thelee

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.

All dialogue is changed to "Nemnok! Nemnok! Nemnok!" All tool-tip text descriptions are also changed to "Nemnok! Nemnok! Nemnok!"

Have you gotten their turn-based mode survey? (Maybe it's just for backers) It seems to be pretty clear to me that turn-based mode is their sort of hail mary throw at understanding and adapting to the current cRPG market, and the mere existence of the turn-based beta mode seems to have reversed the game's standard downward trend on steam engagement (which is a pretty notable accomplishment for any game). If we see a PoE3 it'll probably be a combo turn-based and RtWP game. It's a big if, but PoE is original IP (read: doesn't need licensing fees and already has a proven fan base), and that is a really hard thing to come by these days. My guess is, it will receive Dragon Age treatment. Microsoft will fund it, but force them to make it more console-friendly. MSFT acquired an indie studio known for a specific approach to RPGs. Maybe MSFT of the 1990s/2000s would do that, but I feel like MSFT of the late 2010s is a bit better and is not expecting to turn Obsidian into a Ubisoft-type money-printing operation. We'll see, though. edit: more specifically the current MSFT gaming approach is less about pushing the xbox console itself, but pushing xbox as kind of an "idea" or brand across all microsoft platforms. I think maybe it means we're less likely to see a macOS or linux version of a PoE3. (which would personally make me sad since ~1/3 of my game time is on a macbook though maybe it would also make their QA easier. though maybe there'll be a business case to be made if it doesn't cost them much to add in the extra platform support vs the sales)

One thing to keep in mind is that a) characters can (rarely) lose flanked but still have a perception affliction [though this itself is likely a buggy handling of flanked] and b) even on enemies that are able to be rid of the perception affliction, you'll still have the confounding blind effect. so it's not "wasted" though it may still be a design error. though there are several effects in the game that seem redundant, and it is (to my reading) an intentional way of making an effect "sticky." For example, Wild Sprint (barbarian) gives you nimble and immunity to engagement which at first blush is weird because swift would do the exact same thing, but making them separate effects means that your dex inspiration can be countered (or ineffective) but you'll still have the immunity to engagement. Similarly, Writ of Engagement does stagger and cannot engage, which is redundant with stagger, but it means even if stagger doesn't work (might resistance or dispelling a might inspiration) the "cannot engage" component still does. i'm not sure if this is much comfort - I just remember that in any given run I find the Bridge Ablaze really challenging because even with scrolls of blessing in tow, the fact that every burned archer uses confounding blind on your party members is extremely punishing. there are also other bugs with confounding blind, i'm not sure if they've ever been addressed: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/104987-bugconfounding-blind-duration/

Wow.... since release? Obsidian seems to have dropped the ball when it comes to quality.... I mean, I love Obsidian's work, but virtually every game I can think of since they stopped being Black Isle Studios has had QA problems :-/

Spellshaping adds +1 for a smaller aoe and does -5 for a larger AoE. The "always right choice" angle is why the penalty is asymmetrically severe vs the possible bonus.

Yeah this has been an issue since forever. This is like my umpteenth run, and this is still an issue in the Cavern of Xaur Tuk Tuik: (this fire blight has been untargetable since almost as far back as I can remember - some people say it's related to saving/reloading) I mean, I guess strictly speaking it's not critical because nothing is breaking, but still a little in disbelief that over many many patches they've never fixed this. Dropbox link to output_log and save, in case developers still don't have enough evidence: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/dkd9s9tw6sh9oge/AABKgoDKtP801mmXNiAr94Mca?dl=0

note that these two don't stack, being both active effects. You'll only get the higher. That being said, exalted aura is much easier to have 100% uptime on, whereas unless you have a cipher with essence interrupter and lots of accuracy or a salvation of time/brilliant loop having robust uptime for such a long fight is going to be hard.

Which subclasses would you pick for Mindstalker and Ravager (Monk+Barbarian)then? i think furyshaper makes for a great all-around barbarian subclass (even just the AL1 frenzy totem is super great for any party, and it stacks with other action speed bonuses). monk you could make a case for any (i think forbidden fist might be a bit too challenging for an un-metagamed ravager build). i think helwalker might be great if you could handle the glass cannon-y ness of having a frenzied barbarian (-deflection) taking 50% extra damage because carnage scales with PL but also with might and helwalker can get tons of might. mindstalker: you'll do well with anyone other than a psion (psion only makes sense with a caster). debonaire+beguiler is a particularly synergistic combo because the beguiler can use lots of charm effects and the debonaire gets hit->crit conversion on charmed targets (on top of having a charm themselves) so with the right metagaming you can make lots of friends, and when the charm is about to wear off hit them with a really hard cipher or rogue power (soul ignition, disintegrate, toxic strike). it's really metagaming/micromanagement heavy though.

huh wow! I always thought "threatened by" in mob stance was simply another way to say "targets you are currently engaging". way to have a completely extra complicated layer! (and this explains what I thought was an apparent redundancy in the AI scripting). edit: is it fair to say that an engaged target is one that is definitely being threatened - but a threatened target is not necessarily one that is engaged? a threatened target is someone that could be engaged, but for whatever reason may not be (not high enough engagement limit?)

There was another post about Suppress Affliction not properly clearing charmed, but they thought it was limited to just that and in turn-based mode. I think it's a more general problem then that. For whatever reason, Suppress Affliction suppresses the listed debuffs, but does not actually suppress the actual effects, at least when it comes to afflictions. See screenshot: Eder clearly has the paralyzed effect suppressed, but is still paralyzed and immobile (there is a paralyzed icon in the tooltip above him and he is immobile/unable to act). This is in RTwP, not turn-based. Dropbox link to save and output_log: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/v46ydva9ilqtwr7/AAAtTOjPK46dYHdHrpFdI_dka?dl=0 (man, how do previously-working things keep getting broken...) edit: it was also mentioned in that charmed thread that paralyze was also broken in follow-up comments, so this is just another post to reinforce the idea that Suppress Affliction is pretty much broken right now, as well as providing save/output_log/screenshot data.