Resolve, help me out.

[rheingold]

Resolve was good in POE. Could have been better though, I for one, would love alternate options to quests based on resolve. Would be great not to have to fight all the time. It was also really useful for the deflection bonus. Rogues were squishy on POtd, so having 16-18 resolve helped quite a bit. And with a high deflection class like chanter kitted out with all the abilities it was possible to get to an absurd deflection score. If I recall it was somewhere around 175 with scrolls.

I think resolve is actually a better stat now in Deadfire from a gaming point of view, it has some nice bonuses for defense, but they could have had more skill checks with it.

[protopersona]

Snipped quote for conciseness. 

So you mean like a Resolve check to make the Magma Dragon fly away? Or the multiple checks to have the Dragon fight Rym in the BoW? Like that?

You can keep trying to refute but I've provided you evidence and keep talking about Fallout. Don't care about Fallout. Just admit you are wrong- Resolve was an important dialogue attribute in PoE, it did everything you are saying above - changed quests and allowed you to take different routes.

 

You're doing a lot of cherry picking there to prove your point. That list has a few hundred checks on it. You listed what, 4-5 checks that actually meaningfully affect the game? How many of the checks on that list aren't just for flavor text?

 

Nobody is saying that stat checks never do anything meaningful. What we are saying is if PoE was designed with the same philosophies as former Obsidian/Black Isle RPGs then the number of checks that actually affect quest outcomes and game content would be most of the checks in the game.

Edited October 22, 2018 by protopersona

[thelee]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

People dumped it in POE 1 also

Then they missed out on all the dialogue options.

I think a lot of people preferred to wreck house in combat instead.

Which ppl?

most of the discussion i was a part of back in the day, resolve was a dump stat.

 

in terms of dialogue options while it did give you a few alternative quest endings, it was only in a few cases. it's nothing like charisma/speech in fallouts 1-NV.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/raw-numbers-for-poes-dialogue-checks.98722/

 

Incorrect.

Most of those are "flavor" alternate checks... like in Deadfire. Where you say something extra, or learn something extra, but nothing material changes in the dialogue tree or quest. Read the second paragraph in that link: "Mind you, the dialogue unlocked by these checks could still be ****."

 

Meanwhile, in the Fallout series, you could literally convince the final boss to kill themselves just by being charismatic and speechful enough. Entire quest chains could be blocked off from you for having the wrong stats or saying the wrong thing.

So you mean like a Resolve check to make the Magma Dragon fly away? Or the multiple checks to have the Dragon fight Rym in the BoW? Like that?

 

You can keep trying to refute but I've provided you evidence and keep talking about Fallout. Don't care about Fallout. Just admit you are wrong- Resolve was an important dialogue attribute in PoE, it did everything you are saying above - changed quests and allowed you to take different routes.

 

 

So when I say "most of those are flavor checks" you respond with literally two counterexamples and somehow this disputes "most of those are flavor checks?" Not to mention that in Deadfire, most of the important game-changing skill checks aren't even resolve-based (e.g. extremely high intimidate or i think bluff checks for Nemnok; being a priest of magran for the ashen maw); not to mention that we're talking about PoE1 here so drawing counterexamples from Deadfire literally proves nothing. You should go through the game and quick save before each major dialogue and proceed to try every single skill or stat-gated dialogue option; you may find yourself surprised as to how little actually materially changes anything. They may give you some extra lore, but not much else. (Heck in this sense Deadire is worse; even the dialogue options that sound like rejecting a quest may still end up with the question being added to your journal.)

 

In PoE1 I think I count on my hands the number of times a high resolve actually made for a tangibly different outcome (said as someone who has clocked ~1000 steam hours on PoE1).

 

I use fallout as an example because that's a series where the equivalent charisma stat mattered in the sense that you're talking about. PoE1/2 aren't even close; they are certainly better than BG/BG2, but not even remotely close.

Edited October 22, 2018 by thelee

[Verde]

And your initial counter was "me and some ppl I used to talk to dumped Resolve so we could do more DPS." Not much of an argument. At least I provided some semblance of evidence. Again, I don't care about Fallout whatsoever and it has no relation to Resolve in either game.

Edited October 22, 2018 by Verde

[Boeroer]

The only important things that I remember in PoE that you could do with high Resolve were:

 

Getting Ryona's Vambraces from the Alpine Dragon without the need to fight him. Or in other words: get them a lot earlier if you wanted to kill him anyway.

 

Negotiating with Lenrath and getting a minor stat boost - but not getting bog dragon scales.

[Verde]

The only important things that I remember in PoE that you could do with high Resolve were:

 

Getting Ryona's Vambraces from the Alpine Dragon without the need to fight him. Or in other words: get them a lot earlier if you wanted to kill him anyway.

 

Negotiating with Lenrath and getting a minor stat boost - but not getting bog dragon scales.

So what you're saying is, it would be good for a Diplomatic char?

 

Also-

 

https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Uses_of_Resolve_in_interactions

[Verde]

Snipped quote for conciseness.

So you mean like a Resolve check to make the Magma Dragon fly away? Or the multiple checks to have the Dragon fight Rym in the BoW? Like that?

You can keep trying to refute but I've provided you evidence and keep talking about Fallout. Don't care about Fallout. Just admit you are wrong- Resolve was an important dialogue attribute in PoE, it did everything you are saying above - changed quests and allowed you to take different routes.

 

You're doing a lot of cherry picking there to prove your point. That list has a few hundred checks on it. You listed what, 4-5 checks that actually meaningfully affect the game? How many of the checks on that list aren't just for flavor text?

 

Nobody is saying that stat checks never do anything meaningful. What we are saying is if PoE was designed with the same philosophies as former Obsidian/Black Isle RPGs then the number of checks that actually affect quest outcomes and game content would be most of the checks in the game.

I made a fairly simple assertion that was blown out of proportion, evidenced by this sentiment which is not even remotely what I was saying.

 

-> Resolve was an important stat in PoE1 for dialogue/diplomatic chars. That's it.

 

If you don't agree, well...I wrote up a more detailed response, but don't much care at this pt ha.

Edited October 22, 2018 by Verde

[Prince of Lies]

As a murderhobo, Prince of Lies endorses dumping Resolve and murdering everything in sight.  

[Verde]

As a murderhobo, Prince of Lies endorses dumping Resolve and murdering everything in sight.

More power to ya

[protopersona]

-> Resolve was an important stat in PoE1 for dialogue/diplomatic chars. That's it.

 

Meanwhile I'm of the mind that there's not really a point to making a diplomatic character in a game where diplomacy has such a small effect on the game. Yes resolve has some use, but not enough to make it worth bothering with even for diplomacy, since you're probably going to need to murder almost everything anyways.

[Prince of Lies]

In all seriousness though:

 

If you want non-combat conversation options, Deadfire relies on skills like Intimidate, Diplomacy, and Bluff. To a lesser extent Insight, Streetwise, and Survival. 

 

The difference between Deadfire and Fallout 1 is size. Fallout 1 has significantly less encounters. Probably in the double digits. Deadfire has hundreds. It's a lot easier to make all of your encounters have a non-combat solution if you only have, say 60 encounters versus 300. 

 

I feel that Deadfire actually gives you more options (through skills) than PoE1 did. 

 

Sawyer actually mentioned in the Shacknews table talk/interview that he's interested in non-combat mechanics to resolve encounters. I reckon if he's involved in PoE3, we might see more interesting non-combat solutions to encounters.  

[Verde]

 

-> Resolve was an important stat in PoE1 for dialogue/diplomatic chars. That's it.

Meanwhile I'm of the mind that there's not really a point to making a diplomatic character in a game where diplomacy has such a small effect on the game. Yes resolve has some use, but not enough to make it worth bothering with even for diplomacy, since you're probably going to need to murder almost everything anyways.

Well luckily for me not every shares the same simple-minded sentiment.

Edited October 23, 2018 by Verde

[protopersona]

 

 

-> Resolve was an important stat in PoE1 for dialogue/diplomatic chars. That's it.

Meanwhile I'm of the mind that there's not really a point to making a diplomatic character in a game where diplomacy has such a small effect on the game. Yes resolve has some use, but not enough to make it worth bothering with even for diplomacy, since you're probably going to need to murder almost everything anyways.

Well luckily for me not every shares the same simple-minded sentiment.

 

Huh. How respectful of you. Glad you don't reflect the community as a whole.

[thelee]

In all seriousness though:

 

If you want non-combat conversation options, Deadfire relies on skills like Intimidate, Diplomacy, and Bluff. To a lesser extent Insight, Streetwise, and Survival. 

 

The difference between Deadfire and Fallout 1 is size. Fallout 1 has significantly less encounters. Probably in the double digits. Deadfire has hundreds. It's a lot easier to make all of your encounters have a non-combat solution if you only have, say 60 encounters versus 300. 

 

This +100.

 

Not only can charisma/speech carry you places in Fallout 1/2, there are very very few forced combat encounters. Planescape: Torment might also need to be on this shortlist of "games where you can talk your way out of things" because I think P:T had even fewer forced combat encounters (a friend mentioned something like counting on one hand the fights you had to do), which was great because I thought P:T really screwed the pooch on infinity engine combat mechanics.

 

PoE/Deadfire's ancestry is with BG and BG2. So it has combat up the wazoo, and very nearly every aspect of its game system is devoted to fighting. Deadfire is a little better with its dedicated talk skills. But both poe/deadfire are still fundamentally fighting games.

 

 

 

Sawyer actually mentioned in the Shacknews table talk/interview that he's interested in non-combat mechanics to resolve encounters. I reckon if he's involved in PoE3, we might see more interesting non-combat solutions to encounters. 

 

This is an interesting anecdote because I think Sawyer's first major project was Icewind Dale 2, and if this is the way Sawyer leans then it's reflected even in IWD2, which--despite being a hack-and-slash sequel to a near-100% dungeon crawly game--actually had dedicated "soft" skills to invest in (Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate IIRC; I seem to recall them being somewhat meaningful, but I don't remember).

Edited October 23, 2018 by thelee

[Prince of Lies]

Yeah. I don't know how much of that was Sawyer, or just skills from 3e D&D.

 

This might sound a little sacrilegious- but I've never played IWD2 beyond an hour, so I can't say whether non-combat skills were useful or not.

 

If you were to compare with contemporary games, it'd probably have to be Torment: Tides of Numenera- non-combat solutions were definitely the better choice. The reason for that was (for me) because combat was a trainwreck.

 

Divinity: Original Sin 2 had some unusual choices to resolve encounters, but not very many outside of combat.  

[Boeroer]

 

The only important things that I remember in PoE that you could do with high Resolve were:

 

Getting Ryona's Vambraces from the Alpine Dragon without the need to fight him. Or in other words: get them a lot earlier if you wanted to kill him anyway.

 

Negotiating with Lenrath and getting a minor stat boost - but not getting bog dragon scales.

So what you're saying is, it would be good for a Diplomatic char?

 

Also-

 

https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Uses_of_Resolve_in_interactions

Yes, but please don't try to put things into my mouth.

 

Besides the feeling of "proper" roleplaying you gain not much from the diplomatic approach - unfortunately. It would be nice if one could get some other unique rewards for playing like that. Like a cruel char can get when sacrificing people to a dargul or a blood pool. Imagine that. A lot more people would find resolve useful all of a sudden.

 

Same in Deadfire where being an arse captain gives you a nice bonus while being the best one gives you nothing (mechanical).

 

As is the impact of RES to diplomatic solutions doesn't increase its value when one focuses on the mechanical aspects of Resolve.

 

It has increasing returns as deflection booster though. So if you want to get untouchable it's pretty important. So that's something.

Edited October 23, 2018 by Boeroer

[Prince of Lies]

Same in Deadfire where being an arse captain gives you a nice bonus while being the best one gives you nothing (mechanical).

We Infamous Captains prefer the term "efficient".

 

Apparently in the upcoming patch, you can just buy your way to infamy with the new Berath's Blessing. 

[Verde]

 

 

 

-> Resolve was an important stat in PoE1 for dialogue/diplomatic chars. That's it.

Meanwhile I'm of the mind that there's not really a point to making a diplomatic character in a game where diplomacy has such a small effect on the game. Yes resolve has some use, but not enough to make it worth bothering with even for diplomacy, since you're probably going to need to murder almost everything anyways.

Well luckily for me not every shares the same simple-minded sentiment.

Huh. How respectful of you. Glad you don't reflect the community as a whole.

I wasnt asking his personal preference about dialogue and diplomacy. It's an RPG, conversations and resolving conflicts through nonviolence may be preferred approach. To say "why diplomacy, murder everyone?" deserves that type of respect in kind. Edited October 23, 2018 by Verde

[protopersona]

 

 

 

 

-> Resolve was an important stat in PoE1 for dialogue/diplomatic chars. That's it.

Meanwhile I'm of the mind that there's not really a point to making a diplomatic character in a game where diplomacy has such a small effect on the game. Yes resolve has some use, but not enough to make it worth bothering with even for diplomacy, since you're probably going to need to murder almost everything anyways.

Well luckily for me not every shares the same simple-minded sentiment.

Huh. How respectful of you. Glad you don't reflect the community as a whole.

I wasnt asking his personal preference about dialogue and diplomacy. It's an RPG, conversations and resolving conflicts through nonviolence may be preferred approach. To say "why diplomacy, murder everyone?" deserves that type of respect in kind.

 

Not sure why saying diplomacy has little mechanical value is disrespectful and deserves a disrespectful response. People play games for lots of reasons. I like puzzling out solutions personally, the story is just a nice skin over my mechanics. Doesn't make my views "simple minded," just different.

[Verde]

-

Edited November 3, 2018 by Verde

[Verde]

 

 

 

 

 

-> Resolve was an important stat in PoE1 for dialogue/diplomatic chars. That's it.

Meanwhile I'm of the mind that there's not really a point to making a diplomatic character in a game where diplomacy has such a small effect on the game. Yes resolve has some use, but not enough to make it worth bothering with even for diplomacy, since you're probably going to need to murder almost everything anyways.

Well luckily for me not every shares the same simple-minded sentiment.

Huh. How respectful of you. Glad you don't reflect the community as a whole.

I wasnt asking his personal preference about dialogue and diplomacy. It's an RPG, conversations and resolving conflicts through nonviolence may be preferred approach. To say "why diplomacy, murder everyone?" deserves that type of respect in kind.

Not sure why saying diplomacy has little mechanical value is disrespectful and deserves a disrespectful response. People play games for lots of reasons. I like puzzling out solutions personally, the story is just a nice skin over my mechanics. Doesn't make my views "simple minded," just different.

So coming back this after another playthrough, here are mechanical advantages of having high Diplomacy -

 

1. Gaining both Bardattos Luxury and Duskfall without fighting

2. Freeing Kali from Nemnok

3. Obtaining the Floating Hangman without a fight

4. Getting BoW Dragon to fight Rym

 

These are only a few examples. You may prefer to play a different playstyle but to say there is no mechanical value in diplomacy in this RPG is just silly and short-sighted. And that's not even considering the RP value of playing a diplomatic character. I never thought I'd be on a forum arguing the value of conversation in an RPG.

Edited November 3, 2018 by Verde

[protopersona]

So coming back this after another playthrough, here are mechanical advantages of having high Diplomacy -

1. Gaining both Bardattos Luxury and Duskfall without fighting

2. Freeing Kali from Nemnok

3. Obtaining the Floating Hangman without a fight

4. Getting BoW Dragon to fight Rym

 

These are only a few examples. You may prefer to play a different playstyle but to say there is no mechanical value in diplomacy in this RPG is just silly and short-sighted. And that's not even considering the RP value of playing a diplomatic character. I never thought I'd be on a forum arguing the value of conversation in an RPG.

 

 

I appreciate the follow up on that. Those are indeed good reasons to have a high resolve. Problem is I just don't see a handful of situations as important as the giant amounts of combat that the game puts you through. In the majority of most classes play experience resolve will be a dead stat for most of the game.

 

I never said resolve has no effect on the game, just that it doesn't have enough of an effect to make it worth investing in most of the time. Obviously other people's priorities for things like roleplay will change that subjective value. Judging by the massive amount of opinions on the games combat difficulty I'd say plenty of people prioritize the fighting over the story.

[whimper]

Just to be clear, I think Verde was talking about a high Diplomacy skill, not a high Resolve? One can have a high Diplomacy skill and a low Resolve, and vice versa.

[protopersona]

Just to be clear, I think Verde was talking about a high Diplomacy skill, not a high Resolve? One can have a high Diplomacy skill and a low Resolve, and vice versa.

 

The thread was about the value of the Resolve stat, not the Diplomacy skill. I've been discussing that context.

[whimper]

 

Just to be clear, I think Verde was talking about a high Diplomacy skill, not a high Resolve? One can have a high Diplomacy skill and a low Resolve, and vice versa.

The thread was about the value of the Resolve stat, not the Diplomacy skill. I've been discussing that context.

Yeah, I wasn’t trying to weigh in on that discussion one way or the other. Just clarifying that it’s a high Diplomacy skill, not a high Resolve stat, that is needed to get the outcomes Verde was describing.