Katarack21

I really, really dig this idea.

Mother always said to make new friends.

Large, complex RPG's with detailed character creators like PoE I always play through twice. Once, my first playthrough, I go in totally blind of all plot elements that I can avoid and build a character based around a theme and backstory and make all my choices from that perspective. In PoE I went in as a ranged cipher ex-slave from the Deadfire. My *second* playthrough, I min/max for ultimate powaz. That time I was actually a melee rogue focusing on maximum attack speed and minimum recovery. Both were fun playthroughs, for different reasons. I'll be taking both saves into Deadfire.

Heh. We asked for an obsidian item, but Obsidian can make it anything they want, so who knows.

Exactly. I'm not calling anybody lazy, not denigrating their work, not trying to criticize anybody. I know that building nine new passives for Fighters specifically would be extremely difficult and might not even be possible at this stage, with all the balancing that would ensue. But from my players perspective, what I'm seeing is good, nuanced, interesting builds for multitudes of solo classes being sacrificed for the sake of fluffing out certain talent trees (not just fighter) with general talents that vaguely fit that classes theme. I feel like it's a relatively easy way to go about it from a design and coding perspective, because you don't have to spend all the time creating, testing, and balancing new abilities, and I totally understand why that option would be taken, but I don't enjoy what it's done to the experience of building a character.

The codex is an awful and horrifying place The fact that I used to agree with the people over at RPGCodex is a persistent source of mild shame for me. Codex is a cool place with many interesting and nuanced discussions, and a very diverse pool of members from all around the world. Not sarcasm. Diverse, sure (although the internet is a just diverse by itself). Nuance? No, definitely not. Just lots of casual slurs, racism, sexism, and tons of whining So it's the 4chan of the RPG crowd?

You should build nine new Fighter-specific passives that are interesting and unique rather than gimp other classes to make Fighter feel special by grafting generic talents to their tree.

Is there such a thing as a tier one hard c.c.? I thought tier 1 afflictions were all fairly minor.

All I know is I build nuke wizards, and I *will* dump all my strength to 3. Because why not.

I hate, hate, hate the change to prone. Significantly reduced my fighters active role in my party.

So...no cliffhanger resolution? Am sad panda.

Sometimes, you need piercing damage.

Yeah, but I mean, other than some sort of save point-based system or an artificial limit on how many times you can save/load, there's really not a lot you can do about save scumming. At some point you have to back off and go "If people want to play the game this way, if that's just how they have fun, they're just gonna do it."

And changes to injuries--most no longer remove health, those that do remove 15 percent instead of 25, 4 injuries still kills you.

I like it much better. Less reasons to spam rest. However, it appears that some wounds that don't reduce health are considered minor, so I've nitpicky question - why would you die of 4 minor wounds? Yeah, I agree. I mean, I understand like a gaping wound, but I don't care who you are--a rash, a sprained wrist, a swollen eye, and a wrenched knee do not combine into a lethal effect.

My problem is that if the game stays equally challenging and difficult the whole time, I don't feel any sense of progress or advancement. I'm objectively more powerful fighting more powerful enemies, but I feel just as week as the beginning, and lose interest.

Yeah. I built websites for a company that still uses their home-built 20 year old, crappy Typo3-derivate. It is far past the point were minor changes can disguise the fact that it is old. It should have been rebuilt from the ground or better totally replaced years ago. But as my boss always says: "It may have it's flaws, but it works. Why should we change something that works?" To improve it, of course. To see, if it can be made better. To be the ones, that do the next step and not always the ones that crawl over the finish line after all other competitors. To have a unique piece of software and not another clone. And last but not least: Just to find out, what works best and not be satisfied by the first solution that kinda works. Why do a sequel and not try to make it better? Just compare BG1 to BG2. In my opinion "Never touch a running system!" is a mantra for calming down lazy developers. BG2 didn't completely rework all the combat mechanics and stat system. It's not really equivalent. Experimentation for experimentation sake risks replacing functional systems with less functional systems. Worse, sometimes you just shift the problem but now it's hidden better. Fixing problems is good; losing solutions in the search for perfection is not.

It didn't solve the dump stat problem, just shifted it to a different stat.

Ciphers are *screwed*.

Strength is important up to a point; you need the strength to draw the bow, which I guess is an argument for base strength requirements for different bows. But that only works up to a point; there's a max draw on a bow that caps how much strength can impact your damage with *any individual bow*.

Everybody always thought of might as strength. That was the problem. It was tied in to both spell and melee damage because might reflected raw soul power; this *could* be physical strength or it *could* be magical strength. The dialogue options didn't always reflect this, and it led a lot of people to thinking about might as strength when it never was. I liked how *every stat* was important to *every character*. That was one of the things I really, really enjoyed about PoE. Now I'll just dump strength for points and pump everything I need. Disappointing.

I *despise* stat-based weapon requirements, always have. I want to use whatever weapon I feel is appropiate on whatever character I want. If I want my wizard to wield a two-handed sword, I should have that option without having to stat them as a fighter.

I do get “role playing” argument, though I am much more interested in mechical side of combat, and would happily trade obvious and meaningless choices for a smaller set of interesting ones. But how does it help to distinguish your roles? I imagine you will get weapon focus on all of characters, as it won’t cost you nothing (you don’t need more that two weapon proficiencies per character) which means you paladin trained with shields will be just as trained as mage whom you have a shield to boost his defences. Unless, of course you handicap yourself due to role playing reasons, which is cool, but still gives us a pretty bad system. Not for roleplaying reasons. I don't have any need to give weapon+shield to my wizard when I have a buff spell that's more versatile, works in different situations, etc and I have the choice of something like a Scion talent or something more versatile like Quick Switch. I *might* take it, but that would be an artifact of the weapon talents being provided on the proficiency page and a lack of a real general talent pool--eventually once you've taken all the profiencies you realistically need for your non-weapon-using-wizard, something like weapon+shield might be taken due to lack of other options. I can assure you, I did not regularly take any such talents with my wizard in PoE, because it doesn't play well with the way I play a wizard. I'd rather take things like Scion talents or Triage or other things that increase my wizards versatility while depending on his spells, other characters abilities, and being far away from the melee to survive. But take Marksman. If I'm playing a ranged cipher--*not* a ranger/cipher--then Marksman is one part of my overall ranged-weapon-using-cipher build. It's a small nudge towards being more of a ranged character than a melee character, helping me to define my cipher as a particular *type* of cipher without having to be a whole different character from a cipher. Overall, with things like Marksman and stat allocations and weapon profieciences, I can define my cipher character as being very much unique from a melee cipher. Not just in "what weapon I'm currently using", but in the overall defining aspect of the character--I can literally create my cipher to be uniquely distinct and specialized as a ranged character, without having to change every aspect of him, sacrifice the final two levels of character progression, or be forced to play a class I have no interest in. That's why general talent pools are important to me. I don't want the only distinction between my ranged cipher and a melee cipher to be the weapon that we currently have equipped, and I don't want to be forced to play a class I have no interest in just to be able to define my role on the battlefield.

So if those are so irrelevant, what is the point of needing them in order to define your character? Where did idea of weapon accuracy buffs from PoE1 coming back to Deadfire came from? Has there been new details revealed? From Josh’s original post I understood that they will simply make existing passive weapons talents available to everyone. I think one handed weapon style had increased accuracy if I remember well, but all the other had different effects. They're irrelevant in a mechanical sense by late mid-game. I've said before I don't even really care what the bonus provided by the weapon styles or weapon focus or marksman or whatever even is; it could be +3 accuracy or +30% damage, and I'd take it either way for a character I felt it was appropriate for. For me it serves two purposes: One, a slight nudge towards distinct roles, with lesser impact and overall character affect than multiclassing. Two, roleplay purposes.