The Problem With Turn-Based: Not in POE

[NotDumbEnough]

14 hours ago, Boeroer said:

I think the basic idea of weapon modals is great. I personally don't need even more per-encounter stuff to micromanage. Party size got reduced from 6 to 5 just because having more active abilities (also with martial classes/builds) means a lot more micromanagement. Adding per-encounter-management to resource-pool-management adds more... well... management. Even with 5 party members I already find myself using "select all, attack" in numerous fights because - while it's less effective - it's just faster. 
I only wish the modals were a) treated as passives so that modals wouldn't stop to be useful once you swin in active buffs and b) wouldn't show signs of "we couldn't come up with any more interesting stuff so we gave +PEN and +recovery time to a bunch of them". But modals like Body Blows, Overbearing Shot etc. are awesome imo and do exactly what they are supposed to: you activate them in certain situations and then they will give you a real advantage - and you deactivate them when they won't have an impact. That's way better than some 1/encounter ability imo.

 

 

I'd personally prefer something more akin to Battle Brothers' weapon system, as it actually gave weapon types their own identities. Bonking people with a 2h hammer felt much different from a 2h sword. Translated to PoE, I guess that would mean something like giving all 2h swords an infinite-use but watered-down Clear Out with extra recovery time, etc. As it stands, rolling a Greatsword Devoted means "I will use Voidwheel or Sanguine Greatsword or WotEP or Effort..." more than "I will use greatswords in general and see where I go from there" as a lot of the uniques are quite picky about what sort of character uses them, but are really strong when they do fit. By having unique properties frontloaded into the weapon class rather than the individual unique weapons, it would help reduce the feeling of being led by the nose.

In case that was confusing to read, I guess what I dislike is the need to metagame to make unique items work, since you don't know what you're going to come across until you've played through the game once, due to unique items being so unique that they drown out whatever identity the base item has. A flail Devoted, for example, is thoroughly uninterested in Sun and Moon even though it's technically a flail.

[xzar_monty]

9 hours ago, NotDumbEnough said:

In case that was confusing to read, I guess what I dislike is the need to metagame to make unique items work, since you don't know what you're going to come across until you've played through the game once, due to unique items being so unique that they drown out whatever identity the base item has.

This is an interesting point. If what you say really holds, then I suppose it explains why I found the unique weapons (and loot in general) underwhelming. I dislike metagaming. I don't want to know where the loot is, I want to find it myself -- or miss it, if that happens to be the case. Given this, and given your description of where the unique items may kind of fail, I can see why I had problems with the loot in this game. It just didn't click with the roleplaying choices I made. It might have clicked, but it didn't.

Sounds logical, doesn't it?

[Boeroer]

Battle Brothers is turn based. With turn based games my point of added micromanagement doesn't stand because that's only a problem in RTwP (or without pause) games.

By the way I played BB nearly as much as Deadfire. It's an awesome game with great general weapon mechanics where weapon types are really distinctive (more than in real life even ;)).  But imo it isn't a great example for good unique weapon design. Also the MC is not in the focus (there is none unless Lone Wolf background is chosen) which allows more mechanics that don't put a focus on the character development but more emphasis on the combat system and tactical, turn based combat itself. It has no story and only rudimentary quests - so by design it's a nearly pure combat simulator - and all the systems have to cater to that  - while a "proper" RPG like Deadfire (I mean wirb story, char development, quests, branching dialogue, skill use, consequences etc.) also has to fulfill the expectations of role players who want to see their  character grow, pick up cool abilities and skills etc.

So I don't know if everything that works well in BB would be transferrable to/work with Deadfire.

But in general I agree that if the weapon modals (or the general stats) of the different weapon types of Deadfire would lead to more distinction/special use like in Battle Brothers that would be cool.

As I said: it seems like the designers ran out of interesting ideas for modals or special properties (like the +Acc of daggers/rapiers/spear or the +PEN of stiletto/Esto etc.) of the different weapon types - or they simply didn't have enough time in the end. 

 

Edited October 26, 2021 by Boeroer

[Helz]

Sorry, doublepost

Edited October 26, 2021 by Helz

[Helz]

6 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

This is an interesting point. If what you say really holds, then I suppose it explains why I found the unique weapons (and loot in general) underwhelming. I dislike metagaming. I don't want to know where the loot is, I want to find it myself -- or miss it, if that happens to be the case. Given this, and given your description of where the unique items may kind of fail, I can see why I had problems with the loot in this game. It just didn't click with the roleplaying choices I made. It might have clicked, but it didn't.

I'm the same way, I like to discover games by playing them. Around level 10 I gave in and looked up the weapon lists because they're all scattered across an immense, open world. Overall, I think the unique weapons and enchantments are quite good and numerous, but the right combination for a class, build, and weapon proficiency can be very specific. It also sucks that certain weapon types have so few unique options.

Nevermind unique weapons, I was cussing when I'd looted my seventh exceptional greatsword, and my MC still had a plain battleaxe. Then it hit me, I need to buy some weapons. I'm so used to hammers and axes falling from the sky...

edit:

7 hours ago, Boeroer said:

As I said: it seems like the designers ran out of interesting ideas for modals or special properties (like the +Acc of daggers/rapiers/spear or the +PEN of stiletto/Esto etc.) of the different weapon types - or they simply didn't have enough time in the end.

I don't love those either. I also don't like the implementation of the better weapon modals that apply an affliction like bleeding over time. It's annoying that you can leave the modal on and just keep reapplying the non-stacking affliction and getting -20% damage. That is horribly inefficient, so I have to micro the modal on and off 'every 40 seconds' (but not really, because pauses). I'm guaranteed to forget. This is the main thing I'd use party AI for, except I like to turn it off, so I'm constantly screwing this up.

[NotDumbEnough]

The battleaxe bleed DOES stack, and in fact stacks in a very powerful, potentially broken way. Whenever you apply another stack, all previous stacks immediately tick again. So if you attack every 3.1s, you will get ticks at 0s (there is a tick immediately on hit), 3s, 3.1s (because you just hit them again), 6.1s, 6.2s, 9.2s, etc.

 

Anyhow, I think the downfall in the weapon system is partially in the excessively large number of different weapon types. We don't really need dozens of different weapon types, especially for melee. They could be halved and still provide a very large selection, only it would be much easier to make each weapon type unique.

[thelee]

4 hours ago, NotDumbEnough said:

The battleaxe bleed DOES stack, and in fact stacks in a very powerful, potentially broken way. Whenever you apply another stack, all previous stacks immediately tick again. So if you attack every 3.1s, you will get ticks at 0s (there is a tick immediately on hit), 3s, 3.1s (because you just hit them again), 6.1s, 6.2s, 9.2s, etc.

off topic, but i've literally killed dorudugan like this in a blink of an eye (combined with blade cascade and a few casts of salvation of time). crashed the game the first time i did it (game really does not like having like 80 stacks of something at combat cleanup), worked the second time.

[Helz]

10 hours ago, NotDumbEnough said:

The battleaxe bleed DOES stack, and in fact stacks in a very powerful, potentially broken way. Whenever you apply another stack, all previous stacks immediately tick again. So if you attack every 3.1s, you will get ticks at 0s (there is a tick immediately on hit), 3s, 3.1s (because you just hit them again), 6.1s, 6.2s, 9.2s, etc.

Oops, I was thinking about battleaxes, but apply what I said to the morningstar or club modals instead. Incidentally, I didn't know that the bleed would tick on every new application, that's nasty.

[thelee]

10 hours ago, Helz said:

Oops, I was thinking about battleaxes, but apply what I said to the morningstar or club modals instead.

i suppose it's "optimal" to constantly manage the morningstar/club/flail modals, but it's really unnecessary (and yes, sounds extremely un-fun). in some cases, you might graze or the enemy has enough of a resolve or it's hard enough to hit them that you want them on all the time anyway because the durations won't be as constant.

frankly, for morningstar and club (flail less so), i generally leave the modal on constantly so i'm not thinking about needing to do that when i actually need to land a fort/will ability. i happily trade off tens of weapon damage over a fight so that i'm always ready to land a brutal spell.

Edited October 27, 2021 by thelee

[Boeroer]

Same.

Body- and Bewildering Blows: always on.

[Helz]

I'm surprised, a permanent -25% weapon damage seems like a lot. The affliction lasts long enough that I felt expected to toggle.

1 hour ago, thelee said:

 in some cases, you might graze or the enemy has enough of a resolve or it's hard enough to hit them that you want them on all the time anyway because the durations won't be as constant.

That's true, it does expire sometimes, but I err on the side of keeping it on.

2 hours ago, thelee said:

 i happily trade off tens of weapon damage over a fight so that i'm always ready to land a brutal spell.

You're right, not landing the spell is worse than extra damage per swing.

[NotDumbEnough]

I personally program Eder's AI so that he uses Mule Kick about every other attack, so there's little reason not to leave the modal permanently on. I want full uptime on the effect even if he misses every now and then.

[xzar_monty]

2 hours ago, NotDumbEnough said:

I personally program Eder's AI so that he uses Mule Kick about every other attack, so there's little reason not to leave the modal permanently on.

Mule Kick, btw, is either bugged or (more likely) just badly designed. If it hits, the enemy falls prone, which is fine. But when the enemy falls prone, all targeting on that enemy also disappears. So, if someone was attempting to cast a spell on that same enemy when he gets a mule kick, that spell is either cancled or lost. This is irritating as heck.

[NotDumbEnough]

That's because of how knock up works. I think Tornado also knocks up.

[xzar_monty]

Yeah, I know. It's still supremely irritating.

[thelee]

26 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Yeah, I know. It's still supremely irritating.

irritating but a narrow benefit is that my tactician/skaen ultimate run loved this quirk (if there's only one enemy and they get knocked up, that triggers brilliant for a split second [no enemies but still in combat], but a split second brilliant still means a resource restored for each half of the multiclass).

Edited October 27, 2021 by thelee