[Discussion] Combat design choices in Deadfire

[mosspit]

After playing for a couple of playthroughs, I have made some observations that I would to share with the community and maybe to hear some explanation on some of the design choices made in Deadfire. In all likelihood, I might be rehashing old arguments made during the development phase. If so, kindly re-iterate the rationale or even point me to the correct threads or links that contain said discussion.

 

On-Crit Effects

 

Most of the effects I see having crit procs are gated behind low proc rates. Typically behind < 30% with some of the strongest (and most interesting) effects like Blade Cascade and Meteoric gated behind 5%.

 

That is understandable. However also consider this:

• One of the biggest utilization of PoE1 crit procs is through propagation via Carnage and that is completely nullified through Deadfire's Carnage design
• Crit is now harder to achieve consistently due to multiplicative stacking rules
• Combat in Deadfire is already considerably slower than PoE1, which will lower proc rate in general

With these, I feel that on-crit effects are just added flavor and one will be lucky just to have them happen in an encounter. Rather than having builds design around them due to consistent occurrence.

 

On-receiving Crit Effects

 

Again, these effects are gated behind proc rates of typically less than 30%. However, most of them have the added condition of being proc by melee crit. Consider Okura's Kettle (10% on receiving melee crit) and Ngati's Gridle (10% on receiving melee crit). Even if you intentionally dump defensive stats to get crit on for every hit, you will only get to experience the proc effects at 10%. Honesty, I don't know Okura's Kettle is a bug or not as I can't seem to get it to proc. But the proc rate is so low that it might be just rng skewing my observation.

 

Compared with PoE's Shod-in-Faith (otherwise known as my favourite pair of boots in PoE1), Sanguine Plate, Binding Rope and Swaddling Sheet, retaliation seems to be something very difficult to design around in Deadfire. Most of the "on being critically hit" effects in Deadfire is hardly considered OP and I am puzzled by the design choices.

 

In fact, I tried to explain the convoluted mechanics behind Lethandria's Devotion and realized that I had to explain the interaction that was behind 3 layers of RNG and if the incoming attack was melee in nature. That is one of my first realization of how badly retaliation effects were implemented.

 

 

Indirect Healing Effects

 

In PoE1, Draining weapons are quite effective and they offer dependable sustainability as viable substitute to direct healing. In Deadfire, I see that Draining type weapons are much rarer and don't work in the same way. Typically PoE1 Draining heals endurance for 20% of the dmg dealt. In Deadfire, there are weapons like Sanguine Greatsword and Aldris Blade which only heals on crit. In particular, I question Magran's Flavor Blazing Core enchantment as it often heals for 0-2 health.

 

What this leads to is being shoehorned into using traditional healing for sustainability. Which is another puzzling design choice.

 

 

When discussing about these kind of effects, the question of difficulty will most likely be called into question. Just to be clear, I am fine with difficult game play and have no issues to admit I am not a particularly competent gamer. I will most likely not solo this game, like I have not solo'ed PoE1. But I also believe that diversity and difficulty is often not mutually exclusive. So I prefer to think of this way - nerf the numbers, but not to extent of killing the interactions or mechanics.

 

I guess discuss away?

Edited July 30, 2018 by mosspit

[mant2si]

Yes, I also was little bit disappoint about items proc and slow combat. When Obsidian release all DLC I will for sure develop mod which will return some part of PoE I balance, such as combat speed and good proc rate and maybe bosses stats, and maybe redone some classes to make them playable without multi classes, because I can balance pure class but can't  balance combo as Paladin + Rogue or Cipher + Ranger 

Edited July 30, 2018 by mant2si

[Dorftek]

I completely agree with the OP 100% and it has been my main point when I have been complaining about itemization wich has been so praised in a thread over at general section. All the interesting effects are either completely useless (magran axe for example) or just gated behind extreme RNG. There are a few exceptions tho such as Frostseeker. I also really like that we have quite a few weapons that can be enchanted with wounding, all is not bad, but a lot of em are.

 

Also another thing that bothers me is that they still keep certain special weapon attack enchanments as 1-2 per rest while others are 1 per encounter. Why? Thunderous report and Run through, two of the most powerful singleattacks are 1 per encounter wich is great, while complete garbage like Red Tear for example are per rest abilities. What's the reasoning behind this? Why is Stormrune shot 1 per rest while the better AoE in thunderous report is 1 per encounter?

 

I know the resting is completely irrelevant in this game, wich makes this even less understandable but it is still annoying because resting too often can screw with ones immersion.

 

You either keep the resting system from PoE1 with their per rest abilities and u improve upon on it or u leave it in the past, dipping into both just makes both variants worse if u ask me. Even if u enjoy both mustard and chocolate doesn't mean they mix well together.

Edited July 30, 2018 by Dorftek

[Boeroer]

I agree, it's pretty lame. But on the other hand: in PoE items like Shod-in-Faith and We-Toki etc. could be found in nealry every build - because they were so powerful and reliable.

 

So something had to be done. I just think that making the procs more random is lame. I don't like things in a combat game you can't influence at all too much. I would rather weaken the effect itself than adding another layer of randomness.

 

By the way: attack conversion rates were multiplicative in PoE as well. That's not new to Deadfire.

Edited July 31, 2018 by Boeroer

[Haplok]

I completely agree with the OP 100% and it has been my main point when I have been complaining about itemization wich has been so praised in a thread over at general section. All the interesting effects are either completely useless (magran axe for example) or just gated behind extreme RNG. There are a few exceptions tho such as Frostseeker. I also really like that we have quite a few weapons that can be enchanted with wounding, all is not bad, but a lot of em are.

 

Also another thing that bothers me is that they still keep certain special weapon attack enchanments as 1-2 per rest while others are 1 per encounter. Why? Thunderous report and Run through, two of the most powerful singleattacks are 1 per encounter wich is great, while complete garbage like Red Tear for example are per rest abilities. What's the reasoning behind this? Why is Stormrune shot 1 per rest while the better AoE in thunderous report is 1 per encounter?

 

I know the resting is completely irrelevant in this game, wich makes this even less understandable but it is still annoying because resting too often can screw with ones immersion.

 

You either keep the resting system from PoE1 with their per rest abilities and u improve upon on it or u leave it in the past, dipping into both just makes both variants worse if u ask me. Even if u enjoy both mustard and chocolate doesn't mean they mix well together.

 

Yeah, it's a huge mess with once per rest/per encounter abilities. I think all active abilities should be changed to 1-3 times per encounter (some weaker ones could be changed to x2-x3 to somewhat compensate for the weaker effect).

 

 

And regarding the effect trigger chance... I think Obsidian went overboard with the nerfs. The trigger chances were actually very good for many items on launch. Perhaps too good in some cases (often 100% on crit on stuff like Nature's Embrace and Ngati's Girdle). But instead of reducing them to 50% or even 30%, then nerfed them to the ground and changed the trigger chance to 10%, making those effects almost useless (because unreliable) flavor.

[grasida]

I agree that a lot of effects were over-nerfed in 1.1 and on-crit effects and procs were among the worst victims of this. I’m not railing against nerfs, a lot of things needed nerfing on release. But obsidian went for a blanket nerf approach to everything and adjusted a whole lot of numbers in a huge hurry that resulted in making a lot of procs feel boring or pointless because you almost never see them happen.

[mosspit]

@mant2si

 

No doubt it can be tricky but I don't know whether it is an intention to balance the "normal" PotD difficulty against the most OP of builds

 

 

@Dortek

 

I don't think I would like to get too deep into per-rest vs per-encounter argument. I seen it in other threads and I think ppl feel strongly on both side of the fence. One thing for sure - I feel class design on the whole has embraced the concept of per-encounter pretty well. But I can't say the same for itemization. As you said, there is a disconnect within the design of different item effects. I almost feel that there are completely isolated teams who were involved in item and class design.

 

To add further, I think Obs has equated "5-10% on crit" with "100% on-crit but 1/rest or 1/encounter". Hypothetically on average, both cases can be treated as having proc of 1 per encounter. But I don't think Obs realize that the former case is much more difficult to have included into builds with a consistent purpose.

 

 

@Boeroer

 

Yes, perhaps some items were too good in vanilla. That's probably the reason why with WM1 and WM2, items with % on-crit and on-hit effects were introduced. Even so, they are most or less acceptable although things like Firebug proc on Unlaboured Blade was given 3% (LOL). In Deadfire, on-crit effects on the whole got an even harsher treatment by forgoing the on-hit condition in general (and worsened by patch 1.1).

 

Also the fact that multiplicative stacking rule exists in PoE1 is surprising news to me. I admittedly don't go too deep into the mechanics for PoE1 but I have all along thought that the hit-to-crit conversions were additive in PoE1 eg. 2 instances of 10% hit-to-crit = 20% hit-to-crit. Which also makes the multiplicative rules for hit-to-crit in Deadfire understandably worthy of discussing in Deadfire threads. If it is really the case, I will admit it as an oversight on my part. But I don't think it shifts the relevance of my observations too much.

 

@Haplok

 

Yes, I agree. I don't think Obs realize what 10% on being melee crit'ed really is...

 

 

@grasida

 

Yes I agree. I will parrot myself that blanket changes are always a bad idea to me. Because while it does resolve the issue of difficulty in the general case, it will inevitably cause items, that didn't need to be nerfed in the first place, to be further nerfed to the point of "why bother". Also, I am a firm believer that changes have to be tested before being exposed to the public. And it just not possible for blanket changes to be tested well enough.

Edited July 31, 2018 by mosspit

[Archaven]

tbh if you asked me probably they gimped the system on purpose. else what can you expect for poe3?