Why is PoE2 not successful ?

[xzar_monty]

Ok, fair enough, good to have that cleared up.

[Gromnir]

4 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

 Not being able to prebuff is, in the end, quite fine, but I suppose this is related to the difficulty: you don't really need to prebuff, in the same way that you don't need to optimize your gear, you'll do just fine (except maybe in the very beginning of the game). In the end it seems to me that removing the idea of prebuffing also removed the need to ever use scrolls or potions in the game, and I feel this is a bit of a loss -- especially because they are all over the place in the game, in terms of loot, items on sale, etc. But you just don't need any.

decision to not add prebuff to poe were 'bout fun as 'posed to difficulty. what 'bout prebuffing were fun? before big/difficult battles in the ie games, we would prebuff. given broad range o' prebuffs available, we could effective render our party immune to multiple attacks we knew would be directed at us. furthermore, our prebuff routine were less dependent on the nature/type o' foe being encountered and more based on our level, and as level rose, the layers o' defenses we laid on also increased. as we got deeper into the game, spent more time for prebuff, such that we got to the point where if we weren't careful, the duration o' buffs would be wearing off before we finished our full prebuff routine. particular with another ie/d&d feature fans argued for frequent, insta-kill, the pre-buffing often lasted longer than the battles themselves.  we much enjoyed our firstest firkraag battle in bg2, and the second and even third. the prebuffing ritual ain't what made fun. 

difficulty o' game could be adjusted regardless o' prebuff. weren't a difficulty issue. poe battles were designed so prebuffs were not necessary to survive or thrive, and combat is no less less tactical if we gotta make buffing choices during battle as 'posed to pre. good.

we followed multiple poe threads where fans o' the ie games attempted to convince us (and selves) that the mechanical and reflexive pre-fight rituals o' prebuffing were a fun and essential feature o' the ie games.

...

at some point, after awhile, when ie game purists accused obsidian o' developer malfeasance 'cause o' their refusal to add ie game features, we mental were hearing one o' those goats screaming vids.

were similarly unintelligible while managing to be funny and disturbing at same time. bunch o' goats screaming almost as if they were real people.

as for suggestion the exorcising o' prebuff rendered unnecessary potions and scrolls in poe games, am gonna disagree, particular for higher difficulties and especial in light o' content such as forgotten sanctum. now again, keep in mind that while Gromnir is NOT a min-maxer by any stretch who optimizes to extremes, we have played the poe games for many hours. Many.  fact is we used potions and scrolls in poe exact same way we used in the ie games and in pnp; we saved up such limited resources and expended only during toughest battles.  for instance, in poe we used potions and scrolls for master below.  llengrath and the bog dragons also had us careful choosing potions and food consumption pre battle, and likely using scrolls during battle. could come up with a substantial list o' sss and fs battles we needed potions and scrolls, 'cause were more than a few.

but again, use Gromnir is not appropriate measure, and chances are xzar is similarly handicapped. if you are still posting 'bout poe and deadfire regular, then probable are you ain't the casual player who is gonna make up the bulk o' folks who played those games. 

regardless, 'cause o' the choice to not have poe prebuff, the mindless and repetitive rituals associated with prebuff were limited. argue the act o' prebuffing were fun gameplay were always a stoopid argument, but to see it repeated by ie purists during poe development over and over and overandoverandoverandoverandoverandoverandover were resulting in one o' those rare moments o' sympathy we has for game developers. 

as to camping/resting we didn't like poe resting scheme, particular as it related to camping supplies. dumb. nothing more than an infrequent source o' frustration w/o adding gameplay value. much like prebuffing, trudge back to town to rest and buy supplies were a mindless chore devoid o' any gameplay value.

'course poe camping were changed in deadfire, so given the thrust o' this thread, bring up the camping change 'tween poe and deadfire would appear to be a positive as 'posed to a negative. obsidian were responsive to community criticisms 'bout camping/resting. huzzah.

HA! Good Fun!

[algroth]

5 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

I accept that I have remembered things wrong wrt saving. I only played the first and second to last beta.

You should give the games another go if the first game's beta is the last you'd tried of it. I think most here would agree that the game's gone through a lot of fine-tuning and changes all the way up to a rather polished and enjoyable state at patch 3.0.

[Gromnir]

20 minutes ago, algroth said:

You should give the games another go if the first game's beta is the last you'd tried of it. I think most here would agree that the game's gone through a lot of fine-tuning and changes all the way up to a rather polished and enjoyable state at patch 3.0.

disagree. am not gonna belabor why we believe gifted's complaints were unreasonable and frequent irrational 'cause it don't matter. say what you will, am not denying the complaints were nevertheless genuine.

deadfire is refined version o' poe. am suspecting such makes deadfire less appealing.

we make hot sauce and while person don't come out and say specific the sauce were too hot they make kinda obvious such were the root problem. tell us they need a big glass o' milk to make palatable and that the sauce were "too spicy." don't wanna say "too hot" for some reason. machismo? whatever.

our refinement is to move from cayenne-based hot sauce to naga viper peppers. 

deadfire is a better game than poe... is better for Gromnir. deadfire combat is more intuitive and rational than d&d 2e or 3e. classes and spells is more balanced and low level abilities have usefulness from beginning of game to end. deadfire avoided such d&d legacy demons as insta-kills, pre-buffing and vancian casting. etc.

however, am recognizing better for Gromnir is not objective better. poor articulation o' root problems with poe does not make those problems disappear. 

if gifted can get a free copy or or play on a friend's pc, then sure, he might as well give deadfire an honest few hours and see if enough stuff has changed to make palatable, but we would not recommend him spending money to play what is a refinement o' stuff he didn't like in the poe beta. throwing away good money after bad. 

HA! Good Fun!

[Hawke64]

On pre-buffing. Pathfinder: Kingmaker on Normal (mostly on Normal, there were several difficulty sliders) required pre-buffing in order to not die quickly and horribly. On my second PT, when I knew what to expect and understood the mechanics better, I buffed the party upon entering a map, then ran and murdered everything while the buffs lasted. There was little variety to it, so I wished I could write macros (and it made me appreciate PoE even more). Dragon Age at least allowed to customize AI and the companions could pre-buff themselves, though I don't remember if it was necessary.
So, I like the approach to buffs in PoE.

[thelee]

I actually don't really get the prebuffing argument, either way. Deadfire and PoE1 still have lots of buffing, I guess the main difference now is that it's part of the fight and subject to the action economy so things can be balanced around that. (Also you can automate it a lot better in Deadfire.)

Sure you don't have to lay on tons of buffs before each fight, but whenever I have a druid or priest (and sometimes a wizard), their actions at the start every fight are pretty samey. From a purely mechanical standpoint, you can still lay a delayed fireball or a seal or traps in advance of a fight. I guess because that's such a narrow thing you can do, people don't care or do that much?

Or maybe it's saving us from ourselves. It was pretty annoying to cast Protection from Evil, Bless, Chant, etc. in advance of every fight and remember the precise order to maximize durations. But I still pretty much do that now (e.g. in my aforementioned party Tekehu pretty much starts off every fight with Woodskin, Nature's Fit, Moon's Light in that order), the only difference is that it feels a bit more "interactive" now that it's actually part of a fight where I have to worry about interrupts or circumstances that might get me to change up the order a bit.

[Starwars]

For me, stuff like prebuffing, required resting, and that using camping supplies... does it all add immensely to the gameplay? Hmm, not really. But I like that it adds a sort of link between the "here's the exploration part of the game" and "here's the combat side of the game". I like the feeling of overlap, the feeling of atrition for your party (however easy it may be to handle) and I like that it creates a... not a simulation type of gameplay, but *something* like that. I was never fond of prebuffing but... I like how it feels. I like the feeling of actually being able to prepare my party before I head into a dangerous area. Because it makes sense to be able to do that. It annoys me to no end that I can't cast certain spells outside of combat in Pillars. It *feels* so wrong. Balance be damned.

In a game like Tyranny, and to a lesser extent Deadfire, the focus on per-encounter abilities and the fact that everything takes place inside the actual encounter makes the whole thing feel "gamey" to me. And yes, I'm very well aware that we are playing a game and blablabla but it doesn't do much for MAH IMMERSION. To me it completely reduces the feel of the game down to "exploration/combat/exploration/combat" with not much that "glues" them together. Especially with how you get everything back that very second you complete an encounter. For me it really takes away from the feeling of, yes, my character actually inhabits this world. And I have to say that, as far as I'm concerned, that's an overlooked aspect of a lot of games. I get that designing games with a per-encounter base is waaaaaaaay easier to balance of course. But I like my gameworlds to be a little wild and crazy, with the possibility of wrecking an encounter because I did good in terms of preserving my per-rest resources, or getting stomped because I headed into an encounter with a completely drained party.

Probably better ways to handle it than prebuffing of course.

Edited November 22, 2019 by Starwars

[Wormerine]

2 hours ago, Starwars said:

I like the feeling of overlap, the feeling of atrition for your party (however easy it may be to handle) and I like that it creates a... not a simulation type of gameplay, but *something* like that. I was never fond of prebuffing but... I like how it feels.

I agree, though I think IE Games by their very nature are rather game-y and artificial. Many issues those games struggle with come from adapting system build for an entirely different experience. 

In PoEs one thing that does bother me, and it sort of feeds into buff/not to buff discussion, is how little gameplay overlap/interacts between three gameplay planes: exploration, conversation, combat. Even in character building systems combat skills and social skills are separated (with some little overlap: some abilities scaling with social skills, class unlocking new conversations). I think Deadfire improved in that regard but it is far from being elegant, or consistent. 

I generally find that if systems feed into each other (strategic&tactical layers of 96X-COM) or use same mechanics on different gameplay planes (think how Arkham Games gadgets are all used for exploration/combat/stealth) games feel more natural and unified, even if they are heavily abstracted. That is I think what Divinities do much better, with skills and abilities being used for both exploration and combat.

this is also were BG had an advantage - spells could be used for both exploration (find traps) and combat, making rules consistent throughout the experience (even if rules didn’t lead to great gameplay IMO). 

[xzar_monty]

15 hours ago, Hawke64 said:

On pre-buffing. Pathfinder: Kingmaker on Normal (mostly on Normal, there were several difficulty sliders) required pre-buffing in order to not die quickly and horribly.

I'm sorry but this is just not true. While it is true that P:K is ruthless to the point of being cruel, pre-buffing to this extent is not necessary. I have only played the game once, so I never knew what was coming, and most of the time I did fine (on Normal, with enemy damage yanked up to 100% from the 80% it is by default on Normal). This only changed at the very end, at the House at the Edge (or was it End?) of Time. That whole area suffered from unnecessarily cruel design and was a big blemish on both the game and its makers.

Three kind-of caveats.

1) I have been playing D&D since 1980s, so this type of world is something I know quite well.

2) While pre-buffing in the sense of using all you've got is not necessary, I will add that when travelling in dungeons, especially, it is only sensible to buff yourself with spells whose duration is 10 min / level or longer. (There are not that many of those, however.)

3) While it is not pre-buffing as such, I am quite happy to concede that P:K suffers from one of the annoying mechanics-related problems of the D&D world: as soon as combat begins, casting a combination of Haste on your party and Slow on the enemies is too powerful, as a general tool.

[xzar_monty]

15 hours ago, thelee said:

I actually don't really get the prebuffing argument, either way. Deadfire and PoE1 still have lots of buffing, I guess the main difference now is that it's part of the fight and subject to the action economy so things can be balanced around that. (Also you can automate it a lot better in Deadfire.)

Your comment made me remember one big reason why I basically gave up on buffing in PoE and Deadfire altogether: you can't access your inventory during battle. There's a huge number of scrolls and potions in the game but only a relatively small number of quick slots to put them in, and if you don't happen to have the right ones there when the battle begins, forget about it. Because of this, I pretty much forgot about buffing fairly early on.

[algroth]

2 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

I'm sorry but this is just not true. While it is true that P:K is ruthless to the point of being cruel, pre-buffing to this extent is not necessary. I have only played the game once, so I never knew what was coming, and most of the time I did fine (on Normal, with enemy damage yanked up to 100% from the 80% it is by default on Normal). This only changed at the very end, at the House at the Edge (or was it End?) of Time. That whole area suffered from unnecessarily cruel design and was a big blemish on both the game and its makers.

I disagree. The entire game was built around pre-buffing and made the act absolutely necessary for me. It made the difference between being assblasted by three alchemists spamming constant fireballs at you every turn and being essentially invulnerable to their one attack, or much the same for the Wisps in Candlemere or the giant slugs in the Swamp-Witch's Cottage and so on. Even on normal difficulty those slugs attack you for 6d6 acid damage with their regular attacks, when you're at best a lvl 5-7 party. It forces you to either be "lucky" (i.e. bash your head against a wall until you survive the encounter relatively unscathed), or cast a communal protection from acid spell prior to the fight to negate just about all of the damage. Similarly the fact that poisons, blindness, and so on become so inordinately punishing that your one feasible option becomes that of casting protections prior to any combat. In the IE games pre-buffing was a convenient work-around, in Kingmaker they thoroughly felt like a necessity.

[xzar_monty]

1 hour ago, algroth said:

I disagree. The entire game was built around pre-buffing and made the act absolutely necessary for me. It made the difference between being assblasted by three alchemists spamming constant fireballs at you every turn and being essentially invulnerable to their one attack, or much the same for the Wisps in Candlemere or the giant slugs in the Swamp-Witch's Cottage and so on. Even on normal difficulty those slugs attack you for 6d6 acid damage with their regular attacks, when you're at best a lvl 5-7 party. It forces you to either be "lucky" (i.e. bash your head against a wall until you survive the encounter relatively unscathed), or cast a communal protection from acid spell prior to the fight to negate just about all of the damage. Similarly the fact that poisons, blindness, and so on become so inordinately punishing that your one feasible option becomes that of casting protections prior to any combat. In the IE games pre-buffing was a convenient work-around, in Kingmaker they thoroughly felt like a necessity.

You're putting it much too strongly, there. I can demonstrate it by pointing out that I survived those situations without communal protection from acid.

I agree that P:K is ruthless to the point of being cruel(*), as I said, but pre-buffing is not necessary anywhere close to the extent you describe.

 

(*) Sometimes I actually wondered what the designers were thinking, i.e. did they really think that some of their decisions were fun for anyone. They made me think of PnP GMs who would've been without any willing players after only a couple of sessions.

Edited November 23, 2019 by xzar_monty

[xzar_monty]

Btw, I went so far as to check the Swamp Witch's cottage area to see I'm certain what I'm talking about. So: I'm baffled that you went there at lvl 5-7. Also, the way I dealt with the area was to go there at one point (can't remember the level), deal with some of the creatures, notice that other creatures were way above my level and then return there something like five levels later. I regard this as sensible playing, and I did it with quite a few areas in the game.

[bugarup]

22 hours ago, Gromnir said:

<educational goat video>

...wow. And here I thought those screaming goats in Wasteland 2 was an Easter Egg, like, some dude just screaming and not even pretending he's a goat.

Anyway. Prebuffing. Am I so glad this ghastly thing ain't present in PoE series and I'm with Algroth re: Kingmaker. The game before I got informed that "Protection from poison" , a) has a really long duration, b) has a mass version, c) protects from a wide array of extremely annoying grievances (like attribute drain. F†ck drain!!!!!!!!! ) and after that was almost like two different games, and that's just one case. The good thing about those buffs is that they last longer and are measured in real time instead of something like turns or rounds or some other nonsense, the bad thing -- you still have to put them all on when you enter the location or thing a fight is about to happen, and its a chore.

They might be less annoying in BG series, where you put on a few long lasting ones and then if situation demands cast those things that last rounds, but by ToB they also pretty much become a necessity.

Anyway², playing BG series made me appreciate even more just how many grievances (prebuffing, slow movement, inventory limit, nonsensical alignments, F†CKING LEVEL DRAIN!!!!! ) PoE series got rid of. Really thankful here, me.

[xzar_monty]

I understand where you're coming from, but I suppose we'll just have to disagree here. My main battle-related grievance with PoE / Deadfire is that everything is rendered meaningless. If you survive a battle, it's as if it's never happened because everything is back to where it was (in PoE, you may lose some health, but in Deadfire, you can't lose even that). Thus, there are no monsters to be especially afraid of, there is nothing to particularly prepare for -- everything is the same, and if you survive, everything is meaningless: all the terrifying abilities that the monsters may have mean absolutely nothing. To me, that just makes the whole gaming experience much more bland than it could or should be. Yes, I know the possible injuries are there, but they are a very, very minor thing and you can always negate their effect immediately after the battle, there's no way they can actually hurt you.

Both approaches are logical and consistent, and it's a matter of opinion which one you prefer. I absolutely prefer the approach where things mean something. You mentioned level drain. I agree, it is an extremely annoying effect. But that's the point. That's why you're supposed to be extra careful with certain undead. There are vampires in PoE / Deadfire, too, even if they're called fampyrs, but they mean nothing. They might as well be wolves, or monkeys, or slime molds, or rothes, or grid bugs, or any of the hundreds of fantastical creatures that appear in role-playing games. Nothing they can do can possibly scare you in any way whatsoever. I want enemies that can scare me and make me seriously consider whether I want to face them.

Edited November 23, 2019 by xzar_monty

[xzar_monty]

To give another example of this: part of the lengedary status of Baldur's Gate II relies on the marvelous fact that early on in the game, you are afraid of the night. The vampires are just too damn dangerous. You really have to think where to go and what to do and at what time of the day. This is superb, absolutely superb. The nighttime Athkatla at early levels is the scariest place I've ever encountered in all my years of cRPGs. That's what you get when enemies actually hurt you in a way that you can't brush away.

[bugarup]

1 hour ago, xzar_monty said:

I understand where you're coming from, but I suppose we'll just have to disagree here. My main battle-related grievance with PoE / Deadfire is that everything is rendered meaningless. If you survive a battle, it's as if it's never happened because everything is back to where it was (in PoE, you may lose some health, but in Deadfire, you can't lose even that).

[...]

 That's why you're supposed to be extra careful with certain undead. There are vampires in PoE / Deadfire, too, even if they're called fampyrs, but they mean nothing.

Yeah, we seem to come from different schools of RPG Enjoyment, don't we. For me, going back to the initial state after the fight is a huge pro. Veni, vidi, vici, ite domum, that's my motto. Lingering annoyances only mean I will have to make time for something I don't want to do in the middle of my game session and that means "There goes muh immersion". Clearing vampirey debuff (aka hauling your ass to a temple through locations and loading screens if you didn't fork over for scrolls and then forced rest because this one scroll is very tiring to cast? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) is as scary as, say, the cat barfing on the bed while I play. Not anything serious, still I have to drop the game for a couple of minutes of something vaguely unpleasant.

There's this other thing -- as most things in Baldur's Gate, vampires have something that trivializes them. Give the mace of disruption to Beefcake A, amulet of level drain immunity to Beefcake B, plug the corridor with them, summon a skellie or two between them and your ranged line if you want to be better safe than sorry, park a Sanctuaried cleric nearby to spook them if your rangeds shoot fast -- voila, you just defanged those suckers.

Now those Deadire's toothy schmucks on the reef and in the cave, they don't have a "Lolcurbstomp or trip to a cleric" situation. They're nasty and wiped the floor with me more than once. So I was rather happy when I finally did them in and was psyched to push on, but had I trek all the way back to the boat, sail across half the world to cough up some hard earned cash to some priest -- that would absolutely have killed the momentum for me.

[Boeroer]

I liked PoE's endurance/health mechanic a lot more than Deadfire's injuries. It made it so that even filler fights mattered. Meaning that if you were careless in those fights it had an impact on your next fight (if you didn't rest in between) but at the same time it didn't lower your figthing ability so you didn't feel the need to rest immidiately after losing some health - like you do when catching an injury.  

[Wormerine]

3 hours ago, bugarup said:

...wow. And here I thought those screaming goats in Wasteland 2 was an Easter Egg, like, some dude just screaming and not even pretending he's a goat.

Oh, man you missed a whole lot of first rate memes.

 

[Wormerine]

2 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

I understand where you're coming from, but I suppose we'll just have to disagree here. My main battle-related grievance with PoE / Deadfire is that everything is rendered meaningless. If you survive a battle, it's as if it's never happened because everything is back to where it was (in PoE, you may lose some health, but in Deadfire, you can't lose even that). Thus, there are no monsters to be especially afraid of, there is nothing to particularly prepare for -- everything is the same, and if you survive, everything is meaningless: all the terrifying abilities that the monsters may have mean absolutely nothing.

Not meaningless, as you won the battle and can move forward.

I do get what you mean though. I just don't feel this is a design, which fits the strcture of the game. P:K has time passing buy, which means resting from skill drain isn't without consequence - which is potentially good, though I didn't venture deep into the game to know if it's done well. From what I have seen it was already a problem (played opening chapter only, till gaining your own land) as I would spend time traveling into the area only to discover that I didn't have required items or it was too high for my level: which meant reloading. So far I did find P:K tedious and not respectful to my time. I am glad to read that there was a spell to protect myself from draining. Sounds like very IE mechanic, in a bad way. It's a pain in the ass, until you cast this one particular spell, which makes it a none issue. That is not a good, interesting or indepth design to me. Fighting vampires in IE doesn't have depth or consequences. You just need one spell to make their ability not take an effect. Fighting mindcontrolling vampires in PoE2 on the other hand, did provide tactical challenge which can be counter in multiple different ways, and doesn't require foreknowledge. 

I love my roguelites and roguelikes (ADOM2 in production!), but I don't believe that IE structure supports that type of "consequence". Spend too many spells in a battle? Go to sleep without a consequence. Get your levels drained? Cast restoration. Don't have it memorized? Go to sleep and cast it. Can't memorize it? Use scroll. Don't have a scroll? Treck back to the temple and get healed. None of those are consequences to me - just annoyances, which either will make me waste gaming time, or reload.

PoE to me cut the unnecessary fat, appropriate to the game's overall structure. Darkest Dungeon or XCOMs? Sure, characters getting handicapped or killed fits the game. PoEs? Not very much.

[xzar_monty]

12 hours ago, bugarup said:

There's this other thing -- as most things in Baldur's Gate, vampires have something that trivializes them. Give the mace of disruption to Beefcake A, amulet of level drain immunity to Beefcake B, plug the corridor with them, summon a skellie or two between them and your ranged line if you want to be better safe than sorry, park a Sanctuaried cleric nearby to spook them if your rangeds shoot fast -- voila, you just defanged those suckers.

But you see, this is metagaming. Nothing wrong with it, but when you start the game knowing nothing about what's in store, you don't even know there's a mace of disruption in the game. Or that you can get an amulet of level drain immunity, etc. That's what makes the vampires scary, and that's just great.

[xzar_monty]

11 hours ago, Boeroer said:

I liked PoE's endurance/health mechanic a lot more than Deadfire's injuries. It made it so that even filler fights mattered. Meaning that if you were careless in those fights it had an impact on your next fight (if you didn't rest in between) but at the same time it didn't lower your figthing ability so you didn't feel the need to rest immidiately after losing some health - like you do when catching an injury.  

Agreed. PoE's mechanic was better and for exactly the reason you describe. Deadfire trivializes encounters because everything gets back to square one immediately afterward.

[Boeroer]

Yes, that's one reason why I'm not against per-rest mechanics - or more generally speaking: resources that don't replenish right after combat/challenge. Of course the advantages of those mechanics don't work very well if you allow resting (or any other means of replenishment) anywhere anytime. And if you use supplies to limit resting people will just travel back and get more - which feels like a drag and adds nothing to the game except tedium. I guess I wouldn't have used resting supplies at all. Instead I would have used resting "spots" that you'd have to reach (think of Hero Quest, Dark Souls, Legend of Grimrock or Slay the Spire and many more). And yes, that means that you can get stuck (see certain spots in PoE like jumping into the pit in the Endless Paths of Od Nua). But I think if you make the player aware of this, don't do superhuge areas between resting spots and also use clever auto-saving it creates a better combat experience over the course of a dungeon/map/area and a deeper feeling of accomplishment once you manage to reach the resting sites or finish the area.

It should be obvious by now that I like roguelike games or games that use some roguelike elements.

I don't mean that every resource needs to be non-replenishable though. Stuff like per-encounter for less impactful abilites like Knockdown etc. worked very well in mix with per-rest abilities like spells in PoE. If you make everything non-replenishable fights might become boring as well because one tends to hoard precious resources then and only use stuff that costs nothing.  

Edited November 24, 2019 by Boeroer

[Wormerine]

4 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Of course the advantages of those mechanics don't work very well if you allow resting (or any other means of replenishment) anywhere anytime. And if you use supplies to limit resting people will just travel back and get more - which feels like a drag and adds nothing to the game except tedium. I guess I wouldn't have used resting supplies at all. Instead I would have used resting "spots" that you'd have to reach (think of Hero Quest, Dark Souls, Legend of Grimrock or Slay the Spire and many more).

Yessssssssssssss!!!!!!! Please.

[Gromnir]

12 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Agreed. PoE's mechanic was better and for exactly the reason you describe. Deadfire trivializes encounters because everything gets back to square one immediately afterward.

ridiculous.

the difference is the developers is able to make encounters w/o the immense important variable o' temporal rest proximity being a non workable factor. is no need to consider how different a party of depleted vancian casters will fare or converse, a fully rested group o' vancian casters, v. a group o' ogres. save for boss fights, developers cannot know how recent the party has rested, even though the difficulty o' any given encounter will be fundamental impacted by the answer to such a question. 

doesn't trivialize encounters. makes more likely encounters will be designed appropriate. per encounter makes encounter design more intelligent... better.

is opposite problem you suggest. to avoid player frustration, developers need consider how a depleted party will fare 'gainst a rando encounter. chances are the developers tune down such encounters a bit to avoid such disappointment, which no doubt angers veteran players, or players who happened to have their party rest immediate before the encounter? mess. stoopid.

anything more than extreme limited nod to per rest resources is not conducive to intelligent encounter design. stoopid.

HA! Good Fun!

Edited November 24, 2019 by Gromnir