Here is a big reason why v301 "feels better"

[Sensuki]

The Backer Beta characters all have severely inflated Health values. Take the BB Wizard for example. His Stamina is 73. Under the new Health system he should have 219/219 total health due to Wizards having a 1:3 Stamina:Health ratio. Instead he has 682/218 Health, and when he gets KO'd several times in a row his Health bar does not go down until it us less than 218. It is the same for all backer beta characters.

 

I do not think this is intended, but the "adventuring day" does feel A LOT BETTER because of this. I think these values are a bit too high, but I also think that the values on the right are going to be too low. The Backer Beta party is underpowered due to lack of gear and spells and phrases found in the world, and also any quest/dialogue rewards that they would have at this point in the game. If your PC is not tanking and you let the BB Fighter tank, you can do all of the Dyrford Crossing, all of the Ogre Cave and probably all of the Skaen Cultist temple as well (I refuse to complete this dungeon until they improve the frame rate), without having to rest.

The BB Wizard will become fatigued though, due to having 0 Athletics.

 

In the Infinity Engine games, you could actually do an exterior map, a small interior and a dungeon without having to rest, and then you'd rest after the big dungeon. So while these new inflated values are too high, I also think they might be a bit low even when the characters have proper gear. It's a start anyway. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mutonizer]

Yep, that was my point in another thread: Adventuring days feels better because Health is irrelevant meaning survival and need to rest is only based around actual party resource management, and that feels good, only resting when you feel you need to rest based on resources you have left.

 

Next step is to remove Health completely, get rid of Camping Supplies (or remove abstract cap at least) and done and done

[Sensuki]

Yeah it's a bug though

[IndiraLightfoot]

Sometimes a bug is great and turn into a feature. Now we got to test it like this, and it seems most people like it. It would perhaps be easier to keep it more or less like this, and even do one or two bold changes, like Mut suggested.

[Namutree]

An easy way to make this the standard without the game being too easy is to give the player a big health penalty for running out of endurance.

[archangel979]

I can already envision a mod that will fix this mess. 

Mod features:

1. Health is removed.

2. Your characters can only use Endurance and once they are down they don't die unless the whole party dies.

3. Game time is counted, after x time Fatigue kicks in and gives a noticeable penalty to combat stats. Like in IE games, if you keep moving during fatigue the penalty get bigger and bigger over time.

4. Each time your character Endurance is reduced to 0 that character gets closer to Fatigue state or closer to next level of Fatigue penalties.

5. Fatigue can only be removed by Resting.

6. Resting limits stay as they are now. 

 

7. Monks power their abilities by having their Endurance reduced (same numbers as now). 

 

If players turn on option to be able to die, reducing Endurance to 0 gives you 1 minute to win combat or cast spells that restores Endurance or the character dies.

Edited September 30, 2014 by archangel979

[curryinahurry]

Just tested it...it's definitely not an issue in my game.  the 1:5 change in damage seems to be a good re-balance for fighters, and no one else takes that much damage at the moment because AI is basically non-existent.  I think defensive values have been nerfed for enemies and have gone up for our party as there is now an attribute for it...that's a big deal. 

 

Also, the game is more polished and people are starting to get comfortable with the mechanics, even the whiners.  Certain attack conditions, like flanking for rogues or wizard spells scoring criticals, seem to have been adjusted or been properly implemented.  All these little changes begin to add up

[Sensuki]

What do you mean it's not an issue? The value of all of the BB characters health is inflated due to a bug, making the game easier.

Edited September 30, 2014 by Sensuki

[Uomoz]

You know that removing health = "PoE has a regenerative health system". The moment some "fans" realize it, can you imagine the outrage? I personally don't care how the life resource is handled as far as it's fun and balanced.

[swordofthesith]

I am sure the inflated health has a huge impact on ease of gameplay but to be honest, withy my dual rogues sneak attacking and producing stupid damage output MOBs usually get cut down too fast to deal damage of any kind. The conditions that permit a Sneak Attack need a good solid nerfing.  

Edited September 30, 2014 by swordofthesith

[curryinahurry]

What do you mean it's not an issue? The value of all of the BB characters health is inflated due to a bug, making the game easier.

 

I don't have this bug in my game...so it isn't universal.  It might be the result of a corrupted save or some other issue in your game...but I checked multiple saves and the endurance/health values are accurate in all of them.

Edited September 30, 2014 by curryinahurry

[IndiraLightfoot]

I did the same. It took a bit of time, but I can now tell you that in six saves, three from two different "games" with different characters, without this bug being present for me in any form. I just assumed I had it, but I didn't. More people need to check this out.

 

EDIT: I never installed any mods (although Sensuki's ones were tempting). And obviously, I didn't use any old saves. I had them deleted.

Edited September 30, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Sensuki]

I get it on all BB characters. I've used "Verify Integrity of Game Cache" to restore files as well. I deleted all of my old saves from v278.

Edited September 30, 2014 by Sensuki

[Captain Shrek]

Also, I doubt if the HP bloat is making game easier. Have you ever lost full stamina Sensuki? Are those values looking right?

[archangel979]

You know that removing health = "PoE has a regenerative health system". The moment some "fans" realize it, can you imagine the outrage? I personally don't care how the life resource is handled as far as it's fun and balanced.

Yes, I know. But it is still better than what he have now. By losing Endurance during battles the Fatigue would pile up high fast and still force you to rest. And regenerating Endurance means nothing when you got per encounter Endurance healing spells. Instead of automatic recovery of Endurance you just use those spells which is slower and more irritating. 

[Sensuki]

Also, I doubt if the HP bloat is making game easier. Have you ever lost full stamina Sensuki? Are those values looking right?

Rarely, only when I come up against an overpowered enemy. My Wizard got one-shotted by the Menpwgra, critical hit with some spell for 96 damage.

 

In v257 and v278, the adventuring day length was far far too short. With this bug it's great because you can actually do a few maps without resting like the IE games ... but it's too much. I've depleted all my Wizard spells and he has critical fatigue, but my other four party members are strolling along on Full Health and Stamina after 2.5 maps.

 

That's a bit broken if you ask me. By now I should be getting to the stage where I need to be careful due to low strategical resources.

 

The other thing is due to the Rogue and Fighter's powers mostly being encounter only there's absolutely no strategical stress on them whatsoever.

Edited September 30, 2014 by Sensuki

[IndiraLightfoot]

We'll see what happens if Josh makes all the baddies hit hard like that ghost, right across the board and even harder, but we keep it all as it is now. That could be a fun game - no swift and naked solo Orlan stabbing humanoids in the calves no more.

Edited September 30, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[WorstUsernameEver]

Sensuki, have you tried starting a game at Normal and checking the BB companions' Health values? They are definitely working as intended for me.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Good point: All my saves are from Normal difficulty.

[Sensuki]

Sensuki, have you tried starting a game at Normal and checking the BB companions' Health values? They are definitely working as intended for me.

 

Nope, I only play on Hard, as that will be the difficulty I will be playing at for release.

[Sensuki]

Okay this bug is present on Easy, Hard and Path of the Damned.

 

It's not present for normal difficulty.

 

Look at the Health on PotD LOL

 

Edited September 30, 2014 by Sensuki

[Seari]

I'm still for health only being affected when endurance is low or depleted, then health values don't have to be inflated. This would however mean that fights would have to be more dangerous in general, which is a good thing IMO.

[curryinahurry]

@ Sensuki 

 

Haha...Yeah, I'm playing on normal even though I plan to play through the actual game on Hard.  Maybe this is an issue with alternate modes.  

 

Anyway, in 278, I made it through the Dyrford Crossing maps,  - the Shambling Mounds without resting. I leveled up  after the Ogre in that run, which reset everything, and finished with the Spider queen, Wurms, and Sevis, but honestly, probably didn't need it as my health was pretty good across the party and I had been pretty stingy with spell use.  The main difference 301 made was that I tore through all of the encounters (MY BB fighter was down to about 320 Health after the Ogre).  I think that also had something to do with the fact that I was a level higher (I think they increased the XP awards this release). 

 

I might try Hard  after a few more releases

Edited September 30, 2014 by curryinahurry

[Sensuki]

Josh must be doing his "doubling and halving" trick.

[mutonizer]

I've been testing runs with "normal" custom parties on hard difficulty lately. First complete run was with this setup:

• Fighter: hatchet or mace and medium shield with normal plate armor.
• Paladin: hatchet or mace and medium shield with normal plate armor.
• Barbarian: quarterstaff and hide armor, spear/small shield as backup.
• Rogue: hunting bow with leather armor, stiletto/small shield as backup.
• Priest: Rod with scale armor, mace/small shield as backup.
• Wizard: Wand with robe, dagger/small shield as backup.
• All are Orlans (wanted to test their racial) and I did not dump any stats, all being at 10, with their role stats being at 18 or close to it.
• All started at level 5 exactly.
• Did not use any dropped items apart from the magical ones or direct upgrades to their base load-outs (ie: exceptional hatchet at some point, better robe, etc).
• Kept a reasonable Skill distribution, and made sure the entire team had a spread of Stealth as well as a main Skill and some Athletics. Didn't exploit it, but with this setup, you can just sneak up to any mob with the entire team if you want...

The run was pretty good actually, especially early on and even without the inflated Health values that sometimes bug out with BB party, adventuring days were decent overall, Health not being a limiting or frustrating factor. Only times where I was forced into rest without any resource reason was because of bugged out things such as infinite stacking stuck buff from spiders, spells not working properly (suppress not working for example) and other things that were clearly bugs.
Both party fights (Medreth and Egg bandits) were somewhat decent, requiring me to use some resources and bit of tactics. Egg Bandits fight especially was nice. Blood Legacy fight was cake but think it's because by that point, my guys were pretty buff.
Also, Orlan racial works just fine from what I could see and man, unless I'm mistaking when reading log, it's powerful if you got the ACC to back it up and push things over.

All in all, without proper mob balancing, things got quickly out of control and some nasty bugs got in the way, but early on, was good fun. Next run I'll probably make an all human team with different class combos, see how that handles.

If you want the base save with the party at level 5 and loaded with proper items before anything was done/killed, you'll find it here (just need to put it in your document/saved game/ folder thing with the other saves): LINK