IndiraLightfoot

Dishonored 2, IMHO. (Hollow Knight seems to be great though. I've bought it, but have yet to play it.)

Yeah, I agree with you. All of those examples are fine by me, but Dice's SW Battlefront 2 is not - they've crossed the line buy locking desirable characters behind walls in the game - either brought down by grinding or microtransactions.

I think that's what falls out of the move away from long term resources in CRPGs. Once you add more and more ability auto-regen after every fight, smaller fights stop mattering, because they have no lasting cost to your party. They aren't even interesting fights any more, because you can unload your ability inventory in a blaze of overkill (a problem POE1 had to some extent, especially later in the game). That leads game designers towards removing smaller fights entirely, because they don't matter any more, and aren't fun. ​ ​Contrast with long term dynamics, where you have to think carefully about how to handle small fights efficiently, and a series of small fights has a major impact on whether you make it out of a dungeon alive, because nothing is given back to you. That however implies it's possible to become backed into a resource starvation corner, if you were too inefficient. Most players seem to prefer the more short term style, so I understand why Ob and other studios are backing away from the alternatives. I suspect it is the best choice from a business perspective. I don't like it at all though :sad:. ​ Heh, I'm one of those crazy people who downloaded mods for BG1 to make levelling superslow, since I love the first three levels (and perhaps five) so much. I love the challenge - that every encounter is a challenge.

@Doppelschwert: You're welcome! And after your clarifications, I reckon we have more similar views than you might expect. I guess that we both agree on this: -Multiclassing in Deadfire is great -Simpler single classes are not a problem per se -Most of these single classes need to get more talents and be more fleshed out, and this goes for the subclasses as well. I think a slight disagreement may reside in our view on system balance and easy-to-grasp character development. -I like almost over-complicated systems, systems that aren't perfect, sprawling and fiddly-friendly (Just as an example, I wouldn't mind if they kept PoE1 and then smacked Deadfire multiclasses on top and didn't balance it much.) -You like fewer and more meaningful choices, and you want to see a better made system, professionally balanced to a certain degree.

Hmm , this may come out leftfield, but I'm not sure this beta is very optimal for beta testing. The PoE1 beta was the vertical slice, and it was very easy to have that inn as a base in Dyrford, and you just ran out of the map or into a certain house, or aggrevated a certain gang, and you could test combat and dialogue over and over. And you quickly had resources at your disposal. In this beta, the hopping between the starting village (with few items and starting cash that doesn't help), your ship, island exploration, and the rather distant "dungeons", makes our test runs very slow at the start, and also hard to get the steam up after that.

Hm, let me see if I get you here. I think you mean that almost all those passive talents only change numbers, like, they're only minor adjustments under the hood of a machine? And then something like Deep Pockets at least alters gameplay a little bit? I respect your opinion on this, but know this: Most people who played PoE 1 had factual and lasting alterations of their playthrough because of their choices of the aforementioned passive talents. Compare this to a computer. It's like one of them makes the sound system slightly crisper, or the motherboard a bit more reliable, or perhaps, you do get a somewhat faster response time on your hard drive. And for tech nerds (in this case build enthusiasts), all this tech and all these numbers make up fun and important choices for how they build their machine or character. As for the single classes getting exclusive talents. Well, yes, at the end, but I've played through PoE1 a number of times, and it was never necessary for me to reach the top levels. It's too little, too late, I reckon.

These are excellent points on penetration and armour. Like you, I think these two systems can be saved if they are staggered somehow instead.

I forgot to mention that I really liked the water colour portraits. During the kickstarter, I was sceptical, but playing now, I see that they are beautiful and they do blend in with the rest of the game nicely.

Let me get this straight, you dismiss 50+ general talents (You even give us the link), since you, personally, only liked three? The rest are "ACTUAL boring talents that generically increase your stats". From this, you conclude: "Claiming that single classes lack build options is ridiculous". This is not very objective of you. How about stepping back and consider the impact for all sorts of players: -The newbies (who I mentioned earlier may be content in picking those talents you described as "boring") -The casuals (They often pick whatever, and they like a lot to pick from, and don't care about system sleekness or effectiveness) -The experienced PoE players (They love to adapt their characters to their playthroughs) -The build experimenters (They thrive on choice and numbers.) I want Deadfire to fit and accommodate for all these groups. PoE did a good job in that department, and now with multiclassing, I reckon only the sky is the limit. Then we have the PoE2 of all of our hopes and dreams.

Still, it's just one Mulekick per rest or one MCM per rest. For such an ability, I'd love see something like a Round Mule Kick, knocking three enemies down, or like I said, a similar spell, but higher level, getting cast only this once.

Yeah, given the investment in the few spells you get to cast during an encounter vs. the number of chances a martial character gets to swing with a number of important talents in play, I'd say spells should have high accuracy or even auto-hit if enemies are low-level or low-in-a-certain attribute, etc. Seeing a 9% chance of Paralyze over and over again (which lasts like 10s, anyways), when I rarely got to cast it as a lvl 6 Herald vs those Lizardmen, that was depressing, to say the least.

The once per rest Empower ability, well I have tried it now, especially with casters, and let me just say that +1 level as a caster didn't do much to help casters where they sit right now. If most spells are eligible for the name change "Fizzle", then Empower should be called "Somewhat of a Fizzle". Someone suggested it should be +3 in order to make a mark, but I'm not sure that's even near enough. How about Empower being a selectable state (if we take spells as an example), where you during your latest rest can tag a few of the spells and then you pick one of them. Then you get a higher level version of it (not just +3 levels), but Minoletta's Minor Missiles becomes Minoletta's Concussive Missiles, e.g.. The game will show you what the upgrade will be.

I love this suggestion!

Cheap and cheap. They cost all of your starting money, like 2,000 gold.

All these Afflictions and Inspirations are just for show - decoys which really don't matter. Only Affliction that would matter: Decreased Penetration. Only Inspiration that would matter: Increased Penetration. EDIT: Added the emote to underline that this is a tongue-in-cheek joke.

Right now, penetration is the threshold to keep track of in combat (since the stuff casters use barely have an impact.) It works like a lock connecting different bodies of water. If you have high enough penetration, you'll be elevated out of the swamp, and up into the rapids, and land hit after hit. If you don't have it, you're not allowed to leave the stinking swamp of inadequate adventurers.

And caster classes being at least a notch or two worse than martial classes, in general.

I didn't mind it then much, and now five feels like it's always been like this. It seems to be working seamlessly.

A little devil just whispered to me: "Why not just add one general or shared talent pick at every other level up? Then make the enemies slightly harder. This would be fair to caster classes and martial classes."

Deleted.

I got my first menagerist goblin today playing Diablo 3, after 1,000 h played, so they're not exactly a common sight. They are normal sized but blue and yellowish. I had no idea that they existed. Apparently, they give you rare pets. There are like a dozen or so that you can get from them, I reckon I was lucky, since I got a mimic chest, which to me screams good old D&D. Oh, and like yesterday, I jumped into one of them rainbow portal goblins, and decided, what the heck, I'll jump into that My Little Pony land, and I was pleasantly surprised. They have updated the rewards inside - every pot of gold, happy cloud, all the pressies and piñatas . they contained tonnes of useful loot: forgotten souls, legendary items, oodles of gold. This must have been updated. Same with removing gems costing no gold.

I love this idea, and of course you should be able to be fist-devoted (no pun intended).

You know what I mean. Hover over Resolve or the other 5 attributes, and you get a short description (it's decent at least) and then a simple list of "very bad", "bad", "okay", "good", "very good", depending on how the attribute would be, given in intervals. Personally, I find such a basic tooltip totally redundant. I'd love to see something like in Civ 5/6, where you can adjust tooltips for experienced players. Then I'd like to see the maths and the stats behind it all. I don't care for superfluous filler texts: "This hits very hard", "You are more nimble", etc. I have no qualms whatsoever in seeing droves of number adjustments listed in such tooltips. In fact, I'd welcome such system clarity. I suspect there are a few more character Creation tooltip windows that would benefit from this "experienced player mode", and most likely combat log and weapon and armour descriptions as well.

By the way, wouldn't it be neat if our movements on the islands we disembark on was traced with a red meandering perforated line, like on pirate-y treasure maps? Perhaps this could even be drawn permanently, so that you can see exactly where you went. Steering my ship this way really feels like Sid Meier's Pirates and Civilization. I absolutely adore it. I just feel that the island exploration needs a bit more love somehow.