Enduin

VO is only as good as the writing. Sure some people just don't like it, that's fine everyone has preferences, but for most people if you're skipping through voiced dialogue before it's done it's likely because of one or more of three reasons: the VO is not good, the content is not good or the prose is not good. Good VO adds greater character, nuance and emotion to a conversation. It can be as compelling and useful as any other audio/visual technique to help enrich the experience and introduce additional layers to an interaction or event. When a game has good VO I love to just sit back and soak it in, not bothering to read the onscreen text if I can't disable it. One of my biggest issues with PoE was the fact that it was partially voiced in very unpredictable ways. How I physical sit and approach dialogues as well as mentally engage with them is quite different if I'm reading text versus listening to VO and the fact that you could go from voiced to silent to voiced dialogue in one conversation was incredibly annoying and a drag on the experience for me. PoE had good VO and the quality of its content was for the most part quite good. But two issues that I've seen mentioned quite a lot are complaints about the verbosity of the writing and the overall density of its delivery. Not only could you find yourself in very long conversations that felt needlessly wordy, but just the way large chunks of text were delivered instead of discreet one or two sentences at a time effected the experience. And from the looks of it they've addressed that issue in Deadfire with conversations being delivered in much smaller chunks at a time and other things like not having voiced dialogue be broken up by flavor text. If you don't like VO then there should be an option to turn it off completely save for in the field dialogue or only have an opening line spoken to set the stage.

It would be a very strong selling point if they could say everything was voiced, but it is a pretty substantial investment. Kind of hope the positive reception over D:OS2 being fully voiced pushed Obsidian to do the same. That said I would be thrilled if everything but Tasks and random dialogues were fully voiced; all companion/sidekick dialogue, all main and side quest dialogue. That alone would be a huge improvement.

I now expect story book sex scenes that feature woodcut art and skill checks. So... No more constitution dumping? Nobody likes a two pump chump. Nah in that case better hope you buffed your Alchemy or Slight of Hand at least...

I now expect story book sex scenes that feature woodcut art and skill checks.

You gotta do what you gotta do. One month isn't a huge amount of time, but likely time enough to square away some nagging issues with balance and bugs. If that means getting another Beta out to field player feedback great, but if not I'm fine with them just spending the time doing things internally and just providing us with some streams.

I generally hate actual crafting systems where you can actually craft weapons and armor, along with enhancements, as they tend to just ruin itemization and real unique items and they usually become huge distractions with little real payoff for the rest of the game. I vastly prefer upgrade/enhancement systems. PoE was on the right track in this regard but the execution left a lot to be desired. I have to say I rather liked Tyranny's crafting system due to its simplicity of material requirements even if it lacked the ability further enhance and augment items like PoE did with Lashings, Slayings, Proofing and Attribute Bonuses. I was much more invested and interested in upgrading my gear in that game as I had easily identifiable goals in order to do so. PoE's enchanting in comparison was needlessly complex and rather tiring. Crafting level was annoying and completely artificial, the enchantment points system was excessive and confusing for many and the plethora of materials required for everything was just tiring and overwhelming rather than interesting and enticing you to hunt for materials, which really doesn't work for a game like PoE like it does for say open world games, and the whole locking you into choices always rubs me the wrong way and feels like a trap. If we could get a system that was more like Tyranny's with regards to upgrade material requirements and DAO's Rune Slots I'd be way happier. Let us upgrade weapons and armor separate from enchantments with simple material requirements that just increase in quantity with each upgrade. Beyond improving basic item stats, upgrades would also open up rune slots for enchantments. Some unique items could have fewer or more slots along with fixed unique enchantments. Then let us craft Enchantment Runes that we can swap in and out and use the myriad of crafting materials PoE introduced in order to craft these Runes instead. Rarer materials create better runes with more unique qualities. And don't limit upgrades/enchantments by crafting skill which just auto-improves as we level up in order to lock us out. If someone wants to go trick out their weapon from the start and drain their resources to do so, let them. There are other, better, means to restrict this system that's based around player actions and choices with regards to resources and upgrades and not simply level locking them. As well I also really enjoy unique item quests. Stuff like The Blade of the Endless Paths where you find and put a weapon back together is always really rewarding to me. The thrill of finding pieces and putting it all together is great. So I hope to see at least a few of those in Deadfire. Plus this is more than a little bit of a Pirate themed game, give us some riddles and X marks the spot type **** to find this stuff.

It could be that but not likely. That Book Cipher is simply ignoring the letters and using the numbers to pull the corresponding word from the Bestiary Text. So the 6th word in the Imp text is They. And the 6th and 2nd words in the Rathun bestiary text are Pillagers Rathun. And so on.

Honestly can't see a single difference in the Maia Rua portrait. Pallegina is totally different from the actual Deadfire portrait but kind of feels more inline with her PoE portrait. I could take it or leave it. Xoti and Ydwin are crazy glammed up and distracting though.

A good point, but I think this also entirely depends on the approach that is taken. Depending on that Empower could need a boost or a nerf. Right now players will have what 5 or 6 Per-Rest Empowers by end game. If you can balance it so that the average player by end game gets 1-2 Combat Generated Empowers per average encounter and then power gamers who really build a character around RES getting maybe 3 or 4, if they're lucky, that's not a huge difference as right now all it takes is a simple rest to get back to max Empowers. Same for stocking rules, do you put a cap on Combat Generated Empowers or do you just let them accumulate, or even have a weight system so the 2nd takes longer to generate once the 1st is used. Now if they keep some amount of Per-rest Empowers on top of Combat Generated then that would probably into the realm of requiring a nerf and re-balancing of things. Personally I don't want any Per-Rest or stored Empowers. I think the intention is to keep the relative availability the same or lower, while changing how they generate to make them feel more meaningful and thematically tied to combat and the overall combat system which is focused around per-encounter, not per-rest.

Ideally it would balanced so that there is no standing Empower pool that is per rest. It would simply reset at end of every engagement and start over at the start of the next. If they were to keep the current Empower system in some form in addition to a bonus Empower that charges up in combat then that should be a separate resource to prevent that kind of gaming the system. Simplest way would be to just embed the timer in the current Empower slot, have a background color that slowly fills up the frame and when fully charged changes the color of the Empower star to something else, maybe even pulse a little, and then show the number of Per Rest Empowers with a + sign or something next to it to further denote the Bonus Empower. Then when that Bonus Empower is used the timer resets, the Empower Star returns to standard white yellow color and the counter number stays the same but with no + next to it. That way you can't accidentally use your Per Rest Empower instead of the Bonus Empower. That or limit the number of Per Rest Empowers you can restock to just one per combat and then any additional Empowers you charge up disappear once engagement ends.

For the countdown to Empower idea why not make it a two factor calculation. Start with a baseline of 25 seconds from start of combat at Power Level 1, Resolve 10. For each point of Resolve under/over 10 you add/subtract from the baseline by a flat .5 seconds and then for each Power Level over 1 you apply a further 5% reduction. So ((25 - RES) x (1-PL%)) = Final Countdown. This way even at 40 RES and PL 9 you'd still have 6 seconds between the start of combat and gaining your first Empower, at baseline 30 it would be 9 seconds. Heck even at a baseline of 20 seconds there would still be a 3 second countdown with max stats, and so for most players being in the 10-25 range at best for RES most of the time they would be looking at a 12-7.5 seconds for Single Class characters, while Multi Class would be looking at 14-8.75 seconds with the starting baseline of 20. At Baseline 25 it would 15-10.5 for SC and 17.5-12.25 seconds for MC. And at Baseline 30 it would be 18-13.5 for SC and 21-15.75 seconds for MC. What baseline you choose though this setup also helps to give Single Class characters a small, but welcomed, boost. Only real issue I see here is that early days could mean Empower is a lot more rare in combat if you don't have a high RES, which may or may not be a bad thing, as you level and gain PLs you get more powerful and gain faster access to Empower. So in that sense it will clearly reflect that progression helping to further highlight the PL mechanic. But really it all depends on the average length of combat and also how powerful Empower is. If many encounters last over 30 seconds in the early days it won't be a big deal. Might also be worthwhile to have Empower fully replenish your Power Source and maybe provide more than 10 additional PLs to abilities.

Well, combined with expanding the Injury system so that Minor Injuries could be acquired relatively frequently through normal combat via Crits would certainly provide ample reason to rest, while also hopefully making it so that resting is seen more as a more strategic action rather than a reflexive one when an Injury is acquired as it kind of is right now. Personally I'd also be in favor of no inherent Empower charges, just built up when in combat. At most I'd say give one every 10 levels. So at level 20 players would have 3 inherently, recouped by resting. Then have the normal Empower charge rate be dictated primarily by your Power Level with then Resolve, per MaxQuest's suggestion, amplify that. This would also give single class characters another small edge over multiclass characters give them an inherently faster Empower charge rate.

I think thematically this makes a lot of sense, my only concern would be is this too complicated. I think you can reach a certain point where Attributes have too many effects, and while quite complimentary, it might become overwhelming both when selecting them and when trying to evaluate their impact for players to juggle the pros and cons in their minds. I think this definitely toes the line between intuitive and too much. That's partly why I've only focused on RES in relation to expanding the Injuries. But I would certainly like to see it in practice to tell for sure. How the UI and info is presented contextually would also be very important, as it is with all things really. But man combining that with expanding the frequency and types of Injuries could make it a far more compelling and interesting system, which would have ripple effects all over the place influencing player behavior when in combat, how they manage resources and so forth.

Wholeheartedly agree on that. I think ultimately it becomes of an issue of implementation for a lot of these suggested mechanics, as the implications they introduce can be complicated and far reaching, which ultimately makes them unrealistic. RES influencing Inspiration/Affliction could work, sounds good, but the time do get it right might be more than they have at the moment and/or the lift to do it right might mean changing up too many other systems which is no good. I think that's the biggest hurdle for my pet approach of expanding the Injury system and linking RES to that. I think it would work, but how much time would it take to actually implement it and balance. Plus there's always the inherent risk of it simply not being fun. I think it would provide a reasonable challenge and require players to think intelligently about how many injuries they'll let accumulate before resting and managing their food/buffs, but does that actually translate into making the game more fun, or are you simply adding extra work for the player. In that respect more passive applications like affecting Inspiration/Affliction or the suggestion to have RES provide a chance for Empower to not drain a usage are less intrusive and don't disturb or change the overall feel of the game too much and can theoretically be implemented more easily. I would be perfectly happy with this. Makes Empower more viable and feel like a product of Combat and your character's determination to persevere and continue the fight. Works mechanically and thematically as you say. Great work, as always.

It really shouldn't be. It was reported by Josh (and it is true in beta) that conversation checks refering to attributes are fairly rare. Game tends to checks skills (athletics, deplomacy, bluff, intimidation etc.) more often now. Poor, poor Resolve. Can't say that's a bad change at all.

From a RPing standpoint as well Resolve still was one of the most important stats when it came to Dialogue in PoE, with the most checks out of all Attributes and I think often some of the highest. And I'm willing to bet the same will likely hold true in Deadfire. I still favor my Injury expansion idea, but at this stage in the game it's likely far too large a change to properly implement and test in such a short amount of time. As well as implications I haven't thought of at all that might kill it. Which is probably true for a lot of these other suggestions. I think right now the best thing may be to just revert MIG and RES back to what they were and then take feedback upon release and do internal testing to see if there's a clearly better solution and then to take the time to implement it for a 2.0 update. I think everyone agrees that PoE at 2.0 and 3.0 is clearly a better game, but it also wasn't broken or inherently bad at 1.0 either. Not everything can be perfect and that's OK.

I like this in theory as it seems the most fitting for Resolve in a RPing sense, but I'm not sure it would work out in the end. Practically speaking affecting the bonus/malus of Inspirations/Afflictions appears problematic. How do you scale an Attribute to effect a +/-5 in X Attribute effect with an single point increment that scales from 3-20? You can't scale it one to one and while you could scale every other or more points that would make in between points in Resolve feel wasted, even if it also affected duration. Affecting the duration is easy and seems most practical/reasonable, but the issue there is Intelligence already provides a +5% bonus to Duration. So that just leaves decreasing Affliction duration, which isn't all that bad, but is it enough. Unless you take away the Duration bonus from Intelligence and apply it Resolve, but would that then leave Intelligence wanting and possibly lead to some classes being spread thin across too many Attributes. I'm still in favor tying Resolve to Injuries and altering that system to be more frequent and varied, as to me it is currently lacking the proper depth or nuance needed to actually be an interesting mechanic in the game and having Resolve influence that would be a benefit to all classes and shouldn't spread any one thin or rob other Attributes of value. Edit: Nevermind, looks like Decreasing Affliction Duration is a pain in the ass too, per Josh:

I really don't like the Resolve/Empower idea as well as it basically offers the player nothing actionable or substantive to interact and engage with. It's a thing that exists out there and that may or may not trigger to their benefit or detriment with little influence from them and very little impact on the rest of the game. It doesn't add any real depth or nuance to combat and the overall experience, it simply exists to try and bolster Resolve as an Attribute which lacks purpose and to try to improve the Empower mechanic, which it doesn't actually have anything to do with. As I've posted in two other threads on this already, I would prefer Obsidian to instead rework the Injury system and have Resolve directly impact that to add more depth and Risk/Reward to that system as a staple of combat, thus making Resolve a more meaningful and present Attribute at the same time. Right now the Injury system works as a purely punitive system with little nuance or depth to it in the larger gameplay. You trigger a Trap or get Knocked out in combat, both somewhat uncommon to rare occurrences for many people, and the fact that we have a 3 injury limit, with the 4 resulting in Perma death, means it's something few people will actually let accumulate. So for the vast majority of players you'll see two outcomes: 1) reloading saves to redo combat to avoid knockouts or to avoid traps, or 2) resorting to resting immediately anytime someone acquires an Injury. The new Food system for resting is an interesting mechanic and one I very much am happy with over the old Camping Supplies, but the way Injuries work I don't see Food consumption and related bonuses side of it as enough of a deterrent to immediately resting upon Injury. Few people will actually carry on with a party member having 1 or 2 Injuries. And to me that's a really boring system, as it doesn't provide any real Risk/Reward behavior because the occurrence is still rather low and the penalty is too high. You get an Injury and you either Reload your save or Rest to remove it. So to me a simple solution would be to add more depth to the Injury system by making it more common in normal play. Create two types of Injuries, Major and Minor. Major Injuries would act much like the current system, 4 = Perma-death, more substantial penalties, but the player would only be able to recover from them at an Inn, not through Resting and Food consumption in the field. But the upside is they would become more rare as the main thing would now be Minor Injuries. These Minor Injuries would be acquirable in normal combat as the result of Crits or High DMG attacks, 8 = Perma Death upon Knockout, but they would carry lighter penalties compared to Major Injuries. These Minor Injuries though could be recovered through Resting and Food consumption in the field. And then when Knocked Out or hit with a Trap a dice roll will be made to determine whether you receive a Major or Minor Injury. Resolve would play into this as it would directly impact the outcome of these Injury rolls. Every point Above/Below 10 Resolve would provide +/-X% to the chance to the dice roll that determines if you receive a Minor Injury in combat when hit with a Crit and whether you receive a Major or Minor Injury when Knocked Out or hit with a Trap. An additional/alternative to this would be to have Resolve also reduce/increase the penalties of Injuries. Personally I would prefer the former or both, but not just the latter, but it is an option. To me this setup makes Injuries a far more present and interesting mechanic that players will actually have to interact with, manage and think about, along with resource management of food for resting now that Injuries would be far more common making the prospects of resting every time someone is Injured far less realistic. That said this setup would still be something players could actually influence directly and take steps and develop strategies to mitigate. Resolve would be the first such step to help boost the odds in their favor and potentially decrease the penalties of said Injuries, making it a more attractive Attribute and not simply one they can dump without much impact, as well as just all the other myriad of ways they have to develop their characters via equipment, armor, buffs, etc to protect them from Crits/Knockouts along with their overall tactics and strategy during combat to help shield their more vulnerable characters. Instead of Injuries being a near automatic trigger to reload or immediately Rest, it becomes a system that players will have to come to live with and manage in a strategic and thoughtful manner. Issue here is that this is potentially a rather large change that has rippling effects elsewhere in the game. Needing to rework and re-balance Injury penalties and the whole dice roll associated with how they are acquired, as well as re-balancing food distribution and whether the current pricing and availability is adequate or too limited to what you'll see players use, even after adjusting to the new system and realizing they can't constantly rest. But I think it's a worthwhile change that would help both the Injury/Resting systems out a lot as well as make Resolve a much more attractive and meaningful stat for all classes.

This feels like a very gimmicky random chance that has very little interesting gameplay implications or mechanics for players to really influence or interact with in on any meaningful level as a last ditch effort to make Empower and Resolve have some kind of weight and relevance in the game. Pulling what I posted in one of the other dozen Resolve threads: I would prefer to instead revamp the Injury system and have Resolve directly impact that to add more depth and Risk/Reward to it as a staple of combat. Have two degrees of Injuries: Major and Minor. Major would function as the current injuries do now, but the only change would be they can only be healed by staying at an Inn, not just resting with food, so as to provide more weight behind choosing to heal them over simply choosing to rest and eat in the field. Acquire 4 of them and you die, same as it is now. Then you would have Minor injuries which inflict smaller penalties. You would be able to acquire 8 of them before perma death. They could be healed via resting/food, but the big difference is that Minor Injuries could be acquired via normal combat, and not just from Knockouts and Traps. I figured the easiest mechanism would be from Crits, with a % based chance to acquire an injury when dealt one, possibly influenced by the overall dmg dealt. When you are knocked out in combat that too would trigger a roll that would determine if you receive a Major or Minor injury, possibly again influenced by overall dmg dealt in the knockout blow. Where Resolve plays into this is that your Resolve stat would help/hurt the overall % chance of acquiring Minor injuries from Crits in combat as well as the chances of receiving Major injuries from Knockouts. An alternative/additional possibility would be to have Resolve also decrease the effects of said injuries, so you can more easily power through multiple injuries with less of an impact on your character stats and fighting capabilities. And then obviously if you decrease your Resolve below 10 the odds of receiving Minor/Major injuries would then increase, as would the effects of said injuries. To me this would help to make injuries a more interesting as a mechanic and fact of life you'll have to deal with in combat, providing a more meaningful risk/reward to resting and consuming supplies to heal, as well as giving Resolve a more substantial and real world impact on gameplay that doesn't favor or penalize any one class too much. Instead of just resting every time a companion gets knocked out and acquires an injury they would now become just another element to manage in combat. And while it's also random chance, it is one that the player has a much greater impact on via Attribute choices, buffs and overall tactics and strategy in combat to help reduce crits on their characters and overall execution of encounters to eliminate more dangerous enemies and protect those party members more susceptible to crits.

I still would like to see Injuries changed up a bit with then Resolve playing into that. Have two degrees of Injuries: Major and Minor. Major would function as the current injuries do now, but the only change would be they can only be healed by staying at an Inn, not just resting with food. Acquire 4 of them and you die. Then you would have Minor injuries which inflict smaller penalties. You would be able to acquire 8 of them before perma death. They could be healed via resting/food, but the big difference is that Minor Injuries could be acquired via normal combat, and not just from Knockouts and Traps. I figured the easiest mechanism would be from Crits, with a % based chance to acquire an injury, possibly influenced by the overall dmg dealt. When you are knocked out in combat that too would trigger a roll that would determine if you receive a Major or Minor injury, possibly again influenced by overall dmg dealt in the knockout blow. Where Resolve plays into this is that your Resolve stat would help/hurt the overall % chance of acquiring Minor injuries from Crits in combat as well as the chances of receiving Major injuries from Knockouts. An additional possibility would be to also decrease the effects of said injuries, so you can power through with multiple injuries with less of an impact on your character stats. And then obviously if you decrease your Resolve below 10 the odds of receiving Minor/Major injuries would then increase, as would the effects of said injuries. To me this would help to make injuries more interesting as a mechanic, providing a more substantial risk/reward to resting and consuming supplies to heal, as well as giving Resolve a more substantial and real world impact on gameplay that doesn't favor or penalize any one class too much.

I've been enjoying the beta quite a bit since it came out. It felt off at first but since then I've gotten used to it and familiar with it's flow and mechanics and on top of the tweaks to things I've found it to be very satisfying to play and I'm now mostly positive about the changes and direction of things, but there's still a lot that can and needs to be done before release. I think there is still a good deal of balancing/tweaking that still needs to be done, better transparency and communication of abilities and systems and some potential additional support systems that may be needed to further flesh out the players ability to effect certain things like Action Speeds and PEN/AR. Only a few things to me really are broken and need major reworkings like Stacking Rules, Weapon Proficiency/Modals and Empower. I don't think the combat is too complex as I don't think players need to easily understand and grasp the underlying maths that control everything. That's an issue for power gamers looking to min/max things and find the optimal classes and abilities. What the average player does need though is to be able to confidently know what X choice will mean for their character and combat. If they choose X ability at level up or apply Y buff in combat they need to know and be able to judge in broad terms how that's going effect their play. That I think right now is not super clear for some things. But overall I think things are working out. I'm not a power gamer, I like creating powerful and efficient characters, but I don't have the patience or determination to really min/max things. Since day 1 of the Beta I was able to use some basic educated guesses and create some really fun and effective MC characters without needed to crunch the numbers or really understand the nuances and fine details of all the systems.

I think the simplest and most straightforward solution to this stacking issue is to just let everything stack. Keep the current framework of all Passives and the Highest Active buff stacks but then simply apply a fraction of the remaining active bonuses. Either by average or individual fractions of each based on rank of highest to lowest. So: 2nd Highest divide by 2 3rd Highest divide by 3 etc etc The rules as they are right now are "clear" enough on paper, Highest Active and any Passives stack, but in practice the UI when leveling up and selecting abilities as well as the diplay of active effects in the character screen don't reflect that at all. And more importantly when in combat on the fly that kind of stuff is not at all clear and really has no way of being very clear in a simple and easy way to understand. I think this is more an issue most people will simply never fully realize and they choose and apply buffs assuming they stack, with only a few actually figuring out that activating Swift Strikes and Frenzy at the same time doesn't actually confer a higher Action Speed Bonus. But by letting everything stack and simply decreasing the effectiveness of the additional bonuses you eliminate that issue and for those who are aware they won't feel as though certain builds, single or multi, in conjunction with other things like consumables aren't viable.

I'm fine with it. It's a more elegant way of presenting these requirements with a mild degree of familiarization required upfront. I think once you are a few hours into the game proper it won't be that confusing. Just messing in the Beta and doing my best to skip over the dialogue I've come to recognize more than a few at a glance without needing the tooltip to reference it.

I'm fine with the current recovery of weapons as there are a lot of means to counteract that in the builds I've been playing, but I know that's not the case of every class and every build type. And even for the build I've been messing with there could be more ways to mitigate that if not for the Stacking rules. I think keeping the relative baseline speed of combat as is would be fine if they then made the use of Modals, Passives, Drugs, Potions, Buffs, etc more integral to the experience and strategy of the game to overcome that, which it somewhat feels is the intention. But as it stands right now it feels a whole lot easier to drastically increase recovery times than it is to decrease it. Between Armor Penalties and Modals certain characters like your Fighter Tank could be looking at like 1 attack per 7+ seconds before they acquire Armored Grace, which only knocks less than a second off that.

Weapon Proficiencies/Modals are kind of bonkers in their current state. We will have a total of 8 of them by lvl 19, save for Devoted. That's beyond excessive given the current setup we have, not even taking into account the actual usefulness of the Modals themselves which is quite dubious and potential stacking conflicts. I feel like it would be way more beneficial if each Proficiency had Ranks to it rather than being a one off. Each rank could improve the effectiveness of the Modal it provides, the current Modals could stay as they are for Rank 1, but each subsequent Rank would decrease the Malus associated with it by X%. Windmill Slash at Rank 1 would be +100% Recovery Time with +2 Pen, but at Rank 3 it would only be like +50% Recovery Time. Or something like that. Few character builds will ever need to be proficient in 8 different weapons, more like 3 or 4. So why not make spending those later points mean something and not just have us picking random weapons we'll probably never use just because we have to. By level 7 in the Beta I was already just choosing a random weapon as 3 was really all any character in my party needed. You wouldn't even need to alter the current progression of every 3 levels or allotment of points. 8 Points would allow characters to max out two weapons and 2/3 of a third, or hit Rank 2 on 4, or 8 at Rank 1 if they're really weird.