Answermancer
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Posts posted by Answermancer
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- I like that there are subclasses but none of the ones I looked at seemed worth taking, mostly because their downsides were too steep to make the upside seem interesting. For instance, I can't see myself taking any of the 3 rogue subclasses ever, they all have really punishing downsides for pretty meh benefits. The one exception might be assassin if I wanted a very invisibility-heavy build (but I generally don't).
Almost all of the subclasses that I've actually tried (excluding a few wizard subs, & priest of Skaen) have proven to be a lot of fun to play.
Assassin is brutal, especially matched with Devoted or Sharpshooter.
That's good to hear, I guess mostly they don't "sound" worth taking based on the description of the penalty, but if I'm wrong then that's great. I'll play around with a few as I go along I'm sure.
And yeah, Assassin sounded good, but didn't really feel my preferred rogue playstyle which is basically swashbuckling with sneak attacks (flank, hobble, etc., do crazy damage). I'm not really into the "go invisible" playstyle, but I can totally see the appeal and it did sound good, but the other two just sounded like I wouldn't enjoy them at all. One of them nerfs Sneak Attack in half! That's crazy! Why would I ever do that, that's the rogue "thing".
And yeah, Devoted has certainly seemed powerful and popular from the description and threads I've been reading. I'm mostly concerned that each class will only have maybe 1 subclass that doesn't sound suboptimal.
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My impressions, currently I have more things listed that I dislike but that's because I think that's more important feedback, and it's easier for me to list than it is for me to list everything I like (because I like the majority of it so far!).
For reference, my favorite classes are usually rogues, specifically from the combat side, and so my first playthrough of PoE was as a dual-wielding rogue, and my playstyle was basically "set up the rogue" where the entire party's job was to CC, tank, and empower my rogue main character (with buffs and enemy debuffs). That will likely be my first playthrough of PoE2 as well.
Things I (particularly) like:
- The graphics are great, I really like all the improvements, especially the weather effects.
- Retargeting spells is something I've always wanted in games with non-instant cast times, so that's fantastic.
- The sheer variety possible with multi-classing looks awesome.
- I like how abilities now upgrade to one of 2 or more versions, that's really cool, although it's one of the only things that distinguishes single-class characters (see my dislikes for what I mean).
- Writing seems good, I really like the new additions to the dialog interface, like the breakdown of why an option is available ("It's due to this skill and hold shift to see how you got this value"). Love that. Also the Tyranny-style inline glossary is wonderful.
- The way encounter abilities work now is great, really like the system of getting power points as you level up and using them per encounter to be able to choose from more abilities each fight. Really nice change. Less sold on it for casters, but mostly because of other limitations (more on that below).
- The health system seems okay, not sure I like it more than the previous Endurance split but I don't like it less so far, although the -25% health per wound feels really harsh.
- The weapon proficiency modals are a cool idea.
- The overworld map is great, I wasn't sure it'd be a meaningful change vs. just a throwback to Fallout, but I really like it so far. Especially how the world map now has lots of illustrated encounters, this was a great idea, a great way to add more of these super-cool encounters to the game in a way that makes total sense..
- The ship, the island and pirate setting, all of it, awesome.
- The skill system is awesome, much better than the first, I love the split between active and passive skills and how you get 1 point for each. I've always liked this kind of split.
- I like that there are subclasses (but not what they do, see below).
Things I don't like:
- A lot of annoying bugs, I know that's a given for beta but the flickering UI in particular is driving me crazy. Another one is that racial bonuses are not listed in character creation (like the Hearth Orlan feature), even though they still seem to exist.
- No slow-mo mode. I posted about this in the bug thread where you revealed it's a "feature." This one makes me actively angry that you would remove it, it was one of my favorite things about PoE (and Tyranny). I know you said you tried to tone down the base speed but, you failed, I'm sorry. I hate this, especially since it's just an option, one that lets me play the game the way I most enjoy, gone for no real reason.
- Overall I like the character trees but the lack of generic talents seems like it could be an issue. Right now it seems like single-class characters are going to be much more boring and tactically uninteresting compared to multi-class ones and I don't like that. In PoE I could specialize my rogue into dual-wielding, grab various generic talents to make myself great at breaking through DR, or mobility, or various other cool things and feel different than a rogue that specialized in ranged weapons or 2 handers or whatever. I feel like right now all single-class rogues in PoE2 will feel identical, except for some skill branching. Single-class feels half-baked now.
- No grazes by default also annoys me. It's okay for auto-attacks, although even there having 60% of my attacks against an even opponent do nothing feel bad, but for abilities it just completely sucks. Investing talent points and power points to do a cool class ability and then having it do literally nothing except waste my time is garbage, it feels terrible. Even D&D has mostly added partial damage/effect on failure to spells and abilities in 4E and 5E.
- Single-class spellcasters in general feel underwhelming. They only get to choose spells each level, no passives, this is related to the point above about not having generic talents. It feels pretty boring honestly. The spells don't feel very powerful, and they often miss doing literally nothing after casting for 3 seconds. Feels terrible. I know they need to be weaker since they are per-encounter, but then give us some kind of miss protection at least.
- Not loving penetration right now. I might change my mind but it feels much less intuitive than (damage - DR = final damage) and I don't really see any benefit to it other than some crazy edge cases. Also as a dual-wielder I can only see one comparison on mouse-over, which means I now have to memorize the penetration value of both my weapons, which sucks. It also feels too punishing right now since being off by 1 point of pen makes such a huge difference, (lots of 0-1 damage hits on top of lots of misses = no fun) but I know balance is still very rough and my characters are not optimized.
- I like that there are subclasses but none of the ones I looked at seemed worth taking, mostly because their downsides were too steep to make the upside seem interesting. For instance, I can't see myself taking any of the 3 rogue subclasses ever, they all have really punishing downsides for pretty meh benefits. The one exception might be assassin if I wanted a very invisibility-heavy build (but I generally don't).
- The UI feels like a step back in some ways:
- The Inventory UI looks nicer with the big character model but it's much more annoying to move items between characters, and having the stash always there doesn't feel necessary to me at all, it worked fine as a pop-over window. Honestly this feels like a concession towards a console/controller UI and I'm not on board with it.
- Is there any way to bring up the skill tree except when leveling up? There should be, it's annoying that there doesn't seem to be any way.
- When editing AI, you have to click Save after changing each character, then reopen to edit the next character. This seems like a bug though (I hope), cause right now clicking the character portraits makes you lose all the changes you made to the last one.
- The dialog UI looks great, but again feels like a concession towards consoles. I have a 27" 1440p monitor, why does the section that shows previous dialog close between conversations? I hate this, I have to click it open every single conversation because I like the extra context. Why is the area where you make your dialog choices so small? If you have more than 4-5 choices you have to scroll and can't see more at the same time, that super sucks for a game with such rich dialog gameplay.
- Edit: Another I forgot to mention, no way to show all the characters' health and action bars permanently in combat? If so, I hate this, now I have to hold tab all the time too? Ugh, I hope it's a bug or option I missed.
Okay, that's what I've got for now, back to playing!
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Yeah I think the lack of grazes really hurts spells in a way that's very unfun.
I think spells at a minimum need some sort of miss protection, even in D&D they've generally added partial damage or partial effects to spell misses in the last couple editions.
Personally, right now I think the old graze system should just come back for everything, a 60% chance to do nothing with an action the majority of the time Feels Bad Man. But even if they don't wanna go that route, I think spells and powerful abilities should always benefit from grazes or something. It's tolerate for auto-attacks but just makes my character feel passive and useless when I try to use their cool class-specific abilities and get a boring old nothing.
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Heya mrhawn,
Thanks for the info!
1. This is a bug that's been fixed multiple times on our end, but keeps coming back. We're trying to fix it for good but unfortunately weren't able to for the backer beta.
2. Thanks for this one! We're working on our 21:9 support (we want it to be much better than the first game) so I'll add this to our database.
3. We have removed slow mode from the game for now. Our goal for PoE 2 combat was to slow it down in general, and to essentially remove the need for slow mode. The option in the menu and button in the hud don't actually do anything anymore, we just haven't removed them yet. We're looking for feedback on how combat feels without it, so feel free to tell us what you think!
Again, thanks for all of these! Feedback and bugs are the whole reason we're doing this backer beta, so everything you post is appreciated =)
In regards to #3, how it feels is:
"Too ****ing fast."
Seriously, I hate this and I hope you reverse this decision or at least it can be fixed by mods (I never felt the need for any mods of PoE but this would do it for sure).
I loved, loved, loved the addition of slow mode. It let me play the game in semi-real time without pausing after literally every action. Now I just have to pause after literally every action to have a good time.
What is the harm in having the option exactly? Usually I can understand at least the intent behind a design decision, even if I disagree with it, but removing what is a totally optional feature seems silly.
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I agree, I actually find vague tooltips extremely frustrating. "This makes you hit a little harder", great what the **** does that mean?
I know there's a trend towards this sort of thing since casual players seem to be afraid of numbers but I don't think I'll ever understand why.
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Graze was one of the best mechanichs in poe. I hated the d&d stuff, where you could cast a super duper spell but a lucky roll could negate the whole effect. Graze was interesting both for melee attacks ( even if it favoured heavy armors) and for spells. You cast something on a high defences enemy? You can still aim for some effect!
I agree, the lack of grazing or SOME sort of mitigation for spells missing seems really broken to me right now. I get that this is how it works in D&D, but it sucks there just as much as it sucks here.
I don't necessarily mind missing more with regular attacks (although I loved grazes and also thought they were one of the best mechanics they came up with for PoE), especially since there are still ways to get grazes via gear abilities, but for spells and powerful abilities it just completely sucks.
For instance I spend 2 talent points and then spend 2 of my 5 rogue power points on a powerful Confounding Blind and it just misses and does nothing. How boring and frustrating.
The fact that you can get grazes other ways is cool... but it's also fiddly in that now I have to remember under what circumstances characters can and can't graze. It just seems like more mental micro management for no benefit.
Penetration I'm not sure about yet. I think the old system was way more intuitive (damage - armor = final damage, nice and simple), whereas now I have to basically mouse over with each attack and ability to get a basic idea of if I'll do any damage at all. It particularly sucks for dual wielding, I've got a sabre and stiletto but the mouseover only shows me one at a time so now I need to remember exactly what their pen values are all the time. It sucks. I understand the old system had edge cases like the lashes which weren't intuitive, but I can live with that when 90% of the other cases are intuitive (or they could come up with some other solution to just that problem).
I guess I don't really understand what the penetration system improves. I don't think it's more intuitive, I think it's less so, and I don't see literally any other benefit that it provides, neither to the designers balancing things or the players trying to understand the system.
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Sounds like we've thoroughly tracked down the bug
Please fix it!
Meanwhile I guess no Fenwalker boots for me
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What do you need in a save? Just any save?
Since I posted I have seen Hiravius occasionally shapeshift but it's quite rare, seems to happen towards the end of fights or if he's engaged by a lot of people. But the description of the AI setting says he should do it as soon as he engages an enemy, which he does often and early. -
Yeah, I've been seeing this occasionally too.
It's really annoying actually, I think it makes that character useless for the whole battle, they can still move around but none of their abilities seem to work properly.
For instance, here it happened to Kana and he seemed to never start Chanting again in this fight :/
Edit: Maybe it's related to the Fenwalkers boots? I just realized that Kana is wearing them and they are supposed to reduce the duration of Paralyze by 3 (seconds?). Maybe if he gets grazed by a paralyze that's < 3 seconds it bugs out? I'll try to pay attention and see if it only ever happens to him.
(Sorry, I know speculation is not usually that useful in bug reports but I'm a programmer, I can't help it).
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I am having the same problem right now with Hiravius.
I have him set to Spiritshift and he never does it on his own, just swings his spear instead. It's annoying
I tried his on Defensive and Aggresive mode and both were the same.
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there is a clear disproportion in acquired ingridients in PoE, like 2 adra dragon scales and 2 sky dragon eyes? cmon! and pilgrim's crowns are so rare, it hurts.
I wish there were travelling herbalists, poachers and prospectors from which you could barter gems, plants and monster parts which you no longer need for those you do.
If you build the botanical garden thing in your keep you will get random plants spawning in your chest every "keep turn" or whatever. I think one of the other buildings gives other crafting mats in the same fashion, but I could be wrong.
I know every time I go back to the keep (which tends to be every few in-game days) there is some stuff waiting in the chest for me.
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I'm pretty sure these worked in the beta, since people were talking about how you should take a bunch of them on the Druid (especially the Cold and Shock ones) since Druid spells are so great.
Unless they broke it since then, they should definitely increase spell damage.
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Indeed, that sounds really great in my opinion.
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Not really. The posts here have nothing on some of the insane Twitter users out there. One of my personal favourites was the guy joking about hanging white men being used as pinatas, right after Robin Williams hung himself. Who even thinks that, let alone posts it on Twitter?
That's bull****, you're just falling into the same trap as everyone else in this mess and refusing to see even an inch of the other side's point while maintaining that your side is 100% free of blame.
Holy ****, I've been reading these threads all day and they are so incredibly depressing. There's nothing quite like reading pages upon pages where 80% of the people on each side seem completely ****ing insane and unreasonable to you. Jesus I swear, SJWs have no empathy for anyone who isn't 100% on point with their agenda, but many of the gamers on here and other places have no empathy for anyone they don't immediately identify with as a part of their own "hardcore gamer" tribe.
Yeah the twitter-er is a ****ty person who tweets ****ty things, I wouldn't want to be friends with her, but she's not some ****ing genocidal monster, nor a disinterested party "just looking for attention" since she's been playing the game for a while (she posted a screenshot of steam with something like 18 hours). All the "#killallmen" stuff is clearly trolling to rile up white men (I know, since I'm a white man and it riled me up) and make a "point" about the very ****ing thing people are dismissing here: the ability for words to hurt people. I think it's a ****ty thing to spew that kinda stuff out into the ether, but then I think being intentionally rude or cruel to people is a ****ty thing to do regardless of who they are.
Meanwhile Firedorn's poem was not particularly offensive, but it could certainly be read to be kinda dickish about trans people. Indeed, Firedorn says on this blog that the character of "Firedorn" is in fact a clueless homophobe, and the memorial was showing a character like that getting what he deserved. Which is fine, but that's hardly obvious when the context is 6 ****ing lines of text right? It doesn't exactly make it clear that "Firedorn" the character is an unreasonable ****, just like the twitter girl doesn't make it clear that she's just trolling to let off steam.
So yeah, "killallmen" is crazy, but also obviously not literal. But acting like "killallmen" is literal is no different than her acting like the joke is literally transphobic. They both show massive lack of self-awareness and basic empathy for other people.
And all the people screaming for Obsidian's head over this because of "censorship" or because they fear the PC police look just as bad here as the ****ty twitter-twit. They act like game devs need to cater to their every whim, and apparently if you even consider for a moment how your words might affect the feelings of different people, you're clearly just a sellout to the PC police and you must be boycotted to stop the pernicious spread of "censorship".
Even if it's not actual game content they designed.
Even if they actually took the time to talk to the backer in question, and come up with a replacement in better taste that actually is a jab at the hypersensitive crowd.
Even if the backer was okay with it.
That's insane. It is marginally less insane than the twitter SJW people being hypersensitive to the merest whiff of bigotry and treating all men like excrement, but only until the bigoted slurs come out and that didn't take long at all.
For the record I am a backer as well, and I think they handled this about as well as they could have all things considered, outside of maybe leading with the fact that they spoke to Firedorn before all this got out of hand.
If this affected in-game content I'd be concerned, but not everything needs to be a slippery slope, there's a "slippery slope fallacy" for a reason. Freaking out over this particular thing to the point of boycott campaigns and crazy people calling to "make an example" of Obsidian is bat**** crazy, and in my opinion no less bat**** crazy than SJWs acting like men are the only problem with the world.
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This is on a pre-patch savegame, it looks like all of the AoE circles are smaller than they should be, here is a screenshot:
http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/527260138205616346/720BCA6B002FA5CD8DF3BED815C3BBA0B970C216/
Notice that the prone Dargul is highlighted even though the yellow circle is not touching its selection circle, also notice that the rogue next to the Dargul is highlighted even though she is outside of the red circle.
I believe the highlighting is correct (I cast the spell and it hit both targets) but the circle is too small for some reason.
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So then people played normal or higher - but suddenly the devs started reading the solo threads and nerfing anything that was helping play on the higher difficulties..... which is weird.
Everytime I start to think that the internet (the world?) isn't full of people with paranoid delusions and magical thinking someone swiftly comes along and proves me wrong.
Yes, yes child, you're totally right! The devs are watching your every move, they have a camera in your ceiling and they watch when you
touch yourselfplay Pillars of Eternity and jot down copious notes about which spell to nerf next. Shhh, shhh now it's gonna be okay... it's gonna be okay as long as youKILL YOUR PARENTStake your medication and plaster wallpaper over the ceiling to cover up the camerasPLASTER THE CEILING WITH THEIR BLOOD!!!. Yeah, no worries just do whatLORD SATAN COMMANDSI say and they'll never nerf your favorite spells ever again. -
Hold Tab.
Alternately, if you're like me and want to see everything highlighted all the time, go into your controls and bind a key to "toggle highlighting" (right under what Tab is bound to by default) and then you can toggle it on and off instead of holding Tab all the time (I just rebound Tab to toggling it).
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Fully agree, after playing for a bit it's quite obvious that Mechanics is the best skill and you need at least two companions who have it as high as possible.
Why would you need it on two companions? One is plenty. Durance starts with some points so I made him my go-to mechanics guy.
That said, I do think that Mechanics is probably a bit overloaded, and I don't like that I'm basically forced to move slowly all the time (negating some of the awesomeness of double speed mode) if I want to find everything (and I must find everything
).They should just make it so that you're always detecting hidden stuff, it makes very little sense to tie it to stealth.
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Paladins can only engage one enemy initially, but there are talents you can take to engage more than one enemy. Fighters also have a modal ability they can get that increases their possible number of engaged enemies.
If you want to prevent people running past your front line you will probably want at least 2 "tanks," at least that was my experience in the beta.
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I still find cynical hyperbole and non-constructive snarkiness to be extremely obnoxious but that's just me.
Does this mean that non-cynical hyperbole and constructive snarkiness would be more acceptable?
I suppose. I suppose that is technically correct.
The best kind of correct.
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See, this here is the saddest part, where you clearly haven't even skimmed through the threads before you start mouthing off nonsense about things you know nothing about. I've played extensively between BBv333 and BBv480. Before I started BBv333, I was very positive towards Engagement, I was completely sold on the pitch, and then I started playing, looking at how it functioned, considered the arguments, and then re-evaluated my position.
Then I am mistaken about that part and I apologize for it. I must have confused you with someone else who doesn't have the beta.
I don't love engagement either by the way, after playing the beta, but I also don't think it's garbage or terrible, just half-baked. I would prefer it if you could move around in melee like you were supposed to be able to originally, and if more classes had engagement-breaking abilities (or if everyone had a basic Disengage ability that traded an action for free movement). But I still prefer the current implementation to "nothing" and enjoy the game fine with it as it is.
I still find cynical hyperbole and non-constructive snarkiness to be extremely obnoxious but that's just me.
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The mechanic itself is terrible, yet there's this part of me that still feel that it's a good idea or ideal, which probably explains why Sawyer is holding onto it so strongly come hell or high water, no matter how much criticism is levied against it, no matter how much it can be exploited, or how much it detracts from tactical mobility, despite the fact that Sawyer has been almost neurotic about rooting out other "exploits" left, right and centre stage. And I can actually understand that, to a degree.
[...]
I still wish it would've turned out better. I'm still looking for a way that this could work, simply because I like the idea, I just can't find a way to reasonably do it.
And yet you haven't actually played with it have you? I can't understand how you can be so convinced that something is terrible having never even tried it yourself.
There's countless of posts in countless of threads where all of this is reasonably argued
[...]
If you actually had an interest in the topic, you would've raised an actual argument around it, or reviewed the discussion. But no, you're just here to pick on easy targets that had no relation to the factual discussion to begin with, nor was ever intended as constructive feedback, but merely an expression of fatigue and lamentation (for lack of a better word).
I don't post much these days but I've read all those threads you're talking about from beginning to end, and if I wanted to have a discussion about it, that's where I would post.
But I consider "lamentations" and non-constructive feedback to be toxic and childish, so I commented here instead on a representative example of the kind of crap you and some others are fond of spewing.
Though I will say that you do at least post constructive comments as well, at least when the topic is not engagement, unlike some people who just ****post all day every day.
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Man, the pitch still sounds good, and again makes me want to like this piece of broken trash.
How is such vitriol helping either your plight or mood? It seems to me you're making yourself miserable over one mechanic decision and letting it ruin any possibility of satisfaction from playing. Additionally, by posting such emotional reactions you move to effect others, either souring their moods or forcing them to shrink away from you and your cause.
"broken piece of trash" - This won't help your cause, the developers, your influence, the reader nor anyone else. Get a hold of yourself man!
You must've missed all the countless threads where this was reasonably discussed. I was commenting specifically on the video and how it actually made me want to like the Engagement system again, on an emotional level, despite me knowing on that it's a broken piece of trash as a reasoning individual. One of those fun dualities of man.
I thought that was clear, but apparently not.
Nor will this make me miserable "over one mechanic decision and letting it ruin any possibility of satisfaction from playing". I'm not even sure where you got that from. Engagement being a broken piece of trash doesn't do that, nor does acknowledging that Engagement is a broken piece of trash. My statement was one of tiredness and melancholy, not of world-ending sorrow and wailing.
Calling a system you don't like a broken piece of trash, whether as some sort of "zinger" or as "a rational response to your emotional opposite response" does not make you look clever.
It makes you look like a bitter, petty child trying to be edgy to impress other edgy children.
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I took a glimpse back in time.
That is 5 months after the Kickstarter ended.
Here's the thread:
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63432-update-44-the-rules-of-melee-engagement/
For those of you interested in research/history of the engagement system.
Man, the pitch still sounds good, and again makes me want to like this piece of broken trash.
I don't think I will ever understand how some of you people go through life without constantly cutting yourselves on your edginess.
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Backer Beta First Impressions
in Backer Beta Discussion
Posted
Yeah so I looked at it again and I think the first time I looked at it I was so outraged by the sneak attack nerf that I didn't fully read the benefit and thought it only gave one spell rather than a bunch. That sounds a lot more reasonable and I could see it being fun.
That said I probably still wouldn't want to give up half my sneak attack on a single-class character unless I was really into the Trickster concept. It's probably my pro-Sneak-Attack bias but I just think that losing so much power to my favorite rogue feature wouldn't be worth it, although almost any other sort of penalty would probably work for me and I'd be happy with the subclass then.
It's possible that Dr. Hieronymous is right and subclasses feel a lot more worthwhile in a multi-class situation when you already have a bunch of cool features to combine, so even a penalty to something as crucial as sneak attack isn't that big a deal because you've got other equally cool stuff coming from the other class.
I think single-class characters need a lot of work either way, so hopefully they come up with some way to make them more interesting and then he subclasses will feel better as well.
One idea I had was that even single-class character could have some extremely basic cross-class ability access. Say you could choose to pick 1-2 first or second tier passives from another class even as a "single-class" character. Right now that would probably be nightmare to balance but I think you could make something like that work. For instance, this way single-class characters would be able to get a combat style out of the Fighter passive tree.