TURN BASED combat in Deadfire?!

[rjshae]

And finally, they're coming out on consoles soon. And since they have turn-based mode now, I expect them to get some serious sales. With a polished game, that used us, PC players, as guinea pigs for balance and bugs. You might be cool with that, but I'm not.

 

So that was their evil plan all along, was it? Mwahahahaha...

 

Right.

[house2fly]

They didn't "use us as guinea pigs" they released on PC first. It's like saying they're screwing over launch day buyers by continuing to sell the game on steam after improving it. As for sales, you might want to look at how console ports of isometric crpgs usually do

Edited January 28, 2019 by house2fly

[Manveru123]

Console ports of isometric crpgs are usually terrible because RTWP on a gamepad is horrible. This one's gonna break the bank. You'll see.

[protopersona]

 

 

Here the devs have done a major and drastic shake up to the game, something that would never fly in a multiplayer game. It's like having a second launch. Honestly it's a pretty smart move since it gets a new round of media coverage.

 

 

Ever heard about Final Fantasy XIV? It's a MMO game that, well.. did a major and drastic shake up, completely changing it. They called it Realm Reborn or something. Other games implement smaller changes over time, but they do - today's WoW is completely different than WoW 5 years ago, for example. MMO games MUST change and evolve to stay relevant. And best part is, these changes are tied to content updates, and aren't just random overhaul patches coming from nowhere.

 

Single-player games, however, do not have to evolve in the same way. And yet we have one that is getting an MMO treatment. I mean, they just recently nerfed a Monk ability, that worked in its previous form since the game was released. It wasn't even overpowered. Who the hell does that.

 

Single-player games don't have microtransactions, but they do have DLC. MMOs sometimes have both (hello ESO). Paid content is paid content.

 

Obs released 3 new DLC and a new game mode. That's great. Now imagine how great it would be if all those balance patches were actually tied to these updates, not just thrown randomly between them. Like every MMO game ever does.

 

And finally, they're coming out on consoles soon. And since they have turn-based mode now, I expect them to get some serious sales. With a polished game, that used us, PC players, as guinea pigs for balance and bugs. You might be cool with that, but I'm not.

 

Balance patches, or your feelings about those patches, do not change how the sales of a single player game work. They do not make it suddenly follow a games-as-a-service or MMO model. Single player games have to make their money upfront, at launch day, because the sales tail is drastically smaller than a multiplayer title. DLC in single player titles does not increase the install base of the base title like content releases in multiplayer titles. It's two entirely different situations.

 

What Obsidian has done here was drastic by single player game standards. In all practicality they have re-launched the game here, and still have room for a final complete release for a third sales spike. My gut feeling is this was driven by a huge need to repair the public worth of the PoE IP.

 

If you feel used because they changed up the game before it was complete, maybe Patient Gamers is more your speed. You don't have to buy things before they're complete, and nothing is first released complete anymore.

Edited January 28, 2019 by protopersona

[Manveru123]

Launch day sales are important, but if that's all you're going to get, then there would be no point in developing the game further after release. Fact is, if your marketing is good enough, you will sell a lot of copies on Sales. Works for every platform. Unless the game flopped of course, then it's probably dead no matter what you do. Also, there are MMOs that actually can be played f2p after you buy it (meaning no subscription fee) and all you need to do is buy expansions, which is exactly how a single-player game works with DLC.

 

"Used" might be an overstatement, but this simply confirms my resolve not to buy Obsidian games in the future until at least a year after they're released, which is when we finally get a finished product. Apparently.

[house2fly]

The point being, that's a ton of games nowadays. Both Divinity OS games got relaunched, Wasteland 2, AAA single player games get stuff added to them after launch all the time- God Of War got a new game+ mode after a several months. If you include bugfixing then PC games have been released unfinished since the 90s. Why would you ever buy a game at launch

[Manveru123]

I feel like we're talking about different things. I'm ok with new stuff if it doesn't break whatever was available previously. DOS relaunches were separate games that had no effect on the "normal" title. Wasteland 2 was a complete remake, pretty much a different game altogether. There is nothing wrong with that. And fixing bugs should be mandatory.

 

Samsies for turn-based in Deadfire. I clearly see why they added it and honestly it was a very good move to do it before console releases to avoid POE1 console fiasco.

 

My problem is that this game is completely different gameplay-wise from when it was released, because a lot of things were completely overhauled (mostly a bunch of nerfs and unneccessary mechanic changes). I understand games doing updates, but have you seen 1.1 patch notes at least? And that was the first major patch, like.. a month after the release or so? And it was not even tied to any content updates, it was just a random major patch pulled out of someone's arse. Now, this is of course not a problem for turn-based mode, because all it has to do is sip the cream that all these patches put on the coffee, but it's hard not to feel like a beta tester after all these months.

 

I mean come on. When 3rd DLC was released, I was like "ok finally time to play", and shortly after "SURPRISE MONK NERFS LUL".

[Mungrul]

I'd just like to chime in and say that this game is spectacular. I picked it up because of turn-based mode being added, and I'm having a fantastic time. It has a lot of that old-school Infinity Engine feel to it, as well as having a really rather grand turn-based mode now, which has always been my preferred mode for RPGs. I couldn't stand the RtwP mode in the first game, and this has completely fixed that issue.

 

The systems, while derivative of D&D, are just different enough to be refreshing, but similar enough to scratch a lot of the same itches that ToEE scratched. I feel they need a bit more time to mature (skill points for rogues is a personal sticking point), but are otherwise great. Could we get a more verbose combat log though, with dice-rolls and variables? Oh, and animations for disengagement attacks too!

 

I hope this gets a lot of attention and sells well, as it's shaping up to be one of my favourite games for years (I'll reserve final judgement until I've finished it, but can't see it going too wrong).

And personally, this is a LOT better than the mess Larian made of Divinity Original Sin 2. You can really tell this is designed by RPG veterans, where Larian's systems feel like they've been created by people who've never read a P&P rulebook.

 

Can't wait to get home and venture forth some more!

[deneweth]

I've played turn based up to nekekata on veteran scale all upward as a wizard.

I have to say that spell casting started off very clunky and painful, and now that I've got the hang of it, it still feels very weak.  I am doing okay on my single class wizard that uses a lot of free action buff spells.  Xoti as a single priest and Aloth as a wizard/fighter are just weak, and not very fun. 

I think part of the problem is that companions weren't designed with turn based in mind, and have skimped on dexterity.  Another very glaring issue is that, to my knowledge, there is no way to retarget a spell right before it goes off like in RTWP.  The biggest victims are priest buffs that center around the caster with small area.

Another part of the problem is that I don't think Int is scaling durations the way it does in RTWP.  Maybe you just have to get up to 50% increased duration to take a 2 round spell to 3 rounds, but even on short buffs in RTWP you got some sort of extention.  Knockdown, for example, is useless as anything other than an interrupt because it seems to last 1 round regardless, and if it is actually delaying the target's turn, I can't tell.  They get right back up and attack.  Mule kick was virtually indistinguishable from knockdown.

Priests suck at healing.  In a world where bad initiative means everyone focuses the casters before your tank can intercept (yes, I know it's my fault, I should reload when I don't imitate combat on my terms in perfect formation) there are very few heal spells, and none that are quick.  Even having a regular generic heal at each level would be improvement.  I find myself using restore over powerful spells like blessing or holy power.  I would gladly give up level 3+ spell casts for another use of holy radiance some fights.  Consecrated ground, my old go to takes too long to cast and I find in turn based the fight just doesn't stay in the same area the way it does in real time.

 

When not casting I know casters aren't supposed to be doing much but their low accuracy costing them a turn isn't worth attacking over delaying turn, which isn't great either.  If a caster is going to pull their weight they should have something to do.  I really wish you could save up time units like other games, and maybe drop a full cast time heal in one turn, or have an "answer" spell ready to react to combat (controling a loose enemy, finishing off a weakend foe, lowering the deflection of the next target etc.)

It could in part be an issue with me not playing the game in quite some time.  I realized after a while that using berath's blessing to increase my level with level scaling turned on just meant I would be level 5 in mundane gear against enemies that are balanced around level 5 items.  You'd think that would give spell casters an advantage, but wizard's missing/grazing is very noticeable and painful in turn based, and buff spells that don't hit your entire party aren't worth the time or spell use.

All issues aside, this is a very fun way to play the game.  I'm going to start over with a different class and difficulty and see if things feel better.  For the record I'm not complaining about the difficulty, I was doing fine.  It just really cut in to the fun having dead weight companions that feel like they aren't working properly.

[Elric Galad]

I think the main question for Obsidian now is whether the game is fun to play in TB mode.

 

Even if the TB balance is currently weird, it is not a big issue for the moment.

They might still work on it once they are sure that it worths the investment.

[the streaker]

I think the main question for Obsidian now is whether the game is fun to play in TB mode.

 

Even if the TB balance is currently weird, it is not a big issue for the moment.

They might still work on it once they are sure that it worths the investment.

 

And is it? It's been out for a while now. Balance isn't that important, tbh. But a good TB is a whole other experience and would get me back in the game if it was good enough!

[protopersona]

 

I think the main question for Obsidian now is whether the game is fun to play in TB mode.

 

Even if the TB balance is currently weird, it is not a big issue for the moment.

They might still work on it once they are sure that it worths the investment.

 

And is it? It's been out for a while now. Balance isn't that important, tbh. But a good TB is a whole other experience and would get me back in the game if it was good enough!

 

Mechanically? Yeah TB is great. Some things in the game are a lot better than they were in RTwP, but that's balance stuff that can be sorted out.

[kanisatha]

 

 

I think the main question for Obsidian now is whether the game is fun to play in TB mode.

 

Even if the TB balance is currently weird, it is not a big issue for the moment.

They might still work on it once they are sure that it worths the investment.

 

And is it? It's been out for a while now. Balance isn't that important, tbh. But a good TB is a whole other experience and would get me back in the game if it was good enough!

 

Mechanically? Yeah TB is great. Some things in the game are a lot better than they were in RTwP, but that's balance stuff that can be sorted out.

So long as it's clear this is opinion and not fact. Mechanically and otherwise, nothing's better for me. No objective answer can be provided about whether it is 'better'.

[protopersona]

So long as it's clear this is opinion and not fact. Mechanically and otherwise, nothing's better for me. No objective answer can be provided about whether it is 'better'.

Is this a "RTwP is always better than TB" opinion, or is there some way they could make TB better for you?

[Saito Hikari]

Is this a "RTwP is always better than TB" opinion, or is there some way they could make TB better for you?

 

This is what I want to know, because his sthick is getting really annoying. It's all worthless drivel that contributes nothing to any serious discussion of game design.

 

There is one thing that I've found about TB that's actually going to improve my skills when I do another RTwP playthrough. TB slows down the game enough that it makes it very easy to understand how the game's mechanics interact with each other. In the chaos of RTwP, a lot gets lost to the point where I imagine that most players just never pick up on certain concepts, and it's no secret that this game isn't exactly stellar at explaining them either. Indeed, throughout most of my RTwP playthroughs, all I really did was macro my main character and didn't really care much for what the rest of my party was doing. But TB makes things happen one by one (and forced me to optimize/understand how to use each and every single party member), outright showing you what effect your actions/buffs/debilitations have on your rolls without anything else in the background to distract you.

 

One needs to understand that slow is not bad.

 

Also, some mechanics/skills absolutely do have greater importance in TB compared to RTwP, though the opposite also holds true. The Fighter Blackjacket subclass is already considered far more viable in TB compared to RTwP, because you normally get heavily penalized for switching weapons in TB (using a full action to do so). Blackjacket turns it into a free action there, so you now have a literal weapon master that can hit weaknesses and/or swap from melee to ranged all the time with no penalty. Dexterity/action speed is also no longer the be-all-end-all stat in TB, while most RTwP builds stacked it to high heaven (along with many people using the lightest armor possible to survive with). Now in TB, people are more willing to use heavy armor, and many argue that Dexterity is a dump stat since everyone gets an equal amount of actions per turn anyway. Still, I've found a few mechanics that benefit from low initiative in TB (namely Cipher Disintegration ticking twice in one turn if the Cipher manages to cast it before the enemy acts that turn).

 

All in all, the sheer existence of TB mode is really one of the most interesting things I've ever seen in all of gaming. It's not often that games give you such a drastic choice on how to play it, designed drastically different from each other and without either coming off as an afterthought. Seeing what kind of mechanics people value between each mode is quite fascinating, and has already contributed so much to my own understanding of game design.

Edited February 4, 2019 by Saito Hikari

[Manveru123]

 

One needs to understand that slow is not bad.

 

 

In your opinion maybe. I value my time.

 

I don't think there's a way to make TB better for someone who doesn't like it. It's not like TB in this game is worse than in other games of this type. It's a completely different playstyle, just like FIFA is different than Football Manager, even though they're both football games, and both of them have fans who tend to prefer one or the other.

 

Like I don't see any value in understanding how mechanics interact with each other if it doesn't help me achieve my goals. Can I beat the encounter with basic knowledge? Great, then that's all I need to know. All that "knowledge" I could gain would become worthless the moment I finish playing the game, and it doesn't contribute in any way to my enjoyment, so why would I ever bother?

[kanisatha]

 

So long as it's clear this is opinion and not fact. Mechanically and otherwise, nothing's better for me. No objective answer can be provided about whether it is 'better'.

Is this a "RTwP is always better than TB" opinion, or is there some way they could make TB better for you?

Happy to engage with you since you're being civil, unlike certain other asses.

 

My problem with TB is that the actors' actions happen sequentially. So the one and only way TB can be ok for me is if you use the turn to issue orders to all actors and then all actors' actions get resolved simultaneously at the end of the round. The idea that everyone goes on their designated turn, and when it is not their turn they just stand there doing nothing while enemies are wailing on your buddy who's standing right next to you just utterly destroys immersion for me. Nobody ever fights a battle by taking turns to attack their enemy. You may as well land a spaceship firing lasers in the middle of the battle 'cause it is that much of an immersion-breaker.

 

I place a great deal of value on the chaos and messiness of battle. A battle without chaos and screw-ups where everything happens in a nice orderly, optimal way is completely artificial and fake. I want enemies to be able to swarm me from different sides at the same time, and be able to do the same to the enemies. I want to be able to have multiple actors take their actions simultaneously. I want actors to be able to hold their actions to any point they choose within the battle. I want to have situations where you cast an area spell only to have all the enemies move out of that area by the time your spell goes off. I want for my party to make mistakes, cast the wrong spell at the wrong time, take the wrong action or waste an action. These are examples of the kind of thing that makes combat interesting and meaningful and real for me.

 

I would not have the love and the nostalgia for the IE games today were it not for Baldur's Gate being RTwP. Had BG been TB, it would be a forgotten game at this point in time for me. It is precisely the chaos and messiness and confusion and the resulting tension and fear from those early combats in the game that entirely fuel my nostalgia for that game.

[Daiyang]

hey all,

any way i can enable the mode in my current play-through?

[Mikeymoonshine]

A lot of people love TB, I tried the mode out and it was fun to play so I don't really see it as a problem. I still do prefer RTWP for this kind of game only because TB fights can get tedious and I prefer setting up all my moves at once rather than waiting for everyone to have a turn. Hopefully it will help them in console sales and future PC sales, they deserve it considering the amount of support this game has had post launch. If there was another instalment and it was TB only I would be disappointed, but hopefully that won't happen and who knows maybe we will get both again. 

[protopersona]

hey all,

any way i can enable the mode in my current play-through?

No. The devs said it's an engine limitation they don't have the resources to fix currently.

[Saito Hikari]

Like I don't see any value in understanding how mechanics interact with each other if it doesn't help me achieve my goals. Can I beat the encounter with basic knowledge? Great, then that's all I need to know. All that "knowledge" I could gain would become worthless the moment I finish playing the game, and it doesn't contribute in any way to my enjoyment, so why would I ever bother?

 

Well, that's certainly quite a pessimistic way to tell game designers that a lot of their efforts in the smaller details are quite meaningless in the end. A lot of people don't really know how much they enjoy something that might be considered basic or worthless until it gets taken away. Consider the very harsh reaction to the major round of nerfs that happened shortly after release. You could still beat the game after albeit with slightly more difficulty, so were those changes actually worthless? Apparently not, I still see people ragging on the developers for that literally half a year later.

 

Then again, perhaps I'm looking at this from an overall design standpoint, while most people here are looking at this from a personal enjoyment standpoint. They're not mutually exclusive, but the way people talk, you'd think they are. You may not ever bother, but I like to take that design consideration into account when analyzing how different games work as a whole. It's how someone like I who barely discovered cRPGs very recently can actually respect this genre, when most of the other kind of modern gamers that the cRPG community likes to sneer at and engage in gatekeeping with cannot.

 

On a side note, through actual testing, it's fairly apparent that while TB is a thing, the very backbone of the game still runs on the RTwP engine, mainly for the purposes of how the game handles out of combat traversal (though a few bugs I've found during testing does result in RTwP leaking into turn-based combat, namely killing a caster that had just cast a persistent field effect like Chill Fog causes the field effect to be 're-converted' to RTwP rules, inflicting multiple turns worth of damage immediately).

 

It's not a problem at all. If anything, the realization does provide valuable insight into how the game is coded. To most people, this won't mean much, but to people who like to analyze why the mechanics work the way they do without access to the very code itself, it's rather fascinating.

 

Indeed, when you take this knowledge to a different game - let's say, DOS2 - you'd realize it actually works in a similar way with the traversal and how abilities work out of combat. Each 'turn' out of combat there, for the purposes of determining how quickly abilities return from being on cooldown along with buff/debuff/field effect durations, is a specific amount of real time seconds. It sounds suspiciously like how RTwP works, doesn't it? Perhaps Larian already has the infrastructure to create a RTwP mode, if they cared enough. Or someone skilled enough in modding might be able to create it there themselves.

Edited February 4, 2019 by Saito Hikari

[Manveru123]

The designer's efforts are not meaningless because their system works as it should, and that's the reward. You can have fun with the game without knowing everything about its systems. Actually, it's very rare for an average player to even try to delve deep enough to understand everything. As long as it works, it's fine.

 

This way of thinking is completely destroyed when the developers/designer/whatever suddenly decide to rewrite the game because they either didn't bother testing it, or just wanted to release as soon as possible. Suddenly your enjoyment is interrupted by massive nerfs, which you don't really expect from a single player game. And "literally half a year later", they are STILL doing nerfs and changing abilities that weren't touched since the game was released, although on a much lesser scale. If you feel like you're forced to tweak your game almost a year after it was released, you're a failure as a designer.

[Saito Hikari]

There's a pretty big gulf between 'forced to' and 'wanting to'. Though I will agree that some of the adjustments were really unnecessary and way out there. (The Time Parasite nerf especially, which was pretty bad considering it didn't address the core issue of the buff stacking on itself and the fact that it was only accessible to single class, all it did was reduce values to the point where it cemented Ascendant as being the subclass of choice for single class Cipher, if anyone played Cipher single class at all.)

 

While it appears the main goal of it all was to discourage people from gravitating towards a specific few highly publicized builds that the community may have amplified any thoughts of said builds being 'broken', all it really achieved in the end was people in the wider gaming community outside of these forums constantly slamming the game for the game's classes feeling rather 'samey'. That, and I imagine quite a few people have gravitated away from these forums or have had thoughts of not publishing their builds at all in the fears that the developers will see it and nerf it if it gains too much traction in the community. I've had similar thoughts about speaking of Frostseeker and Time Parasite a bit too much during the first few weeks of release, just to see what happened afterwards.

 

Indeed, the current major topic at the PoE2 thread at RPGCodex is how Ranger doesn't really have an identity beyond 'pet of questionable worth that gives you a huge penalty for allowing it to get knocked out', and that a lot of the classes don't feel different enough.

Edited February 5, 2019 by Saito Hikari

[Triple - A Foxy Lad]

They have telemetry now. comments on boards might flag up outliers but will have little impact on data coming in.

 

also i doubt referring to the codex will achieve much of anything. Ur likely to smother whatever argument ur making with whatever someones opinion of the codex might be.

[Saito Hikari]

True, but I see many of the same kinds of complaints from other places like the subreddit (and its discord) and dedicated threads from other forums. It's just their current topic there, and outright dismissing legitimate criticism because the forum is known for being a haven for alt-right crap or is full of gatekeepers to the highest degree otherwise isn't going to accomplish much. That, and you can't exactly deny the power these other communities have on the perception of the game.

 

Indeed, the influence of the actual Obsidian forums is pretty minimal, because if we're posting here in the first place, we're probably already rather hardcore anyway. Or the place is an echo chamber. A lot of people think official forums are rather like that. It doesn't help that polls on new items to be designed are held on freaking Twitter of all places, instead of on these forums.

Edited February 5, 2019 by Saito Hikari