moving on from that to the absolutely most frustrating part of the combat in this game - Whoever made the decision to make dodge and jump the same button should not be allowed to make game design decisions without adult supervision. The character CONSTANTLY dodges when I want to jump over an obstacle and it constantly jumps like an idiot when i'm trying to dodge (which results in getting hit). The impotent jump while trying to dodge happened so often it started to feel like the game was cheating intentionally. (If any of the devs want to see dodging done right, go play Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon) SO EDGY - I get the whole "let's make the player make hard moral choices" thing but video games are saturated with this stuff lately and sometimes, it feels like a game is just trying too hard to be edgy when there's no reason for it. A situation happens and it's choice A stinks because bad stuff happens one way, and Choice B (the only other option) stinks because bad things happen a different way. There's no "hey, why don't both of you just wait and not do anything and give me another week to see if I can fix this before you kill a bunch of innocents" option. Moral dilemmas are good but when they're THIS forced, they fall flat. It just feels like the writers are saying "look how edgy we are" rather than trying to tell a story that makes logical sense. Why can't we parry while dual wielding? Enough with the unclimbable magic walls. If terrain looks like we should be able to climb it, not letting us climb it with invisble walls is super frustrating. I get that the devs or the engine couldn't quite handle actual open terrain and we're still basically navigating a maze of corridors disguised as open terrain but still. If we aren't supposed to go somewhere, don't make it look like it should be climbable. Getting stuck on things: (this is hardly only Avowed's issue but) can we please just automatically step over obstructions shorter than knee high on the character? love that the mobs do not scale. Scaling mobs is annoying. It ruins any feeling of progression. So, good choice. Except... it would be nice if it were easier to tell if mobs were over your level or not. I know there's the whole gear thing comparison but that's basically like putting out an RPG where there are only 5 levels. (item qualities). It doesn't feel great. I beat the game with the wizard build... all the while not feeling like a wizard. More of a ranger with a glow stick (wand). Tried a bow/stealth ranger. The game laughed at me attempting to use stealth. The game also laughed at me for using a bow when "guns are much cooler". So i gave up on that. Tried a dual pistol ranger since all the guides say that was the most powerful... and it was noticeably better than the bow. Who needs to stealth when PEW. Still, after the wizard playthrough felt like I was basically "Obi-WAND-Kenobi" that didn't really cast many spells, it felt nearly the exact same as a pistol ranger. The only real diference is fast attacks that do low damage vs slow attacks that slam. It's the same character with different sound effects. I tried a greatsword warrior and a dual dagger ranger (again the game mocked me for thinking stealth was a supported playstyle). And.. the Lords of Nevermiss made the melee attempts feel obnoxiously unfun. It may well be a skill issue on my part but I don't find it fun to drink 1 healing potion for every 2 kills just to stay alive as a melee build. So yeah, despite there being technically 3 different classes, nothing ever felt like I was a class. The game played the same with the wizard and the ranger. Melee DID feel different but it was a bad different. It was a "Meh, nah" different. RPGs should have skills. They should have character classes insofar as the world and NPCs react to your character class or being a particular class does things that other classes can't do, so you have more reason to replay the game on a different class. Avowed's version of versatility ends up making everything feel samey, and thus the urge to replay it on a different character is weak. So, all in all, not a bad game. Not a great one either. Extremely mid.

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. [edit: adding another example] The raptidons in the sky cutter. Can't stealth. They just appear already in combat and will see you no matter what you do. Game says "Stealth build? I think not!" 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.