Some Concerns Regarding Patch 1.1

[Farsha]

What? No! THe huge selection of classes and sub-classes is one of THE BEST THINGS about Deadfire. THis would just screw those of us over who don't have time for multiple playthroughs.

 

 

 

Honestly if you are not gonna do mutiple playthroughs, why do you even bother to come to this forum? I mean you must be done with the game by now, and if you don't plan to come back, why bother.

It will be like 4 years before we'll see another big Obsidian game, maybe more (Deadfire did not sell all that well, they'll need to work out new strategy and approach), so plenty of time for multiple runs if you like the game. Speciall with expansions coming.

If you gonna play once, you're not really a person that will benefit from any future updates and changes. Also you will play 1 character ever, so why does it bother you there are things you'll not have access to, you would not use them anyways as you'll pick one of them only and selection even now is huge.

BTW that change will not come companion sublasses will remain unique to them to make them stand out more, they'll never be playable subclasses with out modding, so no worries.

[NCR75]

I would love for patch 1.1 (or another future patch) to include a more robust respeccing system.  This would address the problem of having a 40+ hour playthrough "ruined" midway by a balancing patch (I say "ruined" because I understand some people are more/less bothered by this than others.  For me personally, it is extremely irksome.  However, I may very well be in the minority). 

 

Not to single Pillars out, as this problem concerns seemingly most semi-modern single player RPGs that come with robust mechanics and combat systems.  Keeping in mind that, in order for said problem to even occur, literally all of the following has to be true about the game in question:

 

1) The game isn't balanced on release (understandable, given the complexity)

 

2) The devs decide that the game needs to be balanced, desite it being a single player RPG (I'm actually ok with this, as it can vastly improve the game.  PoE 1 came so, so far!  It was like day and night.)

 

3) Said rebalancing is not optional.  You are not allowed to 'select the patch' at which to play the base game + all DLC (could be a coding nightmare.  I have no idea)

 

4) Respeccing is not robust enough to 100 % adjust to the rebalance in question

 

Given all of this, I personally think allowing 100 % respeccing is the best way to avoid this problem.  

 

(Side Note --- Specific concern raised for my particular playthrough:  I already saw it mentioned that the chanter should perhaps have its brilliance inspired invocation pushed from PL 7 to PL 8 or 9.  This is all well and good, but why can't I respec my chanter/fighter to pure chanter so that I can still obtain my favorite support buff?  This doesn't break the game, it just lets me play the character concept that I want to play. Its still balanced, because I have to abide by the same new restrictions/changes that would be imposed on any newly created character.  The only difference is that I do not need (somewhat arbitrarily?) to start all over, in a 100 % single player RPG.)  

 

TL:DR:  I would love for respecc'ing the main PC to take us back to the character creation screen and allow us to reselect attribute points, race, core classes, subclasses, etc.  Also allow respecc'ing NPC/henchmen to allow us to change their core classes/multiclass within the original three options.  This is all so that we can 100 % redo any character building decision in order to adjust to any balance changes mid playthrough.  Players who find this amount of respecc'ing too liberal can simply opt to not use it.  If achievements are a concern, just warn the player that they'll be disabled for the more severe respecc'ing options or something similar.  

[NCR75]

I also just wanted to add that when it comes to exactly what should/shouldn't be nerfed, what should/shouldn't be buffed, etc (ie, all of the balancing details), I give a friendly shout out to both the devs and the players who criticizes.  Mechanics wizards far smarter than me know how to create/fine tune such a system that is both complex and balanced. 

 

My only two cents is to reiterate that dual wielding (especially given full attack powers) seems to be a clear winner when it comes to DPS.  Personally I would think it would be neat for dual wielding to do more raw DPS but with lower penetration - so that it is more effective only against softer targets.   

[KDubya]

 

Dude, the game is a cakewalk on the hardest difficulty. I don’t give a crap about over- nerfing. Better thAt than the current state where the game is largely without challenge.

Well we're trusting them to make it more difficult. It'd be nice if it didn't take the form of over-nerfing. Everyone wants to feel powerful, not weak, but it's also better when you are fighting worthy opponents.

 

 

If you want to feel powerful - god mode Gandolph - there are many different difficulty levels to choose from, you have storymode, easy. normal and even veteran. There is only PotD for anyone wanting some sort of tactical challenge. 

 

Why do people want to play on PotD and be super powerful in order to feel better about themselves?

 

• They need to change what abilities are full attack and which are primary. Charge and FoD should be primary not full.
• Monk fist damage needs a review. Their base damage is higher than slow one handers like battle axes and they attack at the speed of the fast one handers like daggers. 
• Transcendent Suffering seems to add too much damage. At 20th my single class Shattered Pillar has +95% damage and that's before I activate Wellspring of Life.
• Dual wielding could use a lower penetration or reduced damage on the off hand or reduced accuracy on the off hand.

 

In PoE on PotD you could go with the story companions, avoid the OP Vancian casters, avoid resting too much and have a nice challenging game that required some planning, team synergy and such. In DeadFire you'd be hard pressed (impossible??) to make a team that doesn't faceroll the game.

[CottonWolf]

 

Please take a look at Corpse Eater subclass. Firstly the flesh commune ability casting time of 3 secs is absurd for a 50hp heal. Then after mid-game all corpses explode somehow(crit?) and my barb can't eat anything. 

You can turn off gibs in the game options and people will stop exploding.

 

That said, the viability of a subclass shouldn't be determined by a graphical option.

[ThacoBell]

 

What? No! THe huge selection of classes and sub-classes is one of THE BEST THINGS about Deadfire. THis would just screw those of us over who don't have time for multiple playthroughs.

 

 

 

Honestly if you are not gonna do mutiple playthroughs, why do you even bother to come to this forum? I mean you must be done with the game by now, and if you don't plan to come back, why bother.

It will be like 4 years before we'll see another big Obsidian game, maybe more (Deadfire did not sell all that well, they'll need to work out new strategy and approach), so plenty of time for multiple runs if you like the game. Speciall with expansions coming.

If you gonna play once, you're not really a person that will benefit from any future updates and changes. Also you will play 1 character ever, so why does it bother you there are things you'll not have access to, you would not use them anyways as you'll pick one of them only and selection even now is huge.

BTW that change will not come companion sublasses will remain unique to them to make them stand out more, they'll never be playable subclasses with out modding, so no worries.

 

Maybe I'm waiting for patches, maybe I want to get as much out of one playthrough as I can. Can you give a single good reason to arbitrarily restrict character building options from the get go?

[misterjimmy]

Cipher can self buff.

Edited May 31, 2018 by misterjimmy

[AnarchyJesus]

do we know when is 1.1 coming

[Tomice]

do we know when is 1.1 coming

 

"Early June", but I'm sure they'd rather release it a week later than releasing something half-baked.

There isn't to much reason to rush it from the viewpoint of the devs:

They've had a bunch of income through release, they fixed the worst bugs in the hotfix, they have positive press reviews, there aren't many game-breaking bugs AFAIK -just the mediocre balance and an industry-standard lack of polish for a game thatt just released.

[Dorftek]

First of all I hope they tune the classes.

Here's a few suggestions:

 

-Cleave stance get an internal cooldown

-swift flurry gets an internal cooldown

-heartbeat drumming gets an internal Cooldown

-Shieldbearer LoH gets changed from immortality to a DR.

-Chanter Summons have low priority for enemies just like charmed enemies do. An enemy should know that the summoner is the threat rather then his summons.

-Chanters Brilliant invocation should be changed from every 3 sec to every 12 sec to avoid insane max spell lvl spamming.

-Monk fists should have slightly lower base dmg.

-monk get 50%+25% lash dmg, this is simply too much.

-mobility skills such as charge should be primary attack or an already pre set dmg

-invisibility need to de-activate when u go too far away from enemies and should not reset encounters.

-invisibility should not de-activate by DoT ticks.

-Cipher dmg spells NEED to be buffed.

-Priest buffs should be quicker casting and have less recovery.

-Empowering AoE spells get only half the PL bonus

-Unbending need lower duration

-Rapid recovery need lower duration

-Rogue need some way to recover Guile

-ranger has a super boring skill tree, please make it more interesting somehow.

-FoD changed to primary attack or double the resource cost.

 

Also OP items should be gated behind really hard fights. Best in slot gear should not be sold by merchants and definitely not be laying inside a chest for easy taking at said merchant.

 

My face after firing the easily obtainable frostseeker --> O_O

 

And then, more HP on enemies and a smarter AI with more abilities overall. Also bigger encounters.

[whiskiz]

Let me start off by saying I'm very excited for Patch 1.1; Like many people, I've found PotD to be a challenge in the beginning, but once you get access to certain pieces of gear fairly early on in the game it gets trivial. As someone who beat Tyranny on PotD, I really want to try to give Deadfire a fair shot on the hardest difficulty. That said, with any sort of balance patch, I definitely have a few concerns - and I'd like to address them now. Please feel free to respond to them - I might just be overreacting.

 

My biggest concern is overnerfing, honestly. While I definitely understand not wanting immortal characters that remove all sense of challenge from the game, I'd much rather see underappreciated classes/multiclasses get some love than seeing things that are overpowered if used in a certain way get nerfed for everyone else. 

 

For example, I want to run a Fighter/Monk for my next playthrough because I think it could be a lot of fun - Monk gives Fighter some nice augments to damage, and Fighter has solid defenses. Plus, playing a drug Monk would provide a lot of really neat roleplay opportunities. But I've talked about all of that before. 

 

Fighter and Monk are, unfortunately, two of the classes that are used in a lot of the "Become a functionally immortal god" builds. And while I agree that some skills need tuning (Changing a lot of Full Attacks to Primary Attacks to encourage Dual Wielding, for instance) I hope they don't put too many desirable abilities behind PL8 and 9 (I'd be okay having Unbending go down to, say PL7 and then the enhancements go down to 8 or 9, for example - but I'd hate to lose it altogether. Similarly, while I think that the 25% chance on Crit to trigger an extra attack hardly qualifies as "small", I'd rather that be reduced to 10% or even 5% (So it's more of a reward) than have it go up to 8 or 9. Same thing with Turning Wheel - for a multiclass, that comes at level 16. 

 

The Chanter Invocation that renews class resources could be moved to 8 or 9, because that seems like sort of a capstone Chanter ability. 

 

By the same token, some skills at higher levels really don't make sense at those levels, and could stand to be made a little bit stronger. I know a lot of people have complained about Cipher and Priest, for instance. Cipher has some super powerful skills like Time Parasite or Defensive Mindweb, but then there are spells like Haunting Chains. Oooh, Terrified AND Hobbled. It's not like there's a lower level Cipher spell that causes Paral- Oh, wait. 

 

Basically what I'm trying to say is, there has to be a way to pick apart the builds that allow people to be completely invulnerable, while still keeping character creation robust and enjoyable. At the same time, I hope the balance changes and tweaks focus just as much on uplifting certain classes as on adjusting nigh immortal builds. 

 

TL;DR: What are your thoughts on the changes coming in 1.1 from a class balance perspective? What changes can you see coming to each class (Be as specific as you like). 

 

if you're worried about overnerfing and it being too hard for you afterward - play a lower difficulty.

 

Boom, instant old power levels.

[Parasol_Syndicate]

 

 

Please take a look at Corpse Eater subclass. Firstly the flesh commune ability casting time of 3 secs is absurd for a 50hp heal. Then after mid-game all corpses explode somehow(crit?) and my barb can't eat anything. 

You can turn off gibs in the game options and people will stop exploding.

 

That said, the viability of a subclass shouldn't be determined by a graphical option.

 

 

While I don't mean to be overly disgusting, maybe we could satisfy both issues by applying the buff automatically when a Corpse Eater gibs a kith. 

If I were a cannibal, numerous bite sized chunks would go down quicker and easier than a massive slab of meat. 

 

This would also provide a slim hope of doing a solo run with one. 

Edited May 31, 2018 by Parasol_Syndicate

[Erik Dirk]

The random map loot can occasionally be game breaking too. I found a summon Drake & wyrm amulet at level 5.

[Answermancer]

Why do people want to play on PotD and be super powerful in order to feel better about themselves?

 

if you're worried about overnerfing and it being too hard for you afterward - play a lower difficulty.

 

Boom, instant old power levels.

 

 

Nobody that actually wants to play on the higher difficulties wants that, so you're talking to a strawman.

 

What some of us do want is:

• A pace and rhythm to difficulty, and not every encounter to be maximally difficult, but for some (especially outside of level scaling) to still be easy so that the sense of power growth is maintained. I might be wrong about this, but a lot of what I read from the most hardcore players makes it sound like they want every encounter to be as difficult as possible, I suppose on PotD with level scaling that would be okay, although personally I think level scaling is more interesting if it does have a cap so that if you leave an early-game area untouched until you're level 20 you can still go in and one-shot everything. Maximal balls to the wall difficulty fits well in mods for the people who really want that, considering that modding seems to be pretty viable this time around with a lot of extra difficulty mods already out.
• For currently powerful builds and abilities to remain "powerful" and fun in the sense of remaining viable, rather than having them overnerfed to the point where a totally different set of abilities become mandatory.

Edited May 31, 2018 by Answermancer

[269811510]

players are OP because they have too many epic equipments but enemies just have poor magic equipments.And the broken rest system is another important reason.

[269811510]

Remove the epic equitments from stores to the enemies' hands will be much better.

[Cyrus_Blackfeather]

 

Why do people want to play on PotD and be super powerful in order to feel better about themselves?

 

if you're worried about overnerfing and it being too hard for you afterward - play a lower difficulty.

 

Boom, instant old power levels.

 

 

Nobody that actually wants to play on the higher difficulties wants that, so you're talking to a strawman.

 

What some of us do want is:

• A pace and rhythm to difficulty, and not every encounter to be maximally difficult, but for some (especially outside of level scaling) to still be easy so that the sense of power growth is maintained. I might be wrong about this, but a lot of what I read from the most hardcore players makes it sound like they want every encounter to be as difficult as possible, I suppose on PotD with level scaling that would be okay, although personally I think level scaling is more interesting if it does have a cap so that if you leave an early-game area untouched until you're level 20 you can still go in and one-shot everything. Maximal balls to the wall difficulty fits well in mods for the people who really want that, considering that modding seems to be pretty viable this time around with a lot of extra difficulty mods already out.
• For currently powerful builds and abilities to remain "powerful" and fun in the sense of remaining viable, rather than having them overnerfed to the point where a totally different set of abilities become mandatory.

 

 

This, exactly. Frankly, I don't think Cleaving Stance, Heartbeat Drumming, or Swift Flurry even NEED an internal cooldown because, if the mobs are tough enough, the odds of proccing enough bonus attacks to immediately kill something shouldn't be that high. Or the enemy should have enough damage reduction that chaos theory eventually means you hit, graze, or miss while they still have a respectable amount of HP left. 

 

It's also worth noting that, even if they did nerf "OP" builds, people would still find ways to cheese encounters because they'd be impossible otherwise. And yes, I consider kiting enemies around and spamming Paralysis scrolls to be "cheesy."

[Dorftek]

 

 

Why do people want to play on PotD and be super powerful in order to feel better about themselves?

 

if you're worried about overnerfing and it being too hard for you afterward - play a lower difficulty.

 

Boom, instant old power levels.

 

Nobody that actually wants to play on the higher difficulties wants that, so you're talking to a strawman.

 

What some of us do want is:

• A pace and rhythm to difficulty, and not every encounter to be maximally difficult, but for some (especially outside of level scaling) to still be easy so that the sense of power growth is maintained. I might be wrong about this, but a lot of what I read from the most hardcore players makes it sound like they want every encounter to be as difficult as possible, I suppose on PotD with level scaling that would be okay, although personally I think level scaling is more interesting if it does have a cap so that if you leave an early-game area untouched until you're level 20 you can still go in and one-shot everything. Maximal balls to the wall difficulty fits well in mods for the people who really want that, considering that modding seems to be pretty viable this time around with a lot of extra difficulty mods already out.
• For currently powerful builds and abilities to remain "powerful" and fun in the sense of remaining viable, rather than having them overnerfed to the point where a totally different set of abilities become mandatory.

This, exactly. Frankly, I don't think Cleaving Stance, Heartbeat Drumming, or Swift Flurry even NEED an internal cooldown because, if the mobs are tough enough, the odds of proccing enough bonus attacks to immediately kill something shouldn't be that high. Or the enemy should have enough damage reduction that chaos theory eventually means you hit, graze, or miss while they still have a respectable amount of HP left.

 

It's also worth noting that, even if they did nerf "OP" builds, people would still find ways to cheese encounters because they'd be impossible otherwise. And yes, I consider kiting enemies around and spamming Paralysis scrolls to be "cheesy."

Putting an internal cooldown of just 1sec would prevent procs to proc more procs but wouldn't hurt the ability per se. Rather then skyrocketing enemies deflection to prevent crits from happening

 

And yeah paralysis scrolls were OP in PoE1, but even if ud infinite amount of paralysis scrolls in PoE 1 that game would still be harder then what we have now. Because one shotting the entire screen with a broken proc is more effective then CCing enemies.

Edited June 1, 2018 by Dorftek

[Sobric]

I think I'd like to see POTD and Veteran difficulty made harder before they launch too many nerfs (so I agree with the original poster). I think there are actually some good encounters in the game that are only held back by the difficulty of the enemies that you face (off the top of my head: encounters with grubs/beetles/skeletons where they spawn continually; a lot of the fights under the Temple of Berath in Neketaka are great too).

 

A few buffs towards Priests and Ranger Pets would be welcomed as well. 

[vanyel54]

Lot of good things in this thread. A few things that I did not see :
- When selling pile of items, please set the number to the max.
- Druid - Please remove the recovery after spiritshift.
- I don't know how you could manage it, but solo and boarding combat are incompatible. Perhaps adjust the number of opponents ?
- Please remove the need to click X times to search a place on the map. That's so stupid. I will ALWAYS do complete and thorough search !
- It will surely come with the DLC, but please add good items. Almost every build i see use the same armour/weapons (hello devil of caroc). And we should not be able to get the best items straight from the start...
 

[Cyrus_Blackfeather]

I think I'd like to see POTD and Veteran difficulty made harder before they launch too many nerfs (so I agree with the original poster). I think there are actually some good encounters in the game that are only held back by the difficulty of the enemies that you face (off the top of my head: encounters with grubs/beetles/skeletons where they spawn continually; a lot of the fights under the Temple of Berath in Neketaka are great too).

 

A few buffs towards Priests and Ranger Pets would be welcomed as well. 

 

Absolutely. It's a balancing act - you've got to have challenging encounters, but the players also need access to tools to overcome them in a number of different ways. 

 

They've said in the patch notes that they're approaching this in a multi-step process focusing on enemies first, so I'm happy about that. Let us see how the current builds fare against more difficult encounters before deciding what needs to be tuned. Or at least, that's the impression I got. It's scientific in a sense, you can't just change all of the variables at once you need to go through things methodically in order to see how one change affects everything else. 

 

That's why I like all of the posts talking about how to improve classes that aren't in a good state currently, by the way. One of the reasons I think so many of the overpowered builds stand out is because the rest of the classes need some love, like Ranger, Priest, Druid, and Cipher. 

 

Wizard too, I really feel like the bonus to picking a subclass should be a little higher than reduced recovery because of the drawbacks - you're not only removing two entire schools of magic, you're suffering a penalty to all of the remaining ones that aren't of your chosen school. It'd be like if, as a Sharpshooter Ranger, you couldn't use melee weapons, and guns took much longer to reload. 

 

I'd also like more unique subclass options for companions, but I get that that's something that's not a priority/could be saved for mods. Does modding this game disable achievements or is there a mod for that? 

 

 

Putting an internal cooldown of just 1sec would prevent procs to proc more procs but wouldn't hurt the ability per se. Rather then skyrocketing enemies deflection to prevent crits from happening

 

And yeah paralysis scrolls were OP in PoE1, but even if ud infinite amount of paralysis scrolls in PoE 1 that game would still be harder then what we have now. Because one shotting the entire screen with a broken proc is more effective then CCing enemies.

 

 

 

Okay, that's fair. I come from a lot of MMO communities where when people want internal cooldowns for things it's in the ballpark of, say, ten seconds. One second is fair, it allows the skill to work as intended and prevents infinite chaining. 

 

I guess my point about the paralysis scrolls is that there were ways to break open the first game's difficulty as well. You could cheese the Adra Dragon fight with those things, and most other encounters too. I can think of very few enemies that actually resisted/were immune to Paralysis. The difficulty becomes DR bypass/whittling down huge HP while the monsters can't really do anything. Yes, having a powerful character kind of cuts out the middleman so to speak, but the same result would more or less be achieved. 

 

I do agree that some of the stronger gear needs to be gated behind actual challenges though.

[Climhazzard]

Imo if something like swift flurry has an internal cooldown then it shouldn't be higher than the recovery time of your attacks.  If it doesn't have a chance to proc with every attack it'll be worse than say lightning strikes.

[Answermancer]

Imo if something like swift flurry has an internal cooldown then it shouldn't be higher than the recovery time of your attacks.  If it doesn't have a chance to proc with every attack it'll be worse than say lightning strikes.

 

Yeah, I think that would be the ideal for Flurry and Cleave stance.

 

The chaining is a huge problem for balance, but it you didn't get the effect on every actual "real" attack then that would feel crappy too.

[Cyrus_Blackfeather]

Imo if something like swift flurry has an internal cooldown then it shouldn't be higher than the recovery time of your attacks.  If it doesn't have a chance to proc with every attack it'll be worse than say lightning strikes.

 

This, pretty much. I hope we get comprehensive patch notes. 

[mazeltov]

PSA the beta patch is out, with a lot of unadvertised item and ability changes etc.