Poll - Do you like POE1 casting and ability use system better or POE2s

[JFutral]

I'm mostly agnostic. I liked where PoE1 ended up, I wasn't around for the early changes.

 

I am dumbfounded why they felt the need to change. Things are different, but I don't think better, not really. I felt in PoE 1 i actually had a spellcaster specialist more so than in PoE 2. In tough battles my spell casters can run out of spells (especially in PotD) and end up slinging wands or whatever. That's not a spellcaster. That's a crippled ranger.

 

But, really, whatevs. 

 

I wish I had waited a year to jump in, though. I do not like the rollercoaster ride of early game development until they get their sea legs. Buff that, nerf this, arbitrary balance issues that weren't issues before.

 

That frustrates me more than anything.

 

Joe

[Psychevore]

I voted for POE2 mechanics, but let's be honest here: there is hardly a difference. Camping supplies were abundant in POE and battles were hardly ever really hard, so per rest abilities were in effect just per encounter abilities anyway.

[Rheios]

I voted for POE2 mechanics, but let's be honest here: there is hardly a difference. Camping supplies were abundant in POE and battles were hardly ever really hard, so per rest abilities were in effect just per encounter abilities anyway.

 

I don't think the idea was ever to run out of camping supplies if you were practicing a little discretion, but as sortof an existing discouragement for the 5 minute workday, alongside inn buffs. So that if you did do the 5 minute work day you had to A) keep finding them or B) keep buying them. The second's fine and the first I'll agree should have been harder, but I also think the amount you can carry with you should have been set at 3 and not 4.  That being said, sure you can still have a 5 minute workday, and many probably do, but I always found that as self-imposed boredom. I didn't allow it at my D&D table, and I don't let myself do it here, but I found the limited resources and fatigue mechanics were good about forcing me to rest in turn. 

 

Come Deadfire and I'd completed half of Nekataka without sleeping over the course of several (in game) months or more because of my preference to push ahead until wound, fatigue, and additional resource loss force me to stop. The loss of some of those mechanics was just lost complexity/choice-impact in my book. Not world ending, not horribly done in this case, but not any sort of improvement.

Edited July 6, 2018 by Rheios

[rjshae]

Personally I'd prefer something in between. Let the player have a limited set of selected spells that they can cast per encounter, then add in a magical focus that provides additional spell themes -- say up to 1 additional spell/level, depending on the power level. (The focus would be an equip-able item like an amulet, diadem, tome, or ring.) If the player doesn't like a focus, they can find a new one and become attuned to that. At least then you'd have some additional tactical variety and advanced planning.

[Celan]

I voted for POE2 mechanics, but let's be honest here: there is hardly a difference. Camping supplies were abundant in POE and battles were hardly ever really hard, so per rest abilities were in effect just per encounter abilities anyway.

I disagree that it's the same. You run out of casts halfway through most battles in PoE2. This rarely happened in PoE1 if I was managing my supplies.

[heldred]

The main point is, they wasted dev time tackling the spell/grimoire system and they could have spent the time on a better story, more content, diversity of items, balance, etc. i don’t recall this ever being a hot topic of contention, but now it is...

 

Don’t get me started on the waste it time and resources of the pirate ship system/combat. For some reason they forgot the type of game they were making and drank the pirate cool aid.

 

Begin with the end in mind and in their quest to be different they ran the risk of alienating the core (or making us less enthusiastic reviewers to recommend the game). I’m hoping they get their arms around balance and the DLC makes up for the shortcomings of the current game.

[K2K]

Both are bad. PoE 1 made casters gods at higher levels, but it at least give you choice because you get all spells eventually. So if spell was weaker or situational it wasn't problem, there was no opportunity cost in learning it. Resting restriction was purely illusionary so this was not limitation.

In PoE 2 however spell-casters are in weird place halfway in between, with per level  and per encounter cast. If you add to this that you need to chose you spells there is little variation here, you take only strongest ones.  

They should go with full change here, all  vancian spell-casters should get they own resource pool and ability tree similar to other classes with upgrades and more passives.

[ThacoBell]

As it stands, I much prefer everything about PoE2's combat system over PoE1's. But 2 could have been better if Obsidian had gone all in on the per encounter system. Remove rest and after battle injuries entirely, and make encounters more unique, encouraging different tactics to survive each battle.

[cokane]

As it stands, I much prefer everything about PoE2's combat system over PoE1's. But 2 could have been better if Obsidian had gone all in on the per encounter system. Remove rest and after battle injuries entirely, and make encounters more unique, encouraging different tactics to survive each battle.

 

It's really not surprising that the game launch had such abysmal difficulty when there's a decent chunk of the fanbase clamoring for removing any aspect of difficulty. If the game followed this, the only challenge would be limited to full party wipes. What of traps and other wound-causing moments under this system? Good job erasing that aspect of the game too. I swear, some people just want a game with choice, but no actual consequences.

[George_Truman]

I voted for Deadfire. I would prefer the PoE1 system if there were some way to lock the player in to certain situations (so they can't leave). The way it works in PoE1 is really only as a self-imposed constraint. 

[K2K]

Eh honestly they just should go all in with changes. Current ability model doesn't impress me very much. If it was to me I would divorce power levels from learning abilities and split those in four tiers.

[Haplok]

I prefer Deadfire's consistency, particularly for martial classes. Something that bothers me about PoE are the per rest abilities like Finishing Blow or Clear Out, which are inferior to the rest of the classes abilities in terms of availability and inferior to the per rest spells in terms of power. I also remeber the cluster**** that was per emcounter spells before Spell Mastery got introduced and I see Deadfire's casting system as an attempt to avoid either of those patchwork solutions, which I personally enjoy more.

 

So those abilities should be upgraded to 1 per encounter.... like Heart of Fury, which initially used to be 1/per rest.

 

I prefer the attrition based rest system from PoE1. With the awesome Health and Endurance mechanics, which have also been cut.

 

That said, I do strongly believe that PoE2 is the better game overall.

[gkathellar]

I voted for PoE1, not because of the per-rest system (which was garbage), but because martial classes really do not profit from having a single shared resource pool for all of their abilities. Spamming your main full attack over and over again is not fun, necessitates the use of an AI routine, and generally means that higher level, higher-cost abilities are not worth using (with some exceptions). If martial characters used the same system as the main spellcasters - that is to say, having their resource pools broken up by power level - I would absolutely switch my vote.

 

Book of Nine Swords all the way, baby

[Skazz]

Book of Nine Swords Book of Weeaboo Fightan Magic all the way, baby

 

There, I fixed the sentence for you. I think that's what you meant to say.

[gkathellar]

 

Book of Nine Swords Book of Weeaboo Fightan Magic all the way, baby

 

There, I fixed the sentence for you. I think that's what you meant to say.

 

It is! God, what a typo. I feel ashamed.

[ThacoBell]

 

As it stands, I much prefer everything about PoE2's combat system over PoE1's. But 2 could have been better if Obsidian had gone all in on the per encounter system. Remove rest and after battle injuries entirely, and make encounters more unique, encouraging different tactics to survive each battle.

 

It's really not surprising that the game launch had such abysmal difficulty when there's a decent chunk of the fanbase clamoring for removing any aspect of difficulty. If the game followed this, the only challenge would be limited to full party wipes. What of traps and other wound-causing moments under this system? Good job erasing that aspect of the game too. I swear, some people just want a game with choice, but no actual consequences.

 

Easy, make traps part of the encounter. For example, have a group of enemies prepared for you. Have them entrenched in a definsive location. Give the player options on how to engage. Brute force your way through the front guards (paladins and fighters) use ranged attacks to snipe vulnerable but dangerous targets )spellcasters), or find a way around (requiring either navigating around traps placed by the enemy, or disarm them). So many things could be done to make each encounter interesting and challenging in tis own right. THe problems with difficulty isn't because of a lack of a tedious resting mechanic. No extra strategy is added by resting, its not difficult. You just have to take 5 mintutes to backtrck and rest to get your abilites back so that you can do more than auto attack.

[cokane]

 

 

As it stands, I much prefer everything about PoE2's combat system over PoE1's. But 2 could have been better if Obsidian had gone all in on the per encounter system. Remove rest and after battle injuries entirely, and make encounters more unique, encouraging different tactics to survive each battle.

 

It's really not surprising that the game launch had such abysmal difficulty when there's a decent chunk of the fanbase clamoring for removing any aspect of difficulty. If the game followed this, the only challenge would be limited to full party wipes. What of traps and other wound-causing moments under this system? Good job erasing that aspect of the game too. I swear, some people just want a game with choice, but no actual consequences.

 

Easy, make traps part of the encounter. For example, have a group of enemies prepared for you. Have them entrenched in a definsive location. Give the player options on how to engage. Brute force your way through the front guards (paladins and fighters) use ranged attacks to snipe vulnerable but dangerous targets )spellcasters), or find a way around (requiring either navigating around traps placed by the enemy, or disarm them). So many things could be done to make each encounter interesting and challenging in tis own right. THe problems with difficulty isn't because of a lack of a tedious resting mechanic. No extra strategy is added by resting, its not difficult. You just have to take 5 mintutes to backtrck and rest to get your abilites back so that you can do more than auto attack.

 

 

Again, this is still stripping something out of the game. Making traps only as part of combat encounters makes the game narrower. Going on ad nauseam about how traps tactically affect combat here is just obfuscating. You're calling for less diverse challenges in the game.

 

If traps can no longer exist as separate problems for the player, the game is diminished. (It's already slightly diminished over the original in this department, as non-combat traps can only do one thing: wound.)

 

And you didn't address my point that wounds are also handed out in other aspects of the game -- scripted encounters and puzzles that aren't necessarily traps (think fire room in the digsite dungeon). The game already provides virtually no failstates in the quest design, same as the original. A far more forgiving combat system than the original. And now the same players whose calls neutered that challenge demand design choices that strip more challenges out of the game.

Edited July 10, 2018 by cokane

[Rheios]

Easy, make traps part of the encounter. For example, have a group of enemies prepared for you. Have them entrenched in a definsive location. Give the player options on how to engage. Brute force your way through the front guards (paladins and fighters) use ranged attacks to snipe vulnerable but dangerous targets )spellcasters), or find a way around (requiring either navigating around traps placed by the enemy, or disarm them). So many things could be done to make each encounter interesting and challenging in tis own right. THe problems with difficulty isn't because of a lack of a tedious resting mechanic. No extra strategy is added by resting, its not difficult. You just have to take 5 mintutes to backtrck and rest to get your abilites back so that you can do more than auto attack.

 

 

 

 

What you describe here wouldn't really look or play well with the existing isometric gamestyle POE1 tried to emulate and POE2 built off of, it could be fun but I think it'd really work better delivered in the text interactions like the Keep defense war in POE 1 or the Ship battles in POE2 - if the ship battles had hazards and some more variables (might have actually been interesting then). Describe a scenario and letting you choose the action works better in text than trying to provide the tools to emulate it as opposed to straight combat and your system would leave those circumstances out most times because they lack a lot of choice beyond the obvious. I can't even say I'd hate that approach in a different or unrelated game - I actually really liked the war for the castle's precursor decisions and would have liked the Boat choices to have that much impact on the resulting boarding battles.  I'd probably also have decisions between encounters carry over in some fashion, even if it wasn't always damage. High risks that damage you should come with penalties later on.

 

That being said your flat wrong about there not being some amount of strategy to resting based resource mechanics. There's a very obvious interplay between the drive to complete the ruin or area, avoiding potential rest dangers (which there should be occurrences of and I think can be interesting to occur when out of doors and could be mitigated with high survival characters), rationing damage vs spells (I know I do my job right when my spellcasters run out of spells about the same time my fighters were running out of health in POE1), and not wanting to trek back to town - risking become dangerously fatigued on the journey that you could be surprised on - empty-handed just because someone blew their resources. What you're describing is the 5 minute workday from D&D and its never a problem in a group/with a player that actually cares about their characters' view or the dangers of the world around them. Its almost always a problem, not because of lack of encounter complexity although that is always a good thing, with the DM not making the world punish slow completions, risky sleeping events, and the simple fact that players who just woke up aren't going to be tired enough to benefit from 8 hours of rest again right after the last one. Not to mention in a game like POE its just self imposed boring. Sure you can do it, but that's entirely on you at that point, as its pretty obviously not the intention.

Edited July 10, 2018 by Rheios

[gkathellar]

 

 

 

As it stands, I much prefer everything about PoE2's combat system over PoE1's. But 2 could have been better if Obsidian had gone all in on the per encounter system. Remove rest and after battle injuries entirely, and make encounters more unique, encouraging different tactics to survive each battle.

 

It's really not surprising that the game launch had such abysmal difficulty when there's a decent chunk of the fanbase clamoring for removing any aspect of difficulty. If the game followed this, the only challenge would be limited to full party wipes. What of traps and other wound-causing moments under this system? Good job erasing that aspect of the game too. I swear, some people just want a game with choice, but no actual consequences.

 

Easy, make traps part of the encounter. For example, have a group of enemies prepared for you. Have them entrenched in a definsive location. Give the player options on how to engage. Brute force your way through the front guards (paladins and fighters) use ranged attacks to snipe vulnerable but dangerous targets )spellcasters), or find a way around (requiring either navigating around traps placed by the enemy, or disarm them). So many things could be done to make each encounter interesting and challenging in tis own right. THe problems with difficulty isn't because of a lack of a tedious resting mechanic. No extra strategy is added by resting, its not difficult. You just have to take 5 mintutes to backtrck and rest to get your abilites back so that you can do more than auto attack.

 

 

Again, this is still stripping something out of the game. Making traps only as part of combat encounters makes the game narrower. Going on ad nauseam about how traps tactically affect combat here is just obfuscating. You're calling for less diverse challenges in the game.

 

If traps can no longer exist as separate problems for the player, the game is diminished. (It's already slightly diminished over the original in this department, as non-combat traps can only do one thing: wound.)

 

 

That's pretty much exactly how it is already, though. In PoE 1 and 2 alike, traps only ever matter when there's a group of enemies sitting right on top of them (and there are a couple of notable cases of this in either game that add meaningfully to particular combat encounters). Otherwise, you just spot and disarm them and that's that. Same thing in the IE games: realistically, you will have a rogue in the party, and you will spot the traps, and you'll disarm them and get XP for it if you're not otherwise occupied. I suppose they impose a "you must have this much Disarm Traps to pass" requirement, which ... is not especially compelling or interesting. The whole "glowing red square on the floor" model of traps only works when there are opportunity costs to disarmament.

[cokane]

 

 

 

 

As it stands, I much prefer everything about PoE2's combat system over PoE1's. But 2 could have been better if Obsidian had gone all in on the per encounter system. Remove rest and after battle injuries entirely, and make encounters more unique, encouraging different tactics to survive each battle.

 

It's really not surprising that the game launch had such abysmal difficulty when there's a decent chunk of the fanbase clamoring for removing any aspect of difficulty. If the game followed this, the only challenge would be limited to full party wipes. What of traps and other wound-causing moments under this system? Good job erasing that aspect of the game too. I swear, some people just want a game with choice, but no actual consequences.

 

Easy, make traps part of the encounter. For example, have a group of enemies prepared for you. Have them entrenched in a definsive location. Give the player options on how to engage. Brute force your way through the front guards (paladins and fighters) use ranged attacks to snipe vulnerable but dangerous targets )spellcasters), or find a way around (requiring either navigating around traps placed by the enemy, or disarm them). So many things could be done to make each encounter interesting and challenging in tis own right. THe problems with difficulty isn't because of a lack of a tedious resting mechanic. No extra strategy is added by resting, its not difficult. You just have to take 5 mintutes to backtrck and rest to get your abilites back so that you can do more than auto attack.

 

 

Again, this is still stripping something out of the game. Making traps only as part of combat encounters makes the game narrower. Going on ad nauseam about how traps tactically affect combat here is just obfuscating. You're calling for less diverse challenges in the game.

 

If traps can no longer exist as separate problems for the player, the game is diminished. (It's already slightly diminished over the original in this department, as non-combat traps can only do one thing: wound.)

 

 

That's pretty much exactly how it is already, though. In PoE 1 and 2 alike, traps only ever matter when there's a group of enemies sitting right on top of them (and there are a couple of notable cases of this in either game that add meaningfully to particular combat encounters). Otherwise, you just spot and disarm them and that's that. Same thing in the IE games: realistically, you will have a rogue in the party, and you will spot the traps, and you'll disarm them and get XP for it if you're not otherwise occupied. I suppose they impose a "you must have this much Disarm Traps to pass" requirement, which ... is not especially compelling or interesting. The whole "glowing red square on the floor" model of traps only works when there are opportunity costs to disarmament.

 

 

This isn't true. Traps in BG games could wipe your whole party if you weren't careful. In the original there were specifically traps such as in Lle a Rhemen (dungeon below stormwall gorge) as you enter the second level that was beefy and easy to set off -- because it came right after a scripted encounter. The very low fungus level of Endless Paths. And several parts of Galvino's workshop (a fine example of trap usage), that might be hard to even detect. People here repeatedly rely on hyperbole when talking about the old games' shortcomings and it's not a honest way to discuss these games.