Will Obsidian be doing anything about the absolutely retarded amount of stun/prone/etc spam?

[Ashen Rohk]

As someone up above said, playing with a party of non-casters is always going to be more of a challenge. I'd say a priest was essential on PotD to buff/resist incoming stun locks.

 

Stack the **** out of the storm skills, interdict, repulse seal and play them at their own game. Bring the (god)hammer down.

[zimcub]

I'm not so sure about that. Following josh's mentality of every party is viable,

 

I think he specificaly said that didn't apply to PotD and was even fine with min/maxing to be viable for that mode.

[Bill Gates' Son]

As someone up above said, playing with a party of non-casters is always going to be more of a challenge. I'd say a priest was essential on PotD to buff/resist incoming stun locks.

 Scrolls

[MortyTheGobbo]

Everyone's pretty harsh on the OP, but I see the point. If not their word choice. At-will stuns get pretty ludicrous at times. Protecting yourself against disabling effects is part of good strategy in a game like this, but when you've got a bunch of enemies who can repeatedly inflict those conditions, it gets annoying. With some conditions, it necessitates using a particular spell or scroll to immunize your party, but I don't think there's anything that works on stun.

[Gromnir]

 

Phantoms and Lagufaeth are a good test of how well the player understands game mechanics instead of just hulk smashing everything. They're not the source of any perceived stun excess.

 

I'm not so sure about that. Following josh's mentality of every party is viable, I made a party without casters and had a lot of problems dealing with the Lagufaeth before I outleveled them. 

 

hmmm.  did josh ever suggest every potd party should be viable? most any individual character build, particular with the available joinable npcs, will be viable, but we don't recollect josh ever suggesting universal custom party viability, particular in potd. for example, would be kinda silly to expect an all-rogue party, with no functional scroll casting ability and universal tanked constitution to survive typical lagufaeth encounters, eh? near any poe character build could/should be viable and fun for players, and is our opinion that obsidian were successful at making  an extreme wide variety o' poe character builds viable and (more important) fun, but am not believing it were ever a goal to make every potd party load-out viable. too much to ask.  too much to expect.

 

'course there is a few adversaries and encounters that will force players to change tactics, which should be a good thing in a squad-based tactical combat game with rpg elements, yes?  be able to use exact same tactics for every encounter would be bad/boring. even so, the graze mechanic will pose particular problems for many parties in a handful o' encounters.  swarming potd phantoms can be difficult for a low-level party with few available abilities/options to counter phantom stunning attacks.  lagufaeth and fampyr pose similar problems for mid-level parties.  am understanding how such encounters could be frustrating, particular as the relative difficulty o' such encounters can increase dramatically. as much as Gromnir personal likes varied and difficult challenges in a crpg, we can see how it might not be good for the game as a whole if the graze mechanic results in too many folks to feeling as if particular non-boss encounters were disproportionate difficult.  is admitted a tough call for developers to keep challenges varied w/o becoming frustrating.  

 

ogre druids? well, the biggest problem for Gromnir regarding ogre druids were how for a considerable period o' time, plague of insects were ticking for 'bout 2x as much damage as it were 'posed to, but such were not a graze issue.

 

regardless, the graze mechanic is particular punishing in a handful o' encounters, and it is as easy to see such as a positive as it is to see as negative.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

[CrumpetsForBreakfast]

Disabling effect on hit for every hit always is just bad design and there's not much sense in justifying it. If it happened in any other game or in dungeons and dragons people would say it's bad design too. Instead people say that dungeons and dragons is bad because it had limited use 'save or die' effects but things like Pillars is okay because it's on every hit every second even with low level critters.

 

That's why the way to play is with wizards, rogues, and/or stacks of scrolls. Josh has spoken out about lopsided fairness like that in games such as dungeons and dragons before so it would be odd if it doesn't get reworked.

 

$0.02

[Wormerine]

Yeah, I do like the unique statuses enemies can inflict, but the way Pillars Implimented them is not perfect. Essentially, you don't have protection - yuo die. You have protection, so they don't do anything to you. It's not a fun system. You just have to know what protection spell to cast at the start of the combat.

 

Some redesign would be welcome.

[Doppelschwert]

I think I did poor job at conveying what I meant. It's true that josh never claimed that every party should be viable in potd, and I'm aware that there are scrolls available that solve the problem. My point is this:

 

I tried to take josh's design paradigm of viable parties and tested if it still holds true in potd. To do this, I used non-min-maxed attribute arrays, didn't use any unique armors or weapons, and made everyone a noncaster of a different class with focus on unarmed attacks and gave them robes. I wanted to see what characters could achieve with the minimum support of any sort of items or equipment.

 

And it turns out, everything was perfectly viable for the most time, except for the optional endbosses, some add-on content and the Lagufaeth / some variants of the shades, which all required overleveling to defeat them. My point therefore was to say:

The excessive stuns of certain enemies were the only part in the game were I truly would have needed additional tools to beat them on a appropriate level other than bosses, which implies to me that the scaling of stuns is somehow off, relative to the rest of the difficulty level. The overall difficulty (or lack thereof) of the game is a separate discussion, but I think my example shows at the very least that tools to deal with afflictions are very unevenly distributed among classes.

 

I'm not saying I should've easily succeeded at potd with this party, but rather that the remaining difficulty was not at the same level as the stuns were. The game should require a consistent effort from you on each difficulty, and the stuns stick out, therefore being overwhelmed by that is understandable in my opinion. The game should give you just as much trouble with other enemies on higher difficulties, and on lower difficulties, stuns should fall more in line with the rest as well.

Edited April 9, 2017 by Doppelschwert

[PizzaSHARK]

 

Playing through Pillars 1 again on PotD and I'd apparently forgotten about just how retarded the amount of stun or other hard control spam there is in this game.  Phantoms that stun on hit, every hit.  Returning Storm and Relentless Storm that stack with each other, do high damage in an AOE, and stun on every hit.  Wizards can paralyze for a long duration at low level with high accuracy, Chill Fog blinds and damages in a massive AOE at level 1.

 

It's kind of insane.  I don't know how anyone that plays tabletop games consistently could possibly have thought this was a good idea - "save or suck" is one of the most enduring problems in tabletop RPG design, and it's like they tried to maximize that problem in Pillars.  Maybe it's just a PotD thing, when monsters have enough HP and stats that they don't just fall over when the player farts in their general direction.

 

Regardless, has Obsidian said anything about this?  I recall reading that they admitted that Phantoms were a mistake, or at least that they appeared too early in the game... but the stun-happy Phantoms are just a symptom of a larger problem.  Do we know if they'll be focusing on addressing that problem for Pillars 2, or can we expect it to also be a game with awful gameplay balance like Pillars 1 and Tyranny?

Dude. If it's too hard just give up.

 

 

I've completed PotD twice.  I'm just re-encountering how stupid some of the design choices were, since I figured I'd play through again.

 

 

I like those nasty stunners. Skirmishers, Phantoms, Banshees, Lagufaeth and also Corrupted Druids and Blights and whatnot.

 

It feels especially good to start an encounter with disabling + clipping them first.

 

Ogre Druids also got much hate in the past for using Calling the World's Maw and Plague of Insects, same as Delemgans and especially Adragans ("Hello petrified, tell me how you're doin'!"). Because they can use spells the player can use. How dare they!

 

Usually those complaints will come from players who don't know the mechanics yet and get frustrated because they get owned by those enemies - although the rest of the game feels easy for them. They don't know how awesome Fenwalkers are and will never use a mountain dwarf because they think "Hale & Hardy" is totally useless.

 

Of course it can be a shock for inexperienced players to get disabled so hard and then bite the dust - but as I said it feels especially rewarding if you finally manage to overwhelm them.

 

And for me it's more like "disable first or suck" instead of "save or suck". Why can they get off their disables although you start the fight?

 

I mean how frustrating must it be for an Adragan to stand around at some random crossroads, scratching his stony butt - and suddenly get his head blown apart by a paladin's arquebus shot with Flames of Devotion? That is really evil save or suck I'd say - he didn't even see it coming.

 

I like stuns and hard disables when you can play against them.  You can't really play against Skirmishers, Phantoms, etc other than having complete immunity (which usually means a high level Priest or high level scrolls and knowing ahead of time which prayer you'll need) or just hoping you get lucky rolls.  Removing the ability to activate their control effect on grazes would, honestly, be a good idea.  I don't know how much it'd help on PotD since their Accuracy versus average party Deflection is kind of retarded (which is the point, of course), but it'd probably make the lower difficulties a lot more enjoyable.

 

It doesn't feel rewarding when you **** them over with stuns before they can, or if the deciding factor was just you rolling better than they did.  Using fore-knowledge of enemy placement to unload a 6 arquebus opening salvo on them stinks of cheese just as badly as dropping a dozen traps on top of Firkraag before pissing him off did in BG2.  

 

As an example, there's an encounter in early act 2 where you fight a collection of lions, a delemgan, and an adragan.  In my experience, the fight goes one of two ways: you stunlock the adragan into the dirt (good rolls), or the adragan gets to use its abilities and you're probably going to have to load from save.  That's not to say the lions or delemgan aren't relevant (if you can't stun the lions with a druid spell, they can be quite dangerous in fact), just that the fight feels incredibly binary - you lock down and murder the big nasty enemy and the rest practically takes care of itself.  Or the big nasty enemy rolls high and blocks your disables, gets to fire off a couple of spells, and things rapidly go to ****.

 

This is hardly the only example - they're quite common throughout the game, and that's kind of the point.  "Save or suck" is a major, very common complaint among players of D&D, Pathfinder, and related games and I know JSawyer has mentioned that stuff in the past.  So it's really weird to me that a game he's put so much effort into is absolutely flooded with "save or suck" mechanics, to the point that enemies with save or suck on-hit effects are common.

 

I don't think, in most cases, these are even tactically interesting engagements.  The adragan example above, for example, has nothing of interest.  It takes place in a wide open field with no opportunities to take advantage of terrain (not that Pillars has much in the way of terrain mechanics to begin with) or anything like that - it's just a pure brawl and whoever gets better rolls wins.  While some degree of hard control is necessary to make turn-based RPGs interesting (as well as Pillars, whose roots are in those turn-based systems), I think such spells and effects need to be carefully husbanded and doled out sparingly, tied to powerful abilities and items with limited uses or high costs.

 

There are people who complain that reducing the amount of hard control would make the game too MMO-like, but Pillars is already very MMO like with very smooth damage curves, a system designed around units taking very frequent bits of smooth damage, stats that are uniform and have no relevance to what your character can do, etc.  It may not be designed around the holy trinity, but Pillars' system feels very, very MMO-like compared to D&D and Pathfinder based games.

 

 

 

 

Playing through Pillars 1 again on PotD and I'd apparently forgotten about just how retarded the amount of stun or other hard control spam there is in this game.  Phantoms that stun on hit, every hit.  Returning Storm and Relentless Storm that stack with each other, do high damage in an AOE, and stun on every hit.  Wizards can paralyze for a long duration at low level with high accuracy, Chill Fog blinds and damages in a massive AOE at level 1.

 

It's kind of insane.  I don't know how anyone that plays tabletop games consistently could possibly have thought this was a good idea - "save or suck" is one of the most enduring problems in tabletop RPG design, and it's like they tried to maximize that problem in Pillars.  Maybe it's just a PotD thing, when monsters have enough HP and stats that they don't just fall over when the player farts in their general direction.

 

Regardless, has Obsidian said anything about this?  I recall reading that they admitted that Phantoms were a mistake, or at least that they appeared too early in the game... but the stun-happy Phantoms are just a symptom of a larger problem.  Do we know if they'll be focusing on addressing that problem for Pillars 2, or can we expect it to also be a game with awful gameplay balance like Pillars 1 and Tyranny?

Dude. If it's too hard just give up.

 

 

Or just turn down the difficulty. I really don't get acheivement hunters

 

 

I already have the achievements.  I just felt like playing through again, and had apparently forgotten how ridiculous the save or die spam in PotD is.

[Tigranes]

I think I did poor job at conveying what I meant. It's true that josh never claimed that every party should be viable in potd, and I'm aware that there are scrolls available that solve the problem. My point is this:

 

I tried to take josh's design paradigm of viable parties and tested if it still holds true in potd. To do this, I used non-min-maxed attribute arrays, didn't use any unique armors or weapons, and made everyone a noncaster of a different class with focus on unarmed attacks and gave them robes. I wanted to see what characters could achieve with the minimum support of any sort of items or equipment.

 

And it turns out, everything was perfectly viable for the most time, except for the optional endbosses, some add-on content and the Lagufaeth / some variants of the shades, which all required overleveling to defeat them. My point therefore was to say:

The excessive stuns of certain enemies were the only part in the game were I truly would have needed additional tools to beat them on a appropriate level other than bosses, which implies to me that the scaling of stuns is somehow off, relative to the rest of the difficulty level. The overall difficulty (or lack thereof) of the game is a separate discussion, but I think my example shows at the very least that tools to deal with afflictions are very unevenly distributed among classes.

 

I'm not saying I should've easily succeeded at potd with this party, but rather that the remaining difficulty was not at the same level as the stuns were. The game should require a consistent effort from you on each difficulty, and the stuns stick out, therefore being overwhelmed by that is understandable in my opinion. The game should give you just as much trouble with other enemies on higher difficulties, and on lower difficulties, stuns should fall more in line with the rest as well.

 

You rolled a party that isn't just "20% less powerful at everything", you rolled a party that specifically leaves out a chunk of tools from the toolbox. Hence, stuns - which attacked that newfound weakness in your party - were more difficult. There's nothing strange or unbalanced about this.

 

The game shouldn't "require a consistent effort from you on each difficulty" when you start running nonstandard parties. That's what makes nonstandard party runs interesting. That's when you discover that one party roflstomped the dragon but this party now has difficulty and has to come up with new solutions and tactics.

 

There should be a certain consistency for standard parties, where the average joe running a normal full party doesn't discover level 3 skeletons are supermassively difficult relative to level 4 goblins, but in this context, what you're suggesting is a weird and improbable flattening of the experience that really seems to subtract from the fun and flavour of nonstandard parties.

Edited April 10, 2017 by Tigranes

[PizzaSHARK]

 

I think I did poor job at conveying what I meant. It's true that josh never claimed that every party should be viable in potd, and I'm aware that there are scrolls available that solve the problem. My point is this:

 

I tried to take josh's design paradigm of viable parties and tested if it still holds true in potd. To do this, I used non-min-maxed attribute arrays, didn't use any unique armors or weapons, and made everyone a noncaster of a different class with focus on unarmed attacks and gave them robes. I wanted to see what characters could achieve with the minimum support of any sort of items or equipment.

 

And it turns out, everything was perfectly viable for the most time, except for the optional endbosses, some add-on content and the Lagufaeth / some variants of the shades, which all required overleveling to defeat them. My point therefore was to say:

The excessive stuns of certain enemies were the only part in the game were I truly would have needed additional tools to beat them on a appropriate level other than bosses, which implies to me that the scaling of stuns is somehow off, relative to the rest of the difficulty level. The overall difficulty (or lack thereof) of the game is a separate discussion, but I think my example shows at the very least that tools to deal with afflictions are very unevenly distributed among classes.

 

I'm not saying I should've easily succeeded at potd with this party, but rather that the remaining difficulty was not at the same level as the stuns were. The game should require a consistent effort from you on each difficulty, and the stuns stick out, therefore being overwhelmed by that is understandable in my opinion. The game should give you just as much trouble with other enemies on higher difficulties, and on lower difficulties, stuns should fall more in line with the rest as well.

 

You rolled a party that isn't just "20% less powerful at everything", you rolled a party that specifically leaves out a chunk of tools from the toolbox. Hence, stuns - which attacked that newfound weakness in your party - were more difficult. There's nothing strange or unbalanced about this.

 

The game shouldn't "require a consistent effort from you on each difficulty" when you start running nonstandard parties. That's what makes nonstandard party runs interesting. That's when you discover that one party roflstomped the dragon but this party now has difficulty and has to come up with new solutions and tactics.

 

There should be a certain consistency for standard parties, where the average joe running a normal full party doesn't discover level 3 skeletons are supermassively difficult relative to level 4 goblins, but in this context, what you're suggesting is a weird and improbable flattening of the experience that really seems to subtract from the fun and flavour of nonstandard parties.

 

 

In my experience, the nonstandard parties just end up abusing one thing or another to compensate for whatever their inherent toolkit lacks.  Scrolls of Paralysis are pretty much Pillars' great equalizer - get 8 Lore and a bunch of materials and just stun your way through the game.  Pillars just doesn't offer much in terms of tactical depth.  While I haven't played any gimmick based groups like Doppelschwert talks about, I've played enough permutations of "standard party" that I don't see tactics changing much, especially once you get into the middle levels of the game where my warriors are probably opening combats with scrolls and potions anyhow.

 

I think the game's difficulty should be relatively consistent throughout, especially for non-optional areas and encounters.  Instead, the difficulty tends to be all over the place with some areas being quite clearly a great deal more difficult than others (though, again, Scrolls of Paralysis tend to make everything easy.)  This is a problem Tyranny also has, so I'm thinking it might be an Obsidian thing, not specific to a single game.

 

Encounters with lots of save or suck mechanics or abilities are likely going to be both much harder than ones with lesser amounts, and also harder to balance.  If a fight is largely based around a gimmick like spirits that stun on every hit and then start hitting huge numbers with sneak attack damage on the people they stunned, if those people get a series of lucky rolls you could end up with the encounter being rather easier than planned.  Or vice versa.  Hence the point of my rant - excessive reliance on hard control just makes the game annoying and frustrating, not interesting.

[Gromnir]

 

 

There should be a certain consistency for standard parties, where the average joe running a normal full party doesn't discover level 3 skeletons are supermassively difficult relative to level 4 goblins, but in this context, what you're suggesting is a weird and improbable flattening of the experience that really seems to subtract from the fun and flavour of nonstandard parties.

 

the thing is, the graze mechanic does make particular non-boss encounters more difficult than most foes. at lower levels, phantoms and shades is more difficult than spiders and vessels for Gromnir's typical party which includes two priests. the graze mechanic for debilitating afflictions, coupled with a mob attack, is disproportionate difficult compared to most encounters, even when utilizing a standard party.  the charm and stun/paralyze afflictions invariably lower defenses, making subsequent attacks more likely to hit or be critical hit.  no matter how you buff your party at low and mid levels, avoid grazes is problematic, and once grazed, an attacking mob ordinarily has far too many opportunities for a typical player to avoid subsequent hits and crits.  

 

yeah, there is schemes and tactics for dealing with the encounters which seems to exploit grazing afflictions, but am not gonna pretend such encounters is equal as difficult as running 'cross a bunch o' wicht or a couple o' forest trolls.  

 

as to lagufaeth... well, the lagufaeth also represent a unique challenge and many folks find'em to be particular troublesome, but am not seeing such criticism to be particular fair. we expect every white march encounter is 'posed to be relative difficult compared to the base game encounters.  the people playing white march is the folks who enjoyed poe enough to buy wm, no?  am suspecting wm were designed more for the hardcore player and as such we expected a general increase in the difficulty curve.  am recalling multitudes o' folks complaining 'bout unfair white march monks as well, no?  were any number o' wm encounters which initial gave folks fits.  good.  developers wouldn't have been doing job if wm weren't more difficult.  admitted, there is one particular over-sized lagufaeth encounter which is disproportionate  troublesome simple 'cause o' excessive numbers, but it is not critical path. the radiant spore boss battle also felt to Gromnir as if the difficulty were a bit skewed, but it were a boss battle.  for the most part we feel as if wm developers intended to scale up difficulty overall, and so a few particular troublesome battles were appropriate.  

 

to be honest the lagufaeth encounters bothered us not so much 'cause o' graze mechanics, which we were quite familiar with after having played poe for literal dozens (hundreds) of hours, but rather the lack o' creativity in the encounter design.  were simple a kinda overwhelming mob rush with enemies who were preternatural able to target party members with the most vulnerable defenses.

 

le *sigh*

 

converse, am thinking it is fair to observe how particular in potd wherein foes have disproportionate extreme accuracy, a party at low and mid-levels (parties who don't yet have access to nullifying spells or the capacity to build their own accuracy and defensive bloat) will find the graze mechanic to be a disproportionate troublesome hurdle when combined with a mob foe who uses a noteworthy debilitating affliction.  am personal not discouraged by the disproportionate difficult foes, but am seeing how some folks might be discouraged by such.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[redneckdevil]

OP, it's because of enemies like those that make getting the +10 to etc saves type feats close to important​ as an class or ability feat.

Also high fort characters help alot to resist the stuns as well.

[PizzaSHARK]

OP, it's because of enemies like those that make getting the +10 to etc saves type feats close to important​ as an class or ability feat.

Also high fort characters help alot to resist the stuns as well.

 

This doesn't really matter much for PotD because of how high monster base ACC is and because grazes still apply the effects.

[Gromnir]

 

OP, it's because of enemies like those that make getting the +10 to etc saves type feats close to important​ as an class or ability feat.

Also high fort characters help alot to resist the stuns as well.

 

This doesn't really matter much for PotD because of how high monster base ACC is and because grazes still apply the effects.

 

to be fair, potd isn't balanced.  for more hardcore players who want a greater challenge, potd is an option.  even so, potd foes get across the board bonuses to accuracy and defenses and mob sizes is increased.  those foe bonuses coupled with more numerous incoming attacks from larger mobs result in the graze peculiarities which has been the source o' debate in this thread.

 

is doubtful poe 2 potd gets more balance than poe. this is gonna continue to be a caveat emptor situation where the players accept the risks of increasing the difficulty beyond "hard." 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Doppelschwert]

You rolled a party that isn't just "20% less powerful at everything", you rolled a party that specifically leaves out a chunk of tools from the toolbox. Hence, stuns - which attacked that newfound weakness in your party - were more difficult. There's nothing strange or unbalanced about this.

 

The game shouldn't "require a consistent effort from you on each difficulty" when you start running nonstandard parties. That's what makes nonstandard party runs interesting. That's when you discover that one party roflstomped the dragon but this party now has difficulty and has to come up with new solutions and tactics.

 

There should be a certain consistency for standard parties, where the average joe running a normal full party doesn't discover level 3 skeletons are supermassively difficult relative to level 4 goblins, but in this context, what you're suggesting is a weird and improbable flattening of the experience that really seems to subtract from the fun and flavour of nonstandard parties.

 

I don't think my party was as extreme as you make it sound. I had a Fighter, a Monk, a Barbarian, a Chanter and 2 Paladins, and I especially took care to learn higher resistances to status effects and various tools for the chanter / paladins to support the party. The only thing I was really lacking was unlimited hard CC or ranged/elemental damage, as the monk, fighter and the chanter have CC options, just not enough to disable 10 Lagufaeth at once at the start of battle.

 

I agree that running nonstandard parties, different encounters should have different difficulties, and that was the case. But the stun encounters were a very binary thing, as also described by other posts in this thread, and felt relatively awkward as a result. I also don't see how "Stun them all to death myself instead" or "Use the one spell in the game that buffs your defenses to absurd amounts" would have made for nuanced or interesting new tactics in this context, which is basically the only thing that would have gotten available in a standard party. When I can brute force my way through the stuns on hard but need to rely on a very small toolbox on potd, something is definitely wrong imho.

[CrumpetsForBreakfast]

To say the highest difficulty setting shouldn't be considered isn't right. Paths of the damned just emphasizes how poorly designed the mechanic is at the core.

 

So paralysis is up to about 4 second duration or more? and they attack every second or two? Your chance to avoid the effect declines on a curve even if you have high defenses. They can put a character into permanent paralysis with very little chance to save. So the only reliable way is to get the monster first or get immunity.

 

You just can't really defend it. This is the kind of design that amateurs come up with, that amateurs have come up with in their own mods of games. There's nothing special about it, you create an arbitrary false sense of difficulty, so you don't spend as much time actually developing mechanics further and unique attacks for monsters.

 

Now if a player could start with that ability on every attack ...... mmmmm.

Edited April 11, 2017 by CrumpetsForBreakfast

[Gromnir]

 

 

You just can't really defend it. 

nevertheless, many o' us has completed multiple potd runs, which should suggest there is tactics for dealing with the 'posed indefensible.  heck, Gromnir ain't even a serious optimizer and potd hardly sent us to our metaphorical knees. am gonna guess there is extreme few folks who, having spent tens of hours on a normal or hard playthrough o' poe, were nevertheless unable to finish a potd run 'cause o' the graze mechanic.

 

*shrug*

 

potd is a blunt difficulty increase.  mob sizes are increased. foe defenses and accuracy is increased.  such methods is crude and effective. such methods also make the graze mechanic particular visible.  

 

if obsidian spends too much effort balancing potd, we would be disappointed.  this board obvious attracts more hardcore players, so feedback here is not always meaningful and can be misleading.  the folks who genuine had their poe purchase frustrated by the graze mechanic rearing its ugly head in a few potd encounters cannot be a large % o' total purchasers.  of the potd enthusiasts posting in this thread, many will claim they saw no graze issue at all.  some, such as Gromnir, will recognize the impact o' grazes making stuns/charms more lethal, but will deny it caused noteworthy frustration. the remainder o' folks describe some degree o' consternation with potd grazes.

 

in all honesty, where would folks prioritize potd balancing o' the graze mechanic?  game development is zero sum, so what do we sacrifice to ensure better graze balancing in potd? reduce mob sizes in a few o' those stun/charm-on-graze encounters would likely be an easy fix to the problem, but Gromnir actual likes the additional challenge. dunno.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[firkraag888]

It's been sorted. I've just gotten word from obsidian that they are introducing a new difficulty setting

 

PATH OF THE MUMMY BOYS

 

On this setting you can opt to have your mum hold your hand through out your adventures in the dyrwood.

[desel]

I thought this was already introduced with TWM and called "Story Time"?

 

Anyway - no problem here as far as I'm concerned.

People having issues with the frequency, duration or the amount of incapacitating effects might just have set the difficulty too high is all.

[Doppelschwert]

It's been sorted. I've just gotten word from obsidian that they are introducing a new difficulty setting

 

PATH OF THE MUMMY BOYS

 

On this setting you can opt to have your mum hold your hand through out your adventures in the dyrwood.

 

Secret mummy companion confirmed?!

I hope there'll be a personal quest to unlock a special bandage skill for her.

[PizzaSHARK]

 

 

 

You just can't really defend it. 

nevertheless, many o' us has completed multiple potd runs, which should suggest there is tactics for dealing with the 'posed indefensible.  heck, Gromnir ain't even a serious optimizer and potd hardly sent us to our metaphorical knees. am gonna guess there is extreme few folks who, having spent tens of hours on a normal or hard playthrough o' poe, were nevertheless unable to finish a potd run 'cause o' the graze mechanic.

 

*shrug*

 

potd is a blunt difficulty increase.  mob sizes are increased. foe defenses and accuracy is increased.  such methods is crude and effective. such methods also make the graze mechanic particular visible.  

 

if obsidian spends too much effort balancing potd, we would be disappointed.  this board obvious attracts more hardcore players, so feedback here is not always meaningful and can be misleading.  the folks who genuine had their poe purchase frustrated by the graze mechanic rearing its ugly head in a few potd encounters cannot be a large % o' total purchasers.  of the potd enthusiasts posting in this thread, many will claim they saw no graze issue at all.  some, such as Gromnir, will recognize the impact o' grazes making stuns/charms more lethal, but will deny it caused noteworthy frustration. the remainder o' folks describe some degree o' consternation with potd grazes.

 

in all honesty, where would folks prioritize potd balancing o' the graze mechanic?  game development is zero sum, so what do we sacrifice to ensure better graze balancing in potd? reduce mob sizes in a few o' those stun/charm-on-graze encounters would likely be an easy fix to the problem, but Gromnir actual likes the additional challenge. dunno.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

Removal of the on hit effects from grazes would be enough.  Maybe this would make easier difficulties too easy... but that just further illuminates why balancing around "the phantoms have to keep the party stunlocked or it's too easy" is sloppy design.

 

A lot of people like to point to Ghouls in D&D and Pathfinder as an example of a monster that has a stun on hit effect (paralysis, but it's pretty similar) - but they're forgetting that Ghouls can't paralyze someone they can't hit.  This is unlike Phantoms in Pillars, for example, who will still stun you (which makes you easier to hit) even if they "miss" you (a graze in Pillars would be an outright miss in D&D.)

 

Note that even with removal of the on hit effects on grazes, it would still probably be problematic in PotD simply due to sheer numbers (you fight 3 phantoms and 2 shadows on Hard and it's 4 phantoms and 4 shadows on PotD, for example - weight of numbers alone would slant things heavily in the monsters' favor compared to the easier mode before even factoring in higher base ACC), but that just means that PotD would still be frustratingly hard as you like, but would result in better overall design/balance throughout the game.

 

I don't think balancing PotD would have as negative a trickle-down effect on gameplay balance as you seem to think it would have.  PotD is, overall, pretty much fine.  The number of encounters that are basically binary bull**** are fairly uncommon, which is why they stick out so well.  We don't really remember the encounters with like 8 xaurip skirmishers, 5 champions, and a pile of priests very much because while they can be difficult, it's manageable with tactics and knowledge of the game.  The ones we remember are the ones that tend to not give two ****s about your knowledge, other than knowing exactly what scrolls or spells etc you need to immunize your party against its gimmick.

[Gromnir]

 

 

I don't think balancing PotD would have as negative a trickle-down effect on gameplay balance as you seem to think it would have. 

that were your observation, not Gromnir's.  we observed that potd balance testing should not be a priority 'cause it would take development resources to do such testing.  based on numerous threads 'bout how folks actual play poe, am not seeing a need for change for the vast majority o' players.  have a few potd encounters play noticeable more difficult?  why fix? is few actual potd players, and at least some % o' those appear to be ok with the current situation.   

 

that being said, removing the on-hit effects would drastic affect the balance o' any number o' encounters. the challenge o' numerous foes is largely dependent on their ability to punish via debilitating status effects. a phantom w/o stun has little point.  the phantom don't teleport or daze as do shadows. what is the purpose o' phantoms in encounter design if you remove status effect? simple remove such capacity would reduce the variety, complexity, difficulty and fun o' many combat encounters in poe. at the very least the removal o' phantom stunning would necessitate new balance testing and likely would warrant phantom redesign to give your newly emasculated and boring monster type a replacement ability.  

 

am not certain what your point 'bout d&d is.  is a different combat systems.  there is no graze mechanic in d&d.  there is indeed no-save status effects in d&d, but suggesting you know how such d&d stuff would be applied if d&d used a poe-style graze mechanic is a bit o' a stretch.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

[hilfazer]

There will be less attacks that can graze in POE2.

 

Obsidian already did something with CC compared to its spiritual predecessors - durations are short. Take for example this D&D spell:

http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Emotion-Hopelessness

1 round = 6 seconds. Is there anything in POE that can compare with that with duration? Well, maybe Binding Roots if ranger has lots of INT and crits but its single target ability and does not prevent all actions. And Hopelessness is still going to beat it with enough caster levels. Keep in mind Binding Roots is a CC with exceptionally long duration.

Grazes have only half of those durations.

[PizzaSHARK]

 

 

 

I don't think balancing PotD would have as negative a trickle-down effect on gameplay balance as you seem to think it would have. 

that were your observation, not Gromnir's.  we observed that potd balance testing should not be a priority 'cause it would take development resources to do such testing.  based on numerous threads 'bout how folks actual play poe, am not seeing a need for change for the vast majority o' players.  have a few potd encounters play noticeable more difficult?  why fix? is few actual potd players, and at least some % o' those appear to be ok with the current situation.   

 

that being said, removing the on-hit effects would drastic affect the balance o' any number o' encounters. the challenge o' numerous foes is largely dependent on their ability to punish via debilitating status effects. a phantom w/o stun has little point.  the phantom don't teleport or daze as do shadows. what is the purpose o' phantoms in encounter design if you remove status effect? simple remove such capacity would reduce the variety, complexity, difficulty and fun o' many combat encounters in poe. at the very least the removal o' phantom stunning would necessitate new balance testing and likely would warrant phantom redesign to give your newly emasculated and boring monster type a replacement ability.  

 

am not certain what your point 'bout d&d is.  is a different combat systems.  there is no graze mechanic in d&d.  there is indeed no-save status effects in d&d, but suggesting you know how such d&d stuff would be applied if d&d used a poe-style graze mechanic is a bit o' a stretch.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

Phantoms already have Sneak Attack.  it's clear their intention is to punish players for not defending against sneak attackers, much like there are any number of encounters with ranged Rogue NPCs that can drill your back line characters (or front liners, really) for 50+ damage per shot.  It's something that demands a response and adjustment of tactics.  Phantoms would still fulfill this function without their stun on hit, assuming they were allowed to teleport (removing teleport instead of stun is "fixing" the wrong problem.)  Phantoms that are difficult to land a solid hit on, are frequently teleporting, and hitting for 30+ Freeze damage when even tanks rarely have above 100-120 END is pretty substantial and demands a specific response... but that response is "play better" not "hope you roll high" like it is vs stun spamming.

Stun spamming isn't fun.  It doesn't demand a change in tactics, because there are no special tactics or tools you can use at that stage of the game - immunity or even resistance to stuns is all very high level stuff and you're fighting Phantoms primarily in the first act.

 

There is literally no downside whatsoever to actually balancing PotD.  PotD lacks tactical depth because so many of its encounters are utterly binary - they save or die, or you save or die.  Boring.  Uninteresting.  Pillars already has a severe issue with lack of tactical depth and complexity, and PotD exacerbates it through a series of questionable design choices.  Sure, PotD is "difficult," but difficulty without depth is just a waste of time.

 

I'm comparing Pillars to D&D because it's a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate, which was a AD&D 2E-based game.  Pillars has numerous, obvious connections to turn-based tabletop systems to anyone that's played them, and comparing and contrasting their differences is pretty relevant, particularly if you want to discuss core gameplay mechanics.

 

I don't think Obsidian iterated enough on their graze system.  Introducing "weak hits" dramatically changes how combat works in the systems they built Pillars out of and I don't think they spent enough time really considering all the angles.  Fair point to them, though, that it would take a lot of time to even work out the angles in the first place - we'll see what lessons were learned with Pillars 2, I imagine.

 

 

There will be less attacks that can graze in POE2.

 

Obsidian already did something with CC compared to its spiritual predecessors - durations are short. Take for example this D&D spell:

http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Emotion-Hopelessness

1 round = 6 seconds. Is there anything in POE that can compare with that with duration? Well, maybe Binding Roots if ranger has lots of INT and crits but its single target ability and does not prevent all actions. And Hopelessness is still going to beat it with enough caster levels. Keep in mind Binding Roots is a CC with exceptionally long duration.

Grazes have only half of those durations.

 

Nope, but level 1 spells in Pillars are a lot stronger than they are in D&D.  Spells in Pillars are, in general, a lot stronger than they are in D&D because spells can graze.  Sometimes you don't really need to petrify them for the full duration - a couple seconds is all you need.  In D&D, if they save or resist your spell, too bad.  In Pillars, grazes can often get you by just fine, especially if it's a control spell and not a damage spell (hence why control wizards tend to be orders of magnitude more reliable and better, overall, than damage wizards.)

 

Note that spell affects everyone in the area.  Compare that to the Pillars 4th level spell Confusion, which simply applies confusion to all enemies in a large AOE with no worries about friendly fire.  I'd take the Pillars spell over the D&D spell any day of the week.