Pillars of Eternity 2 Wish List and Suggestions

[Loren Tyr]

Except that the restriction is there for good reason, removing it would require a major revision and rebalancing of all abilities, spells, bonuses, etc., not just the equipment. And unlimited item (and active/modal) stacking also makes stat bonuses much more variable and therefore inherently more difficult to balance, since it considerably extends the amount of bonus that can be (easily) obtained to any one stat.

[Eadan]

Except that the restriction is there for good reason, removing it would require a major revision and rebalancing of all abilities, spells, bonuses, etc., not just the equipment. And unlimited item (and active/modal) stacking also makes stat bonuses much more variable and therefore inherently more difficult to balance, since it considerably extends the amount of bonus that can be (easily) obtained to any one stat.

This is the only game I have seen have this kind of restriction. Maybe it seemed like a cool idea, but it complicates things too much especially in late game. There are some of us who play these games because of build customization and this restriction makes item build customization 10 times more tedious than any other game I have played.

[Loren Tyr]

This is the only game I have seen have this kind of restriction. Maybe it seemed like a cool idea, but it complicates things too much especially in late game. There are some of us who play these games because of build customization and this restriction makes item build customization 10 times more tedious than any other game I have played.

 

 

You must never have played any of the old Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale games either then (which inspired PoE in the first place). 

 

And you are hardly the only one who likes customizing his characters, it's one of the main draws of PoE I'd say. The stacking could be clearer in the interface, but even without for example the warning system I suggested I still don't see what the big difficulty is here. Given a set of items it's not that hard to figure out how to get the most optimal results for your purposes. I'm not sure what other games you've been playing, but if you find this too tedious then I would suggest that that maybe has got more to do with you than with the PoE system. 

[Eadan]

 

This is the only game I have seen have this kind of restriction. Maybe it seemed like a cool idea, but it complicates things too much especially in late game. There are some of us who play these games because of build customization and this restriction makes item build customization 10 times more tedious than any other game I have played.

 

 

You must never have played any of the old Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale games either then (which inspired PoE in the first place). 

 

And you are hardly the only one who likes customizing his characters, it's one of the main draws of PoE I'd say. The stacking could be clearer in the interface, but even without for example the warning system I suggested I still don't see what the big difficulty is here. Given a set of items it's not that hard to figure out how to get the most optimal results for your purposes. I'm not sure what other games you've been playing, but if you find this too tedious then I would suggest that that maybe has got more to do with you than with the PoE system. 

 

 

And I am sure your group isn't half as optimized as you think. So imagine this scenario: You have a wizard, a chanter and 4 more. Your wizard has a hat that gives +3 int, but you loot a hat with +4 int. So you equip it on your wizard, but notice that your chanter is wearing a hat that gives +1 dex. So you give the now free +3 int hat to your chanter, but then notice he has a belt that gives +2 int/ +1 per. And this goes on and on, so with every new good item gained you basically need to unequip all items on all your characters and start from scratch.

I didn't play BG but I played Icewind Dale 1/2 and many other RPGs and none required you to waste so much time for optimal item build customization. If you don't agree, that's fine, I am just stating my suggestions.

[Loren Tyr]

My group is very much as optimized as I think, and for the many hours I have played this game I've never needed to do spent any significant amount of time with the kind of unequipping you describe. Sure, once you hit the point where (say) the amount of useful headgear exceeds the number of available heads, you're likely going to shuffle around some hats at some point to make the most of them for your party; this in itself has nothing to do with the stacking system. And though the stacking system does entail that this can indeed result in other items becoming less useful for a particular character and might prompt some more re-evaluation and possible shuffling, I've never had anything like the kind of cascade you are talking about. In practice there will tend to be only a limited set of equipment permutations that make a priori sense and need to be evaluated. Moreover, balancing the relative merit of different bonuses for a character against each other is at least as much of a factor here, and can equally cause subsequent shuffling even with full stacking. In your example, the Chanter would still need to decide between (say, having a Blunting Belt) +5 INT / +1 PER and +3 INT / +5 Pierce&Slash DR. Arguably, without the stacking restrictions this actually becomes more of an issue, because there are more item combinations that make sense. 

 

So while you are free to state your suggestions, I am equally free to question what problem they are meant to solve, and what the consequences would be.

[mindswayer]

- No Unity 4

 

- Actually have your character background and dialogues make a difference in how people perceive you. Instead of some NPCs having a unique dialogue line (very few even had one in PoE), have them actually have a completely different manner of speaking to you. Have X NPC treat you with disdain constantly if you're a Godlike, for example, instead of "Hey, what's up? // Wew, you're a godlike, absolutely disgusting, get out of my castle // Hey, take this 5000 coin." Perhaps a personality trait system could be of use here, even though 2nd edition D&D didn't have such a thing. But do you really want to create your own thing or remain a prisoner of D&D?

 

- Have fun loot - stop flooding players with +5 Accuracy types of garbage, have weapons that have unique traits. And by unique traits I also don't mean "% chance to cast this ability from y class". Maybe have the weapon cast a unique ability that is unique to it. Look no further than some Dark Souls weapons or the recent introduction of Aerondight in Witcher 3's Blood & Wine. Imagine a Soulbound weapon, but instead of giving you that wizard spell you've used for the past 20 hours, you get a unique ability. It adds personality to the weapon and makes people grow fond of it.

 

- Fun magic. Seriously Sawyer, pls stop with the MMO-tier spells. I get it you like to have 20 AoE disables per level plus the "this time a stronger magic missile" spell, but it just gets tiring.

 

Other than encouraging them to keep writing stories that aren't exclusively about saving the world, or "an ancient evil awakens", that's pretty much it.

Hoping they learned things with PoE1 instead of getting an ego boost, because it certainly was not the 9/10 game that reviewers gave it.

 

EDIT: oh, how could I forget? Bring back the equivalent of low-INT dialogue.

Edited June 3, 2016 by mindswayer

[Killyox]

Here comes guys, something I think Obsidian missed mark with and I hope they step up their game in POE2/Tyranny.

 

So...COMPANIONS!

 

- TL;DR more engaging and impactful companions like in Shadowrun: Hong Kong (because wishing for Planescape: Torment level companions would be overkill)

 

 

- Long version...

 

It felt very awkward for them to sometimes throw in their 2 cents and there being no follow-ups on it or no impact on the story or resolution of X problem.

Take for example Shadowrun: Hong Kong. Companions there are 10x more engaging, have more backstory and a lot more actual impact on the story. Hell, you can fight them to death if you do something that absolutely does not sit well with them. 

 

If you barge in with Gaichu (a ghoul) inside a corp building you will almost certainly get reaction for that and have to fight your way in/out unless you are extremely good talker (and not even that is always the case).

 

 

I think companions' personality should be shown more. If I travel with a guy who stands for good and protecting the weak I expect him to fight me to death if I try to kill someone innocent. 

 

Think Keldor and how he reacted to some decisions and how it impacted player's decision, NPCs disposition towards party and so on.

 

There is none of this here tbh. They just throw in some remakrs from time to time that have absolutely no impact. I could travel with a flying pig farting gold dust and it would have zero impact on how my party would be perceived.

 

Companions need to react to our actions more and world needs to react more to them traveling with us as well. 

 

MAGIC & SKILLS

 

More interesting magic/abilities/skills. We don't need 10+ CC effects per level or 10+ dmging spells per level. It's sort of annoying to have 20 ways to kill when you will just use 1 or maybe 2 anyways. Make magic about what it could trully be! Making a clone of yourself who can attack is cool, so are other effects less "agressive" in their nature but still magical like teleporting enemy away or locking him in different dimension for some time or w/e else. Less fireball'ish spells.

 

Same with skills. Tbh I think I prefer Cooldown instead of per battle/per rest but still, more per battle skills is OK. Also make them trigger faster. I get that delay is intended but it does break fluidity of combat a lot.
 

Edited June 3, 2016 by Killyox

[Killyox]

This has probably been said a million times but please, faster loading times and less loadings in general. General optimisation improvements, my pc is not high tier but still could run wasteland 2 better than poe and while is was not prettier in terms of art directon it is definitely more demanding(or at least it should be) since it's a fully 3d game. I know that wasteland 2 dc runs on unity 5 while poe is still just unity 4 so let's just hope that poe 2 will deliver in both gameplay and technical aspects.

to a degree poe is also 3d, just that you don't see it (due to how it's made) but it's not 2D

[Eadan]

My group is very much as optimized as I think, and for the many hours I have played this game I've never needed to do spent any significant amount of time with the kind of unequipping you describe. Sure, once you hit the point where (say) the amount of useful headgear exceeds the number of available heads, you're likely going to shuffle around some hats at some point to make the most of them for your party; this in itself has nothing to do with the stacking system. And though the stacking system does entail that this can indeed result in other items becoming less useful for a particular character and might prompt some more re-evaluation and possible shuffling, I've never had anything like the kind of cascade you are talking about. In practice there will tend to be only a limited set of equipment permutations that make a priori sense and need to be evaluated. Moreover, balancing the relative merit of different bonuses for a character against each other is at least as much of a factor here, and can equally cause subsequent shuffling even with full stacking. In your example, the Chanter would still need to decide between (say, having a Blunting Belt) +5 INT / +1 PER and +3 INT / +5 Pierce&Slash DR. Arguably, without the stacking restrictions this actually becomes more of an issue, because there are more item combinations that make sense. 

 

So while you are free to state your suggestions, I am equally free to question what problem they are meant to solve, and what the consequences would be.

I don't mind you arguing about this, but I feel we are hijacking the thread and making it harder for someone to just read players' suggestions.

 

How did you not come across any situation as I described? The situation I described is the least amount of work that will be required with an item upgrade in this game. In most cases, especially at late game, there are also lots of potentially equipable items waiting in the stash other than the ones on your characters at that point. Take deflection for example. It can be on rings/neck/gloves and maybe other slots. Do you wear the +9 deflection ring with +2 dexterity gloves or do you go through all your items to notice you have a +9 def gloves and +3dex ring? In reality it isn't only 2 slots you need to worry in this manner for a character but 9 (?), and you have 6 characters. Not to mention you can also enchant armor. So it goes past fun and sufficiently complex to tedious and punishing to the point I can't even feel rewarded when I get good items. If ithere is some value in this design decision that I may be missing, let me know. Otherwise, they should at least make sure once the initial item build optimization is done, every new potential item upgrade doesn't require too much work to reoptimize your item builds.

Edited June 3, 2016 by Eadan

[rjshae]

For PoE 2 I'd actually like if they did not forcibly try to provide exactly one companion of each and every class. When I was building my character, I actually resorted to picking a class that wasn't taken, just so my character would be fairly unique entity in the party. I was concerned that having two of class X would limit my options, while avoiding that class character could reduce my potential enjoyment of interactions.

 

Not sure what the solution to that is though.

[Loren Tyr]

 

How did you not come across any situation as I described? The situation I described is the least amount of work that will be required with an item upgrade in this game. In most cases, especially at late game, there are also lots of potentially equipable items waiting in the stash other than the ones on your characters at that point. Take deflection for example. It can be on rings/neck/gloves and maybe other slots. Do you wear the +9 deflection ring with +2 dexterity gloves or do you go through all your items to notice you have a +9 def gloves and +3dex ring? In reality it isn't only 2 slots you need to worry in this manner for a character but 9 (?), and you have 6 characters. Not to mention you can also enchant armor. So it goes past fun and sufficiently complex to tedious and punishing to the point I can't even feel rewarded when I get good items. If ithere is some value in this design decision that I may be missing, let me know. Otherwise, they should at least make sure once the initial item build optimization is done, every new potential item upgrade doesn't require too much work to reoptimize your item builds.

 

 

And I ask again, allowing full stacking as you propose solves this how? Let's run through your example here. In the current system we have the following four options (let's assume there is only one available ring slot): a) +9 DEF +2 DEX, b) +9 DEF, c) +3 DEX and d) +9 DEF +3 DEX. Thus, it's a no-brainer, option d) is optimal.

However, if we remove stacking restrictions as you suggest we get: a) +9 DEF +2 DEX, b) +18 DEF, c) +5 DEX and d) +9 DEF +3 DEX. We are now suddenly faced with three viable options rather than one. Rather than removing the alleged tedium and speeding up the optimizing process, it did the exact opposite. And as noted, by making it so much easier to reach high stat bonuses balancing becomes more difficult and inherently more unstable. 

 

The reason I don't run into many length equipment quandaries is because I generally have quite a clear idea for each character what kinds of bonus to prioritize for them. If I have an item giving, say, a Resolve bonus, there will realistically only be a few characters at best for whom that item is going to be the best pick in that item slot (unless it's the only choice). Of the many possible permutations of available equipment, the vast majority can be crossed off out of hand because they are never going to be the top choice. There are only a few that really need further consideration.

 

But what I fundamentally don't get is just exactly what it is you're aiming for with the changes you propose. On the one hand you say you like build optimization, and you propose a change (remove stacking restrictions) that would considerably increase the number of potentially viable equipment combinations. But you also complain about tedium, about having to constantly reevaluate equipment choices, and propose another change (restrict bonus types to specific item slots) that considerably reduces the number of viable that need to be considered (and removes much of the reason for lifting stacking restrictions in the first place). It seems like you're saying you want build/item optimization, but you would like to see the number of options to do so be reduced so it doesn't take too much effort to do so. 

[DraMaFlo]

Can we please make rapiers medium weapons in the next game. They were just as heavy as the medieval arming swords 

[Eadan]

 

 

 

And I ask again, allowing full stacking as you propose solves this how? Let's run through your example here. In the current system we have the following four options (let's assume there is only one available ring slot): a) +9 DEF +2 DEX, b) +9 DEF, c) +3 DEX and d) +9 DEF +3 DEX. Thus, it's a no-brainer, option d) is optimal.

However, if we remove stacking restrictions as you suggest we get: a) +9 DEF +2 DEX, b) +18 DEF, c) +5 DEX and d) +9 DEF +3 DEX. We are now suddenly faced with three viable options rather than one. Rather than removing the alleged tedium and speeding up the optimizing process, it did the exact opposite. And as noted, by making it so much easier to reach high stat bonuses balancing becomes more difficult and inherently more unstable. 

 

The reason I don't run into many length equipment quandaries is because I generally have quite a clear idea for each character what kinds of bonus to prioritize for them. If I have an item giving, say, a Resolve bonus, there will realistically only be a few characters at best for whom that item is going to be the best pick in that item slot (unless it's the only choice). Of the many possible permutations of available equipment, the vast majority can be crossed off out of hand because they are never going to be the top choice. There are only a few that really need further consideration.

 

But what I fundamentally don't get is just exactly what it is you're aiming for with the changes you propose. On the one hand you say you like build optimization, and you propose a change (remove stacking restrictions) that would considerably increase the number of potentially viable equipment combinations. But you also complain about tedium, about having to constantly reevaluate equipment choices, and propose another change (restrict bonus types to specific item slots) that considerably reduces the number of viable that need to be considered (and removes much of the reason for lifting stacking restrictions in the first place). It seems like you're saying you want build/item optimization, but you would like to see the number of options to do so be reduced so it doesn't take too much effort to do so. 

 

 

You need to check all your equipment and keep their stats in your memory to even be able to come up with those 4 alternatives. In reality it isn't just 2 slots either. Let's say you have approximately 10 different potentially equipable items for each slot for a specific character (this is after you filter out irrelevant items or strictly worse items for that character), and 9(?) slots. Without further complicating things with armor enchanments, 2 ring slots or 6 characters, the amount of different combinations is 10⁹ . With stocking restrictions the way they are, you need to compare your complete build with ~10⁹ other builds, you can't just compare items for specific slots. Without stacking restrictions you can just compare 10 items for one slot, choose one then go ahead and compare 10 items for each of the other slots. As you can see, the amount of effort required increases insanely and becomes impossible with the stacking restriction.

 

Your last sentence is the goal, players want to spend the minimum amount of effort and have the maximum amount of fun. Deciding between specific choices is fun, computing and trying to remember 10⁹ different choices for each character is tedious and impossible.

Edited June 4, 2016 by Eadan

[Loren Tyr]

You need to check all your equipment and keep their stats in your memory to even be able to come up with those 4 alternatives. In reality it isn't just 2 slots either. Let's say you have approximately 10 different potentially equipable items for each slot for a specific character (this is after you filter out irrelevant items for that character), and 9(?) slots. Without further complicating things with armor enchanments, 2 ring slots or 6 characters, the amount of different combinations is 10⁹ . With stocking restrictions the way they are, you need to compare your complete build with ~10⁹ other builds, you can't just compare items for specific slots. Without stacking restrictions you can just compare 10 items for one slot, choose one then go ahead and compare 10 items for each of the other slots. As you can see, the amount of effort required increases insanely and becomes immosible with the stacking restriction.

 

No, the effort is inherently a lot higher *without* those stacking restrictions. Removing the stacking restrictions only removes the dependence of stat-specific bonuses between item slots, it doesn't reduce the optimization problem into a set of 9 independent problems. For example, it may well be that for a particular character it may well be that a big boost to either Deflection (+18) or DEX (+5) is superior to boosting both by a smaller amount (+9 / +3). Thus you still need to consider all equipment in the context of the other equipment available; moreover, this applies even if in this case boosting both *is* optimal, as in the example there are two ways of doing so (+9 +2 and +9 +3), one of which is strictly superior to the other. But you'd only reach that conclusion if you considered them in combination, rather than isolation.

 

Moreover, as noted, removing the stacking restrictions effectively *increases* the number of item permutations that need to be considered. Suppose we have the two rings and belts you describe, plus 2 viable items each in 7 other slots. So 2^9 = 512 possible permutations. Let's say we start with the rings and belts: under the current stacking restrictions, of the four possible belt/ring combinations one (option d in my tabulation above) is strictly superior to the rest. And precisely because of the stacking restrictions this cannot be changed by any other item, option d is superior independent of whatever else you are equipping. As such the ring and belt slots can already be fixed on the option d items, and there are only 2^7 = 128 item permutations remaining. Without the stacking restrictions however, there are three belt/ring combinations that are viable, only option a can be ruled out already for being strictly inferior to option d. There are thus still 3 x 2^7 = 384 item permutations remaining. And this applies generally, the stacking restrictions allow you to more quickly eliminate large sets of inferior item permutations than you would be able to without them. 

 

In practice, the number of evaluations you need to make (or at any rate, the number that I need to make; maybe I'm just very efficient), is vastly smaller still. With a new item becoming available, many (sub)combinations simply don't need to be evaluated again because you already did that already the last time you were equipping items. Reevaluation is needed only if and to the extent that the new item changes the value of other items relatively to each other, which it generally does to only a limited extent if at all (and again, which would be more likely to happen without the stacking restrictions). 

 

 

 

Your last sentence is the goal, players want to spend the minimum amount of effort and have the maximum amount of fun. Deciding between specific choices is fun, computing and trying to remember 10⁹ different choices for each character is tedious and impossible.

 

 

Maybe that's what *you* want, and perhaps there are other as well. But that's hardly representative of all players. I think there would be a lot of members of this message board who wholeheartedly disagree. If Obsidian told them they were going to reduce the number of viable equipment combinations to make life easier for the players, they would rebel (myself included; for all the amazing Boeroer builds we'd miss out on alone). There are plenty of players who would want more options, rather than fewer. Maybe (like me) they have a different threshold or definition of tedium, maybe (like me) they don't need to evaluate 10^9 combinations to get at the optimal solution. Maybe it's something else, but regardless it seems a bit presumptuous for you to claim to speak for them. Now, whether they would welcome lifting the stacking restrictions I don't know. As outlined above, and contrary to your claims, this actually considerably increases the number of viable options (yay!) but at the cost of jeopardizing balance (boo!) and requiring a lot of additional development effort that could otherwise be spent on something else (boo?). 

 

What also keeps confounding me is why you play the game in this way. You say that making the optimal equipment decision is a tedious process, so why do you do it? As said, you can get to that optimal decision much more efficiently than you seem to be doing, but apart from that: if you don't enjoy it, why not stick to (slightly) suboptimal decisions made at a fraction of the effort? It's not like the game punishes you for not milking every last possible drop of stat bonus from your equipment, even on PotD. The beauty is that there are so many different, viable ways in which you can play this game. I mean, people have completed PotD solo with all sorts of self-imposed (equipment) restrictions just to see if they could do it (they could); you missing half a point of Deflection bonus somewhere is hardly going to be an obstacle. So why this urgent need to optimize, apparently at the expense of your enjoyment of the game?

[Eadan]

No, the effort is inherently a lot higher *without* those stacking restrictions. Removing the stacking restrictions only removes the dependence of stat-specific bonuses between item slots, it doesn't reduce the optimization problem into a set of 9 independent problems. For example, it may well be that for a particular character it may well be that a big boost to either Deflection (+18) or DEX (+5) is superior to boosting both by a smaller amount (+9 / +3). Thus you still need to consider all equipment in the context of the other equipment available; moreover, this applies even if in this case boosting both *is* optimal, as in the example there are two ways of doing so (+9 +2 and +9 +3), one of which is strictly superior to the other. But you'd only reach that conclusion if you considered them in combination, rather than isolation.

 

That's why I suggested removing the restriction along with rebalancing stats and limiting certain stat bonuses to certain slots. Stat balancing is already necessary even without the restriction being removed, so it isn't extra work.

 

Moreover, as noted, removing the stacking restrictions effectively *increases* the number of item permutations that need to be considered. Suppose we have the two rings and belts you describe, plus 2 viable items each in 7 other slots. So 2^9 = 512 possible permutations. Let's say we start with the rings and belts: under the current stacking restrictions, of the four possible belt/ring combinations one (option d in my tabulation above) is strictly superior to the rest. And precisely because of the stacking restrictions this cannot be changed by any other item, option d is superior independent of whatever else you are equipping. As such the ring and belt slots can already be fixed on the option d items, and there are only 2^7 = 128 item permutations remaining.

In late game you will likely have 10+ viable choices for each slot, but let's go with your example of 2 choices for each slot. In this very unrealistic example where the 4 items have in total 2 different stat bonuses, and each of the items only has 1 type of stat bonus, you can make an independent selection, but still leaving you with 128 different comibnations that you may not simplify later. There definitely won't be a strictly better option for 2 slot combinations realistically ( with 10+ items for each slot, each with possibly more than 1 different stat bonus), and that's assuming you can remember 10  ( not 100, since you just eliminate some combinations as you go along) different total stat bonuses and which item combinations they relate to while making a decision. With more than 2 slot combinations, the whole thing is just impossible.

 

I am inclined to believe you didn't reach late game or didn't bother to get ( loot / buy /get rewarded) many items since apperantly you didn't experience the issues I talked about or you didn't even notice your builds were nowhere near subjectively or objectively optimized.

 

Maybe that's what *you* want, and perhaps there are other as well. But that's hardly representative of all players. I think there would be a lot of members of this message board who wholeheartedly disagree. If Obsidian told them they were going to reduce the number of viable equipment combinations to make life easier for the players, they would rebel (myself included; for all the amazing Boeroer builds we'd miss out on alone). There are plenty of players who would want more options, rather than fewer. Maybe (like me) they have a different threshold or definition of tedium, maybe (like me) they don't need to evaluate 10^9 combinations to get at the optimal solution. Maybe it's something else, but regardless it seems a bit presumptuous for you to claim to speak for them. Now, whether they would welcome lifting the stacking restrictions I don't know. As outlined above, and contrary to your claims, this actually considerably increases the number of viable options (yay!) but at the cost of jeopardizing balance (boo!) and requiring a lot of additional development effort that could otherwise be spent on something else (boo?). 

 

What also keeps confounding me is why you play the game in this way. You say that making the optimal equipment decision is a tedious process, so why do you do it? As said, you can get to that optimal decision much more efficiently than you seem to be doing, but apart from that: if you don't enjoy it, why not stick to (slightly) suboptimal decisions made at a fraction of the effort? It's not like the game punishes you for not milking every last possible drop of stat bonus from your equipment, even on PotD. The beauty is that there are so many different, viable ways in which you can play this game. I mean, people have completed PotD solo with all sorts of self-imposed (equipment) restrictions just to see if they could do it (they could); you missing half a point of Deflection bonus somewhere is hardly going to be an obstacle. So why this urgent need to optimize, apparently at the expense of your enjoyment of the game?

 

 

Less tedious and more fun isn't a subjective goal, it's objectively better. As you suggest, I already stick to suboptimal decisions, which along with easy, non fully scaling combat, removes 2 of the most fun parts of the game for me- combat and character customization. This is also the reason why I want it changed in PoE 2. As for artificially gimping myself to make the game more fun, that's the game designers job giving you restrictions and tools to overcome them to provide a fun, challenging experience. If I am trying different self-invented ways to make the game fun ( which won't be as sccessful or efficient as a game designer desiging the game around it), I might as well design my own game.

 

I am not talking about PoE here, but "you can do so many different things in this game" that I hear about lots of games means nothing if the things themselves aren't fun. If anything it means the things that you do won't be as fun since lots of effort went into quantity over quality.

Edited June 4, 2016 by Eadan

[Dr <3]

I would like they optimized a bit better the game in case One want to play solo. In particolar to fix the "fight reset" when you go invisibile or charm everyone for mystake. Soloing with chiper or rogue is a pain, you use some of your best ability, and baaam! Fight reset, all your buffs are out and you are often already surrounded.

[Loren Tyr]

That's why I suggested removing the restriction along with rebalancing stats and limiting certain stat bonuses to certain slots. Stat balancing is already necessary even without the restriction being removed, so it isn't extra work.

 

 

I don't see any great need for stat balancing in the current game, so I'd say it is extra work. But aside from that: if you are going to limit stat bonuses to specific item slots they're not going to stack much if ever anyway, so there wouldn't be any need to remove the stacking restriction. In any case, I think you'll find that there are plenty of players who would want no such limitation.

 

 

I am inclined to believe you didn't reach late game or didn't bother to get ( loot / buy /get rewarded) many items since apperantly you didn't experience the issues I talked about or you didn't even notice your builds were nowhere near subjectively or objectively optimized.

 

I'd say you are just really bad at solving optimization problems. I certainly have no problem with them, your speculations notwithstanding. And frankly you're the first person on this forum I have seen complain about this at all, so it doesn't seem to be a major problem for others either. 

 

 

Less tedious and more fun isn't a subjective goal, it's objectively better. As you suggest, I already stick to suboptimal decisions, which along with easy, non fully scaling combat, removes 2 of the most fun parts of the game for me- combat and character customization. This is also the reason why I want it changed in PoE 2. As for artificially gimping myself to make the game more fun, that's the game designers job giving you restrictions and tools to overcome them to provide a fun, challenging experience. If I am trying different self-invented ways to make the game fun ( which won't be as sccessful or efficient as a game designer desiging the game around it), I might as well design my own game.

 

I am not talking about PoE here, but "you can do so many different things in this game" that I hear about lots of games means nothing if the things themselves aren't fun. If anything it means the things that you do won't be as fun since lots of effort went into quantity over quality.

 

 

Actually, 'less tedious' and 'more fun' isn't a goal at all, it's two goals. And in most cases the global minimum of 'tedious' (or 'effort') and the global maximum of 'fun' are unlikely to exactly coincide. So although in a superficial sense the goals may be individually 'objective', how the two should be weighted is not. Moreover, what constitutes 'tedious' or 'fun' is a thoroughly subjective matter; as is in fact neatly illustrated by the fact that I have not experienced any of the tedium you describe, and would expect the simplifications you are proposing to result in a (potentially ruinous) reduction in the fun I could have with the game. 

 

"Not obsessively trying to optimize every last single stat" isn't gimping, that's just the normal way most people play games. Somehow it seems that given a particular configuration for your party, you can't have fun with it unless you are assured that this is the most 'optimal' or 'efficient' configuration (as if there is only one, anyway). Not because the current configuration isn't good enough to play the game or is somehow inherently un-fun, but only because it *could* be better.

 

It's like you are eating some excellent ice cream, but can't really enjoy it unless you are sure that it has the optimal distribution of sprinkles. And to address this problem you have somehow created for yourself, you are proposing that no one should have sprinkles at all. Does that seem reasonable to you? You want the game to be dumbed down because on the one hand you don't want to expend any effort trying to reach some kind mathematical optimum in the game, but other hand consider it beneath you not to strive for it anyway? Do you have any idea how absurd that sounds? Here's a tip: if you find something to be more tedious than fun, don't do it. Find something else that you do enjoy, and go do that instead. It's really just that simple.

[Loren Tyr]

I would like they optimized a bit better the game in case One want to play solo. In particolar to fix the "fight reset" when you go invisibile or charm everyone for mystake. Soloing with chiper or rogue is a pain, you use some of your best ability, and baaam! Fight reset, all your buffs are out and you are often already surrounded.

 

Agreed. Not that I ever play solo, but it would be better anyway to have it just let the combat mode run on. The charm effects run out eventually anyway (or until you attack them), but it seems that you should be able to make use of the opportunity to regroup and reposition while your enemies are temporarily docile. And same with invisibility, runs out fairly quickly as well so why not run an 'in enemy visible range' check only after it ends, and only end combat mode them (if out of sight).

[Eadan]

@Loren Tyr

Sorry I didn't know we couldn't make suggestions if the posters here wouldn't agree to them according to you. Nice job ignoring the part where I prove the impossibility of the current system and trying to make it about me, after making me waste all this time trying to explain the obvious to you. I don't know why someone like you who can compute total bonuses for 1 billion combinations while remembering which combinations they relate to, and then deciding the best among those 1 billion total bonuses and then doing this for each character and each time they receive a new item even bother to explain things to a simpleton like me. I clearly don't have the capacity to understand your posts, so I will be ignoring them. Not that any of my suggestions were directed at you anyway.

Edited June 4, 2016 by Eadan

[Loren Tyr]

I merely pointed out that, contrary to your claim of expressing what players want, that certainly many of the players here likely disagree with it. And again, you are entirely free to make suggestions, as I am to argue against them. 

 

And no, you proved no such thing. The key assumption you make is that the only way to solve this optimization problem is an exhaustive search. It is not, even if you want to guarantee finding the global maximum; and frankly, in most cases (including this one) a good enough local maximum will do just fine. Both simple common sense and decades of mathematicians and computer scientists studying optimization bear this out. 

 

But even had you proved that finding the global maximum (or acceptable local maximum) is not feasible in practice... who cares? Despite that alleged infeasibility, plenty of people seem to be deriving a great deal of fun from the game. Apparently what they manage to do with it is quite good enough for them. 

 

In any case, I doubt I'll ever get an answer but let me ask one last time: why is it that your enjoyment is so strongly affected by how much room for improvement there is for your party configuration, rather than the quality it already has? Clearly you don't enjoy the improvement process itself, if you consider it tedious. You seem to be saying that you aren't satisfied because it has further potential, but somehow *would* be satisfied if the developers removed that potential; even if the game would otherwise be the same. So you want your (and those of everone else) options to be restricted, rather than simply choosing not to use all your options to their fullest extent?

[cycloverid]

The "only-one-bonus-across-all-items" restriction is just awful. Please remove it, thanks.

 

Also there only needs to a HARD MAX of 10 skills learned per character. Even 5 per character is a decent amount. Don't need 1000 spells on priest and wizard, it really makes those classes boring and not very diverse.

[Elric Galad]

Casters are supposed to be versatile. How to be versatile with 5-10 abilities ?

 

More abilities making a class boring does not make a lot of sense. Although more original abilities are sometimes better than too many abilities.

Edited June 5, 2016 by Elric Galad

[tinysalamander]

Speaking of wishes. I'd like to have easy way to mod any dialog

[DozingDragon]

Here's a few: 

1. An additional "pet" focused class, where the pet is the main focus of the class. This could be an Animancer with constructs or animats, or maybe even a take on a Sorcerer or Warlock with a familiar.

2. More sequences like the finale from the White March Part II. 

3. More optional high difficulty areas and fights tucked away throughout the game. While the bounty fights were generally enjoyable, they could have benefited from better narrative integration with the surrounding areas. 

[cycloverid]

Casters are supposed to be versatile. How to be versatile with 5-10 abilities ?

 

More abilities making a class boring does not make a lot of sense. Although more original abilities are sometimes better than too many abilities.

 

It doesn't make sense because you misunderstood me, horribly. Having ALL of the abilities makes a class boring. And yes, making choices is more interesting than not making choices .

 

30-60 well-designed abilities is way more than enough to be versatile...