Katarack21

"Ruin your game" is subjective. I don't "ruin my own game", I play how I want when the toolkit is there for me. I liked it far more when I could use summon figurines to boost my numbers more regularly. They did have a rest limit, so it wasn't like you could just spam them.

Firstly that was not my sentence. I just added my personal impression to the discussion. Now if you take that "any" very literary, it is indeed a hyperbolic statement. But this is a forum discussion, not a juristic text. People talk that way, you know. And dying three times on PotD is not really what I would call challenge. But as you insist, here is my non-hyperbolic attempt: In my experience as a self defined average player the game clearly failed to provide an appropriate challenge on the difficulty settings normal and above, apart from very few fights, given the assumption, that players an all difficulty levels but story mode are expected to fail from time to time. You can quote that, nitpicker. Dude. *HE* admitted that it was in fact extreme hyperbole and then proceeded to rephrase with more realistic statements. So...**** you, basically? Like...you don't matter in that conversation. That was an example of hyperbolic statements, not something *being attributed to you*. And my point was, and remains, that hyperbole to an extreme degree creates lack of meaning because at a certain point it ceases to connect with the reality of the situation. Not, like.."nitpicking". Your half-assed attempt to be annoyingly specific as a joke at my expense to create the impression that I'm some kind of obsessively specific jackass just makes me concerned about your comprehension. Are you okay? Like...I'm worried about you. Your executive function doesn't seem to be working well.

I'm on Path of the Damned, man. I don't feel very damned at the moment. Also: What do you think you can achieve with that nitpicking? You are not argumenting, you play wordgames. No, I'm not playing wordgames. I'm attempting to maintain meaning and validity in a discussion by challenging extreme examples of hyperbole that are so insane that they cease to actually reflect anything related to the reality of the actual game. Your joke about Path of the Damend/feeling damned is a *wordgame*. My statement about the hyperbole of the line "It failed to provide any challenge no matter whom you fight." is a call for maintaining some sense of perspective in your complaints so that it doesn't become so extreme that it's like a parody of nerd complaints.

I'm not a great player, I don't read all the numbers and sometimes play like an idiot (I like that thingy. It seems to fit that other thingy. Lets put it on.). I died countless times on PotD in PoE. In Deadfire I died in three fights (Splintered reef entrance, Nemnok, Ukaizo). For every of that three fights I needed 2-3 attempts to finally win. That is not the same as winning with autoattack but it is a measurable difference. P.S.: My wife just told me that so far she died only once on normal difficulty. She's just arrived at Ashen Maw and she's also definitely not a powergamer or Min/Maxer. So...you just proved my statement true. Like, if you died, if you had to pay attention at all, if you had to attend to the game in any way, then the statement "It failed to provide any challenge no matter whom you fight." *isn't accurate*. Look. I'm not saying "don't complain about the game". All I'm saying is keep your complaints grounded in reality. Complain about problems that you *actually had*. When you exaggerate, use major hyperbole, or just say things that aren't true you give a really inaccurate impression of what this game is. Saying "THIS GAME WAS BROKEN ON RELEASE" or "It failed to provide any challenger no matter whom you fight." doesn't provide anything useful; it's such an exaggeration that it distorts reality to a level of vagueness that is ultimately meaningless.

It failed to provide any challenge no matter whom you fight. That's simply hyperbole. That's not accurate. Like, did you literally just set to autoattack on every enemy, every time, throughout the entire game? Did you autoattack the Kraken without ever using an ability? Did you autoattack every vampire fight throughout Splintered Reef? Did you literally clump-autoattack the dragon at Ukazio and then never interact again until it was dead, while you read a book in the next room? Like seriously. That's just not an accurate statement. I understand your making a point, but so am I: people are making inaccurate statements about this game and then treating those statements like their actual literal truth.

I read the statement and I have to admit it turned me around on balance tweaking. I even personally experienced some of the benefits with 1.1: upon learning that Nature Godlike had been nerfed to +1 Power Level, my first thought was "oh good, now I don't have to play Nature Godlike on my monks and casters." So I'm sold on the idea of tweaking game mechanics. But you never had to. You chose to. People conflate "choosing to build the most optimized murder-machine possible" with "I have no choice but to do it this way!" all the time, and it's really annoying. At no point was a mountain dwarf caster any less viable an option for beating the game, it just wasn't as optimal. Nobody ever *had* to play a Nature Godlike on monks and casters, on any difficulty, at any time. Sure, if you want to *SOLO* the game, or pull off the Ultimate, that's a different story. But if you've got a whole team of five people, then it really doesn't matter what difficulty your playing on, your race just doesn't make that much difference by itself. Yes, need for optimizing goes up as you go up in the difficulty levels, but not to the degree that a specific race/class combo is necessary all the time, every time, just to beat the game. They're all viable, that's literally one of the design goals.

Improving and balancing game is Obsidian advantage. Other company might release and forget, which is the style you prefer. Then you could choose some money snatch project, there are plenty on the Steam. When you feel the difficulty rises up over your character build, then you can lower it by yourself. You could still feel that power of unstoppable of rolling at first level of difficulty. Feel free to have fun. Everyone does balance. It's HOW, not IF. Check out Larian. They do balance with a sword. Obsidian uses nuclear weapons. If i want a story ill read a book That *really* does a disservice to the potential and capability of video games as a medium.

Strawman, much? The question of why it's assumed that balance is inherently and always a good thing that must be achieved is a question worth asking in a single-player experience, once the basic component of viability for all classes and combinations is already a thing.

In fairness, that letter written by Sawyer is framed in a very biased and inaccurate manner. For example, he statement " Which set of changes do you think I heard more feedback about? If you guessed the marginal drop in proc rate on the soulbound item that had only worked properly for two weeks, you’d be right." is...intellectually dishonest. The dagger in question had it's proc rate dropped from 10% to 3%; that's not "marginal", that's 2/3rds of it's bonus proc percentage. But acknowledging that doesn't hep the narrative Sawyer is trying to frame, so he implies that it's a smaller change than it actually is. The whole thing is full of stuff like that; it's not an honest discussion of why Sawyer believes these things so much as it is a justification for his view of game systems. To be completely fair, this is not aimed directly at Josh Sawyer. I used to work with him as external QA and I can tell you that he's not a tyrant hell-bent on his own concept. Quite the opposite, he's very open to reasonable suggestions. I have nothing against balance itself, but I strongly believe it should be mostly completed before the title is released. Small tweaks after that are fine. Completely overhauling the game a month after it launches is just.. mean? I'm not trying to attack Josh Sawyer or claim that he's some kind of tyrant, just that like most people he's biased--that he has goals and specific things that he wants to do or accomplish, and that his arguments tend to frame things in ways that support his arguments even when they're not directly related to those arguments. I don't think Josh is lying to us or trying to force his will on us, just that he thinks a certain way and up plays some things while down playing other things to make a narrative that supports him.

What do you call 'level scaling' not working at all? Or how about a Fighter's 'Charge' ability coupled with a Chanter's ' have free unlimited class resources' invocation? The game was entirely playable and I finished it and enjoyed myself but that doesn't mean that the balance was not broken and needed to be fixed as it now has been. I call them "bugs". The game had problems, and maybe certain systems were not functional, but dude, if the majority of users can play through the game from beginning to end and the majority of systems within the game function to create a playable experience, then the product is by definition *not broken*. That's like claiming a dough mixer you bought is "broken" because the timer doesn't work if you set it for more than thirty seconds. Yeah, it limits what you can do, but...it's a functional item that does work for it's intended purpose, so...complain, don't ****ing exaggerate ****.

Well, there's also a third group, like me, who are more or less indifferent. For me the story, the companions and the side quests are always more interesting than combat itself. And since the different easy settings caters to people like me, we have little interest in PotD difficulty. This exactly. I've played PoE many times (though finished it only once). And every time I replay it I only play at the easy or story mode. The story, the side quests, the companions, and my own character's development are all that I care about, and I generally hate the combat situations. That's a legitimate way to play the game, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the discussion about how to tune combat, IMHO. People who are focused on story and character and don't care about combat don't really have a stake in the discussion; easy and story mode are there specifically to cater to that group. When the rest of us are discussing how and in what way the game should be balanced, saying "I don't care about combat" doesn't really add anything to the discussion. that's not...completely true . I give you an exemple : I play an MMO , so I'm a PVE Player . I play for the story . Homewhever , I still enjoy my character zapping abilitie (Sorc) . Here come the PVP player , who whine that Sorc heal and zapping is too OP! Nerf it ! Bioware nerf it . Guess what ? I feel it too . Now my kick ass abilitie is downgraded . PVP player will say : Why do you care ? You only here for the story ! I still enjoy my class , thank you very much . I still use Summon and spell . Maybe I don't track the number like a hard core player and use a calculator . But I still can freaking feel it when my summon won't last long as before , or when my spell doesn't hit that hard still . The difference is I won't go rage in the PVP Thread and tell them to cut it out . But they never come and ask if it's ok for the rest of us either . So personally , I understand the need of 'Balancing' . I can't really say if this class or that spell is weak or overpowered . I just ask , plz don't nerf stuff for no good reasons or for Power Trip or cose you don't like the class ..so it has to get grinded to dust . That's all . Okay, that's legit, but that's a discussion about MMO's. In MMO's, balancing occurs for entirely different reasons and in entirely different ways. It's implicit in your example; PVP vs PVE is a debate that only and exclusively exists in MMO's; it's not really analogous to the difficulty and balance debates that occur about *single-player* games. I can't really see how a story-focused person in a single-player game really is effected by the difficulty curve, balancing, and combat tuning debates. That is, provided a certain baseline of class and character viability, I don't see how somebody in a single-player game whose major (or sole) focus on gameplay is narrative and character based is really concerned with how strong each class or ability is relative to each other or to combat enemies.

Well, there's also a third group, like me, who are more or less indifferent. For me the story, the companions and the side quests are always more interesting than combat itself. And since the different easy settings caters to people like me, we have little interest in PotD difficulty. This exactly. I've played PoE many times (though finished it only once). And every time I replay it I only play at the easy or story mode. The story, the side quests, the companions, and my own character's development are all that I care about, and I generally hate the combat situations. That's a legitimate way to play the game, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the discussion about how to tune combat, IMHO. People who are focused on story and character and don't care about combat don't really have a stake in the discussion; easy and story mode are there specifically to cater to that group. When the rest of us are discussing how and in what way the game should be balanced, saying "I don't care about combat" doesn't really add anything to the discussion.

In the end this comes down to a debate about what's more fun; challenge and difficulty or face-stomping and feeling like a badass. For me, the difficulty of Deadfire on Classic was exactly right; I was challenged in various fights, but was able to feel like my character was powerful and gaining power, as well. Part of the problem is that some people want every single fight to be a difficult, challenging, painful encounter where you have to plan and use tactics and work out what your doing; for these people challenge and difficulty are the primary generators of fun. For me, that makes me feel like my character isn't advancing, doesn't become more than he was; I *want* my character to become so much stronger and more powerful that by the end of the game I'm face-stomping most enemies. For me, that makes me *feel* like I've become, over time, one of the most powerful people in the game-world. Plus, I'm easily frustrated; when I have to replay this Ogre encounter seven times, I don't feel like I'm having fun figuring out the puzzle of this combat; I just want to throw my keyboard and scream "****" over and over.

Hey, dear Tigranes, The Obsidian VIP. I'm just a player who...

In fairness, that letter written by Sawyer is framed in a very biased and inaccurate manner. For example, he statement " Which set of changes do you think I heard more feedback about? If you guessed the marginal drop in proc rate on the soulbound item that had only worked properly for two weeks, you’d be right." is...intellectually dishonest. The dagger in question had it's proc rate dropped from 10% to 3%; that's not "marginal", that's 2/3rds of it's bonus proc percentage. But acknowledging that doesn't hep the narrative Sawyer is trying to frame, so he implies that it's a smaller change than it actually is. The whole thing is full of stuff like that; it's not an honest discussion of why Sawyer believes these things so much as it is a justification for his view of game systems. I have to disagree, and you prove Josh's point about feeling losses more than gains nicely in a way. The 10% to 3% proc rate reduction would be a major thing only if that was the only attribute. While Firebug is a powerful effect, it's by far not the only thing this weapon has to offer, and the he also points that out. The 20% attack rate increase basically increases all damage you do by it by 20%. Being a mythic weapon on top is reason enough to pick it. Right, but my point isn't about the overall capabilities of the weapon, any more than the sentence "If you guessed the marginal drop in proc rate on the soulbound item" refers to the overall capabilities of the weapon. Josh Sawyer in that line, and my response about, is *specifically* addressing the *drop in proc rate*. Not the damage the weapon deals, not the overall capabilities of the weapon, but the *drop in proc rate*. He minimized the *drop in proc rate* by saying that that, and specifically that only, was "marginal". He said it was a "marginal drop in proc rate", and I'm saying that while it's effects on the weapon may have been mininmal, the *drop in proc rate* was not. It dropped the *proc rate* by 2/3rds, which is not a "marginal drop in proc rate". It's a *major* drop in proc rate. The effect of the drop in proc rate was minimal for many reasons, but it most certainly was a severe drop in proc rate. His phrase of it is meant to imply that the drop in proc rate was *itself* minor, which is a dishonest way of phrasing that.

In fairness, that letter written by Sawyer is framed in a very biased and inaccurate manner. For example, he statement " Which set of changes do you think I heard more feedback about? If you guessed the marginal drop in proc rate on the soulbound item that had only worked properly for two weeks, you’d be right." is...intellectually dishonest. The dagger in question had it's proc rate dropped from 10% to 3%; that's not "marginal", that's 2/3rds of it's bonus proc percentage. But acknowledging that doesn't hep the narrative Sawyer is trying to frame, so he implies that it's a smaller change than it actually is. The whole thing is full of stuff like that; it's not an honest discussion of why Sawyer believes these things so much as it is a justification for his view of game systems.

on JE Sawyer's blog, he makes it sounds like they have all sorts of docs written down about Eora and how everything works; likely this is the sort of stuff that Chris would have been a part of. We only get a fraction of it, and JE Sawyer recently apologized on his blog about one specific confusion because the original cut of Deadfire had an explanation, but they had cut it because at the time they didn't think it was necessary, and all of them had been so immersed in the lore that they thought it was self-evident. So I wouldn't blame a lack of Chris Avellone here because I would gather a lot has already been written down and just not revealed to us in game or in novellas. I would blame some hasty editorial choices at most. So why not patch said content in? To me this sounds like 'the dog ate my homework'. Why would you cut something from a main quest line that already has very sparse dialog? How do you know it "already" had sparse dialogue? For all we know it could've been a 30 minute monologue before they cut it. I know that the main quest line in Deadfire has very sparse dialog because I have played through it twice, and can confirm that it has indeed very sparse dialog. Almost as if the main quest line is only 5% of the game. {Why would you cut something} {from a main quest line that already has very sparse dialog}? The first section there is where I talk about the cut content. The 2nd part is where I talk about the main quest line having sparse dialog. So sparse that it left main quest line talking bits so underwhelming and lacking. "{Why would you cut something} {from a main quest line that already has very sparse dialog}?" Yes. What your saying is that, *when they cut the line*, it had spare dialogue. And we don't know *what* the dialogue was like *when they cut the line*. Because we've never seen what the dialogue was like *when they cut the line*. We've only seen it *after* the cut, when it was sparse. We know the cut *MADE* it sparser; we don't know if it "already had very sparse dialogue". It's possible it only has sparse dialogue *because the line was cut*. You need to up your reading comprehension friend. I'm talking about how short and lacking in dialog the main quest is. So why cut something from a main quest that already is so short, contradicts previously established lore, and as Sawyer admits, ends up confusing people? No one is saying that what was cut is sparse. You literally stated that it "already had very sparse dialogue". It can't "already be sparse" at the point of the cut unless it was..well...already sparse. Nothing is wrong with my reading comprehension; you need to make sure you express your ideas clearly.

I made this mod that removes clothes on all female companions, crew, and sidekicks. Download url: https://bit.ly/IqT6zt I kind of hate you right now.

****, I was engaged for five years and during that entire time, I was *still* watching porn. This day and age, you still think porn is only for sad, lonely basement dwelling virgins?

Right click on the picture. Well, holy ****.

And takes to damn long to cast until you purchase abilities to shorten it. The combination makes a fighter/mage who relies on summoned weapons very difficult if not entirely untenable.

I cannot possibly explain how many resources I've wasted crafting food that turned out to be near-useless because I had no goddamn idea what the hell I was actually making.

I'll jump in here: all he's saying is that the one we got IS very sparse. You could add a lot more explanation to it in many different directions and it would still have room for more. He wasn't saying it was sparse before the cut. Just that what we did get was sparse, and there could've been a lot more added. Why would you cut out any main story content when you can, in the release version, complete the game in <30m as long as you had ~100k moneys & good stealth? That's the crux of the question. But...that's not how the sentence parses. "{Why would you cut something} {from a main quest line that already has very sparse dialog" "cut from...already has..." The sentence literally is asking why you cut the dialogue from something that is *ALREADY* sparse. That means that the dialogue *HAD* to be sparse *before it was cut*. That's literally *what the sentence says*. It may not be the intended meaning, but that just means they have to go back and explain what they meant/fix the sentence. My response about not knowing what the dialogue was prior to the cutting is a totally legit statement.