bleedthefreak

My math may not be the best, but I don't think 13/40 voters is a 50/50 split between those that hate it and those that do not.

I was doing some testing after reading Josh's statement that my fighter/rogue should be wearing medium armor to be more survivable, so I used the console to spawn exceptional scale armor. Didn't seem to make a difference. I did some testing on a specific fight and found that with either exceptional leather armor or exceptional scale armor the numbers were about the same. Looking closer at the attacks being made, the penetration values were equal to (in almost every case) or higher than what exceptional scale even offered. Equal to is basically means the armor is a huge penalty, dropping my recovery speed 35%, for no gain (except protection from over penetration - which I agree shouldn't be discounted). Plate fared much better when testing with Exceptional Plate, but not as much as I'd have thought. The numbers weren't significantly lower, in some cases (though it didn't help one of the spells being cast, Necrotic Lance, is like the cure for Plate Armor). In the end it didn't seem like armor was even that useful. I like the penetration system but worry it requires very precise balance in terms of numbers (what penetration does the party have? what does the enemy have in this encounter?) to make it feel right for every fight. I think in many ways I do actually prefer armor just reducing damage instead of the penetration system because then at least some protection is better than none (which is historically accurate at least). I don't like how it feels like a waste to be wearing Exceptional Scale Armor and having it do absolutely no good, may as well be wearing clothing. In fact, wearing clothing would probably be even better because no defense is as good as an offense, and attacking more rapidly means dropping your enemies before they finish your unarmored characters off. EDIT - I should clarify for my testing I was just standing still with the rest of the party out of the combat and not actually playing/attacking but letting them hit me to get numbers. In a real fight things would have gone differently of course, so I may not be testing this right.

I actually think making folks pay to get into the beta is smart, because it filters out people just looking to play it for free for no other reason than just to have played it a bit before launch. I think it was the Rock, Paper, Shotgun news report about the delay that mentioned the beta was being tested buy folks that bought into it, which indicated strongly the most hard core of fans were doing the outsourced testing. I think that's the way to keep going. Besides, if someone really wanted their voice to be heard, they wouldn't really even need the beta to have an opinion - they can watch videos of the beta and post here or any number of other places any thoughts, suggestions, concerns, or questions they may have.

I actually gave you a quick reply on your comment on my video, hopefully that helps as well, but for posterity I'll paste it here: The problem with the ship combat in the beta is it's the first iteration of it and you get thrown in without any build up or tutorial, or really much info at all. They've made many changes to it since this beta version came out (including the option to bypass the text-based portion and skip directly to ship to ship combat if you prefer) but as I dig into it more and realize it's simply a turn-based game of cat and mouse with fantastic sound effects and some neat little moments (like scoring a hit on the other ships gun powder scores) the more I think when finished it could be really fun.

No he wasn't. Tin foil hat refers to conspiracy theorists and he was saying that suggesting that, given there's a more obvious explanation for the delay, your suggestion was bordering on a conspiracy theory. This is correct, I was not trying to attack the OP but rather reinforce my statement. Though, apropos of nothing, paranoia would be something I associate with conspiracy theorists.

Not even a little. You know what is better publicity than a second release date? Releasing the game. Take off the tin-foil hat.

Brilliant, why announce release date too soon then?*ahem* Katrina Garsten departure? I doubt her absence is making the bugs take longer to address. Unless she was some sort of uber-programmer and now they can't handle the workload without her.

Man, I know what that's from... is that Creepshow?

There were even more missing art assets and text strings than originally believed.

In hindsight it strikes me as possible the lack of any information on a final beta update before release may be because OBS didn't themselves know how to pull it off, but they clearly value beta tester feedback so maybe the delay is to not only have more time for bug fixes and polish but also in order to get additional feedback from a beta 4. Maybe one of the contributing factors in the delay is the inability to get a beta 4 that's in good shape out to us in a reasonable time before launch?

"Incorporate feedback from the beta" makes me think they are giving us another beta update in order to gather said feedback (just because they would have already gathered all the feedback from the last version, I would have thought).

Was there an official update? I'm not surprised, and it's probably for the best I don't play the hell out of the beta just weeks before the game proper drops, but I find myself a little bummed all the same.

Maybe more like around 33 hours of gameplay. https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/171762156201/hey-josh-with-pillars-1-in-addition-to-the-beta

How is not allowing players to choose their preference non-optimal? Some will like the mini-game, some will like it but not want to do it every time, and others may only like to engage in ship to ship combat. Why not let folks make that decision themselves? There are really few exceptions where it works. If the feature is made skippable it’s because it is not a good feature. If it’s not good it should be improved or removed. However, there were talks about automating fleeing/boarding, which is not present at the moment, and is not a bad addition by any means. The demo discussed is clearly put together from different gameplay bits. Transition between engagement and boarding is simply due to a cut. I am 100% sure there is an edit there. "If the feature is made skippable it’s because it is not a good feature." What kind of narrow minded nonsense is this?

How is not allowing players to choose their preference non-optimal? Some will like the mini-game, some will like it but not want to do it every time, and others may only like to engage in ship to ship combat. Why not let folks make that decision themselves?

There isn't anything wrong with you suggesting obvious, very good UI improvements such as filtering and searching. It's your tone that's the problem. You are coming across as a bit arrogant. That may well not be your intention, but I promise you the developers were not cackling with glee when they gave us the first pass of the custom AI scripting and declaring, "This will be a fine way to aggravate those fools! Mwa hahaha!"

Quick! Think of a word that describes someone who hangs out with you all of the time, but isn’t a friend. “Companion” is already taken. In old-school DnD they were called hirelings.

https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/171289309831/various-deadfire-changes It's entirely possible that they were planning to put things out to us, but the need to get all hands on deck for the actual game was more important in the end. I would totally buy that, and feel like if they told us the beta updates are done with so they can focus on the game proper not a lot of us would be surprised or disappointed. Certainly that would be better news than a last minute delay.

https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/171289309831/various-deadfire-changes I had completely forgotten he said those changes were coming to the beta, but I did read that when he posted it. Huh. I wonder what the hold up might be?

Maybe they missed the first Thursday of the month due to the short Feb month, and today is the day. I really don't quite understand why no one is just saying Yay or Nay to a new beta update, I don't even need a date, or even an estimate. I'd rather someone just came here and said "nope, no more updates" than having to wonder. Maybe the answer is they themselves don't know - but they'd have to make a decision pretty soon, I'd think. I'm totally cool if they want to put all their attention on the full release instead of trying to incorporate new stuff into the beta branch, for the record, but I would also like to have some thoughts from some of the more hardcore testers to help at least influence a day 0 patch.

We've been bamboozled gentlemen, should I get our pitchforks ready? Not really, Beta build was released in early February. There was no promise of a new beta this week from Obs, Weren't we promised an update on the first Thursday of every month? The early February update was on February 1st, which was in fact the first Thursday.... I had thought that would be the case myself. If that isn't going to happen (or if there is a delay) I hope an OBS can come clear things up because I keep hoping there is going to be a new update to play around with this weekend, and I'd rather stop wondering. Just a simple "nope, next version is the release version" would stop me visiting this thread ever hour.

This may have been suggested already - there are so many threads about Resolve - but since like the idea of Resolve governing spell power and Strength being used for physical damage, what if instead of some crazy random Empower effect from having a high resolve (and I very much don't think letting enemies use empower unless they are like boss fights is a good idea) instead the Resolve stat dictates the power level and number of Empowers you have? Say at 10 you have 2 empowers that boost +5 power levels, and that goes up all the way to like 3 empowers per rest at +10 power level around 20 Resolve? And conversely, dumping the stat gives you 1 empowers (or maybe 0 or still 2) at +3 or 4? Then it's useful for every class and still feels like its own thing.

I love almost everything about this beta, from the visuals and the writing to the ship combat (now I understand it a little better) and the new skill/tree system. However, I have two comments I want to have stated at some point, so this thread is as good a place as any. 1 - I know Josh talked about Weapon Proficiency in a tweet and his comment was something about how they should be situational. I actually realized reading his comment I disagree - I feel like they should be a boon, and everyone weapon proficiency should be awesome and wanted, so when you can finally pick one it's a Big Deal. If you have a proficiency with a weapon, you should WANT to have that ability active all the time - don't even make it a toggle, make it a passive. Proficient with Daggers? Enjoy +1 Penetration with all of them. Something like that. It should be awesome to have a proficiency with a weapon, not an ability I have to remember to use every so often. Also - let's have different speeds at which various classes gain proficiency. Especially for the classes that don't directly benefit from it. Maybe Fighters should get a LOT because many of their abilities can take advantage of it, while Wizards should get only a few? 2 - I like the way combat feels and I'm pleased there will be a slider to allow slower combat, which might be all I really need, but having put some time into the Pathfinder Kingmaker beta I have to admit there is something charming about the measured pace of combat there I prefer. Part of the issue with the backer beta might be those damned Languafish or whatever they are called attack like 3 times for every one time my characters attack, or so it seems, and so sometimes as soon as combat is joined I have a guy paralyzed by a dart and my rogue is nearly dead. No matter what they do, the game is going to be tough to follow when enemies move and attack so quickly, after all. I wish the game's characters had more weight and felt more deliberate, but it's important the enemies feel that way as well.

I haven't seen this mentioned (though I may have missed it) but what happened to slow mode? Is that coming back? It would go a long way making the larger fights more readable, I think.

Posting this because I didn't see it mentioned in the original list, but since the first release of the beta every time I make a custom formation I have to re-make it when I load my save game (it defaults back to the straight line of characters).