thelee

What did you mean? Hazards aren't consistently affected by many things but the big one is keyword interactions (so wall of fire and warding seal don't benefit from Scion of flame or heart of the storm)

Speaking in a personal capacity, I feel like these changes could make sense but are probably a bit out of scope for a "polish" set of changes since I don't think MaxQuest is looking to get ideas for completely new abilities or passives. Though, it unnerved me to no end in BB and release that Spirit of Decay and Heart of the Storm are in priest talent tree at AL4 but the former has literally 0 effect for anyone not a Berathian, and the latter has 0 effect until AL8 (Spark the Souls of the Righteous) due to broken hazard keyword handling. For a class I generally like and find well-balanced, they are clear trap choice talents. I reported this soooo many times... (I mean it makes as much sense as the ranger getting Scion of Flame and Spirit of Decay just because the arcane archer has an ability or two that benefit)

This is a great gathering of info and suggestions, but the game really needs more things that cares about the priest keywords because otherwise all this hard work is close to a no-op. (This is why I wanted to piggyback on Boeroer's idea of trinkets for items that provide specific effects based on priest keyword.) off the top of my head the most I think I can think of like three items that care about priest-specific keywords (xoti's lantern, mundane shell, and aloth's scepter, and "Cleansing" is never referenced as far as I can tell). druids only fare slightly better item-wise, but their subclasses interact more strongly with their keywords. edit - you left out cleansing i think only cleansing flame, magrans' might, and minor intercession have it.

I have been out of the pen and paper scene for a while, but ISTR that Pathfinder, D&D, etc. are all "one character round per turn" systems, like Deadfire TB-mode. Can someone explain like I'm dumb what's wrong with Deadfire's approach, because it seems analogous (and is based on an adaptation of the one character round per turn system into real-time via infinity engine)? I'm not saying that continuous turn based or tick system is bad--I loved playing Final Fantasy Tactics and enjoyed HoMM--just wondering what the reason why people feel that Deadfire needs to be like that versus the "once/turn" systems.

The intent of PL bonuses and whatnot are intended as "nudges" to encourage build variety. If priests have half of the possible spells that Wizards have, then each ability selection on level is worth "twice" as much. When a trinket provides a bonus spell, it becomes extremely easy to saturate the mid-higher ability levels, especially for a subclass like eothas who frequently doesn't even get a unique bonus spell. (Notably at AL6 the priest only has 4 different spells; only Wael gets a free fifth everyone else gets one of htose 4 for free which leaves only 3 for selection.) A wizard would only be vulnerable to something similar if they could pick two spells for every one ability point. Instead for wizards their large amount of spells per spell level simultaneously means they have to lean more on grimoires for spell diversity and they are less prone to being "crowded out" by said grimoires (both of which are very class-specific design philosophies). For talk of adding priest build diversity, naively implementing trinkets like you say would actually all but eliminate it for mid-high level priests (and to a lesser extent druids, though they are a bit more insulated by having a wee bit more spells/passives and subclasses with greater differentiation). edit - seriously though, is there really an optimal choice for every priest AL? it's starting to read to me that it's more of a "have a specific baseline play style for my priest that I want and it's too hard to deviate" vs "too many trap choices." Restore at AL1, Dire Blessing at AL3, and Devotions for the Faithful at AL4 are the closest things I can come up with that I would mandate any new priest player to pick up, everything else seems like a viable choice so long as you are flexible with what you think a priest in your party should do. (Except for Hand of Berath. That's probably a trap spell. And Prayer for the Body. That's probably too niche of a spell for general use.) they actually are, though not necessarily sufficiently weaker. A cipher won't be able to spam out AL7-9 effects straight at the start of a fight like any other caster, and a chanter is going to have to do a lot of waiting in between high-level invocations. I don't actually see too much of a balance problem here except in some specific fights (megabosses mostly, but also to a certain extent Porokoa in SSS as well as some challenges in SSS; possibly the dragon in BoW if you aren't able to circumvent llengrath's safeguard) or in specific non-standard technically-leaning challenges (solo mode) edit 2 - i do think martial classes in general are more constrained than caster classes in terms of active abilities and do agree that that is a bit problematic. it makes fighter/paladin regen all the more powerful due to how accessible they are. i'd rather a comprehensive fix for martial classes instead of leaning harder into buffing limited passives that only a couple classes get that are a) strong on their own and b) strong all the more because of a category-wide weakness. (the closest idea i had some time back was letting the first use of any given martial ability cost no class resource, so that it's less constraining to pick up a bunch of active effects in favor of spamming the same low-level one over and over. also some high-level martial abilities are likely overcosted. this is probably not something you could do with mods but has to be an obsidian-level change. also it may add too much complexity to the game.) edit 3 - for your specific example, it's important to note that 1 wound != 1 of any other class resource. wound costs for abilities are a lot more generously expensive because you are expected to generate a lot more over the course of the fight. generally speaking, too, the wound-spending martial abilities are also weaker to compensate for their higher level of use (force of anguish/efficient anguish is just a primary attack and prone (and a push that is a double-edged sword so i'll consider it a neutral effect); fighter knock down/mule kick gets bonus accuracy, bonus damage, a more powerful interrupt, and an affliction; essentially you make up the weakness of the former with sheer quantity). in terms of general balance it feels like the fighter/paladin/barbarian all seem to target generating just 1-2 resources for a typical fight with varying ways to potentially metagame them for more.

21 times! Wow, I'm not sure I rest that much in a normal no-challenge run, much less after already having played parts of the game. Seems unusually punishing.

i think this is a good direction though I personally don't have any firm ideas. after I wrote my long posts I was reflecting a bit on what I considered to be "auto-select" priest spells, and the only real one I can think of is Restore at AL1. Almost every single priest I've ever run has picked it up, it's just too important. Whereas even though there are some clearly "more generally useful" priest spells later on, I think at some point I have comfortably not-selected any given spell for some priest build, so I don't think the "clear selection" choice is too much of a problem as Boeroer suggests so much as it's more of a "not enough of a baseline competency" problem for priests (if you have your bases covered you feel more freedom to innovate/take more niche selections). But I think the general thrust of focusing more on priest/druids unique traits rather than making them more wizard-like is a good idea.

You'll be less surprised by game mechanics if you read like a lawyer. Deadfire IME is much closer to a game like M:TG than Baldur's Gate. Too bad there's no helpful "oracle"-style database that offers rules reminders for cards.

Imo the biggest problem with Priests and Druids is their very limited spell portfolio which forces you to forgo the circumstancial spells and always pick the same old spells. Grimoires solve this problem for Wizards - so it's only logical that trinkets that function somewhat similarly will solve that problem for Priests and Druids as well. They can be somewhat different (hence I only added on spell per PL or even a passive and added another bonuses) but in general that's what I think trinkets should be for. It's also nothing new that is difficult to implement/may cause balancing issues that are hard to foresee/easily understandable/uniform with grimoire trinkets. the problem is that wizards have *way* more spells than priest and druids, so if you have trinkets that provide even just 1 bonus spell per level, you are starting to severely crowd out meaningful choices upon level up and make the class/subclass more contingent on metagaming knowledge. Wizards have this problem a bit (more so on later levels), but it would be worse for druids/priests. (Wizards appear to have 2x the spells of priests and 2x to 1.5x the spells of druids, which means at level up a priest or druid spell selection is "worth" up to twice as much. At higher ability levels, priests would be extremely hard to distinguish, which would worsen the "same old spells" problem.) If we're talking about trying to add variability to priest builds while not introducing unknown quantities for balance purposes, then we should bring back a weaker version of the original subclasses with their favored and restricted keywords. E.G. "trinket of wael: +1 condemnation PL. -2 cleansing, -2 restoration PL" or "a different trinket of wael because wael is weird like that: +1 illusion, -2 fire, -2 electricity". (not to be treated as real examples, i haven't thought through the balancing symmetry there) ideally for druids and priests you'd do something like the wizard schools specialization where there's an organized logic to them so it's hard to get a trinket that just boosts the "standard" gameplay. edit - a possible zany idea are that trinkets have a simple +1 PL to some favored keyword (with a -somewhere to counterbalance) and bonus spells only for like ALs 1-3. edit 2 - something that would help the "crowd out" problem which I've long thought was needed for the wizard is that you get some sort of bonus for casting a spell that you both know and is in your grimoire/trinket. A +1 PL maybe.

Re: Boeroer and trinkets - I'd rather any priest or druid trinket have no bonus spell or casting-related extras. It makes the differentiation between druids/priests and wizards weaker. I'd rather the trinkets be more like Xoti's lantern, where they just interact with the various keywords that druids/priests have and which are otherwise extremely rare interacted with (and for priests specifically used to be way more relevant back in the days of the backer beta). Something like "Trinket of the Purifier: 15% chance for Cleansing priest abilities to echo" or "Doohickey of the Damned: chance to restore 1 class resource on critical hit with Condemnation priest ability" or "Twig of the Decrepit: empowered Decay effects restore 1 empower point". edit - looks like you added more about your trinket exampels

it's a hack. I don't mean that in a derogatory way, I end up doing hacks all the time in my day job. But fixing game issues by layering hacks on top of that does not make for a better game design, it makes for a more complicated game design, especially considering the realities of coding where you are likely also making it more fragile. Also: seals can be cast out of combat and stick around for a long time; ever since PoE1 that has basically been their point. Warding Seal is not the best spell in later levels to cast in combat but remains a great spell to cast out of combat (even sometimes better than Searing Seal because Warding Seal's smaller aoe doesn't cause curious people to walk over it while you're sneaking). The only seal that I could see an argument for adjustment is Repulsing Seal, because laying a prone trap out of combat is extremely underwhelming and in-combat faces a tough competition to Pillar of Faith, which does damage and has a longer range. But in effect PL scaling already helps Repulsing Seal quite a bit because it gets +2 acc/PL on top of prone-ing on a graze, two benefits that do not accrue to Pillar of Faith. So... eh This is my problem with unsystematic changes like this. I don't think you're broadening your perspective enough and combined with other comments it seems you might have a personal bias on making effects more consistent (e.g. accuracy/reliability) versus enabling a broad spectrum of options (the core PoE philosophy). You seem to be mostly just focused landing offensive effects. It still leaves might and intellect as dead stats for people who want to use non-hostile consumables, even though those stats are supposed to be otherwise universal. Enabling might and intellect on top of perception will not break explosives or potions, and will it make it more viable to split your skill points a bit more instead of basically having to invest everything into explosives or alchemy just to get enough PL scaling to use a poison or grenade decently in mid-late game. Yes, scrolls will probably need a rebalancing - frankly the fact that you get arcana/2 PL scaling on top of more powerful effects (that are already gated by a high arcana) is broken game design, but selectively enabling perception will meaningfully skew gameplay choices in the name of "reliability" (hellooooo scrolls of gaze of the adragan). The fact that it's weaker than PoE1 isn't a good enough metric to suggest that it's "balanced." For one: Deadfire and PoE1 have different level progressions. Plus, no other heal in Deadfire scales with character level, it would still make the moon godlike effect stupidly good. In PoE1 the character scaling was an attempt to keep it relevant into the late game, and it was too good (and it wasn't unique; Holy Radiance also scaled with character level and combined with disposition scaling was stupidly good). With your suggested scaling you are supplanting PL scaling mechanism with character level scaling - adding more cognitive load about exceptions being made to systems that are allegedly universal. And at level 20, you're talking 46 healing per health "unit", totaling 138 health over a hard fight (and you haven't mentioned whether or not it's influenced by might, and either answer to that question is a bad answer). That is a huge amount of healing to get for free (especially with might scaling) - and at any given health "unit" 46 healing alone is still the strongest instantaneous heal effect in the game outside of consumable scrolls or potions. This is in contrast to PoE1 where however good Moon Godlikes were, you still had things like Restore Critical Endurance so while at any discrete health level the moon godlike healing was huge, it was not unique. The lack of any comparable healing in Deadfire would make it all the more powerful. In addition, Deadfire--unlike PoE1--has a mechanism to try to keep things relevant as you go higher in levels: PL scaling. This should be the universal way that we make things stronger as you progress to minimize cognitive load and exceptions. You could make an argument that the moon godlike healing shouldn't be based on any class-specific progression, at which point there is precedent in the game for using a special single-class PL progression for these cases (and the fact that it's not more widely used in place of character-level scaling is a poor design decision to me). It is weak because PL scaling is weak when you only have one or at most two effects that scale. There is precedent here in that carnage still gets +10% damage/PL (and it used to be more generally the case where effects that did not jump or have multiple projectiles got +10%/PL, but in a move that continues to baffle me they nerfed this almost across the board, making multi-projectile/jump effects all the more powerful). A moon godlike that has an AL0 of 10 with +10% healing/single-class-PL with might scaling would be more powerful and more consistent with the existing rules of the game. I disagree. If you were limited to the same abilities at level 1 when you got to level 20, then yeah, sure. But one of the consequences of getting higher level in a game like this is you get more options. So an AL1 restore or AL3 nature's balm do not need to scale proportionally to health as you get up to level 20 to still be useful at level 20 - instead of being your only heal, they increasingly becomes part of a larger toolkit of options. There's a couple of interrelated issues here. The first is that these are funges of math, because you're not actually looking at the net effect. Case 1: a fighter with might 15, superb weapon, penetrating strike is better seen as having a graze/hit/crit coefficient of .87x, 1.85x, and 2.1x which become .87x, 1.85x, and 2.2x with improved crit. This can be as little as a +0% increase in net damage (in cases where you can never crit) to as much as ~3% (in cases where you always crit). So in this respect I think you're overstating the effect. Two: at the same, you're understating the effect. Flat damage increases are rare and because of their unconditional nature they should be limited in scope. Comparison: fighters get Weapon Mastery, which grants a +5% damage increase. Under the same scenario, this averages out to be a ~2% net damage increase on weapons you are proficient with. This seems quite perfectly in line with the magnitude of effect you get Improved Critical from some of these talents you're talking about. In one important way improved critical is even better, because it impacts spells which are otherwise extremely hard to boost damage-wise. Re: potent empower, I could maybe follow along that potent empower needs a buff or accurate empower needs a nerf because as it stands they are roughly in line with each other, but accurate empower is more generally useful than either potent or penetrating (or even lasting). I would probably advocate nerfing accurate empower a bit (+8 acc instead?) and making lasting empower effect durational effect instead of just afflictions/inspirations (many martial classes will have very few of these making this talent all the more marginal). Having a chance to look at some other things more deeply: Fighter 1. Please do not adjust deflection bonuses. Deflection is already a weird stat because of its increasing returns and its general murk/meaninglessness for many non-optimized-for-deflection character builds. I don't think +4 -> +6 meaningfully makes this more generally useful and only helps out the high deflection builds all the more. If you want to make it more generally useful, maybe adding a hit->graze chance would be better (high deflection builds aren't going to be hit all that much anyway). 2. I think this is way too good. In even slightly metagamed scenarios this basically seems like it can mean a fighter is immune to crits. I also have to ask - what is the purpose of this change? Is it just trying to de-murk % chance of happening effects? Because this does not seem like it's explicitly intended as a nerf or a buff but rather a lateral change. 3. I think we should be really really careful about making it easier to regenerate class resources. Same with paladin Virtuous Triumph, and arguably this is an easier condition to meet/metagame. I don't see any systematic polish reason why these should be buffed - I personally argued for so long to make existing effects weaker over several patches. Rogue 1. please no. Riposte is already a weird ability in that it is either virtually useless or extremely powerful. Instead of leaning into this more by providing what is essentially a win-more effect, i'd rather flatten this variability (that basically mandates metagaming) and provide a % riposte chance on grazes as well (even if lower than the % riposte chance on miss). 2. What would Perplexing Sap do? I think Sap is fine as it is, Perplexing Sap is fundamentally broken though. I would and have happily taken Sap as a skill, but after one ugly run where I discovered just how borked Perplexing Sap is, I will never upgrade. (maybe Perplexing Sap should be a redesign and that redesign could mean knocking the opponent asleep and when they wake they are hobbled and confused. A developer noted on my reported bug for Perplexing Sap that this was on their list of abilities that need a revisit so they are aware that it is also broken, but I'm guessing they just can't spare the time to retool it.) 4a. (lol at paying special attention to the cipher interaction. not judging, i paid special attention to the priest suggestions.) 5. I actually don't think it's too big a deal that flanked suppresses low stacks of confounding blind (mentioned as such in the bug forum thread), but this change smells to me like another hack, because it's possible that the designer who implemented this ability forgot that flanked suppresses confounding blind's early effects (or maybe flanked was added into perception affliction later in design and the interaction here was forgotten). I don't have another good suggestion though unless we're willing to go really strong or change the effect altogether, because with the current flanked/perception afflction/stacking system the ability at its core just doesn't work. (Go really strong: make each stack -10 deflection, so the first hit is equivalent to flanked, and it's all upside from there, cap at like 5 stacks. Change the effect altogether: one stack is -1 AR. So the first hit is a no-op (since Flanked also provides -1 AR), and it's all upside from there, though less generally obscenely strong as the previous suggestion) Wizard 1. I fully agree that Kalakoth is way too weak, but I prefer a less-murky debuff (to me it's murky because it's a bunch of effects that don't seem like they are connected) of just a deeper accuracy penalty. 2. Ghost Blades is fine as is. It is a party-friendly effect that also debuffs. It does not need a buff. 3. Probably better to shrink cast time. The effect and duration seem like in a good place for AL2, it is just weird that it has such a lengthy cast time considering basically every other wizard buff. I feel like this spell got missed in that one patch where they shrunk cast times for litanies/prayers and even Eldritch Aim.

i didn't have resolve inspirations because this specific party was leaning on suppress affliction early game. that was based on the assumption that suppress affliction actually worked. but yeah, now i need to adjust and respec my priest to pick up some inspirations again. (extra annoying because i'm using wael's this time around so i have no idea how much money i have, so respeccing is always a little bit of a minor anxiety)

Just posting again because I tried to see if Suppress Affliction would work on Frightened, nope, still can't use hostile abilities. edit - just have to re-register how friggin annoying it is to have known-working abilities suddenly break after some unrelated patch. i had no other way to dispel it, having relied on this ability actually working, so just wiped because i couldn't use any of my abilities.

I mean, their marketing guy didn't get his contract renewed (I think it was mentioned he failed to hit some sales targets or something), and they're sending out these surveys about whether turn-based mode would help us recommend pillars to a friend. They're professionals, sure, but that doesn't give them magical insight. Don't get me wrong, I don't think they're going to wander into this thread, read someone's post and slap themselves on the head and be like "OH THAT'S WHY" but it's a curious puzzle to try to figure out nonetheless.

What resolution are you at? Do note that there's some thread somewhere about suggestions for nvidia owners to improve performance. Possibly anti-aliasing is particularly murderous. But yeah, Deadfire is running on an inefficient engine... blame Unity I guess? I had a beast of a gaming PC I built earlier (2080 Ti, AMD Ryzen 2700x, 32 ram, nvme storage) and I would still get stutters and stuff (especially for certain types of spell effects like Mirror Image) even though I could play AAA games in 4K with all settings maxed as smooth as butter. I eventually gave up on the 2080 Ti and now have an AMD Vega 64 overclocked/undervolted, and it's still jarring how much more inefficient Deadfire is compared to other games I've played. Even with Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 4k at high, I barely drain more than 240W for my GPU and have decent thermals; on Assassin's Creed Odyssey I draw sub-200W and have cool temps to run at 1080p with all settings maxed with HDR. Meanwhile, for Deadfire I could literally just be staring at a paused combat screen with nothing happening and my GPU will be drawing 300W and spiking up to near-max temps (I've literally had the AMD Radeon software alert me about exceeding safe temps only while playing Deadfire). I have a custom profile just for Deadfire to force my fans on higher. In short, when it comes to Deadfire performance:

To wit, I'm just still reflecting how if I go back to PoE1 i have to be very judicious about using consumables because they might not actually do the action to use consumables (despite appearing in their action tool-tip) or if I'm unlucky I could even end up soft-locking the game.

In a world of long and frequent load times, such a store would be a god-send. But it is reasonable to say that it is not immersive. Frankly it can hollow out the game if done poorly. Sometimes the fun is in the journey ("flavor" of going to areas/stores) rather than the destination (the "practical result" of paying money to get an item). That is to say, ME3 is a pretty different game than Deadfire.

Sorry, if I were to better elaborate my perspective, I would use an analogy of an apartment building. All of us players are renting an apartment inside a building called "Deadfire." Consequently, I have a really high tolerance for stuff like mods, because whatever, it doesn't affect me what color someone paints their own room or what furniture they decide to put into, or even if they decide to tear down some of their internal walls or build up new ones. So long as the foundation--the structure that is Deadfire itself--is solid and robust. The stated mission in the OP, however, is to not only gather community wants but also as a roadmap/survey for Obsidian. At that point, my tolerance drops real real low, because then whatever adjustments to the "structure" need to be systematic and robust, because we should be making that structure more robust and not adding hacks on top of it. If someone in this building walls up all their windows because it's too cold, that's one thing. But if suddenly the entire building is going to wall up all the windows, including the ones in my apartment, I'm going to be like "whoa hey, why don't we fix the heating instead?" For example, the priest prayer/litanies which you suggest should be auto-learned. I'll concede that Prayer for the Body is pretty underpowered. And I can understand the logic for making that auto-learned to avoid having to spend a valuable ability point on it (and even make it a free action, as I've seen suggested for TB mode). From a mod perspective, doing that is the equivalent of one person walling up their own windows because they are cold--basically sure, whatever, you do you. As a blanket suggestion for Obsidian to pursue, however, that smacks to me of trying to have the building wall up everyone's windows instead of fixing the heating. The "heating" in this case is the fact that defensive stats are not appropriately balanced, and specifically +5 Con is just a really lame buff because most of the time it literally does nothing (unless you were just about to die, at which point it acts as a temporary and extremely-oddly-scaling heal) and is mostly useful for dispelling Weakened or Enfeebled on someone who really needs to be healed. Fans and mods shouldn't be expected to be able to fix how basic stats work (it's probably not even accessible for modding), but Obsidian should be, and Con and Resolve have long needed balancing help compared to the "offensive" stats (and w.r.t offensive stats, intellect is a bit too good, which is why I will and have explicitly chosen and used Prayer/Litany for the Spirit and used them unconditionally as buffs in combat and making them freebies would be too good). Same thing with adding +15 accuracy to the seals. Why? What's the underlying cause that needs to be fixed? As a fan-made mod, +15 accuracy buff to hazard effects, sure whatever. As a suggestion for Obsidian to pursue - uh, definitely not. What's the systematic reason to do so? Is it because the seals feel a little weak? Maybe hazard effects are a little weak because since 1.0 they are only varyingly affected by stats, keywords, passives, talents, and the like (I first reported Warding Seal's lack of interaction with Heart of the Storm despite having an Electricity keyword in like Backer Beta i think) and they should devote time to fix that instead of duct-taping a +15 accuracy on top of the seals. Same thing with moon godlike/fire godlike scaling or spell shape +1 PL boost. Rather than add more exceptions to PL scaling (I think it is already confusing cognitive load to recognize that some thigns scale with character level even though PL scaling was suppossed to subsume that), we should be fixing PL scaling to be more robust. If people think +1 PL is too weak of a spell shaping bonus, maybe it's because PL itself is extremely murky, or because they like to use spells that don't benefit nearly as well from +1 PL as others. (Or maybe because there should be an explainer on how getting +1 PL on a spell with no trade-off in some cases is extremely good - comparable to Prestige, which is an AL9 ability.) Similarly, maybe the Moon Godlike scaling is weak because +5% heal per PL doesn't save it from becoming completely forgettable by level 20. (I would personally want to rebalance PL scaling so that the fewer effects an effect has that scale, the strong the scaling effect.) I would go so far as to fix chanter chant scaling (which is its own unique character-level scaling; remove that and replace with PL-based mechanism) and also make summon/weapon scaling linked to PL scaling in some (even if partial) way. Same thing with why I agree with bringing back stat scaling to consumables. Removing the scaling effect of consumables from their skill was one thing (high alchemy + potion of impediment = interrupt lock anyone). Removing might/per/intellect effect on consumables was a whole other thing - Obsidian's equivalent of deciding to ban drying machines from the building because a few people started some dryer machine fires because they didn't clear out their lint trap - so now the rest of us are stuck with washing machines but no drying machines to go with them. (I also had specific disagreements with some things that I feel don't need buffing, like hard CC). edit - I also think there's a big problem of conflating "this ability is unpopular or underplayed" with "this ability is weak and specifically needs a buff" - those two are not even close to 1:1. I suspect that's what's leading to some suggestions in the priest section (and in some of the other classes that I skimmed). I think some allowance for buffing "underplayed" abilities just to increase usage is OK, but only in limited careful quantities.

While I appreciate the time it took to put together this huge list, I kind of disagree with its overall mission, since frankly for a lot of these I don't see the underlying systematic "logic" behind a lot of the suggestions and so it seems more like a curated list of personal wants than any general systematic "fix." Which I mean, ok, fine for a fan-made mod, but way too disruptive as official changes to the game without a good underlying logic, except in cases of what I would personally consider objectively-considered balancing failures. Specific sections: Afflictions - strongly strongly strongly strongly strongly disagree with making the with making the hard CCs stronger. The fact that PoE1 hard-CCs were also extremely good defense buffs was broken design imo, and harkens back to how obscenely good hard-CC (hold person and the like) was in AD&D/D&D/BG/BG2/IWD/IWD2. Hard CC is good enough on its own, the extra stuff is just to help differentiate them a bit. I also strongly (but not as strongly) disagree with making increasing attribute bonuses/maluses with higher tier inspirations - first in the general sense the increasing side buff/debuff is what differentiates the tiers and the increasing scaling is unnecessary extra cognitive load - second in the specific suggested tweaks because the increased scaling is so marginal that I don't understand why it's even worth doing for the extra cognitive load. Also I disagree (not strongly) with prone tweaks, first of all because they misunderstand how prone works and interacts with interrupt and second because prone is still fundamentally an interrupt mechanism, not a CC mechanism and I would strongly disagree conflating the two systematically. That being said, I agree that Immobilize is weak and frankly both Hobbled and Immobilized are weak due to how conditional they are, but miss-to-graze is way too good and scales way too well (way better than graze-to-hit or hit-to-crit). I think Hobbled and Immobilized might be better fit with a general/additional action speed penalty on top of their stride/immobility so that more characters actively feel the hurt (on top of the action speed loss from the dexterity loss). Spell Shaping - disagree with changing the -5/+1 balance. It's so trivially easy to to adjust the spell size and use conditionally that you have to make the upside narrow. Even as it is now, on smaller encounters or boss fights spell shaping means all your shapable spells have an unconditional +1 PL. Frankly I'm a little uncomfortable that you even get the +1 balance - for foe-and-friend effects you already get a huge benefit in being able to squeeze the aoe smaller, the fact that you also get +1 PL (in exchange for avoiding hurting your own party members) is no trade-off at all. Other General Stuff 3/4/5 - these effects don't need to be buffed. They are not traded off in with other passives, so it's more about "do you want to do more damage" rather than "which talent do you take to do more damage". 6 - by contrast, this is traded off (in that you either equip a flail or equip something else) and 10% arcing blows is objectively extremely weak compared to anything else that a weapon gets. I have to imagine this was some balancing oversight from back when grazes didn't exist or something. I would fully support a buff to 30% (which is more necessary than in PoE1 given that graze range is smaller in RTwP). 10 - I would frankly want all consumables to benefit from might/int/perception again. They already occupy a weird zone in relation to the inspirations because they odn't get the +5 might/intellect/perception benefit, but they would get the +2 PEN/crit-on-interrupt/+1 PL/graze-to-hit/hit-to-crit benefits. And it's an undue cognitive load to remember that might/int/perception do what they say they do except when it comes to consumables. I think Obsidian overcorrected with consumables. 11 - no no no no no no no on bonus spells. casters already have way more actions available to them than martial classes, and this exacerbates the caster action advantage. it also has poor interactions with self-empower and rounding. it also has surprising balancing effects (many spells are balanced in effect by virtue of effectively being limited in number of cast/encounter in most cases to 2, with an occasional +1 from empower). Racials - Moon godlike scaling was way too good in PoE1, I don't want a return to those days. I also don't like the idea of adding more exceptions to PL scaling by adding yet another place where things scale by a separate dimension. I would rather we fix PL scaling. same thing with suggestion for increased PEN per PL scaling for fire godlike. I'm going to skip over to priest because that's where I have the most expertise: 1. why?? 2/3/4 - why???? this to me seems like trying to bring back a broken artifact of PoE1, which was a +15 accuracy bonus to hazard effects. There's no systematic reason why these should have a +15 accuracy bonus. Any weakness should be addressed by fixing the fact that hazard effects in Deadfire lack all sorts of interactions with keywords and stats (though even despite this both warding seal and searing seal are very usable spells). 5 - -25 deflection is extremely powerful if you can land it. 4.5s seems decently in line. 6 - why? multiple tier 1 inspirations in one go across basically your entire party is very powerful. inspirations aren't just there for the buffs, but as a dispel, and also as an affliction shield. priest of eothas - i don't actually dislike this change, but i think it goes against the philosophy of this class which was essentially to be more like the "vanilla" priest experience (like the druid animist). Anyway, don't take this as me being overly critical or severe - this obviously took a lot of time and thought to put together and I don't want to discount that. If I could summarize my concern, it's that the game design should be well-considered and systematic. You'll note my bafflement in the priest section comes from un-systematic "exceptions" being made to the class, for reasons that I don't feel justify breaking the general game design. In fact, I think the main thing that should be done to fix the core game is to fix the areas where the basic system isn't systematic enough (missing keyword interactions, hazards not working right, places where PL scaling is not applied, where stats are not applied) or the basic system itself is unbalanced (PL scaling un-duly favoring certain types of abilities).

also, you should post this in the main bug forums. i don't think the "patch beta" sub-forum is actively checked unless there's actually a patch on the beta branch being tested.

for bug reporting you should also at minimum attach a save game where this is happening. use dropbox or google drive to generate a link since it's too large to upload directly to the forums. Add an output_log for extra credit, and a screenshot of it in action for double-extra credit.

This is one of those "dumb questions" but you're double-sure you're using a greatsword and not an estoc? Anyway, you should report this in the bug forums if you want it to get noticed as an issue. Be prepared to have a google drive or dropbox account so that you can share a save game where this is ahppening. (Adding screenshots or an output_log will help) edit: nm, saw your identical post in bug forums

off-topic but your name is displayed as "Ormag�den" (with a question mark/broken unicode codepoint) and it actually breaks my forum notifications (it doesn't render at all). way to troll the board with your user name

are you on 4.1.2? because this sounds a lot like a bug in earlier versions (since fixed) where some magical gear was losing their stats (related to the loot being dropped from a kill-on-crit i think)

I'm sure they would love to roll their own engine if they could, but it seems like basically a financial non-starter for any non-AAA-producing studio. edit - realize you didn't necessarily mean their own custom engine. Yeah - I don't know the gaming landscape for engines that well, but it seems like some problems are just endemic to Unity (in PoE1 the increasingly long save/load times, huge patch sizes; in Deadfire, extremely inefficient performance even on powerhouse machines). But I mean, I'm pretty sure they're doing cost-benefit analyses and Unity keeps winning (for now). ...wow. I think this is way more a reflection of you than anything else. This is why Outer Worlds is not doing romances at all simply because given finite time they'd rather spend it on gameplay for everyone rather than deeply involved romances. Not directly to your point, but: Two things BG2 did right about romances: a) unique romance music, so you basically had a big audio cue of HAY WE'RE HAVING A ROMANCE DIALOGUE. b) LOTS of romance dialogue. One thing that BG2 did wrong: a) LOTS of romance dialogue. Was great for a completionist playing the first time, but on successive runs I had to use console commands to manually advance the romance, simply because I'd be playing through the game too quickly. Jaheira was particularly bad about this because there were so many forced waits in between dialogue that were only ticked off with actual played time not in-game (who thought this was a good idea??). W.R.T. Deadfire, I agree that they are romances that basically aren't. You get like a special dialogue when you hit max companion affinity and... that's it. I mean, granted I skim, but with every companion I'm kind of surprised by how sudden it starts and how it basically never comes up again once we're a "thing." I think this is kind of like the ship combat mini-game. IT was promised or players demanded it, but they really couldn't spare the time to do it right. Probably would have been better to not do it at all. I think this is just the reality of being a small independent studio. There are some nice touches here and there, but they're not going to have the resources and time to do the environmental storytelling of a Bethesda game (I remember in Oblivion there was an NPC with a daily schedule where they would leave their house at night after their wife joined them in bed to go to another house to sleep with the woman there, a clear sign of prolonged infidelity. Probably like .01% of players ever noticed this neat little detail, and only a super well-funded AAA game from a larger studio has the resources to blow designer/engineering time to support this little detail). Don't get me wrong, I would love more "delightful surprises" but I'm also being realistic here. Re: BG2 I submit there's a lot of nostalgia at play here. There's taste also, since I truly think Deadfire's music is exceptional -- I actually found PoE1 to be kind of derivative and forgettable (except for the combat music which I heard a bajillion times so I can never forget it--and neither can my wife), and the only music about Deadfire I dislike is music that was imported directly from Deadfire. But I think claims about how BG2 or some other classic game did it better have to be couched in the context that htey are likely heavily influenced by nostalgia or worse: being played in an especially formative time of one's life.