Answermancer

Well, you were wrong cause it came out before you posted that. Based on what other people are saying, I'm at work, don't hurt me if I'm wrong.

Could not agree more with this. Specifically the parts about pacing and how an hour of Deadfire invigorates me, while an hour in say, the Endless Paths left me tired. I'm gonna go ahead and mention in this thread that I disagree strongly with the people who say the dungeons are too small, since it's somewhat relevant to the poll and peoples' perception of the game. I think most of the dungeons are generally much better paced than Pillars, where they often felt like a slog. I would like there to be more of them, but I'm perfectly happy with 2-3 floor dungeons (and dungeon-like areas: Crookspur, Dunnage, etc.), and vastly prefer them to something like the Endless Paths which were cool the first time, and then a slog on subsequent playthroughs. Totally agree here too. It's frustrating to me how people treat playtime as anything but super subjective. The number of games I've seen someone complain about beating in "only" 20 hours, when I'm halfway through at 60 hours makes me just completely disregard these numbers. Not because mine are "right" in any way, but because they are extremely subjective.

Or the game is just not balanced at all on higher difficulties, and the mechanics are not the issue. This isn't evidence of anything, you just prefer per-rest attrition and are pretending like that the current difficulty of the game supports your preference. I think it's interesting how many people in this thread act say things like "one empowered fireball is all it takes to wipe out most encounters" and then go on to blame the per-encounter system and lack of rest attrition for this problem. Isn't the real problem that Empower is too powerful? Why isn't your supported solution to get rid of Empower and resting entirely? Personally, I think that's a much better solution, if Empower can't be balanced (and maybe it can't).

Yeah, I think that would be the ideal for Flurry and Cleave stance. The chaining is a huge problem for balance, but it you didn't get the effect on every actual "real" attack then that would feel crappy too.

Nobody that actually wants to play on the higher difficulties wants that, so you're talking to a strawman. What some of us do want is: A pace and rhythm to difficulty, and not every encounter to be maximally difficult, but for some (especially outside of level scaling) to still be easy so that the sense of power growth is maintained. I might be wrong about this, but a lot of what I read from the most hardcore players makes it sound like they want every encounter to be as difficult as possible, I suppose on PotD with level scaling that would be okay, although personally I think level scaling is more interesting if it does have a cap so that if you leave an early-game area untouched until you're level 20 you can still go in and one-shot everything. Maximal balls to the wall difficulty fits well in mods for the people who really want that, considering that modding seems to be pretty viable this time around with a lot of extra difficulty mods already out. For currently powerful builds and abilities to remain "powerful" and fun in the sense of remaining viable, rather than having them overnerfed to the point where a totally different set of abilities become mandatory.

Good points, especially the last line. Why is an ability that only works on pets equal or worse in every way to one that works on everyone? Does it have better range at least? I don't remember.

Good post! Some thoughts on rogues and priests. Rogue: Agreed pretty much entirely. A high PL ability that gives back Guile on kills is a fantastic idea! Right now there is very little incentive to be a pure Rogue IMO, and getting Guile from killing enemies sounds great both mechanically and thematically. As much as I like my multiclass rogues right now, I think it should be a PL8 or 9 ability though, not 7. Something only a single-class rogue can take (they're likely the only ones who would take enough active abilities to make good use of it anyway). Priest: Agreed. Especially about PL3 having too many useful spells while other tiers have too few. Also a Resolve (fear) immunity around PL3 (although it would add to the problem of too many good PL3 spells) seems like a good idea, Chanter has the heal beams that give Resolve immunity at PL3 as well (I think), so it seems like a reasonable place for it.

... we've had 2 major patches fixing bugs since release a little over a week ago. We've had ONE hotfix that primarily dealt with the issues related to importing save files (which is a pointless feature anyway considering that PoE 1 choices don't affect the plot of Deadfire in any meaningful way). Pillars 1 received significant updates (2.0 and 3.0) with tons of QoL features and bug fixes, while the planned DLC for Deadfire and another pointless sidekick don't inspire confidence. After all is said and done, this game is gonna end up abandoned like Tides of Numenera - a broken mess. Oh no they're only done 1 patch within a week of release, the sky is falling. Oh they announced a big patch coming at the start of June, today? And lots of other support coming all year? I'm shocked that your pessimistic nonsense based on literally nothing didn't come to pass. Get out of here with that ****.

Yeah, that makes me interested in actually using it sometime. If every enemy was 1:1 I wouldn't like that, I need those ups and downs, and it would feel silly if enemies in the starting areas could scale up to level 20 or whatever if I left them alone until the end game.

I'm not asking anyone to give me some in-depth calculation. Again this a strawman. As you can read in this very thread, I've replied to thoughtful posts about frequency and had no problems with others. You haven't spoken about frequency except in a very vague, impossible to decipher sense. You seem committed to attacking me personally and are putting a great deal of effort into repeatedly posting these attacks while you could have spent that same amount time ticking off a short list of dungeons you had to leave midway completed. Why should he have to do that? Why should he have to prove with his personal anecdotes, what countless people online have complained about, as has been brought up. And furthermore, why would he bother when you dismiss other people in this thread doing it as just single anecdotes that don't add up to much. Apparently unless we can get a signed affidavit from every person who's ever been annoyed by this issue, and can get an "accurate count", our experiences don't amount to any proof for you.

I wanna highlight these two posts because I think they're important, and this point always gets lost when people talk about difficulty, since it tends to be the most hardcore players who engage in the talk, and I don't think that's representative of most people. I personally agree that combat should have a rhythm and pacing with the difficulty varying a lot between encounters. Although I do like being challenged in many encounters, I also like feeling completely OP and one-shotting a group of dudes occasionally. What's the point of playing a game with increasing stats like an RPG if you never feel like those stats/levels made you powerful? Sure, currently the game skews too much in the direction of one-shotting everyone, but my point is it shouldn't skew too far in the direction of every fight being a boss fight either, certainly not outside of PotD (I play on Veteran/Hard personally, and if those were tuned so that every encounter was life or death I'd be annoyed). I think having every encounter be one or the other is bad, and a game where every encounter requires you to use all your skill and resources is just as bad as a game where everything is trivial, unless being super demanding is literally the point of the game, like Dark Souls, and that's the kind of game it sells itself as.

Those suggestions are not really the sort that they could apply to separate difficulties, especially things like making the ship minigame more difficult and exhausting on your resources. They're not gonna maintain a version of the game where that stuff is vastly more difficult, so if anything they'd apply to everyone. Also personally I think they would suck even if you're looking for difficulty, but that's just me. Agreed. If you don't want a game that ever frustrates you, play story mode. Deadfire has plenty of options for players who merely want to march through the game without resistance. But what is universally acknowledged, is that the high level difficulty isn't difficult. This is acknowledged even by the developers. I don't understand why you've insisted in participating in this thread in an entirely negative way about game changes that are unlikely to affect or affect significantly the level you enjoy playing at. There is a difference between challenge and difficulty and frustration. One is good; the other is bad. They are to some degree subjective, but that's why you work with large sources of data (like telemetry from beta testers) and make choices based on large portions of your fan base. Literally everything you posted does not sound difficult and challenging, it sounds annoying and frustrating. That's just my opinion, of course. Agreed, there's a massive difference between difficulty and wasting the player's time. Well said, I agree. I would like the encounters to be more difficult. I would absolutely not like them to add more time wasting busy work outside of combat to make that happen.

Literally "Rocks fall, everyone dies" the bug. Neat. I recently had my game start the unresponsive mouse thing after 140 hours. Sold the billion items I had in inventory, deleted 500 extra saves and failed restarts, verifying files now. We'll see if it stops. SUPER annoying trying to sell a ton of junk when every mouse click has to be clicked 3-4 times before it'll register, and sometimes when trying to sell in bulk it will start sliding down from the top amount without stopping when you just want to sell all but one. ETA: Turning off steam overlay worked. Guess it was the recent steam update, although the problem started several hours after the update. Yay computers. I also just started hitting this last night after like 30 hours of playing. Guess I'll have to turn off the overlay, it's super weird and annoying that it suddenly started after so much playtime without issues.

Well at least it actually shows you the real value on your equipped weapons now, that alone is a huge improvement over the first game IMO, even if the math used to get there is not intuitive. At least I can get an attack speed bonus and immediately confirm that it at least reduces it to some extent.

I still can't decide between Shadowdancer and Swashbuckler for my imported original Sneak Attack/Crit rogue, heh, I'm playing a game with each of them now to compare and they're just both so fun. I really like the survivability of the Swashbuckler, and Cleave Stance is hilariously awesome, I'm also stacking a fair bit of accuracy and crit conversion (including the Orlan bonus) and Devoted bonus means I usually over-penetrate and one-shot smaller enemies. The Shadowdancer isn't as far along, but Swift Strikes is just sooooo good, especially with Nature Godlike which I chose for that one, basically a permanent +2 power levels (which I only just realized affects Sneak Attack). I considered going with Shadowdancer when import is fixed, but then also making a new character for Swashbuckler, that's a sort of 3 Musketeers style guy with a Rapier (probably Devoted) and One-Handed style for even more crits. Is One-Handed completely outclassed by dual wielding?

You would think so. Being able to one shot dragons isn’t a priority at obsidian atm apparently The game is currently completely broken. It is almost impossible to die on the hardest difficulty POTD It probably shouldn't be a priority consider that the vast majority of players will never play anything about Normal. Not saying they shouldn't fix it, of course, but the number of people affected is infinitesimal compared to the crashes and import issues.

Solo and massive min maxing to the point of going to 3 res isn't for me, I think, but I'm curious how you guys play a build like this solo. How do you avoid getting CC'd forever and killed, or just one-shot right away by large groups? Consumables? I'm just curious cause I've never done it.

Monk/Rogue has better dps, fist does a little better damage than claw, and you get almost +80 lash from lightning strike and turning wheel, wildstrike only gives u +40. Is that only with fists, or with weapons too?

Worth mentioning that I believe every trap is visible to the naked eye as well, though obviously not super obvious.

Really great responses above by Ezekiel and Wormerine (and others), I encourage anyone who wants more insight into this decision to read and internalize them. I think a great point that I missed that others have pointed out and bears emphasizing: Wizards are now the only class that has access to every single spell without respeccing. Yes, you need to swap Grimoire, just like my a melee character has to swap weapons to change damage type, but by keeping several themed Grimoires around they can access any spell available to the class, which is something that no other caster can do in the new system (for the reasons outlined by others above).

I absolutely hated the idea at first but it grew on me during the Beta, and as I started to understand the tactical benefits to gameplay. But yeah, I understand why someone would hate it.

The idea behind Grimoires now is that they are highly focused and specialized, and meant to be used more like weapons, swapped for the right occasion. Gonna fight a bunch of stuff weak to fire? Equip a Grimoire focused on Fire spells. This also means that finding new Grimoires focused on specific domains is more interesting and Grimoires are more like any other loot. I believe they can even have special power and enchantments on them, just like weapons and armor. Anyway, if you hate it that's fine, but that's the idea. I think it sounds interesting in theory at least, more interesting than the first game where I basically never once swapped a Grimoire, and finding new ones was mostly pointless except in the few rare ones that had unique spells to learn.

Yeah.... I know it's a strong combo, I'm just really torn between that and the Swashbuckler, and also waffling on if I want Devoted if I do stick with Swashbuckler. Both should be good (Shadowdancer probably stronger overall but as long as they're both Good Enough I'm not too worried). For this character I like the idea of Swashbuckler a bit more from an RP perspective but even there Shadowdancer would totally work, with more of a blitz feel. Aaaaaah! Why can't one of them just be terrible and make the choice easy .

Not when my PC is already a Swashbuckler. ;P

Doesn't seem baffling to me, being able to respec to avoid the Devoted penalty is an example of heavily incentivizing really tedious and unfun player behavior. That is, going to respec before every dungeon/major fight.