gkathellar

@Aotrs_Commander - You make some good points, especially with regards to player psychology. The stuff you're talking about is, I think, the entire reason that the concept of "per-encounter" abilities became prevalent in the first place (outside of PoE, anyway). That said, I dunno if it's totally applicable at lower levels.

Please, give implements a distinctive mechanical niche. I want my dual wands, Obsidian. I WANT THEM Haha just replayed the Skaeon temple and was thinking the same thing. How the hell does an organization that prides itself on secrecy amass literally hundreds of followers jam-packed into a tiny dungeon? I'll third this as a major design issue. It's especially bad when you're in an otherwise atmospheric area, like Sun In Shadow, and you have to stop exploring to beat on some dudes every 30 seconds. Fewer, longer, better fights, plz.

This is truer at low levels than it is at high levels, due to the diminishing returns of armor DR relative to attack speed.

What's really baffling about Josh's whole argument - that a more developed stronghold would have pissed off this mysterious "anti-stronghold" faction of players - is that for all that Caed Nua's really bare-bones, you can't actually ignore it. Sure, the player can choose not to visit or spend money on the buildings, but costs do accumulate because of bandits and monster raids and whatnot. This makes it actually easier to ignore if you invest in it, which is odd, to say the least. inorite? The whole setup in Gilded Vale really seemed like it was leading to that. The two should really have been blended together.

Troll threads never die. Strike one down, and it will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

Twin Elms is crawling with druids. They're practically an infestation. Clear 'em out, I say.

Well, no. The main issue is that they can't speak kith languages, due to the structure of their jaws and throat.

Sentient Black Ooze wizard gogogo

Right, that effectively highlights the fundamental problem with the whole, "It's a feature, not a bug," notion: lack of information. Look, there is nothing essentially wrong with the idea of a game where casters are great and warriors don't scale at all, so long as the result is functional and enjoyable. I like asymmetric balance, but I would shy away from saying it's "right" or "correct," because that would be stupid. But if a game doesn't want to be balanced, then it should advertise as much at some level. If a game has casters that are better than the other classes and arguably more interesting, it should manage to communicate, in some way, that "casters are better than the other classes, and arguably more interesting." If a game has three difficulty settings labelled "wizard, fighter, rogue" instead of "easy, normal, hard," that's fine, so long as the information is actually there to advise the player. But the information is never there (except maybe on forums by folks like us who spend too much time thinking about video games); certainly Pillars of Eternity presents unequal options as if they were equal, usually with insufficient information to make the inferences on one's own. Within TTRPG parlance, that is the definition of a "trap" option: a mechanically inferior choice that is presented as something other than what it is. I recall PoE's devs saying they would aim for class balance and mechanical transparency, but if they hadn't been, choosing not to notify the player would still be a problem in my eyes. I can identify three potential causes that readily present themselves. I don't know that these are the reasons, but they strike me as likely reasons. Teachable moments, as they were. Even very early in the backer beta, there were some complaints that PoE's micro was too intense when compared to that of the IE games. The warrior classes were certainly the big change in that respect, and so I'd be unsurprised if the dev team is very conscious of adding too many active abilities to warriors. This is actually pretty reasonable, and I dunno that there is any solution in a RTWP game like Pillars. Turn-based gameplay lends itself to extensive micro, but I think there's an upper threshold in RTWP games beyond which most players just see it as a pain in the tuckus. I think generally, the devs underestimated the role that versatility plays in character strength, and overestimated the possibility of matching that versatility to a particular numerical advantage. When one tries to do this, they run into one of two problems. On the one hand, characters depending on sheer force of math can get numbers so high that versatility becomes irrelevant in comparison. On the other, if the numbers scale to stay pretty much where they already were relative to level-appropriate challenges, then the character just continues to do what they were already doing, and might as well not be advancing at all. Above all, warriors are hampered by a narrative framework that says, "a caster can do anything you can do, but there are things a caster can do that you can never do." Maybe your warrior can knock guys off of their feet, or stun people with hard hits, or shoot two arrows at once, and maybe they can do those things more effectively than a caster. But a caster can do all of those things, and also petrify people and summon duplicates and create fields of damage and etc. PoE is better about this than some games in granting warriors some things to do, but ultimately, casters can still do almost anything, and that lends their versatility even greater weight. I would find that case a lot more compelling if this were a job that you actually need a dumb old warrior to do in PoE. But you don't. I'm all for contextual, cooperation-based party balance. I'm a huge fan of the Etrian Odyssey games, for instance, and if you don't bring a big dumb fighter to soak up hits in those ... well, you gonna die. But there are defensive things that only the defensive classes can do (see pt. 3 above) in those games, and that uniqueness lends an inherent value to their contribution. EO2U's Protector has a job - buffing the party to reduce damage. EO2U's Beast has a job - soaking up hits to the party and surviving them on pure toughness. Only these classes can do these things. PoE's dumb old warrior classes are fine in the sense of being good at their jobs, but most casters are also at least decent at that same job, and other jobs aside. There's something to be said for games which force players to say, "okay, we need this class to take the hits, and this class to do the damage, and this class to debuff, and this class to heal." It can be a simplistic formula for sure, but it's one in which everyone plays a crucial role, and in that regard, it's elegant. But PoE doesn't really fit that formula, if only because a few of the classes can do any or all of those things.

Perhaps, but it occurs in a different ... how should I put this? A different "sphere" of balance than raw class power does. Which is to say that it doesn't affect theoretical maximum power, just the ability to conserve power over many encounters. Again, I think the central thing here is that other classes need to match the escalation in depth and breadth of options that casters have available to them. Better access to per-encounter abilities is almost certainly part of that, but I don't believe that it's the principal issue so much as the fact that high level casters have an ever-increasing advantage when it comes to the sheer number of ability uses - per-encounter and per-rest alike.

I'm sorry if you feel I mischaracterized or misunderstood your remarks. I would appreciate it if you could clarify the four points, I quoted, specifically, and how I misconstrue them. Unless, of course, you're just using the word strawman as a kind of strawman to dismiss my arguments without confronting them. But please, demonstrate your sincerity. Which are? Be specific. I'm honestly curious. You've made this claim several times. I'd like to hear your reasoning. I could say the same of your word choice. I mean, except for the "partisan" part, because that's not what partisan means. I say "gaps" because if classes are of unequal utility, there is a divide between their utility value - a gap, so to speak. You yourself assert that such divides exist, even if you characterize them as positive. And? This isn't news. I've already asserted that I think balance is good for single-player games. What is the point of this statement? It should be pretty clear from my posts that I want everyone to be equally compelling and interesting. I'm not sure what the point in ascribing me sinister motives is, aside from possibly making yourself feel somehow morally superior in disagreeing with me about video game design. Also, for the record, I've never played a MOBA, so I don't even really understand why your accusation would be a black mark on my character. Can you clarify that? Well, that makes two of us.

Sure, sounds good. That'll allow the game's difficulty to be bumped up overall without having to worry about the less powerful classes. So, let me see if I understand. When someone else expresses their opinion in a public space meant for opinion-sharing, it's "force-feeding?" And when you tell other people to shut up because they disagree with you, that's totally kosher? That's a very elaborate scenario Njall has constructed there. I'm surprised that I missed it. Can you please link me to the post where it's outlined? Emphasis mine. Why? Justify your claim. Make a coherent argument for why this enhances the game. Sure, sometimes. Not sure what this has to do with class balance, though. O...kay. I feel like this is getting off topic. Crass, tactless jerks should stop pretending that people who call them crass, tactless jerks for the things they say are somehow violating their freedom of speech. Wow. That sounds like just the kind of thing that someone from a narcissistic vocal minority would say. Protip: claiming that you're correct because you're in the majority is a fallacy, even when you are in the majority, which you have no evidence for.

Difficulty settings should be a function of difficulty settings, not one of metagame self-restrictions. This is especially true when options are presented behind a veneer of equivalency, which PoE's are. Saying balance is unimportant in a game where spells are divided up by tiers of power is absurd - balance concerns are inherent to and inseparable from the very mechanics of the game. Moreover, the pejorative and unjustified claim that anyone who cares about balance is a "minmaxing mook," betrays a complete misunderstanding of game balance as a concept. A well-balanced game has a variety of options that are asymmetric but basically equivalent in value, eschewing a game of "correct" choices for "different" choices. Power gaming is less important in such a game, because players know with relative confidence that any coherent set of decisions will give them a fun play experience. Power gaps increase minmaxing, worsen the learning curve for new players, and create opportunities for a player to become alienated from the game or its mechanics. ITQ: "People who disagree with me obviously do so because of deep-rooted character flaws, and should not be taken seriously because I say so." Would you like some retorte with that ad hominem, sir? No, but it helps. I don't really understand why we should congratulate them for including one of the worst things about the IE games after they explicitly said they would avert it.

It's been a while since I've used a chanter, but IIRC it didn't used to. It does now.

It's not just Deflection though. Because symmetry or whatever. I'm not saying this is well-thought-out. I'm saying that the motivation behind it was to nerf tanks.

They wanted to nerf deflection stacking. Simple as that. What do you mean, the Perception change already accomplished that? Ridiculous!

See topic. I'm contemplating a weird party, and I'm having some trouble on how exactly to split the attributes for a close-combat caster now that I can't dump Perception. Thoughts?

I do think they're a generally good idea, if only because they allow casters to cast more spells more often as they level. There are two practical issues, however. First: spells in general scale really well. If 1st level spells were trivial by 9th level, that'd be one thing - granting greater access to a resource of declining usefulness seems reasonable, especially as the usefulness of plinking away with implements rapidly declines. But most spells stay good from start to finish. I like that, actually, but it brings us to the second issue. Non-casters do not scale very well to high levels. They've got the numbers, but they simply lose out on options, falling ever farther behind casters in terms of resources with each level. Per-encounter spells seem excessive above all because they aggravate the already existing divide in option availability. It's a pretty classic issue, but there it is.

Anyway to add a formula so that Constant Recovery heals a percentage of max endurance instead? That would keep it useful throughout the entire game without being too strong early on. The biggest reason I can think of to avoid this is that it would make the healing scale with Con, and with Endurance-boosting items. All true, but Defender and WD are currently among their worst choices.

I agree in general, although I feel like the whole "lock-down-enemies-via-disengagement" thing has some inherent contradictions. In particular, you get this binary scenario with respect to enemy AI, where either (a) enemies are willing to break disengagement to go after squishies, in which case disengagement attacks end up being functionally equivalent to bonus attacks at the beginning of combat, or (b) enemies are unwilling to break disengagement, in which case you can forget about disengagement attacks entirely. I do think building fighters around reaction abilities would be doable, if one wanted to do that. I contend that a fighter that revolved around pushes, pulls, punishments (i.e. hitting enemies in response to a greater variety of actions), reactive debuffs, and stuns could be designed to work as both a frontliner and a ranged supporter. But right now, we don't have that.

Barbarian and rogue are nice, insofar as there are no companions of either class in game. Cipher has really suffered from excessive nerfs, such that it doesn't seem fun to me anymore, but it's still got one of the coolest mechanics in the game, and is generally just a really fun class. Ranger came out of the 2.0 update with a huge suite of improvements, and is generally just really great.

It would tread on the barbarian's toes. Really, fighter and paladin both need a rework, I think in some ways to bring them in line with barbarian (which also probably needs a lesser rework). All three feel as though they want to be about controlling the space surrounding them, but only barbarian sort of accomplishes this by controlling the space with damage.

You say all of this as if open world gameplay is objectively superior; something ubiquitouslty desireable, the absence of which needs to be excused. This is untrue. Open world gameplay demands a particular style and makeup, and that's not suitable for every game. Putting aside whatever Bioware's devs said at the time, if BG1 had been an open world game, it would have been a fundamentally different beast. Rather than challenging PoE to explain why it's not an open world game, I challenge you to explain why it should be. Obnoxious load times are not a viable explanation - that just means the engine needs to be optimized. How would my adventures in the Dyrwood be improved with the addition of an open world? It's a proven concept. Shadowrun Returns already does it (stylishly, I might add), and it was a pretty ubiquitous trick in NWN modding. They should definitely do it.

The short version is: Wizards have always been very good, and post-launch they've only gotten stronger (more HP, spell upgrades, etc). 2.0 does make it inadvisable to dump Perception, but better accuracy from a high perception on your CC is fantastic. Perhaps best of all, wizards have really minimal item and talent dependency. Once you have gloves of accuracy and the elemental damage-boosting talents, your wizard is pretty much good to go.

There isn't a good reason. Don't do it.