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Answermancer

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Posts posted by Answermancer

  1. I usually don't buy a agme that I definately know I'll like. There are so many let's play videos for every single game out there. Why spend money blindly (or semi-blindly) on a (usually) expensive game if you don't know if you're gonna play it to the end?

    Unless money is not a problem, so it's ok I guess.

    But I get it. Games are like movies this days. Spam everywhere with their "awesomeness" and most people are not scrutinizing geeks like us here so they buy based on cover. Still, fool me once it's on you, fool me twice...

    Well for me, I enjoy lots of types of games and I would rather play 50 games in a year and play each one 25% of the way through than play 5 of them all the way to end since, like I said, the "end" doesn't really matter to me at all. It's an arbitrary point like any other.

     

    Of course, there are exceptions and those are the games that I play to the end and even replay (Pillars and Tyranny are both recent examples), and games that are sandboxes without any real "end" (which I tend to enjoy), and games that just have "matches" (like a MOBA), and games that are all about replayability with different settings (like Civ) etc., etc.

     

    I used to finish more games when I was younger because I had more time than money, now the ratio is inverted and I play far more games but get to the end of relatively few of them.

  2.  

     

     

    And i would stick with the Fighters are the masters of martial combat mantra. Paladins have lots of useful abilities why do they need to take from Fighters without having to multi?

     

    I don't see why you can't just multi-class? This is the defining feature of this new game, embrace it as its not going away.

     

     

    It's only "taking away" from Fighters because Obsidian decided, completely arbitrarily, to give these styles only to them, without any precedent in the first game or any other game, or any of the games this series in based on.

     

    I want to make the kind of Pure Rogue that I've been able to in every D&D inspired game since Icewind Dale 2, which shouldn't include giving up high-level rogue skills for a bunch of Fighter/Monk/Whatever skills that I don't want.

     

    Obviously they could give Fighters different and better passives in place of these!

     

    There is nothing defining about styles for Fighters, they were never even tied to Fighters previously, and I don't know why you think that Fighters "obviously" have to be masters of fighting styles and nobody else can when Fighters in Pillars have a bunch of other defining characteristics that are way more iconic IMO. Like I said, Constant Recovery, improved heavy armor via Armored Grace, Stances, and abilities that move, lock down and control enemies.

     

    And I really can't see how you can argue against Shieldbearers of St. Elcga having access to Weapon and Shield style without multiclassing. I mean honestly, come on. If you make a pure-class Shieldbearer, how does it make any sense for them to be worse at fighting with a shield than a random fighter or X/fighter off the street?? A whole order of Paladins devoted to fighting with shields and they can't even match a pure fighter?

     

     

     

     

    Because people don't want to lose their highest level talents. Which is why I suggested getting rid of single classed characters. At that point you're getting the flexibility and not losing anything.

     

     

    Exactly! If this is the direction they wanna go then just give the full range of abilities to multi-class characters, don't give each class a point every level or whatever and make them share a bit, and get rid of single class altogether because it will never fit previously available archetypes.

     

    Like, apparently the archetype of a Shield-focused Paladin isn't the guy who's a Paladin in the order of the Shieldbearers. No, he's the guy who's a Paladin in the order of the Shieldbearers but also moonlights as an Unbroken for some reason. Oh, and he never learned enough to be a master of either one.

    • Like 3
  3. Yeah, and if you're tired of my rogue-centered whining (though I will advocate for freed Weapon Styles until release :p), consider the shield Paladin:

    • There's a Paladin order called the Shieldbearers of St. Elcga.
    • They get a bonus when using a shield.
    • They can't get Shield and Weapon style (without becoming another victim of X/Devoted).

    Are you really going to argue that a Paladin whose order is centered all around training with a shield shouldn't get access to Shield and Weapon style because "Fighters are the masters of arms and everyone else is an amateur"?

     

    It's a totally arbitrary decision to put the Styles in Fighter instead of more interesting passives, and deny them to everyone else. I don't buy the "it's special to fighters!" thing at all, Contant Recovery is special to Fighters, as well as stances, as well as various martial tactical moves around bullying enemies.

    • Like 7
  4. That's exactly what I wanted, and exactly what I did. Turns out a devoted/streetfighter is a total badass.

    Oh for sure, I'm sure it's fantastic, but it will never have access to high level rogue abilities AND it will use a lot of fighter abilities because why not? It would be a waste not to.

     

    So yeah it's a totally badass character, and probably what I will make if they don't change things, but it's a different archetype both from my Pillars 1 rogue, and from the "super fast attack rogue" in general.

    • Like 1
  5. Why is two-weapon fighting more of a fighter thing than a rogue thing? Other than "that's the tree it's in", I mean. What about two-weapon fighting is more fighter-defining than rogue-defining?

     

    It seems like an arbitrary decision. It's more like "we couldn't think of anything really good and iconic for fighters so we just put the weapon styles there instead".

    Exactly! 

     

    Fighters are the martial mastery class, fighting is what they do and is all they do and they do it better than amateurs.

    This meme needs to die, rogues haven't been "the guy that takes lockpicking and stealth and suck at fighting" for a long time. They are the ninja/agile melee dps class. This has been true in almost every game for like 20 years. They are listed as a Striker, not "Utility with some pity DPS". It absolutely makes sense that they should have some degree of weapon mastery (maybe for limited sets of weapons).

     

    Hell, Eder was originally a rogue in Pillars! Same guy, same backstory, rogue. They only changed it because they wanted the first companion you find to be a fighter (read: tank so that new players don't get wiped as easily). Check the original Kickstarter for Pillars 1 if you don't believe me.

     

    If Fighters are going to be only about having a ****ty knockdown and other 'meh' abilities they might as well just get rid of them as a class. Currently I use Fighters a lot in my multi classing as I like melee characters and Fighters are great at melee, They blend well with lots of classes.

    So give them better abilities, including passives, rather than taking crucial passives from everyone else. Who knows, their high-level abilities might be great.

     

    If I could get the weapon style of my choice without taking Fighter then I could go with a Cipher Monk and get the big damage increase from Soul Whip plus get a spammable power or two. In effect I'd have three classes.

    Not with my idea, which doesn't touch multi-class characters at all :p. You wouldn't be able to multi-class AND take a weapon style with my system (problematic and overcomplicated though it is).

     

    In the example of your Rogue who wants two weapon style what is stopping you from multi classing with a Fighter? You must value whatever else you did more than getting access to two weapon style. Sounds like a choice with consequences to me.

    Because the archetype I want is the rogue who attacks super fast with 2 weapons but is still a rogue. I don't want to multiclass and take all of Fighter (which I want 1 single passive out of) and lose out of a ton of Rogue abilities (as opposed to 1-2 if the talent was universal or I had some other way to get it) just for that.

     

    I can do this in every edition of D&D from 3 up, I can do this in Pillars 1, I can't do it here.

     

    Although right now, if the system doesn't change I probably will make a Rogue/Devoted. And everyone who wants to play a melee character will make an X/Devoted. How boring is that? It's the same as 3rd edition where every single melee class took a level or two of fighter, rogues included.

     

    At least in 3rd edition you could still take two weapon fighting without doing that :p

     

    What the...? No, you wouldn't "in effect have three classes". Does a +20% action speed with one-handed weapons really define a character as effectively having fighter classes? Does that seem so powerful and uniquely fighter that it effectively grants the benefits of the fighter class?

     

    If you give a Paladin sneak attack, that Paladin effectively has the fundamentals of the Rogue class. Same if you gave a Paladin frenzy--it effectively has the fundamentals of the barbarian class. Those things would change the way the paladin plays to be more like those other classes, because they are fundamental to those classes.

     

    But I don't think giving a Paladin +15% damage with two-handed weapons effectively makes that Paladin play any more like a fighter. It just makes that Paladin do more of what it already does.

     

    Those weapon talents are, as I said, to broadly useful to be class-specific talents.

    Totally agreed.

  6. Deep pockets is a Rogue (I think) ability now. Similar to my views on taking Fighter multi if you want Fighter abilities, I'd say take Rogue if you want Rogue abilities. All of the 'general talent pool' abilities are specific to one or more classes, making them available to everyone cheapens the class that had them. 

     

    Plus where do you draw the line? If weapon styles are OK for everyone why not combat stances or regen? If you make the general pool abilities weaker they can still end up being an auto pick or be complete trash.

    This seems like circular reasoning to me:

    "Only fighters get weapons styles now, therefore only fighters should get them or they are getting cheated. Only rogues get deep pockets, therefore only rogues should get them."

     

    Sure that's true right now, but that's not much of an argument because it wasn't true in Pillars 1 (nor D&D since 3E for that matter, two-weapon fighting, my goto example was a generic perk available to anyone who met the stat requirement).

     

    There's nothing explicitly Fighter about two weapon fighting, or explicitly rogue about deep pockets. They just happen to be limited that way right now, and clearly some of us disagree with that decision.

     

    As to where to draw the line, drawing it the same place as Pillars 1 makes sense for a start. In my little writeup idea and mockup I even specifically got rid of the class-defining passives from the second tab (Sneak Attack for rogues, Constant Recovery for Fighters, things like Soul Whip or Carnage, etc. etc.).

     

    In contrast, I don't think there is anything at all about deep pockets that screams rogue to me, nor anything about two weapon fighting that screams fighter.

    • Like 1
  7. Why should everyone get access to weapon styles and weapon focus?

     

    If you want to be good at melee multi with a Fighter and take the weapon style and stance of your choice. Being masters of martial skill is what fighter do. Why should your Rogue be able to cherrypick the best abilities from a Fighter and keep the power level of a pure Rogue?

     

    Now if you want your Rogue to be better at melee you need to sacrifice a little power level and multi with a Fighter. I really do not see the problem with increased access to abilities from another class coming at the cost of a reduced power level.

     

    TANSTAFL

    Well, I don't think it's cherrypicking the best abilities, and the threshold for which passives are available could be lower. Keep in mind this would make passives from various classes available to casters, which they are currently sorely lacking in.

     

    And I would argue that rogues absolutely should get two weapon fighting and one weapon fighting options without having to multiclass, but then I am a rogue fanboy. :p 

     

    It's too complicated and it doesn't really solve the problem, imho. It'll confuse people who picked single class, doesn't solve the problem for multiclass people who want more unique / diverse builds.

    Yes, I'm inclined to agree that it's too complicated and confusing.

     

    Part of the idea was to try to change the existing UI as little as possible (I work on UI a lot professionally so I think that anything that would lower the requirement for them to redesign everything would be good).

     

    I think multi-class builds already have a lot of diversity, this was strictly a replacement idea for helping single-class without adding a universal talent pool.

  8.  

     

     

    Most people who buy games *never finish them*, 

     Why do they buy them then?  :blink:

     

     

    I can answer this a bit.

     

    I buy a ton of games because I am interested in exploring different aspects of them, different mechanics, different settings, different art, etc. Mechanics tend to be most interesting to me though, since I enjoy tinkering with them and learning them.

     

    "Finishing" them has zero interest for me unless I really like the story OR there are things that change and remain interesting for the entire play through, and that's almost never the case. Basically it's the journey, not the destination.

     

    Another thing I've had happen (and others have told me they do this too) is stopping right before the end of the game, psychologically it's something like "I don't want it to end, so I won't get to the end."

     

    That said I did beat Pillars on Hard, and more than once, because I really like it both mechanically (I love messing with character builds, optimizing, etc.) and in terms of story everything else. But it's an exception, I probably only get to the "end" of like 5% of the games I play.

    • Like 1
  9. I have an another problem with magic system.

     

    Priest for exemple.

     

    Now, we know there are 3 levels of inspiration....

     

    Ok, so... Question to 1 million : What is interrest to pick level 1 and level 3, spells of priest (+perception) Two spells that do not stack ?

     

    Answer : No interrest.

     

    It would not be a problem, if priest wasn't choose each spell at level up...

     

    I disagree a little bit, there are a few other considerations, for instance area of effect.

     

    I have both Blessing and Dire Blessing on my priest in the beta and use both:

    • Blessing at the start of fights, because it has a massive AoE and I can hit everyone with it as they reposition.
    • Dire Blessing more surgically (the AoE is quite small) to hit my main damage dealers once they close in.
  10. So I personally agree that single-class characters could use access to more passives, and I read through this thread and thought about a lot of the arguments.

     

    Aside from the general question of "should there be access to general talents" I think there's also an issue of implementation and UI for the devs, because right now it would be kind of complicated and clash with the current UI I think, especially if they just added duplicate talents to classes because now suddenly a multi-class character could take the same passive twice or something.

     

    Anyway, I thought of a weird idea that I briefly mentioned in another thread and made a mockup below.

     

    Basically the idea is this:

    • Everyone chooses a second class, even "single-class" characters
    • They have access to the second class's Tab on levelup BUT:
    • They can only choose low-level passives from that class
    • They can (probably) only choose a grand total of 1-2 (numbers to be tweaked, obviously)
    • They can't choose the class-defining ones like Constant Regen or Sneak Attack
    This would let everyone get things like weapon styles. Multi-classes would be unaffected. The UI wouldn't have to change.

     

    Here's an example mockup, "single-class" rogue... with access to Two Weapon Style (because I want this, dammit :p).

     

    attachicon.gifPillars2MorePassivesMockup.jpg

     

    In fairness, I know this would probably get way too chaotic and complicated and impossible to balance. But I kinda like it as a "maximum flexibility" idea and maybe it could be pared down enough to be sane.

     

    Edit, I dunno how to make it look less bad on here, here's an imgur link: 

    lsMUZ52.jpg

     

     

    Did anyone see this idea I posted the other day? It was the middle of the night so I'm not sure.

     

    Anyone have any thoughts?

     

    Too crazy/complicated to balance? (This is probably true, IMO)

     

    Not far enough for "universality" of talents?

     

    ​Bad because it doesn't help multi-classers at all?

  11. I quite like MaxQuest's table with the 25% thresholds. It feel "right" to me when I look at that distribution, although I think having the bonus damage go that high would be problematic and I'd probably leave it capped at 130% or 125% or something.

     

    I think 5% per point or something lenient like that would defeat the purpose to some extent. That is, the point is supposed to be that switching weapons (or damage types) is optimal, and I think you do want a fairly hefty penalty for using the wrong damage type. I just think that currently that penalty is too steep with a 1 point difference.

     

    I still think the old system was way more intuitive though, to be honest, and it didn't have this "1 point off" issue.

    • Like 2
  12. No zionist conspiracy, unfortunately, those are fun, the business side of things is the ulterior motive.

    ​I don't think wanting more people to play the game (and enjoy it) is an ulterior motive though, it's a front-and-center motive of every game developer.

     

    I mean, you want a lot of people to play it because otherwise you can't afford to keep making games. Full stop, a game company is a company and needs to make profits to continue existing. And even if profit didn't matter, game developers tend to be passionate that their games appeal and are enjoyed by many people, and few of them want only the most hardcore audience to have a good time.

     

    In that sense, the massive number of casual players subsidizes the more hardcore crowd, so there needs to be a balance, and apparently a lot of people thought PoE was scary and hard even on Normal (it was a recurring theme in reviews and comments online at launch). Not that I agree mind you, Normal was easy if you paid attention, but there were several decisions they made in the first game that I think scared casual players away:

    • The start of the game was the hardest part, pretty much.
    • Largely this was because you didn't get a full party for a while.
    • A lot of people seemed to miss companions even when they could have recruited them.

    I saw so many threads of people going "I am in the temple in ​the first town and I'm getting ripped up by these ghosts and this game is impossible!" And inevitably they were trying to do it with 1-2 characters because they didn't realize they could talk to Eder, or they missed Aloth, or they didn't explore the outside areas and find Durance or Kana.

     

    I think Obsidian shot themselves in the foot a bit by trying not to scare and overwhelm players with powers (by giving them a full party earlier), and instead scared and overwhelmed them with encounters because those people didn't know how to get a full party together, or how important that was.

     

    Anyway, I think the only way to properly cater to both sides is to have more drastic handholding on normal and remove most of it on hard and above, because even casual players seem to be averse to lowering their difficulty. PoE tried to do this by limiting camping supplies at higher difficulties but it didn't work so well for all the reasons people have discussed.

    • Like 1
  13. It doesn't matter what the intention of the system was/is, in practice it's about showing you when you suck. When they make it so you can't rest whenever then we can talk about that specific intention. There is no diplomatic way to say that you are just bad at the game or that you use manipulative demagoguery to try to twist facts. You repeatedly mentioned how you have to rest after 2 injuries and the game doesn't give you meaningful choice whether to continue or not. There's a video posted showing that you are demonstrably wrong, a player who has no idea of this 'debate' and is playing the beta for the first time, so now you are moving the goalposts.

     

    Yeah you're clearly one of these people that just assumes the worst of anyone who doesn't agree with them.

     

    It couldn't just be that he's wrong, or that he hasn't thought something through about the system, or even that he has a strong personal preference that clouds his judgment. No, he must be a liar with malicious intent trying to mislead people.

     

    Great way to get people to listen to your points.

    • Like 1
  14.  You can also see that he eschews any kind of confrontation by blocking me instead of arguing my points

     

    No, what I can see is that you're a bully who doesn't know how to communicate without denigrating people.

     

    This makes people not listen to you or understand your points. I certainly didn't until someone else in the thread phrased them in a way that wasn't surrounded by accusations of demagoguery and other ad-hominem nonsense.

    • Like 1
  15. As I've played more I've changed my opinion slightly on the pace of combat.

     

    It's true that it's not too as bad against enemies other than Lagufaeth, and hearing that the recovery for one-handers is a bug and will go to 3 seconds does actually sound slow to me. Furthermore, the cast times are truly nuts considering how likely spells are to fail and do literally nothing, I think those definitely have to be fixed especially since some of them take almost as long to cast as their actual effect time.

     

    All that said, I still think the game needs a Slow Mode. I don't understand why the devs thought taking it out was a good idea at all.

     

    Super, slow down the base combat speed so new players don't have to fiddle with Slow Mode, but then still give us a Slow Mode that reduces it by 25% percent rather than half, or whatever number makes sense.

     

    Or give us a slider, honestly it's something I expected to see in PoE when they first introduced Slow Mode and I don't know why they never did that in the first place. In settings: "Slow Mode slows time by: 10% |-----------| 50%". I'm pretty sure that's what Freedom Force had, and it was a wonderful thing.

     

    I for one far prefer playing these games quasi-turn-based in the sense that I get a lot of time to think and react as things are happening, and a slow mode makes that a thousand times more enjoyable and than pausing or especially auto-pausing all the damn time.

    • Like 3
  16. What if two handed weapons had a bonus to penetration?

    How is that different from the old system then?

     

    Two handers did more damage per hit, therefore they broke through DR more (and it was more intuitive, IMO). I thought part of the point of this system was to equalize how one-handers and two-handers work to some extent, without the big disparity between them on armored targets (which probably confused casual players, although I don't see how this system would be any less confusing to them in practice, since now you have to know a magical penetration value on your weapon as well).

  17.  

     

    I personally would suggest to just remove graze entirely and re-balance enemies and encounters. POE1 combat issue has always been too much damage dealt (so you die too fast and enemies are HP sponge). Re-putting more in, isn't going to solve anything.

     

     

    How would you solve the issue of abilities missing all the time and feeling useless then?

     

    I think that's the biggest issue with lack of grazes personally. Spending a bunch of talent points, and power points / spell levels, and potentially a long cast time just to have nothing happen 60% or more of the time is just less fun than having something happen IMO, even if that something is a lot weaker.

     

    Just my opinion of course, but like I've said previously, even D&D tends to have partial damage or effect for "misses" these days, especially in 4E and 5E but even earlier editions had it for some spells.

  18.  

     

     

    The extra 30% damage for exceeding an enemy's AR by 5 points is harder to get unless you are building your entire (custom) party around stacking AP and/or are purposefully fighting under-leveled foes.

     

    Yeah, it seems pretty clear to me that the 30% bonus is so hard to achieve that its only purpose is to make it easy to mop up low-level enemies if you decide to go back to a low-level area and play god. It's basically just a little cookie you get to make it less tedious and to make you feel like you've grown in power.

     

    I think the chances of anyone getting this bonus in level-relevant fights is so slim in the current design that it's not even worth discussing compared to the rest of the issues with the system. I don't understand why a few people are so hung up on it.

  19. I think one of the best points made in this thread (that made me think, at least) was that resting as it exists now only serves one purpose:

    To get rid of wounds.

     

    When that is the case, I don't think there's any way to make the choice to push on despite wounds interesting or meaningful. Some granularity could help a little maybe, but ultimately there's no interesting decision in not resting, so you may as well do it.

     

    By not resting, you're not going to have more interesting encounters due to depleted resources. You will still have all your abilities as per-encounter, so what is interesting about refusing to rest and pushing on? I think that aspect is gone, and either they'll add more per-rest resources to bring it back or we should resign ourselves that resting is a purely wound-clearing action, and use it when we feel that... it's time to clear wounds, nothing else.

     

    I think if the "git gud" crowd had focused more on making that point without throwing out ad-hominems and assuming that everyone just wants the game to be easier, then more people would agree with them that the system is probably okay as is. That's the argument that made me swing in that direction, after initially thinking the system was indeed too punishing because of lack of granularity and the other stuff that Katarack mentioned.

    • Like 1
  20. So I personally agree that single-class characters could use access to more passives, and I read through this thread and thought about a lot of the arguments.

     

    Aside from the general question of "should there be access to general talents" I think there's also an issue of implementation and UI for the devs, because right now it would be kind of complicated and clash with the current UI I think, especially if they just added duplicate talents to classes because now suddenly a multi-class character could take the same passive twice or something.

     

    Anyway, I thought of a weird idea that I briefly mentioned in another thread and made a mockup below.

     

    Basically the idea is this:

    • Everyone chooses a second class, even "single-class" characters
    • They have access to the second class's Tab on levelup BUT:
    • They can only choose low-level passives from that class
    • They can (probably) only choose a grand total of 1-2 (numbers to be tweaked, obviously)
    • They can't choose the class-defining ones like Constant Regen or Sneak Attack
    This would let everyone get things like weapon styles. Multi-classes would be unaffected. The UI wouldn't have to change.

     

    Here's an example mockup, "single-class" rogue... with access to Two Weapon Style (because I want this, dammit :p).

     

    post-70333-0-96980700-1511089324_thumb.jpg

     

    In fairness, I know this would probably get way too chaotic and complicated and impossible to balance. But I kinda like it as a "maximum flexibility" idea and maybe it could be pared down enough to be sane.

     

    Edit, I dunno how to make it look less bad on here, here's an imgur link: 

    lsMUZ52.jpg

    • Like 1
  21. What you do is you put those gauntlets on whatever non-fighter you have, and your fighter takes the "graze with proficient weapons" talent, and you are golden on your melee. Then you cast that +graze Inspiration on your ranged/casters.

     

    It's the go-to strat I'm using atm.

    Yup, and that's just so fiddly and annoying just to make casters somewhat useable. And if you have more than 2 melee, now you have to remember which ones get grazes and which ones don't.

     

    I think it's way more confusing and unintuitive than the old system, even if it did have "log spam". 

     

    Casters need some sort of graze mechanic to help with the long cast times and penetration problem--otherwise the long build up to constantly miss makes them feel useless. So it becomes a very strong temptation to always cast that inspiration on them, all the time, every battle.

    Totally agree.

  22.  

    much more annoying to move items between characters

     

     

    +1

     

    I like the stash always visible but we can't move items between two characters. Actually : Character 1 > Stash, Stash > Character 2

     

     

    It's not quite this bad, I bet what you were doing (and what I was doing) was dragging items onto character portraits at the top right? Which doesn't work.

     

    What DOES work is clicking the item once so that it sticks to your cursor (rather than just dragging it) and THEN clicking on the other character's portrait.

     

    It works okay, but I am used to just dragging, not clicking to pick up, so it wasn't intuitive for me and I STILL think the old UI was better since I could much more quickly move items from character to character.

    • Like 1
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