"No Bad Builds" a failure in practice?

[Infinitron]

Yes, as a matter of fact, he does want to play a dumb wizard. Also, that wasn't the only example he used.

Edited August 21, 2014 by Infinitron

[Mayama]

Yes, as a matter of fact, he does want to play a dumb wizard. Also, that wasn't the only example he used.

 

He just switched interactions, you can make a dump wizard in PoE but you cant make a wizard with hard hitting spells that isnt physicaly strong.

[Mrakvampire]

Yes, as a matter of fact, he does want to play a dumb wizard. Also, that wasn't the only example he used.

 

It's nonsense. Whole concept of classic wizard (that comes from D&D obviously) is a guy who LEARNS spell formulae. He is like medieval version of scientist. It's like an idea to play as dumb scientist and expect that he should win Nobel prize.

[Infinitron]

 

Yes, as a matter of fact, he does want to play a dumb wizard. Also, that wasn't the only example he used.

 

It's nonsense. Whole concept of classic wizard (that comes from D&D obviously) is a guy who LEARNS spell formulae. He is like medieval version of scientist. It's like an idea to play as dumb scientist and expect that he should win Nobel prize.

 

 

Why should our roleplaying choices be constrained by what a bunch of guys from TSR thought was the only way to build a wizard back in the 1980s?

 

There's a reason they introduced the Sorcerer class later on, you know.

Edited August 21, 2014 by Infinitron

[PrimeJunta]

@Mrakvampire What else do you think should be copied exactly from D&D?

 

P:E has different magical metaphysics than D&D. Dat soul power thing. A wizard is someone who produces magical effects with his soul power through the intermediary of his grimoire. There's nothing inherent to that which demands high intelligence.

 

You may not like it, but that does not make it "nonsense" or "illogical."

[Mrakvampire]

@Mrakvampire What else do you think should be copied exactly from D&D?

 

P:E has different magical metaphysics than D&D. Dat soul power thing. A wizard is someone who produces magical effects with his soul power through the intermediary of his grimoire. There's nothing inherent to that which demands high intelligence.

 

You may not like it, but that does not make it "nonsense" or "illogical."

 

That guy on video talked about D&D wizard and 'Oh how it restrict his roleplaying genius'. And I'm saying that idea to roleplay dumb wizard when it's clearly stated how this wizard operates is dumb. It's not fault of game mechanics, it's pure lack of lore knowledge. It's like to say 'I want to play blind sniper in Fallout' and then demand that this build should be viable in combat. 

 

And yes, your roleplaying choices MUST be contained by simple logic, cause logic is god of everything and it can't be beaten. Right now we have really funny situation that all wizards in game should be like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Oh you say that Might is not strength? Strange, cause it affects melee and ability to apply physicall strength as well. 

Edited August 21, 2014 by Mrakvampire

[PrimeJunta]

@Mrakvampire. P:E's lore is not D&D's lore. D&D explicitly required wizards to be high INT, and provided a rationale for why. You could not make a dumb wizard because in D&D dumb wizards could not learn spells. 

 

This is not the case in P:E because the lore is different. Soul power != intelligence.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Yeah. Spell power linked to Might is more reminiscent of some JRPG traditions. Cf., for instance, The Last Airbender, and how elemental magic is described there. It often needs to be rooted in strength, if you want to become a real powerful elemental magic wielder. I reckon, this is pretty cool, and I hope they keep it in.

[PrimeJunta]

[Ondb]

I am proposing following change in attributions. Strength instead of Might (Diablo3 team tried Might for months and eventually get rid of it ) and some changes what is affecting what.

 

Strength: +2% melee damage bonus, +1% ranged damage bonus +1 Fortitude defense

Dexterity: +1% melee damage bonus, +2% ranged damage bonus, +1 Reflex defense

Constitution: +x % health/stamina bonus, +1 Fortitude defense

Perception: +1 Accuracy, +4% Area of effect of all abilities

Intelligence: +2% spell damage/power, , +1 Will defense

Resolve: +1 concentration, +1 Will defense, +4% healing received, +4% abilities duration

Edited August 21, 2014 by Ondb

[Mayama]

Yeah. Spell power linked to Might is more reminiscent of some JRPG traditions. Cf., for instance, The Last Airbender, and how elemental magic is described there. It often needs to be rooted in strength, if you want to become a real powerful elemental magic wielder. I reckon, this is pretty cool, and I hope they keep it in.

 

Haha ^^ the first thing that came to my mind were those kung fu movies in which strength/kung fu basicaly allows you to do anything. You want to fly or blow out candles with your fists from afar? Lean kung fu and work out.

[Namutree]

 

I am proposing following change in attributions. Strength instead of Might (Diablo3 team tried Might for months and eventually get rid of it ) and some changes what is affecting what.

 

Strength: +2% melee damage bonus, +1% ranged damage bonus +1 Fortitude defense

Dexterity: +1% melee damage bonus, +2% ranged damage bonus, +1 Reflex defense

Constitution: +x % health/stamina bonus, +1 Fortitude defense

Perception: +1 Accuracy, +4% Area of effect of all abilities

Intelligence: +2% spell damage/power, , +1 Will defense

Resolve: +1 concentration, +1 Will defense, +4% healing received, +4% abilities duration

 

Uh... no thanks.

[Waywocket]

 

I am proposing following change in attributions. Strength instead of Might (Diablo3 team tried Might for months and eventually get rid of it ) and some changes what is affecting what.

 

Strength: +2% melee damage bonus, +1% ranged damage bonus +1 Fortitude defense

Dexterity: +1% melee damage bonus, +2% ranged damage bonus, +1 Reflex defense

Constitution: +x % health/stamina bonus, +1 Fortitude defense

Perception: +1 Accuracy, +4% Area of effect of all abilities

Intelligence: +2% spell damage/power, , +1 Will defense

Resolve: +1 concentration, +1 Will defense, +4% healing received, +4% abilities duration

 

I like the perception and resolve bits of this.

[aeonsim]

Even though the "no bad builds" policy of making all attributes equally important for all classes sounded somewhat good on paper, I think its execution has proved a failure. There are still bad builds and dump stats, and even worse than before, it's the same stats for ALL classes now.

 

Every character I make has 18 strength(or more). No matter if it's a fighter, a cleric, or a wizard, it's got to have big muscles because big muscles just make everyone more effective at what they do.

 

Every character I make has minimum perception and resolve because these stats don't do anything.

 

Almost every character I make has maximum dexterity except for support characters.

 

So the problem I see with your current build is that if Interrupts are working properly a High Perception, Int, Dex wizard could shut down/wipe your entire team. Perception boosts interrupt which if you combine with AOE spells could be disrupting nearly every attempt you make to use an ability. Or a Ranged character with High Dex, and Perception and a fast attacking weapon could completely lock down your spell caster (except for instant cast spells) or any other high ability class, if they're getting an interrupt every attack or two as they'll be continuously interrupting your abilities and spells. 

 

Now I'm not sure if Perception boosts interrupt enough to make this happen at the moment (what's the % boost per point to interrupt?) but if it works as described in the ability description and has a fairly high chance, then unless you put a fair bit into Resolve your party could be effectively neutralised. Now I'm not sure if any of the combat in the Beta has such enemies present but if there are some in the full game you may find your party has major issues.

 

While perception needs a bit of a boost I think it would also be helpful if the game was more 'vocal' about when interrupts and concentration kicked in to show you what the effect was. Also having enemies that specialise in high perception and interrupt based tactics and high resolve (concentration) high damage attacks it would make things more obvious that these stats can be important.

 

Also a Wizard/Cipher/Monk with high Con, Dex, Int and Resolve could make an excellent melee fighter with the touch based spells & abilities.

Edited August 21, 2014 by aeonsim

[Billy O]

The problem for me personally is that when building my character I feel like I have very few choices for my build. I was building a ranger (bow and arrow) and the build requires no thought or sacrifice. Maximum might and dex obviously. Perception for interrupts I guess, and some points in constitution, and the rest seems useless.

[Sir Davion]

I think the attributes in PoE are a little bit more abstract (at least some of them). For me it makes sense from a mechanical point of view but part of my brain that is conditioned towards str=melee damage int= magic dam etc. has some problems with it. 

 

Nothing comes for free and you will either have less abstract attributes that force each class into a certain distribution of stats to be viable or those more abstract stats that allow e.g. a barbarian that does less damage but in a larger area and has access to intellect dialogue options. I actually prefer the system as it is. Especially since you have your skills to flesh out your character more.

 

My intellegent barbarian would maybe still skill mostly athletics and not lore and my might wizzward would focus on lore.

[Hormalakh]

There are multiple problems with the current system:

 

1- The stats are not impactful enough and some are more impactful than others. Might comes to mind. Everyone will take might. And likely max it.

2- There are way too many points to be distributed: there really is no question as to how to distribute your point system and I've seen pretty much everyone do the same thing over and over. Add to this the class, race, andd culture boni and you've got 3 or 4 18's 19's in a row. That was a very rare-roll in old DnD games. People would be rolling all day for that. Limit your points to make the questions more interesting.

[Shdy314]

There are multiple problems with the current system:

 

1- The stats are not impactful enough and some are more impactful than others. Might comes to mind. Everyone will take might. And likely max it.

2- There are way too many points to be distributed: there really is no question as to how to distribute your point system and I've seen pretty much everyone do the same thing over and over. Add to this the class, race, andd culture boni and you've got 3 or 4 18's 19's in a row. That was a very rare-roll in old DnD games. People would be rolling all day for that. Limit your points to make the questions more interesting.

People rolled all day for that in every IE game that allowed it too! HA! No but seriously they did. So it is a spiritual successor!

[Enoch]

@Infiltrate_SF I disagree.

 

I think you should get your teeth kicked in if you fail to play your character to its strengths, whatever those are. If you make a muscle wizard and then play it like a glass cannon, you do deserve to lose, just like if you make a glass cannon wizard and put him in the front line. But saying that there's something inherently wrong about a muscle wizard is kind of a low-INT thing to say IMO.

 

Exactly. Capacity for success should depend on one's play throughout the game.  Character creation choices are part of that, but they shouldn't be determinative in themselves.  Doing something weird at character creation shouldn't make the game impossible (as was the case with Icewind Dale, which you could play for 20-ish hours before realizing that your party just wasn't going to cut it anymore and there was nothing you could do but start over and spend more time pressing "reroll"). 

Edited August 21, 2014 by Enoch

[PrimeJunta]

The problem for me personally is that when building my character I feel like I have very few choices for my build. I was building a ranger (bow and arrow) and the build requires no thought or sacrifice. Maximum might and dex obviously. Perception for interrupts I guess, and some points in constitution, and the rest seems useless.

 

Have you actually experimented with different stat distributions?

 

As stated elsewhere, Per and Res can be dumped for most classes, but apart from the obvious Mig and Dex, Con, and Int remain useful: you need Con because you share your health pool with your animal companion which is going to be scrapping with the opposition, and Int is useful because it boosts durations. Wounding Shot for example becomes that much more effective. (Do they stack by the way?)

[Karkarov]

There are multiple problems with the current system:

 

1- The stats are not impactful enough and some are more impactful than others. Might comes to mind. Everyone will take might. And likely max it.

2- There are way too many points to be distributed: there really is no question as to how to distribute your point system and I've seen pretty much everyone do the same thing over and over. Add to this the class, race, andd culture boni and you've got 3 or 4 18's 19's in a row. That was a very rare-roll in old DnD games. People would be rolling all day for that. Limit your points to make the questions more interesting.

Not really, the problem is people don't understand the system.  This was actually discussed in another thread, but sometimes might is not a "great" choice for the character you want to play.  Remember it is only 2% damage and healing per point.  What if you want to play a ranged character who fires a really quick shooting bow?  You will do less damage per shot, so that 30% may not actually be a huge damage increase over 20%.    Your character would have been better off focusing on dex so they never miss, int so their abilities last as long as possible, and perception to help score interrupts.  Barbarians have tons of aoe moves, but they only work if they hit, so a barb who only goes 10-12 in might but gets high dex and int is very viable because they miss less and hit more enemies due to larger aoe.

 

People need to stop thinking about Eternity's stats like it is D&D.  This is not D&D.

[Mrakvampire]

People need to stop thinking about Eternity's stats like it is D&D.  This is not D&D.

 

Yes, it's good idea to create non-intuitive rpg system and then say "This system is not bad, it's you, people, who think wrong and just can't understand it's brilliance!"

[Corto81]

Some of the stats are just weird. The word unintuitive has been used a lot, rightly so.

Why would a Cleric need more Might (STR) to heal better?

 

Unless Might is just Might, in which case... Well, it sort of pounds all the other stats into the ground and I don't honestly see the point of having 6 stats.

 

Like I said, if they wanna do 6 stats and Strenght as a parallel to Might... It can work.

If Might is Might, just do away with the 6 stats system because it's not gonna work.

Edited August 21, 2014 by Corto81

[Mrakvampire]

One more thing. If we (backers that have access to beta), geeks, have difficulty understanding this system (at least huge % of us) - do you expect that your 17-y-old modern player will understand?

[Shdy314]

 

People need to stop thinking about Eternity's stats like it is D&D.  This is not D&D.

 

Yes, it's good idea to create non-intuitive rpg system and then say "This system is not bad, it's you, people, who think wrong and just can't understand it's brilliance!"

 

It is only "unintuitive" because people seriously expect it to be copying dnd. I can't blame them. They have 6 stats in the same order and constitution and intellect are straight from DnD. I watched quite a few livestreams. It was like 100% people thought might was just a renamed STR. Didnt bother even reading the stats. The few who did still assumed damage only applied in melee.

 

There should be big blinking lights that say this is not DnD! Read the stats carefully!

And the tooltips need to be insultingly obvious. The tooltip for Might needs to flat out say ALL DAMAGE. YES EVEN DAMAGE FROM MAGIC, SPECIAL ABILITIES AND RANGED ATTACKS. Yeah... in caps.

 

In all seriousness a good manual will solve most of the confusion but Obsidian still does need to be very explicit in the tooltips.

Edited August 21, 2014 by Shdy314