JerekKruger

I don't know, that sounds awfully sensible. Next you'll be suggesting that, when I mouse over those damage rangers there should be a pop-up that tells us exactly how those numbers are derived!

How else do you measure broad appeal? I completely agree that sales figures are not a good measure of the quality of something, but when we're talking about the appeal of something (whether or not people want it) and describing it as broad (applying to lots of people) then sales figures seem like a pretty good metric. By the way, BG2 is estimated to have sold around 2.5 million copies in its various forms over the years, so don't feel like my "PoE has sold to 1.x million" figure is a game winner. I would, of course, counter that as you say, there has been sixteen years between the two, that BG2 didn't have to compete with the likes of DAI (in fact it was the DAI of its time) and that the advent of digital distribution has reduced sales (okay this last one is a little tongue-in-cheek, but seriously I've bought BG2 four times due to lending copies and never seeing them again, or my first ever copy not reading anymore). EDIT: I will say one thing about broad appeal, and that's that personal opinions are a terrible metric of it. If I say "I don't think BG2 had broad appeal" and I don't have some objective measure to back that up then it's meaningless since, you know, I am just one person.

Yes and no. Josh has said that he wants the base class to remain a viable option as well. If you could create a PoE Paladin with no Order, who got no Order related talents, it would be at best no worse than Paladins with an Order, and possibly worse. As such I expect every kit will have a innate difference including both some advantages and some disadvantages over the base class. So what's the yes? Well, tied into Gromnir's post, I wouldn't be surprised if subclasses end up about the same scope as PoE Paladin Orders in how different they are to the base class. I think a lot of people are imagining a complete reworking of ability trees for each subclass but I suspect it's more likely each subclass will come with one innate difference (for example the Black Jacket gets the ability to switch weapons instantly, but has -5 accuracy) and then a couple of talents or abilities that further emphasise that difference (for the Black Jacket, one which increases accuracy when attacking an enemy's lowest DR for example). Of course, this is purely speculation, but I agree with Gromnir that it's quite likely that subclasses will end up being a lot less distinct from their base class than a lot of people are expecting. I will be happy to find out I'm wrong though

Hah! That pretty much confirms to me that literally no one understands the mechanics of PoE in their entirety: players because they have to do experiments and decompile code to find them out, and developers because they forget. By the way, in the recent Q&A stream Josh was asked if they were going to make Bash shields more appealing. He then went on to give an answer which made it clear that he didn't realise that (for auto attacks at least) bash shields actually reduce a character's damage output when compared to using a non-bash shield. He said something along the lines of "well obviously we don't want bash shields to be as good as dual wielding. Instead they add a small amount of damage output whilst still providing good protection".

I tend to agree with Doppelschwert. Since their introduction in 2.0, several of the "cross class talents" have become staples for almost every build on the Strategy subforum. In particular, Apprentice Sneak Attack and Outlander's Frenzy are very common, with the latter being a key ingredient in reaching 0 recovery for a lot of builds. Yet I often skip them specifically because they don't fit my role-playing image of my character.

This is definitely true. I'd love to see the mechanics explained somewhere in game in their full detail, probably somewhere in the encyclopedia. That said, the general idea that "critting more often is good" still applies, and Perception is by no means a bad attribute (+50% base damage is still pretty good). What I like about PoE is there are multiple different "break even points". For example, a Wizard using Citzal's Martial Lance (which has very high base damage) will benefit a lot more from higher accuracy than a Rogue dual wielding Stilettos (low base damage and Rogues get tonnes of other +% damage modifiers). At the same time, getting more Perception is always going to be a good thing for any class (well, perhaps not so much for a Chanter tank) and its hard to accidentally make a bad decision in PoE. EDIT: by the way, it wasn't all that long ago that I learnt that crits are additive rather than multiplicative.

So long as it's a sufficiently powerful ability, it could be a replacement for Sneak Attack? The class would be a duellist I guess, and sneak attacks never really fitted with that archetype to my mind.

I think this is an excellent idea for either a Fighter or Rogue subclass (Rogue because it's already sort of a thing for Rogues, though builds built around Riposte have never really worked that well).

I know, but you talked about the old IE games having a broader appeal than PoE and when it comes to measuring broad appeal I think sales figures are actually pretty relevant.

I'm still not at all convinced that the same isn't true of PoE. Citation needed. PoE has sold around 900,000 copies on Steam, and who knows how many on GoG (I know it passed the one million mark quite a while ago). It has done so whilst existing alongside games like Dragon Age Inquisition and the Witcher 3 (whereas BG2 was the DAI of its era). I suspect it has pretty broad appeal.

*Raises hand* *Lowers hand again* I did lower Firkraag's saving throws low enough that I could one shot him with Finger of Death.

Okay question: exactly what about PoE's system got in the way of playing and enjoying the game? I ask because to my mind I can't really see the difference. You can play BG2 purely by intuition, without having any real understanding of the mechanics, but I don't really see why that wouldn't be the case for PoE as well. By the way, I apologise if I sound combative in my replies to you in this (and other) threads. I tend to sound that way when I disagree with people but it's not the intention.

When they don't enjoy their work yes. People who are genuinely enthusiastic about what they do don't have this, in fact they often suffer from the opposite problem. No, he's absolutely right. No conspiracy about it. This simplifies the amount of work hours and effort to make a good encounter. Since dev time and money are limited, the easier you make it to create a good encounter the more good encounters you can make. That is exactly the call someone passionate about making games would make. Hmm... yeah I guess. My bad, I read into LordCrash's post something that wasn't there. EDIT: specifically I read his post to be "given the extra complexity that multi-classing adds, making good encounters is too much work so we're not going to" rather than "given the extra complexity that multi-classing adds, making good encounters for six person parties is too much work so we're going to focus on making them for smaller parties".

This I agree with wholeheartedly.

93 is better than 82 is better than 51 is better than 17... Even if people struggle to add or subtract a pair of two-digit numbers, I doubt there is anyone playing PoE who can't immediately compared two two-digit numbers and tell you which is larger. There are several tabletop RPGs that make use of percentiles. It's really quite simple to do, all you need is to own two, different coloured, d10s and you're done (you don't even need this to be honest, but if all your d10s are the same colour you will probably need to roll the two separately). You do realise you can play PoE without ever looking at the combat log, and without ever understanding any of the mechanics that go on behind the scenes. All you need to know is that accuracy increases hit chance and an enemy's defence reduces hit chance. Before someone pipes up "oh but PoE has four different defences and that makes it complicated" let's remember that BG had five different saves, and that D&D 3/3.5 had three save (that basically match the 3 non-deflection defences of PoE). Perhaps AD&D's save system is simpler than PoE's defence system because no one ever had the patience to understand it so everyone ignored it and hoped for the best. I strongly believe that claims that AD&D is simpler or more intuitive to understand is based strongly on the familiarity of those making the argument. You've simply forgotten how unintuitive learning AD&D was.

But the only way in which "dice" were being "rolled" in Baldur's Gate was that the combat log read "dice roll =". There was no visual dice being rolled, and ultimately the "dice roll" started off it's life as a random float between 0 and 1 that ended up being scaled and rounded to be a random integer between 1 and 6. Again though, how was the way dice rolls were represented in BG in any way vivid? I totally agree that some people are put off by maths and calculations, but I suspect said people are put off just as much by calculations done on dice as they are by calculations done with percentages. I suspect those people will ignore the details of the combat log, being happy with the "Steve hit Barry for 7 damage" and not worrying about the details of what Steve rolled to achieve that. In fact, the joy of CRPGs for some people in almost certainly that they don't need to worry about any of the calculations because a computer does it all for them. I guess we simply disagree on this.

Fewer enemies doesn't mean simpler encounter design. There are a lot of encounters in PoE that have upwards of twenty enemies (PotD admittedly, but even on hard you're talking 10-15) but they aren't intricately designed encounters, they're just big swarms of enemies with a few tougher enemies included. I'd much prefer fights against smaller groups where each member of the enemy group has some important role to play beyond "trash". Maybe, though don't be so sure. Obsidian has a lot more staff working for it than it has working on any given project. If the funding goes really well I could see staff from other projects being diverted to work on Deadfire, particularly if some of the stretch goals end up being content related. Given how many times I've seen people completely confused by the fact that raising their dexterity makes their armour class worse* I disagree. THAC0 wasn't particularly confusing to me once I read how it worked, but I've known people who still couldn't get to grips with the idea even after detailed explanations. This isn't meant as a "I'm so smart, they're so dumb" brag, It's just an observation that it was, for some people, a very unintuitive system. I would however be interested in knowing what part of the basic system of PoE is hard to understand? I'll happily concede that it's difficult to master, particularly since I don't think anyone outside of Obsidian (possibly inside Obsidian as well) truly has yet. *Before you correct me, I know it doesn't.

I just looked up the actually Black Isle. Turns out it's not even an island, it's a peninsula

Yeah, I assume it's to avoid the rather arbitrary anti-stacking rules of PoE (which were, in turn, inherited from older IE games and, presumably, AD&D). Instead of having a rule that says "two items with the same bonus can't stack", you allow stacking then make sure there are very few opportunities for it to actually happen.

How is there any difference between the game giving you a randomized percentage value, and the game "rolling" a pair of d10s to generate a number between 1 and 100? I really don't see how that's true. Determining hit chances in PoE is as simple 50% - Defender's Defence% + Attacker's Accuracy%. Most people can add two digit numbers without any real difficulty. Meanwhile a percentile system gives much more precision. In a system based around d6s each increment is about 16%, which is incredibly coarse. I can't represent a 60% chance of something in a d6 system, I have to either have it be a 50% chance or a 67% chance.

When they don't enjoy their work yes. People who are genuinely enthusiastic about what they do don't have this, in fact they often suffer from the opposite problem. It's also a fact that Tyranny was not praised for its gameplay mechanics. As for added complexity, what do you mean? Do you mean it will be very hard to ensure that each encounter is balanced in difficulty for every possible combination of multi-classes? If so then obviously that's the case, and Obsidian would be foolish to imagine they could ever make it not be the case even with simplified encounters. They would also be foolish, in my opinion, if they decided to simplify encounter design since this is something that many of their fans wouldn't be happy about. As for budget, they don't know their budget yet and we have even less of a clue (since we've no idea how much money from PoE's huge success they've put back into Deadfire development). This isn't necessarily targeted at you, but I find the accusations of PoE having overcomplicated mechanics bizarre when it comes from people who also hold up BG2 as the pinnacle of CRPGs. AD&D is a hot mess of a system and is completely unintuitive. Many mechanics in PoE don't work in quite the way you'd assume they would, but they do do what you expect (+20% attack speed doesn't increase your attack speed by 20%, but it does increase your attack speed).

Not when you realise that the bonus damage from crits is additive with other damage bonuses (including the damage bonus from things like "exceptional" weapons), not multiplicative. By the late game, when you're wielding superb weapons and have various talents and abilities that add percentage damage crits become much less important.

You miss the good old days of simple, intuitive AD&D?

Bloody hell, what is it with this thread and unfounded conspiracy theories. A major complaint about combat in PoE was that it was hard to follow what was going on. Characters were lost behind visual effects, the combat log moved at approximately a billion miles per hour and it was next to impossible to determine who was engaging whom. On top of that, a lot of encounters were bloated with trash mobs. In BG2 most dragon fights had no adds at all, in PoE there's only one addless dragon fight. Given all that, the most likely explanation for the reduction is that Obsidian found that it solved, or at least helped, a lot of those problems: with fewer characters there are fewer spell effects flying around, the combat log will move slower, and a single dragon can once again pose a threat by itself. Your theory could, of course, be true, but let's think about it for a moment: everything I ever see from the Obsidian development team is enthusiasm for making RPGs. This could all be a front of course, but I doubt that Obsidian are paying people to coach Josh to hide the fact he hates RPGs, and I hope Obsidian aren't lying when they say a large proportion of their staff play tabletop RPGs. I am sure that, as the release date draws closer, Obsidian will have to make compromises over various aspects of the game to make sure it releases in a reasonable amount of time; but I find it hard to believe that, right now, fairly early on in development, they have gone "oh dear, multiclassing is complicated, oh well let's just put less effort into encounters instead".

Well Lanyon has all but said exactly that. He's criticised changes from the only IE games, waxed lyrical about how amazing BG2 was and used the phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" at least once.