PrimeJunta

As I've mentioned elsewhere I'm really impressed by the progress the game's made and am actually enjoying 392 a lot. It's fun, finally. However, there are a number of mechanical issues that I think result in just the kind of thing Josh wanted to avoid -- either dominant or "false" choices. Rather than bury them in the 392 discussion thread, or log them as bug reports, I thought I'd discuss them here. I've now put significant time into 392 as a ranger, fighter, rogue, and druid, with some Adventurers' Hall Chanter thrown in. Light/fast/slashing/low DT bypass weapons are not a good choice Weapons with poor DT bypass currently are a poor choice overall. They're almost useless against armored enemies like the beetles. Weapons which do have DT bypass, however, remain effective against enemies where they would be beat out by light weapons. Two-handed weapons are seriously more effective overall. This means that when choosing what weapon to equip, and with two weapon sets, given a choice I'll always pick either a mace + shield (mace for DT bypass, shield for the extra Deflection) or a two-hander (estoc for the DT bypass or pike for the reach) in one slot, and a slow ranged weapon with maximal DT bypass in the other (arbalest or firearm). In other words, an entire specialization (double-wielding), and entire categories of weapons (bows, daggers, swords...) become unattractive choices. This can't be the intention. Fixing this is mostly a numbers issue and I don't have the time or inclination to run them. However, those numbers do need to be adjusted so that light/low-DT-bypass weapons become viable choices again. They should be less effective against armored enemies, just not so nearly completely ineffective. After all, a great many enemies—and, notably, a great many of the tougher enemies—are armored. As a possible solution, I would suggest giving crits on these weapons DT bypass. This would also give a picture of an arrow finding a gap in the armor, and would make it possible to build, say, a lethal archer, by investing in talents that increase accuracy and crit range on bows. The Ranger The Ranger is not fun. The main problem is the shared health pool, but there are others as well. It is particularly affected by the problem discussed above, at least if you pick the classic ranger weapon, the bow. It just feels wrong. Having hits on one toon drain the health of another is... not right. It would be fine as a temporary spell effect (e.g. wizard extending his soul to 'summon' a melee combatant), but as a general mechanic for a mostly non-magical class it just 'feels wrong.' It favors durable animal companions. Since the animal companion's main purpose is to pin down an enemy for the ranger to shoot down (and most of the class abilities support this), its only really vital function is to stay standing while engaging enemies. A less durable companion really has to have ridiculously powerful special abilities to make the tradeoff worthwhile. Logically, enemy ranged units should almost always target the ranger first, since being less armored he's a soft target and taking him down takes two units out of the fight. It locks the class into a small and rigid set of tactics. One of the main advantages of a ranged unit is that it can switch targets across the battlefield quickly. Since the ranger is pretty much locked into working together with Mr. Bear, this choice is as good as removed: if he shoots at anything other than the toon engaged by the companion, his efficiency is drastically reduced and he puts himself and Mr. Bear at great risk. I would suggest the following changes to address these issues, which ought to be doable even this late in development: Replace the shared health pool with a split one. Have both the animal companion's and the ranger's health be adjusted by the ranger's Constitution, and have the choice of animal companion define how it's split. Healthier animal companions mean scrawnier rangers and vice versa. I don't think it could be an even split because it would leave both too fragile, but something along those lines. Add a penalty for the Ranger if the animal companion is knocked out. Say, one of those 'wounded' statuses you get from a CYOA pane gone wrong. (But what to do if poor Mr. Bear dies...? New one wanders in after a rest?) Give the Ranger abilities for quickly repositioning the companion, safely breaking its engagement, at least for the more agile companions. The antelope, for example, could "bound" up to 4 meters without triggering disengagement.

I find it interesting how our experience of the BB has diverged over its course. In the earlier builds, I didn't like it for much the same reasons you didn't like it and thought your videos and written analysis described the underlying reasons brilliantly. By now, I'm really digging it and you seem to be as unhappy with it as ever (and as I mentioned elsewhere, I think it's nailed the IE "feel" down pat, even, perhaps especially in combat, only with material improvements). Would it be worth exploring what we're doing or experiencing differently in more detail?

To reproduce: Trigger a druid's Wild Shape ability near the end of an encounter. Then enter a new encounter. Observed: The druid reverts to human form when combat ends. However, when the new encounter starts, the druid goes automatically into Wild Shape, using up the ability. Expected: She doesn't. This behavior is expected for modal combat-only abilities, but not per-encounter ones.

Playing on a late 2013 iMac 27" with GTX 780M. It runs very smoothly -- possibly more smoothly than on significantly more powerful PC's? --, but the current build (392) is somewhat unstable. I'm getting frequent crashes especially in map transitions but occasionally elsewhere as well. I'm confident that Obs will sort these out later on. Trying to keep multiple platforms running stably while you're hammering away at the code isn't easy, and I don't blame them for prioritizing Windows at this stage. But at this point it's annoying enough that I'm going to switch back to the Windows build for further testing.

I believe this has been discussed before, and has been ruled out. IMO it doesn't need a FF toggle. The AoE spells are highly controllable due to the targeting circle, "green fringes," and perspective. Pay a bit of attention where you slap them and you'll be fine. It's certainly a great deal more forgiving than many of the IE games in this respect. The combat in this game is genuinely tactical though -- it matters how you play. It's not super-hard or rocket science (or I wouldn't be able to play it), but brute-force tactics like "select all and attack" or "fireball the melee" will, generally speaking, not work. You do have to read the spell descriptions, try them out, and use them somewhat intelligently, as well as use engagement and other character abilities to your advantage. Figuring it out is half the fun of it. Removing FF would remove most of the incentive to play intelligently. (Hint: look for combos: if an AoE spell targets Reflex, look for a way to debuff that on the enemy... and/or buff it on your party.)

We can always blame Mr. Josh. It's part of his job description. (But then we can also thank him if this turns out good, and I at least am liking 392 a lot.)

Oops, appears that this was already reported here. Sorry for the duplicate...

The UI for weapon focus, specialization, and mastery perks is unclear. While the perk descriptions list which weapons are covered by each perk, they don't say exactly what the mechanical effects are, and whether and how they stack. I managed to give BB Fighter Weapon Mastery (Adventurer) and Weapon Focus (Knight), but I'm not entirely sure how I even managed that. The description for Focus says that it adds accuracy, but not how much, and for Mastery that it adds damage on top of the "standard bonuses" for Specialization, but doesn't list either. I'm especially confused about the relationship between Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization. Expected: the UI should show (1) what bonuses each of these perks grants, (2) whether they stack with each other, and (3) whether some of them require/make available others. Additionally, if (as I surmise) Weapon Focus has nothing to do with Weapon Specialization, there should be a note to that effect in the description, especially if the character taking them is a fighter. Additionally: the inventory UI should automatically highlight or otherwise mark weapons which fall under the selected character's focus/specialization/mastery. I haven't memorized the lists yet and was constantly referring back to them when deciding which weapons to give each of my characters.

Moar impressions. Playing with a druid this time. Her crowd control spells are extremely effective too. Entangle isn't quite as powerful as the wizard's Slicken, but it still turns tough-ish fights into cakewalks. I like the spell selection a lot; nice mix of CC and AoE damage. The class feels a bit too powerful though, at least next to the slightly anemic BB Wizard. Will try rolling my own at some point to see if it's just because BB Wizard isn't built very well. Wiz and Druid spells synergize really well; Entangle debuffs Reflex, which most of wiz's AoE damage spells target. Crowds go down fast with those one-two punches. As with the rogue and fighter, difficulty on Normal feels about right to me, I do have to pay attention and, y'know, play the game to get anywhere, but when I do I get through most battles fairly nicely. Length of the adventuring day feels about right too. I don't feel like I'm camping or running back to the inn all the time, and when I do I feel OK about it. Murdered finished everything in Dyrford and am now in Pwglwn or whatever that syllable-soup dungeon is called (or, well, was fairly deep in it before it crashed again and I quit), and hit level 8. That (optional) climactic battle in the Dyrford ruins was cool but went pretty easily. The Mac build is crashy, though. I'm getting freezes and CTD's pretty often, especially on map transitions. No performance problems. The fighter's weapon focus/specialization/mastery UI (or the mechanic itself) is a little wonky though; I don't think I'm seeing everything I ought to be on the character sheet. I've somehow gotten Weapon Focus: Knight but Weapon mastery: Adventurer for BB Fighter. Dunno how that works. I also can't find what, exactly, any of those do, mechanically speaking. This is the first build that I find is actually fun to play, even with the crashing. Will probably switch to the Windows build next to see if that's stabler (and if Sensuki's performance problems manifest). Perhaps more controversially, at this point it feels to me like an IE game successor. It responds similarly, plays similarly, has similar scope for variation in tactics, builds, and party composition. It does have an IWD-ey feel in combat, but a BG2-ey feel in quests, the writing is not as wild and possibly not quite as deep and personal as PS:T but it's a sight better than any of the others, and the range and breadth of abilities, perks, spells, and items is broad enough to easily pass BG and nip at the heels of the later games in the series, which is pretty remarkable for a system built from scratch. So, yay. I'm sure there's still balancing to do, not to mention a lot of bugfixing and optimization, but as far as I'm concerned this is over the hump. I'm having fun, and I'm having fun in much the same way I have fun playing the IE ones... with a good deal less of the stuff I disliked about them.

I'm getting pretty frequent hangs and crashes on map transitions, most commonly between large areas, but sometimes also e.g. between Dyrford and Dracogen inn. They do not occur consistently. Usually restarting the client and reloading a save, even if it was just before the freeze or crash, resolves the issue.

Once you've discovered a trap on a chest and it turns read, you can't interact with it anymore. Clicking on it does nothing. If you haven't discovered the trap, it gets triggered as intended, after which you can loot the container. Happens in the Skaen temple at least.

At least our issue tracker always collects a significant amount of cruft between releases. There are invalid and duplicate issues, many have summaries or descriptions that are highly technical and only make sense to the devs, and so on. Even after cleaning them up in the tracker, it's a significant amount of work to get from that to something customers can understand and use. That's why we always also write a free-form summary of the significant changes -- something I'd like to see here too.

Addendum -- the next time I tried this, it didn't crash on "Done," but froze (and had to force quit) after selecting the hired adventurer's background.

My paladin gets stuck in an animation loop with a spell effect, repeating "It's not working!" after I reload a save. The loop usually eventually finishes and I can continue to play normally. I can't tell what she's trying to do; it's certainly nothing I've ordered. Screenshot of the effect attached.

Preconditions/Configuration: OS X 10.10 running on iMac 27" (late 2013, GF GTX 780M) Reproducible: frequently; this happened to me twice when attempting to hire an adventurer. However, when I reloaded from a save and tried again, it did not crash. To reproduce: Go to Dracogen inn and hire an adventurer. Observed: Crash to desktop after clicking on button which finishes character creation. More information:

Patch notes are a lot of work to write. I've done a few myself. You don't just dump whatever's in the issue tracker and go with that. I'm sure it took @BAdler a while to do the ones for 392, with links to the relevant threads and all. That said, at least I would be more interested in mechanics/balance changes than which bugs have or have not been fixed. Because that would give direction to what to try next, and certainly make feedback more to the point.

More random thoughts I forgot to put in the previous comments: An Invisibility spell would be rad. It ought to be dead easy to implement; just make it behave like the corresponding rogue talent. It would also be entirely in keeping with the IE game precedent. Or is there one in already? Lockpick XP is derp. Won't comment on the other changes to the XP system because I don't want to get into that discussion again. The ranger's and pet's shared health/endurance pool isn't working. Been trying to think of things to try that might work better, but have nothing I'm really happy with. Clearly the difficulty is that having a "free" extra melee unit in the party is OP. (Try playing SoZ with a party of druids for laughs. You will steamroll.) So something needs to be done to balance that out. Such as: * Make Endurance separate, but Health shared. You can sacrifice Mr. Bear in a pinch without dropping out of the fight yourself, but still have an incentive not to consistently use him as a disposable meat shield. (Still gimmicky. Not sure if less un-fun. Might still try it.) * Drop the shared health pool. However, if Mr. Bear goes down, Mr. Ranger receives a Wounded status (like you'd get from a CYOA interlude gone wrong). The Mac version (at least) is a little unstable. Getting occasional freezes and crashes. Will start paying attention if I can reproduce them consistently to report them. At least loading from a savegame works as it should now.

I'm still having fun. Enjoying the combat rather than finding it a chore. Did not notice the stuttering and slowdowns Sensuki has documented in his videos. Either they're not there for me or I'm just blind to them. Playing on an iMac 27", considerably lower-spec than his machine. I'm really enjoying the way they've opened up the builds since the start of the BB. Itching to try a completely self-built, or at least self-developed party. Some of those talents synergize nicely with each other, as do the spells. I played a rogue this time, and made it as pure a damager build as I could. Noticed the nifty new Invisibility talent but didn't take it because I had already invested in Escape; next time maybe. My standard tactic was to use BB Fighter and BB Priest in the front line, BB Priest with shield, and both rogues equipped with pikes stabbing from behind their backs, with BB Wizard hanging back as usual. Priest doesn't fight much but the spells centered on her are much easier to use. I was much more effective against those damn beetles with this setup. Made it to the ogre cave without resting, then cleared the cave after one rest. Although I did abuse that Slicken spell; it really is too powerful as it is. Had to rearrange my party a bit towards the end, switching PC and BB Priest, because BB Priest was running low on health. Difficulty Normal as usual for me on these "harder" builds. Up to my armpits in beetles as it is, I don't really need even more of them. Both the fighter and the rogue have come a looooong way since the first BB. I found the former constraining and the latter dull; now both are fun to play and have way more scope for variation within their class template. Also digging the look of the wizard talents, many of which should support "gish" play rather nicely.

Yes, that is exactly the problem. The less beefy animal companions have some special abilities that are supposed to compensate but IMO they really don't. You could always tweak the numbers to even things out, but IMO that particular mechanic is fundamentally flawed. The whole concept doesn't feel right, or fun. I would consider dropping it altogether and finding some less conspicuous way to balance out the inherent advantage of having another toon in the party.

@Karkarov yeah, I heard about that. I was wondering how the resulting balance problems manifest. I didn't notice anything drastically wrong with the survivability of my armored front-liners. (I also noticed the damage numbers for the weapons were different than I remembered. And that, apparently, pollaxes still don't work like they're supposed to. At least I wasn't doing any Crush damange on those beetles.) Edit: Thanks, Sensuki. Reading and watching...

Well huh. I wonder if it really is working that much worse on your machine than mine, or if you're that much more sensitive to framerate issues, 'cuz I honestly didn't notice anything. Panning around is butter-smooth everywhere and I didn't notice anything changing when in combat. Also, what's wrong with the way armor works now?

Other than engagement (I know we disagree about that), what else did I get wrong? Played a bit more, this time with a fighter, through to the ogre cave. There were many, many spiders. Then I got a freeze when recruiting an adventurer and had to force quit. And yes, now this is fun, which it wasn't the last build I played. And yes, I like the way engagement works now, and am still having no trouble disengaging when I have to. Also, that first-level oil slick spell seems a leetle overpowered maybe?

Hello again. Been a while. I got a bit burned out on the beta and skipped a couple of updates before firing up 392. First impression: man, it's come a long way. Thanks for bringing back point-buy skills. The level-up UI is much nicer, as is the loot UI. Everything feels a lot more polished and "finished." And... combat is finally starting to feel "right." It's no longer a chaotic dogpile, but you can actually tell what's happening and react to it. A lot of it has to do with movement speed. The updated icons make a lot of difference too. Normal difficulty feels about right to me, it's fairly challenging but not murderous. This is actually going to be a fun game, and not just for the writing and exploration! -- This was the one area that was starting to worry me as combat seemed to have been treading water for a while when I last played it. So I'm feeling both relieved and happy about this. I'm still firmly in the pro-engagement camp, and now it's finally starting to work like I was hoping it would. It gives the game an RTS-ey feel of being able to control the battlefield even when there aren't obvious choke points, in a way that just wasn't there in the IE games. With the UI improvements it's finally possible to see who's engaging whom, and having to deal with that adds a nice dimension to the combat. I also like the various methods there are to break it. I (successfully) used Arcane Veil plus run away when a nasty engaged BB Wizard, Repulsing Seal on another occasion, and Knockdown on a third. These were all much more interesting than simply buggering off like in the IE games. But... way too many beetles in Dyrford Crossing. Srsly Not impressed by the voice sets. They sound fairly uninspired and amateurish, and there's a lot of repetition. The standard to aim for IMO is Planescape: Torment, but this isn't even Baldur's Gate level. Also some of the NPC's have too much voice; an entire paragraph is too much. This is obviously not a make-or-break thing, but IMO if voice is worth doing at all, it's worth doing well, plus less is more. There are also issues with voice FX; the combat barks have an echo like they were indoors even when we're outdoors. Tried playing with a ranger again, now that it works properly. I like the animal companion synergies you get with the perks and feats, but (still) dislike the shared health pool. It just feels gimmicky, and also seems to heavily favor getting as durable a companion as possible, especially with mob fights where there's often more than one enemy engaging each frontliner. It "feels" like the logical way to play a ranger is to park the beast in the frontline and deal damage at range, using the synergies to the max. So between an invulnerable animal that deals no damage and a vulnerable one that deals a ton of damage, why would I ever pick the second one? But perhaps I'm just missing something obvious. I played with an antelope and it worked OK enough. But all in all this is starting to feel like a real game. If everything is at this level of readiness and it was released now, it'd already be better than most I've played. I've had no framerate issues bothersome enough to notice, but then I'm not all that sensitive to them. Ran this on the OS X side of my Mac for the first time, by the way, and it crashed the first time I exited the Dyrford map to go to Dyrford Crossing, but restarting and reloading worked fine. Summa summarum, Obsidian have clearly been working their donkeys off on this one, and it finally feels like they've been playing it too. Couple more months and this is going to be awesome.

Edit: never mind, you're not worth the trouble.

No, although for some reason most opponents of Atheism+ appear to think it is. Understandable perhaps as they have a be-a-u-tiful hate-on for many of FTB's bloggers. It is unabashedly progressive and big on social justice issues though, which drives the libertarian/reactionary wing of the atheist/skeptic/secularist movement bonkers. The drama is great fun. Check out slymepit.com if you want a laugh.