3.05 Live on Steam

[Mygaffer]

Dear Obsidian,

 

PoE is wonderful - the "balance" thing is crap.  I want to smash faces in with ridiculous items in PoE2. I do not want easy mode.  I want items like blackrazor, flail of the ages, the rune axe, bladesinger chain mail... I don't care that they are broken, in fact I like that they are broken... I think most people who played BG2 loved it because it was broken, because being broken and gibbing stunned glabrezu with crimson fury and an off-hand crom-faeyr on a kensai/mage felt so EPIC!!!!!! Stop nerfing broken items.  Better yet, for PoE2, just nerf them in the hardest difficulties for the rare 1% of people who are so absurdly masochistic that they need to play PotD no reload and complain about "balance."  The only weapons and armor that you can get in PotD should be toothpicks and toilet paper. Normal mode should be broken as hell - not easy - I love getting face-stomped on normal (I am not that great at this game, but I have been playing IE-style since the late 90s) - but please make my game more EPIC, i.e. not balanced. I love the mechanics in your game (not a big fan of the attacks of opportunity/escape system, but I can live with it), the world lore and graphics are stunning, the story is o.k. and I fully anticipate PoE2 will do even better.  Please put broken items into normal mode... I want to face-roll dragons with broken items in normal mode.  Also, please develop modding tools for PoE2 - I am not a mod developer, but a vibrant modding kept BG2 alive for 15 years.  PoE seems like it is sailing into the horizon at around 2 years... I think the reason is that it feels flat because it is so "balanced".  As a fairly casual player in terms of challenge desired, but die-hard fanboy of BG2, please make PoE2 normal mode broke as hell... you can apply balance fixes to PotD all you want.

Here is the problem with your outlook and why PoE 2 will not have any "broken" skills, class combos, or items. When you have one or two weapons that are far and away the obvious "best weapons" then the majority of players will use those weapons. Josh Sawyer as a designer is all about player choice. That means you have a lot of viable classes, class combos, items, skills, etc. It means if you have a concept for a character chances are it will be at least playable. It means you don't have a large variance in power level, maybe at the very most 10-15%, but often even less.

 

They also balance around normal and hard, as that is where most players will be playing. So you won't "face-roll dragons with broken weapons" in PoE 2. If not having a broken game is such a turn off this series is probably not for you. Hell, no Josh Sawyer CRPG is probably for you.

 

Personally overall I'm very much in favor of balance. On the topic of the unlabored blade, I hadn't unlocked it prior to the nerf anyway but I will say I can literally only remember it going off once even though the Devil of Caroc is using it all the time in her off hand. It does feel like the proc percentage is too low but the Devil is still doing real work on enemies swinging Nightshrowd in her primary hand and the unlabored blade in the other.

 

I think they've heard the complaints about itemization and have some ideas to make that part of progression feel more meaningful over the course of Deadfire. We've already seen huge leaps from the launch of PoE until the latest patch. Simple things like coloring the unique items yellow make a difference, along with the White March adding more interesting items through the stronghold adventures and the soulbound items.

 

They've already discussed some of the changes they'll make in Deadfire, how you'll be finding more powerful items as you progress, and how there will be some random loot, although none of the major loot will be randomized. Pillars was a great first effort at bringing this kind of game into the modern era but Obsidian knows there were some design flaws and what is promising to me is that they've acknowledged just about all the design flaws that the community has talked about.

 

So don't count on broken items or a broken game, you won't get it. You might just get a game with a real sense of progression and player choice though and isn't that really better?

[rheingold]

I have a plea to the devs: I know pillars support has/is coming to an end? Not sure if 3:05 was the last patch, but there won't be many more in any event. But is it possible to buff rogues base stats a bit. It won't take much work, (I think) and will make a huge difference to the class. It's also not going to break the game as rogues are quite far behind other classes. Just an increase in base deflection, and endurance/health more inline with other melee classes would help tremendously.

Edited May 16, 2017 by rheingold