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i see it that as an alternative or option for you to win fights that are too tough for you. again you dont have to use it.. did anyone use a gun and point to your head "you must press this awesome button"? holy cow is it that the trend these day is something you didnt like you need to enforce everyone else to not allow to empower simply because it's too powerful for you?

 

IMO empower should be powerful that is why it's called empower. the issue probably more to how easy you can rest than empowering. however, i do agree that empower should not 1 shot bosses.

Edited by Archaven
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Some high level spells  are very good. Including Witting Wind.

I think there is a problem with spell level and power level stacking.

For witting wind it is 8, and if we add 10 that would be double the fun.

But we can make every spell base level 0, and just assume that witting wind will have generally +8PL and balance as such. ANd even the crazziest of stacking will give only 2/3 effect.

That could help.

But nerfing Wildstrike and Spirit Weapons... that is important issue too.

Edited by evilcat
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1) take tape

2) tape over part of monitor where empower button is so you can't see it

3) enjoy game.

LOL

 

yup. it's entirely unnecessary from a spell power standpoint.  might use it for the accuracy and pen buff for spells that don't cause damage though... like adragan gaze, and just to refresh spell slots, though I rarely need to do that, the fights are so small.

 

there ARE a couple of fights that send out waves, like the undead fight at the lost city under Neketaka, where I actually needed empower to refresh spell slots.

 

but that was the only one I can think of.  first time I ran through that fight, it pleasantly surprised me.  at below level 8, that would be a challenge for most parties on PotD I think.  a rare thing.

 

 

you know, I've been playing rpgs like this since "So you want to be a hero" (when Sierra Games was just getting rolling, back in 1988).  I think overall what is happening, is that more and more players have already played and enjoyed not just one, but many games like this now, and so what seemed so difficult in games like Baldurs gate, seems much less so now because you kinda know what to expect, and you tend to plan ahead.  But I think devs are stuck in this realm of trying to attract new players to the genre that might never have played any rpg like this before.  so you get this ever increasing gap of proficiency between the old guard, like myself, and new players, and it is just nearly impossible to balance the game to please everyone.

 

i think this is why on release, most of these games seem so easy.   once they get some new players into the game, then they start adding new difficulty.  IIRC, they have already started doing that in the very first patch.

 

so, I figure in about 6 months or so, after a dlc or 2 has come out, they will have balanced it reasonably well, and it will definitely be worth doing another run through. 

 

well, that, or modders will have sufficiently ramped up the difficulty for hardcore gamers.

 

 

 

 

Edited by Ichthyic
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Most martial / power generators classes do not rely on empower button, yeah. But classic casters are a bit screwed at lower levels with their pathetic amount of spell picks and ****ty accuracy, and the higher difficulty is, the more obvious it becomes. As you level up it gets better however, and you may never touch Empower at all.

Edited by Shadenuat
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So for some reason people around here feel that a purely single player game with NO competitive part requires constant rebalancing. My question is: WHY?

 

Unless members of this forums make a majority of the playerbase (which is obviously not likely), the only thing you're doing by these changes is make other players annoyed. There is absolutely nothing fun in having to restart the game because a dumb patch just nerfed your fun character to the point of being uplayable. Also, when a player returns after DLC and wants to continue his old save, then realizes that there was a patch along the way that made his character garbage, what makes you think he will restart and not abandon the game completely? How could you possibly think that effing up someone's playthrough is a good idea to keep them playing?

 

Do you really not see how pointless it is to do a Blizzard-style overhauls to a single player game? Having an "overpowered" character does not affect anyone's game, only YOURS, and you're free to play anything else if you're bored. If the player wants to rebalance the game himself with mods: sure, why not? Let them. Baldur's Gate did. And it was fine, because only people who wanted these changes got them, they weren't forced down their throat because a random Joe on official forum cries that the game is too easy for him.

 

So I ask again: what is there to gain by this? Flexing about achievements perhaps? Hey, did you know that mods do not disable achievements and you can mod yourself to be a god anyway?

 

In short.. fixing obvious bugs is great. Having mod support, so that players can modify the game to their own needs, is also great. But doing these horrible rebalance changes to a game with zero competitive play is just a **** move.

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Can minorities please stop claiming they where the majority? It is really annoying.

I don't think people who want to have fun while playing PotD-difficulty are a minority. And people who don't want their character to be able to eliminate whole encounter groups with a single blow aren't either.

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As far as I understand Josh Sawyer is at least partially in charge of overseeing the balance changes, as he was on PoE1.

 

He has on multiple occasions made it clear that he strongly believes that balance matters, even in singleplayer CRPGs.

 

If you want to make your opinion heard or vent, please go ahead, but know that more balance changes (both up and down) will come.

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As far as I understand Josh Sawyer is at least partially in charge of overseeing the balance changes, as he was on PoE1.

 

He has on multiple occasions made it clear that he strongly believes that balance matters, even in singleplayer CRPGs.

 

If you want to make your opinion heard or vent, please go ahead, but know that more balance changes (both up and down) will come.

And I agree that making it balanced is a matter of making it fun for everyone (not only PotD heads like myself).

A game that's not a least bit of challenging is no fun, as is a game that you can't make progress in. 

Add into the mix a semi-open-worldedness, and it becomes a pretty tricky thing to get right, i.e. to create surmountable challenges for everyone.

Difficulty levels help, as does level scaling, but only to a point. I agree that this sometimes can take extreme form, like the Resolve/Perception redefinition and Defender nerf in PoE1.

Ultimately, though, it was required as otherwise, a two-tanks-four-glass-canons party was all it took to overcome any challenge without even thinking about it even on PotD.

 

BTW While I wasn't arguing from a PotD perspective, I'm pretty sure that the ratio of backers in the PotD crowd is significantly higher than in the non-PotD community. I agree with the OP that we're a minority, but were slightly less insignificant than the numbers make us out to be.

Edited by Zoso der Goldene
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the_ultimate.png
 

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As far as I understand Josh Sawyer is at least partially in charge of overseeing the balance changes, as he was on PoE1.

 

He has on multiple occasions made it clear that he strongly believes that balance matters, even in singleplayer CRPGs.

 

If you want to make your opinion heard or vent, please go ahead, but know that more balance changes (both up and down) will come.

In fairness, that letter written by Sawyer is framed in a very biased and inaccurate manner. For example, he statement " Which set of changes do you think I heard more feedback about? If you guessed the marginal drop in proc rate on the soulbound item that had only worked properly for two weeks, you’d be right." is...intellectually dishonest. The dagger in question had it's proc rate dropped from 10% to 3%; that's not "marginal", that's 2/3rds of it's bonus proc percentage. But acknowledging that doesn't hep the narrative Sawyer is trying to frame, so he implies that it's a smaller change than it actually is. The whole thing is full of stuff like that; it's not an honest discussion of why Sawyer believes these things so much as it is a justification for his view of game systems.

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As far as I understand Josh Sawyer is at least partially in charge of overseeing the balance changes, as he was on PoE1.

 

He has on multiple occasions made it clear that he strongly believes that balance matters, even in singleplayer CRPGs.

 

If you want to make your opinion heard or vent, please go ahead, but know that more balance changes (both up and down) will come.

In fairness, that letter written by Sawyer is framed in a very biased and inaccurate manner. For example, he statement " Which set of changes do you think I heard more feedback about? If you guessed the marginal drop in proc rate on the soulbound item that had only worked properly for two weeks, you’d be right." is...intellectually dishonest. The dagger in question had it's proc rate dropped from 10% to 3%; that's not "marginal", that's 2/3rds of it's bonus proc percentage. But acknowledging that doesn't hep the narrative Sawyer is trying to frame, so he implies that it's a smaller change than it actually is. The whole thing is full of stuff like that; it's not an honest discussion of why Sawyer believes these things so much as it is a justification for his view of game systems.

 

 

To be completely fair, this is not aimed directly at Josh Sawyer. I used to work with him as external QA and I can tell you that he's not a tyrant hell-bent on his own concept. Quite the opposite, he's very open to reasonable suggestions.

 

I have nothing against balance itself, but I strongly believe it should be mostly completed before the title is released. Small tweaks after that are fine. Completely overhauling the game a month after it launches is just.. mean?

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As far as I understand Josh Sawyer is at least partially in charge of overseeing the balance changes, as he was on PoE1.

 

He has on multiple occasions made it clear that he strongly believes that balance matters, even in singleplayer CRPGs.

 

If you want to make your opinion heard or vent, please go ahead, but know that more balance changes (both up and down) will come.

In fairness, that letter written by Sawyer is framed in a very biased and inaccurate manner. For example, he statement " Which set of changes do you think I heard more feedback about? If you guessed the marginal drop in proc rate on the soulbound item that had only worked properly for two weeks, you’d be right." is...intellectually dishonest. The dagger in question had it's proc rate dropped from 10% to 3%; that's not "marginal", that's 2/3rds of it's bonus proc percentage. But acknowledging that doesn't hep the narrative Sawyer is trying to frame, so he implies that it's a smaller change than it actually is. The whole thing is full of stuff like that; it's not an honest discussion of why Sawyer believes these things so much as it is a justification for his view of game systems.

 

I have to disagree, and you prove Josh's point about feeling losses more than gains nicely in a way.

The 10% to 3% proc rate reduction would be a major thing only if that was the only attribute. While Firebug is a powerful effect, it's by far not the only thing this weapon has to offer, and the he also points that out. The 20% attack rate increase basically increases all damage you do by it by 20%. Being a mythic weapon on top is reason enough to pick it.

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I mean its frustrating that the vast majority of items, spell and abilities in the game are very mediocre eg +1 this +2 that +10% that. I hardly even notice using 99% of stuff.

 

Surely there is a way of making the game balanced without making all items and abilities mediocre. 

 

@op Yeah i agree with you to a certain point. Just keep in mind that you are on an obsidian forum full of hardcore obsidian fans. You will be ganged up on and cut down if they deem any of your comments to controversial, regardless if you are right or wrong. They do this just because you are criticizing obsidian.

Edited by antman45454
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Look, I took down the late dragon with one empowered level 9 spell on hard and I coasted through the game after having found veteran in POE to be quite a challenge. Meanwhile in this game I only ever struggled against the damned fampyrs and their charms.

 

If anything the weapons of POE2 are more powerful than the ones in POE were. +15% action speed, for instance, is *huge*.

 

The game was too damn easy.

Edited by Yenkaz
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I don't think people who want to have fun while playing PotD-difficulty are a minority.

I'm quite certain PotD-players are a minority (albeit a vocal one). I'm quite certain more than half of the player base make up for the other 4 difficulty settings.

 

But it doesn't matter much. Clearly, those who enjoy PotD difficulty find the game too easy and it's very reasonable that Obsidian try to fix and adjust that via patches. Which group is in majority or monority is uninteresting in this case.

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I'll do it, for a turnip.

 

DnD item quality description mod (for PoE2) by peardox

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Didn’t play the newes patch, so I can’t comment on changes made. However, 1.0 was in dire need of rebalancing and difficulty change. The game on Veteran provided no resistance and I intentionally didn’t use any of the really overpowered combos. With the wide power gap between various classes/subclasses/abilities creating s proper difficulty is nearly impossible as you either:

1) balance around more effective builds making many options simply wrong choices on higher difficulty

2) balancing around the weakest classes asking the player to create their own restrictions (engage with character creation and create weake builds) in order to have fun.

 

Modding is a nice option, but it is not a substitute for game design and balance. Fans shouldn’t spend their time fixing game they bought. It happens, but it’s not a proper solution.

 

Josh commitment to improving his games is something I respect and value a lot, and a reason I am fairly relax about the horrendous state the game launched in balance wise - I trust Obsidian will be working those.

 

If you find changes too punishing, you can always lower the difficulty. If on Veteran/PotD game plays by itself you can’t do much without redesigning it yourself.

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So for some reason people around here feel that a purely single player game with NO competitive part requires constant rebalancing. My question is: WHY?

 

Unless members of this forums make a majority of the playerbase (which is obviously not likely), the only thing you're doing by these changes is make other players annoyed. There is absolutely nothing fun in having to restart the game because a dumb patch just nerfed your fun character to the point of being uplayable. Also, when a player returns after DLC and wants to continue his old save, then realizes that there was a patch along the way that made his character garbage, what makes you think he will restart and not abandon the game completely? How could you possibly think that effing up someone's playthrough is a good idea to keep them playing?

 

Do you really not see how pointless it is to do a Blizzard-style overhauls to a single player game? Having an "overpowered" character does not affect anyone's game, only YOURS, and you're free to play anything else if you're bored. If the player wants to rebalance the game himself with mods: sure, why not? Let them. Baldur's Gate did. And it was fine, because only people who wanted these changes got them, they weren't forced down their throat because a random Joe on official forum cries that the game is too easy for him.

 

So I ask again: what is there to gain by this? Flexing about achievements perhaps? Hey, did you know that mods do not disable achievements and you can mod yourself to be a god anyway?

 

In short.. fixing obvious bugs is great. Having mod support, so that players can modify the game to their own needs, is also great. But doing these horrible rebalance changes to a game with zero competitive play is just a **** move.

 

It may be weird for me to say what i will say, knowing that the real important thing for me in games like Pillars is Roleplay opportunities. The capability the game gives you to Roleplay. While the writing is great and inspiring in this regard, i believe mechanics are mostly hindering it in the Pillars franchise.

 

BUT... If i try even a bit to be in the shoes of other players, i just can't agree with anything you wrote here, dear OP. Even i tend to try many different things in many different playthroughs in RPGs i like. I would even say that once i've roleplayed 3 playthrouhgs with 3 different characters, playing the same scenario over and over again may become tiresome. What hooked me to BG even past this point (something Torment, best RPG ever, lacked) was creating Roleplayable, but conceptual characters, too. This basically means that, even without min-maxing, i started to experiment concept builds and to try to make the best of the builds i created. I looked for fun, powerful ones.

 

But you know... once the point where i not roleplay my playthroughs as much in a given RPG anymore is reached, lack of balance can ruin everything. 2 such games i love have majors faults in this regard, and i can tell you, it's no good for the future life of the game, modding or not. Because even i ended up being bored, while not finding any mod that could drastically nerf the game, or even get rid of quite a lot of perks/items.

 

These 2 games were: Arcanum (technologist dwarf brawler) and Fallout 2. The problem were the same in both: my dwarf and my fallout character ended up making anything and everything trivial. The whole character building did not make any sense anymore, since i could sweep everything, even naked. Even while trying to lose in combat, i couldn't even achieve that past some game time.

 

For many people, games like Pillars or Wasteland give opportunities for replayability, because of their very essence (being a RPGs with choices). But without a strong work on balance, the whole thing can become pointless. Why even thinking to discard the problem while arguing that modders can do the job, when the very mechanic designer himself is willing to do it for us? I can't grasp your point. If you like the feeling of being overpowered, it's even easier to cheat with the console than mod the game.

 

In the end, even if i will daresay that i would rather a good roleplayable game with roleplay friendly mechanics (which Pillars lacks), i definitely understand that the players that love the game and want to experiment with it in a different way than me, desperately want thorough balance. Especially if Pillars want to live a long life.

 

I agree with Lord Mord. I tend to dislike people who can't consider anything but their own viewpoint. People who think that the whole world can only work in one way, the very one they see for themselves. These people tend to have a lot of opinions, and give you tons of advices on how to live your life that can only apply to themselves, but completely fail to understand this. When you fail to understand that the way you feel and experiment life and things (even in this case, games) can only be true for you, you become narrow minded and engage on the road of pointless proselytism, forgetting that you should just defend your point of view, try to weigh on things, while never discarding right off the blue the one of others, just because you can't see anywhere further that your own nose.

 

Regards.

 

Post scriptum: No, i'm not an Obsidian fan, in case you wonder about it. I have plenty of problems with the way they do things, while recognizing great potential at the same time. So, i definitely won't defend Obs just for the sake of it.

Edited by Abel
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As far as I understand Josh Sawyer is at least partially in charge of overseeing the balance changes, as he was on PoE1.

 

He has on multiple occasions made it clear that he strongly believes that balance matters, even in singleplayer CRPGs.

 

If you want to make your opinion heard or vent, please go ahead, but know that more balance changes (both up and down) will come.

In fairness, that letter written by Sawyer is framed in a very biased and inaccurate manner. For example, he statement " Which set of changes do you think I heard more feedback about? If you guessed the marginal drop in proc rate on the soulbound item that had only worked properly for two weeks, you’d be right." is...intellectually dishonest. The dagger in question had it's proc rate dropped from 10% to 3%; that's not "marginal", that's 2/3rds of it's bonus proc percentage. But acknowledging that doesn't hep the narrative Sawyer is trying to frame, so he implies that it's a smaller change than it actually is. The whole thing is full of stuff like that; it's not an honest discussion of why Sawyer believes these things so much as it is a justification for his view of game systems.

 

I have to disagree, and you prove Josh's point about feeling losses more than gains nicely in a way.

The 10% to 3% proc rate reduction would be a major thing only if that was the only attribute. While Firebug is a powerful effect, it's by far not the only thing this weapon has to offer, and the he also points that out. The 20% attack rate increase basically increases all damage you do by it by 20%. Being a mythic weapon on top is reason enough to pick it.

 

Right, but my point isn't about the overall capabilities of the weapon, any more than the sentence "If you guessed the marginal drop in proc rate on the soulbound item" refers to the overall capabilities of the weapon. Josh Sawyer in that line, and my response about, is *specifically* addressing the *drop in proc rate*. Not the damage the weapon deals, not the overall capabilities of the weapon, but the *drop in proc rate*. He minimized the *drop in proc rate* by saying that that, and specifically that only, was "marginal". He said it was a "marginal drop in proc rate", and I'm saying that while it's effects on the weapon may have been mininmal, the *drop in proc rate* was not. It dropped the *proc rate* by 2/3rds, which is not a "marginal drop in proc rate". It's a *major* drop in proc rate. The effect of the drop in proc rate was minimal for many reasons, but it most certainly was a severe drop in proc rate. His phrase of it is meant to imply that the drop in proc rate was *itself* minor, which is a dishonest way of phrasing that.

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I'm quite certain PotD-players are a minority (albeit a vocal one). I'm quite certain more than half of the player base make up for the other 4 difficulty settings.

 

Of course. But not a minority in the sense of "just the members of this forum".

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