What can OE learn from Tyranny to better PoE 2

[Madscientist]

OK, what can we take from Tyranny for PoE2:

 

+ all chars have different poses and companions have their equipment in dialogue.

+ In dialogue, companions do not only give comments but NPC also see my companions and react to their comments.

+ I like the conquest mode at the beginning.

+ The mini map and how it changes to combat log during combat.

+ The way how traps are and the fact that you can push enemies into traps.

+ The way how all support skills are good for combat and dialogue. It was already in PoE, but I think Tyranny made it better. Also your background, reputation and your past actions (conquest mode or in the normal game) are used better in tyranny.

+ I like spell crafting. I do not want all chars in PoE have it, but it looks like a good idea for one class.

+ The main char in Tyranny feels more part of the game world than in most other games.

+ Unique classes/skills for companions (to some degree already in PoE)

+ combo attacks

+ I like the stronghold of Tyranny better than PoE. The stronghold was one of the weakest parts of PoE. I also disliked the fact that you were forced to return there often because of attacks in PoE.

+ Money and other resources. In PoE and most other RPGs I swim in money after a short while. In Tyranny I always had less then 10 iron rings. There are many useful things you can spend money for in Tyranny (trainers, crafting, buy spell components, . . .) I think the main reason was that not every trash enemy dropped something in Tyranny.

 

+/- With classes or classless is a matter of taste. I like both games in that regard.

 

- I want friendly fire back, at least optional.

- Not so simplified mechanics. I want flanking, interrupt for almost everything and such stuff.

- the UI of tyranny is terrible. PoE was better. or use the Ui of DA:O with a huge skillbar and the option to switch between several skill bars if one is not enough.

- learning by doing systems are often easy to exploit.

- Better enemy AI. All enemies gathered around my tank (Barik) while my glass cannons shoot AoE like crazy. PoE was also terrible in the beginning but it improved a lot after some patches.

- Better AI for companions. In Tyranny my archer wants to go to the tank to buff him. But the tank was surrounded by enemies so my archer walked around the tank+enemies because she could not get in touch range. Their spell and target selection is also terrible sometimes.

- better pathfinding. Tyranny is bad but PoE was also bad at the beginning. I do not know any game where it works very good.

- I want a hold the ground command, so that party members stay where they are in combat or they do only move when I tell them to move.

- I like summons, if only to distract the more intelligent enemies and block their path

- You have only humans, ghosts and a few beastman as enemies and all dungeons look the same.

- too limited equipment for some companions. The worst game in that regard is Planescape torment. The game gives you tons of cool items, but your companions cannot use them and they are completely useless unless your main char has chosen exactly this "class". In Tyranny, does anybody need heavy armor?

 

other things:

+ I like the teleport spell from Divinity: Original Sin. You can do so much cheese with it. Of course you should be able to use it only once per encounter (or a few times per rest) and some enemies should have it too.

+ I said that I like how you can push enemies into traps. It would be nice if enemies could do it too. So if you try to block the enemies with your tank standing in a door, they attempt to push him back so that some enemies start to go for the casters who do lots of damage from the back row.

[zered]

What I like?

 

Spell creating.

Companion reputations - I could finally see a meter that shows I am a prick to Durance

 

Conversation tooltips. Very friendly thing.

 

What I don't like?

 

No-class system. This is a no-go for me. I am fine with the current class mechanics.

 

Dialogue poses, Im ok just with the standard portraits for companions. The poses feel kind of dead for me.

 

Combat, flashy moves. Hurling your companion into the air so she shots arrows whilst flying up? WTF is this ****?

Edited November 22, 2016 by zered

[Fenixp]

Companion reputations - I could finally see a meter that shows I am a prick to Durance

I'm not a huge fan of these meters actually, and tend to wish they were hidden or at least hideable via the options menu. Any option that says "Durance needs to like you 56 for you to say this!" or "You said a thing Durance likes, he now likes you 138!" takes me right out of the experience. I'm generally not a huge fan of displayed qualifiers as it's not very immersive and makes me want to pick the option I quality for regardless of what it is (even strengthened in Tyranny by learning by doing system - I mean, when I get a lore option with a mage, I'd be dumb not to pick it, whatever it is), but at least you can hide those in Pillars. Edited November 22, 2016 by Fenixp

[theBalthazar]

I add a new discovery...

 

Personnaly, I will not update the game (Tyranny) in 1.01. It never happened to me.

 

It's crazy, but I deeply disagree with the choice to block game content (Burning library, never see...). I will benefit from the "bug" of rebel side, and redo the game. (anarchist)

 

Without any patch, forever. It's my choice. : )

Edited November 23, 2016 by theBalthazar

[KDubya]

 

Companion reputations - I could finally see a meter that shows I am a prick to Durance

I'm not a huge fan of these meters actually, and tend to wish they were hidden or at least hideable via the options menu. Any option that says "Durance needs to like you 56 for you to say this!" or "You said a thing Durance likes, he now likes you 138!" takes me right out of the experience. I'm generally not a huge fan of displayed qualifiers as it's not very immersive and makes me want to pick the option I quality for regardless of what it is (even strengthened in Tyranny by learning by doing system - I mean, when I get a lore option with a mage, I'd be dumb not to pick it, whatever it is), but at least you can hide those in Pillars.

 

 

it doesn't show numbers on the like/dislike scale (which I agree would be terrible), it shows a bar scale and where you obtain the various powers. The list below showing why you have the value that you do also does not have any numbers, just hash marks showing the magnitude of the occurrences. I think it strikes a nice balance between not having any clue as to why things happen and the number scenario that you describe (which is not in the game)

[Sven_]

There seems to be a lot of thoughts provided going into very specific areas, such as game mechanics. I'm not at all completely through Tyranny yet, but whilst this is no way a mocking of POE (which I enjoyed pretty much), there's two things that any Obsidian game from here one could take off this thereafter. With one it's going to be difficult, as PoE is an established brand/franchise as it is. But the other, perhaps not so much.

 

- Being SPECIAL/ized and not wearing thin
A tightly focus on one area in particular and completely running with it (in particular if developing on a tighter budget)

 

It must be hard to do a Lord Of The Rings style epic if you aren't backed by the funding to do so, and Kickstarter-style stretch goals can wear that some thin (be it additionally companions, quests, multi-level dungeons, Strongholds, etc.). Tyranny seems to have acknowledged going with a more focused concept from the start, which was all about player decision making without any "fake" choices (which PoE had too), and those choices impacting on the world around you. It naturally has the benefit on being developed on already established engine, but that sticks out the most to me. It's kind of the Icewind Dale route of doing things, reportedly games that had the shortest development cycles back then too. Rather than having a huge scope and running danger of spreading thin, this was supposed to be a dungeon crawl experience from the start. As a result, it still has the best combat and encounter design of any of those games -- and some of the best dungeons, including all the puzzles, traps and beasties you'd expect there to be. Which may be another option for a future game, by the way.

 

 

- Going off the beaten paths
Fresh core narrative / world ideas that none of the bigger budget peers actually dares to sport

 

 

 PoE in comparison to Tyranny is much more like your standard BG-style epic fantasy adventure. It was pitched naturally as such, and it would be uncalled for to criticize the game as being mainly derivative. Still the main question answered by PoE was the one both fans and developers had been asking themselves for well over a decade: What would a game in the style of the Infinity Engine games look like if it were made today? Tyranny goes off-beat, certainly in concept it is to PoE what Planescape:Torment was to Baldur's Gate. For a start, the bad guys have won, you're not the hero to save the day necessarily. Plus rather than slaughtering thousands in the pursuit of loot, experience points and level-ups, you're being faced with consequences of your cruel actions, should you take them. I actually wish they did more with the time limit in the first act here, as that hinted to derail from the RPG cliche of ever filling quest logs and all the time in the world granted to "grind" those quests off the list. But in practice, the pressure rarely felt on as you had all the time in the world to complete your initial task. Pillars is what it is, but there is ways to stay fresh within the constraints of established stuff too. I mean, you guys did it with Kotor 2 already, taking one of the biggest franchises there has ever been and turning this some on its head, or rather the depiction of its dark/er sides and morality.
 

Thanks for making this.
 

Edited November 24, 2016 by Sven_

[Dr <3]

Joining the fray:

About tyranny

 

+ Awesome athmosphere

+ 4 main branches of Story

+ Fast loading times

+ Spires

 

- too easy

- too many factions

- autoscaling

- all fights very similar [ exept bosses ]( you fight every time against 4-6 enemies very similar to each other. No real tanks, wizards are not too squishy, ecc)

- small maps

- 4 different type of spire, often you need to go in all of them to restock/ upgrade/ buy stuff, very time consuming.

- builds are less "exact sience" like was Poe

- overall less variety ingame. You turn out to be everytime some kind of warrior/caster. The feel is that Poe let you build a single class in more ways than tyranny with your main char.

- not enough difference between fighting styles. Everyone have the same bonuses. Dual wield is totally pointless.

- look more a console game than a pc game

- combat based on cooldowns ( i hate that )

 

After a couple of playtrough i feel as already bored, with Poe i'm still trying new things.

[draego]

I enjoyed Tyranny but hope POE doesn't go in this direction. These comments are from a tyranny hard mode play through. There were some things to improve on in POE 2 but nothing i dont think that hasn't already been mentioned outside of the context of Tyranny. 

 

+ Stronghold executed better in Tyranny. Enjoyed having to go to stronghold to upgrade my equipment and build potions. Liked the research\forging aspects of stronghold. Although POE stronghold did get better with patches. 

+ The game economy felt better balanced for the most part throughout the game. I liked that i couldn't buy and upgrade every item in the world. If felt like there were limits. In the third act you do start to getting flush with money but because of the resource requirements for forging\researching\crafting you could not do it all. For most of the game i felt like i had to make real choices between what to research\forge\buy at least compared to POE. POE had some of that in high level upgrades but you could basically buy anything you want from every vendor in the game.

+ Party banter on maps. In POE if you weren't focused on the party you could miss the party banter. In Tyranny you could be looking around the world and still hear the banter.

+ When not in combat your weapons were holstered and you pulled them out at start of fight.

+ Like the sneaking better in one aspect. Even though i didnt use sneaky fighting style abilities you could get closer to enemies to perform sneak attacks. In POE if felt real hard to get close to enemy to perform sneak attack maybe i just didn't do it right.

 

- Don't love this classless system but not because its classless. Would rather pick skills when leveling up. The support skills were especially annoying whenever you picked locks or traps or would sneak up on enemies the whole party gets skills or whenever you learn magic your whole party gets skills. It felt like the game was against character specialization in some respects and everyone in your party should be sneaky and have magic. At the end of dialogues your whole party would get random skill level ups for apparently no reason outside of picking the lore subterfuge choices. Maybe if the system was executed better it would be more enjoyable like wasteland 2 classless system. In that game each character was specializing even though all skills and weapons were open to all characters. 

- Tightly focused game on crit path. I liked POE more open world of exploration with optional fights and content even though POE does limit some content. Didn't love being locked into going into certain areas at certain points in the Tyranny world. I like the optional quest in POE as contributing to the world building better

- Tyranny had more of an info dump world building approach, instead of introducing lore through optional quests. This is not a reading complaint as i do like dialogue trees. Also this is prob just a subjective issue for me but i enjoyed the POE lore better and enjoyed not being that important in POE to start. 

- Tyranny maps had more dungeon crawl feel. Not that i didnt enjoy dungeons in POE, just dont make every area in the game feel like a dungeon crawl. 

- I found POE combat more strategic and fun, even though i know there is cheese in POE combat the further you get into the game. Didnt feel like positioning was as important. Missed the simple flanked typed affects. Also this could simply be the way i built my character but i found i had way to many skills with all the companion\faction skills and magic when i really wanted to focus on melee for my main character. I did find that toward the end of the game with the prebuffs i did just that and was able to focus more on melee and rarely use companion skills. I ended up with 24 non skill tree chosen companion\faction skills. I know some of these are passive but still geez those skill were on top of my own magic and melee skills i picked. 

- Even less love for being sneaky in this game than POE. You couldn't avoid any combat outside dialogue and really why would you in tyranny because your skills are tied to you fighting as much and long as possible. Would like less focus on combat even less than POE and more sneaky options. 

- No friendly fire. I thought i would not be bothered by this going into the game. I really didnt care when i picked up the game but i did miss it. 

- Prebuffing - didn't love the prebuffing with magic. Didn't like it in baldur's gate either. I like how for the most part POE makes you use your abilities in combat.

- No companion quests. Maybe some of the skills should have been tied to companion quest lines.

- Even though i know the purpose of Tyranny is replayability i find i can do more character role playing in with POE. I felt like there is more room for more nuance playthroughs in POE (except for a nature loving play through looking at you White March expansion although that is also optional). I did start Tyranny several times with different roles and the game still had a sameness feel compared to POE and this is probably due to the dungeon crawl feel of the game. 

Edited November 24, 2016 by jnb0364

[jsaving]

All fair points.  One other negative is the "you must purchase the sequel to find out how the game actually ends" approach taken in Tyranny.  Deliberately unconclusive endings can be fine in some contexts, but not when the game itself is shorter than it should have been.

[KDubya]

I liked the ending in Tyranny better than in PoE.

 

• In PoE I was just tired of the whole thing by the time I finally trudges through the final Act. It felt like the various choices around the gods and who to support were all the same. I actually went with the bad god Wodica or whatever her name was because I cared nothing about the people in the world and since all I ever did was try to amass personal power, she had the best offer.
• In Tyranny the ending left you fresh and wanting more. Much tighter focus. Also the ending slides where they describe what happened in the world and with your companions were much better than in PoE.

I also liked the Tyranny got away from Vancian casters. They are great in a tabletop style with a real dungeon master but fail badly in a crpg. PoE did much better than BGII did in that regard but they still are quadratic instead of linear.

 

 

 

P.S. I am really enjoying javelins in Tyranny, first game I've ever seen them done justice.

[Madscientist]

Some people say that PoE has a higher replayability than Tyranny.

I say it depends on what you want. If you want that different choices in the game lead to different results in the game, than Tyranny is better. Tyranny is far from perfect in that sense, but its better than many other games.

PoE is better if you want to play the game with a different character build. PoE has 11 classes and each class has several useful builds. But every time you play PoE you visit the same areas and you have the same quests. Only at one point you must chose between 1 out of 3 quests. At this point and for some other quests, many people choose their answer only as power gamer, so in this case do I want DR, crit bonus or accurancy bonus as reward. In tyranny you will usually end up as tanky melee fighter who uses also magic because this gives you most exp.

 

I am a player who focusses on story, so I prefer Tyranny in this regard. I liked PoE (and BG1+2) on my first playthrough, but later I got bored up to a point where I quit playing. To me it does not matter so much if I play as tank, melee DD or caster as main char, because I have each of those chars in my party anyway. I quit Icewind Dale in the middle of my first playthrough, not because it was too hard but because it was the same stuff again and again (Though encounter design was much better than in most other games).

If Tyranny is to PoE what PST was to BG, then I choose Tyranny and PST (I played PST a short time ago and I liked it. I tried to play BG again too, but I quit because I got bored.)

 

If Obsidian releases a new dungeon crawler, I think I would not buy it. I will buy Torment: Tides of Numenera in any case, even if combat turns out as bad as PST.

[Arddv]

If Obsidian releases a new dungeon crawler, I think I would not buy it. I will buy Torment: Tides of Numenera in any case, even if combat turns out as bad as PST.

Why can't we have both? And why can't dungeon crawlers learn a trick or two from story-driven RPGs and vice versa? I will buy both Torment and PoE2.

[Sven_]

 

If Obsidian releases a new dungeon crawler, I think I would not buy it. I will buy Torment: Tides of Numenera in any case, even if combat turns out as bad as PST.

Why can't we have both? And why can't dungeon crawlers learn a trick or two from story-driven RPGs and vice versa? I will buy both Torment and PoE2.

 

I think the original Icewind Dale is a tad underrated in that. It was a simple D&D story that kept you going from dungeon to dungeon, but they all where atmospheric, and even sported slightly story twists on their own, i.e. Yxunomei lair and the relevation of its cultist nature, turning the entire area from initially curiously quiet to hostile in an instant. For a supposedly straight forward dungeon crawl, there was a lot of BIS/Obsidian trademark role-playing in there. Down to the dialogue options which let you approach conversation in particular ways depending on what alignment you pictured your party to be, and there were areas that turned hostile simply because of a class picked, or the opportunity presented to talk with Evil Skeletons about politics. A truly straight-forward dungeon crawl is Eye Of The Beholder or the more recent Grimrock, and I think Icewind Dale despite its focus on combat and crawling, still sported all the trademark stuff you had come to expect from its studio. It was a dungeon crawl, alright, but one given that trademark BIS touch.

 

I think it was me who brought up the prospect of a dungeon crawler. This wasn't about suggesting a dungeon crawl in particular, though titles such as Temple Of Elemental Evil or the Icewind Dale (2nd one in particular) could be done in the shortest amount of time back then, reportedly, which seems this would be another viable title in there, no more. In general it was more supposed to do with a tighter focus if developing on a budget (i.e. not Bioware or Bethesda). If you go back to the classics, which arguably often hadn't the constraints that are currently in place, they all had massively flaws. Torment was all about character interaction and world building, whilst the combat from Curst Prison onwards still makes you tear your hair out. Fallout was all about world reactivity, whilst the combat was fairly simplistic actually. This would carry over to follow-up studios as well. Arcanum was Fallout all over, however with an arguably much more lacklustre combat system and a narrative that could have been argued to lack focus. And this wasn't only a BIS specialty. RPGs are quite complex games in general.

 

Some titles where entirelly geared towards recreating RPG systems (Temple Of Elemental Evil), and really succeeded in that -- there's several people who argue this to still have the best turn-based combat system in an RPG, well until Original Sin took over more recently. It's certainly the most D&D-faithful. It took Bioware a sizable budget and crew, and established brand name and engine to do their BG2, arguably the most "polished" of its then kind, to roll all the combat encounters, character development, world building and even dungeons into one. Arguably it excelled at neither of those: Torment had the better and certainly more mature storytelling, Icewind Dale had the better puzzles, dungeons and generally encounters -- and compared to the exploration of the original Baldur's Gate, the sequel was tons more linear in nature, more aking to a Japanese role-playing game of its era. But the total sum of it made it all come together.

 

Those team sizes and budgets can be a luxury as of now. I tend to think that PoE, which I really liked, felt a tad stretched in places too, maybe that's where the term "Stretch Goal" originated from, after all, kidding. Take the amount of trash mobs being placed over a lot of maps and optionally dungeons. I also think the second part of PoE, the second town announced later on, felt far less developed than the first, in particular the quests, and the big story revelation felt a bit phoned-in just seconds before the final encounter. Combined with my Tyranny experience, to me this suggests a tight focus can only be of benefit. Speaking of which, whilst the Stronghold stuff seems to be treated as a "must have" ever since BG2 (similar to romances, which Bioware pretty much tag as "feature" nowadays), I think Tyranny could have gone without those too. That may be me though. I'm not tied to a specific type of RPG, personally, so naturally I look forward to whatever's next. But there seems ample evidence that doing a BG2 on a fraction of the budget and team sizes may not be the most ideal of ideas, and initially PoE was sort of announced as the next BG2, Torment, etc. all rolled into one.

 

edit: That said, a more recent thought which occured to me is that developing /reworking character systems for each release individually seems adorable but a bit of a luxury too. In terms of complexity, that's almost akin to starting a new P&P system from scratch, only for it to be utilized by a single adventure module ever. PoE2 is announced, but who's to say Tyranny gets another run yet? Whatever it is they'll do, I just hope they can keep this viable for some time to come really.

Edited December 12, 2016 by Sven_

[Osvir]

I absolutely loved the arrifact and spell mechanics in Tyranny. Leveling up/Experience system as well.

 

Character creation.. choices!

 

These points were most memorable and most intruiging (EDIT: Story was awesome, of course, just addressing mechanical tidbits here).

 

Translating the skill, artifact, faction, and spell system into PoE2 would be a welcome addition in my book. But instead of finding components for spells in the world and shops, maybe get some choices when you level up?

 

Could a spell system be applied to "techniques" as well? (Knockdown AoE, duration, power, knockback etc.)

 

The latter could allow the player to develop unique combat techniques for all their characters (how Tyranny does spells), instead of picking from a list when leveling up how PoE does it).

Edited December 14, 2016 by Osvir

[Helt]

What i like:

+ The setting. The story and how it is introduced.

+ Companion interactions

+ big meaningful factions

+ Reputation

+ Letter exchange

+ Music

+ mysteries

+ atmosphere

+ colourful world ( pillars feels more gray and dull)

+ Highlighter word for more inn depth information of a subject in an interactions. 

+ i feel special )

+ replayability more so than PoE

+ learn new "spells" from scrolls

+ skills feel more meaningful

+ loading time compared with PoE

+/- Combo moves, but should be executed differently. (the combo moves with some of the melee companions don't makes sense when the player is ranged. Combos based on "class" or that other companions can do them too)

+/- Spell creation. But maybe just for a class.

 

What i don't like:

- UI layout

- Linearity

- short

- Few abilities with long cooldown times.

- Locking companions to gear

- Beastmen/woman. Basicly gorillas that can talk. Boring

- Combat in general

- Hate the wounds system. (static skill decrease? please...)

 

Tyranny had potential, but it feel rushed and unfinished. Love the setting and atmosphere of the game tho.

Edited December 15, 2016 by Helt

[DoomBlackDragon]

I'd like to see PoE2 use the classless skill and talent system. And the Conquest intro, total genius. 

I am with you on that. Yes I understand PoE1 was to take this feeling of DnD. Yet I always felt so limited in DnD. This classless system was so good. Maybe just a little more on balance. As the beginning of the game was just so brutal while the end was such a cake walk. When you are killing the final bosses in a row and not even having to worry about loosing the battle. That might be a bit to much.

 

The beginning should be kinda easy but still a good challenge. While the end bosses should be a real work out. This is just my feelings with Path of the Damn in Tyranny. Maybe I was over leveled but I do not think I was. I just think defense and healing stats where just to strong.

[DoomBlackDragon]

I would also like PoE2 to take a page from Dragon Age Origin with party members. I loved being able to set up the AI party members to play the way I want to. Less micromanage and more macromanage. Both Pillar and Tyranny the companion AI was terrible. I had to aways sit there baby sitting stuff.

[jsaving]

I haven't seen many people ask the devs to make PoE2 more like Dragon Age, which some consider to be more of an adventure game than an RPG, but I do think you're on to something here.  I always have to deactivate the AI in PoE and Tyranny because it is so far removed from how I play my characters, and it would be great to be able to have more input into their AI routines.

 

I'd also say that Tyranny is underrated in some quarters and has more to offer than some people acknowledge.  The PC is injected much more thoroughly into the critical path in Tyranny than he ever is in PoE, where new players often fail to perceive the critical path or actively rebel against it (either because they see being a Watcher as a benefit, see the Hollowborn issue as something they couldn't possibly affect, or see the ignorance of LK members as a sign that group couldn't possibly be a threat).  I'm not sure this means PoE's critical path should have been "better" but the devs needed to do a much better job drawing the player into the critical path, making him care about its resolution, and making him believe he can actually do something about it.

 

Another area where Tyranny outperforms PoE is in its factions.  From the very beginning, you understand who Tyranny's factions are and you see throughout the game how your treatment of each faction impacts the narrative.  On the other hand, it's not uncommon for PoE players to join a faction without even knowing there are any other factions and see little to no impact from joining a faction once Defiance Bay fades into the background.  There are tiny tentative nods to the critical path, like the factions' varying stances on animancy, but it would have been much better to give the factions a clear stance on how to resolve the critical path and have them independently working on their solutions in the latter half of the game, with the player frequently bumping into their efforts and having the option to help or hinder them as the case may be. 

 

I also think, personally, that Tyranny was right to classify weapon talent/skills/feats by the type of combat you are doing (two-handed, ranged, etc) rather than by arbitrary group (warrior, knight, etc).  There's nothing more frustrating than building, say, a two-handed combatant but being forced by the game engine to take weapon groups that contain lots of weapons you don't care about yet block you from using more than 1-2 types of two-handers without penalty.  Soulbound weapons are in part a recognition that PoE's weapon groups were unsatisfactory but it would be nice to make the leap from "knight" or "peasant" weapons to "two-handed" or "one-handed" weapons (which could be done whether or not PoE uses the learning-by-doing approach to improving proficiency with those weapons).

[Sannom]

I also think, personally, that Tyranny was right to classify weapon talent/skills/feats by the type of combat you are doing (two-handed, ranged, etc) rather than by arbitrary group (warrior, knight, etc).  There's nothing more frustrating than building, say, a two-handed combatant but being forced by the game engine to take weapon groups that contain lots of weapons you don't care about yet block you from using more than 1-2 types of two-handers without penalty.

Are you the same guy who loudly complained about this a few months back?

 

Anyways, it looks like Obsidian listened to you :

 

http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/156893948066/weapon-proficiencies-are-in-but-are-the-weapon

 

According to this tumblr post giving out a few details about the Proficiency system, it looks like we will be able to design our own weapon groups.

[jsaving]

Hadn't seen that, thanks.  It also looks like they intend to more closely tie the PC and his companions to the critical path, which should make for more immersive gameplay.

Edited February 7, 2017 by jsaving