Empower - Babe put in a corner

[IndiraLightfoot]

The new Deadfire feature Empower, what do you guys think of it?

On standard, a combat encounter lasts 10-15 seconds with a decently equipped party, fighting average challenging baddies, and even mini-bosses like the titan.

 

And since casters have spells that take forever, I usually focus on my melee guys to engage the enemy, and then I rarely need to pause the game.

What happens is this:

-Empower becomes rather meaningless for melee characters

-Empower becomes a high risk, little reward, for casters

-Empower is easy to forget about

-There's too little time to "Empower-up"

Edited December 23, 2017 by IndiraLightfoot

[Juodas Varnas]

I assume it's going to end up like consumables and powerful per-rest abilities for me.

 

I end up hoarding them, saving them up for some difficult encounter but never actually using them.

 

(This isn't a jab against Pillars 1. I do this in EVERY SINGLE RPG i play.)

Edited December 23, 2017 by Juodas Varnas

[Insidous]

My encounters usually take much longer, but maybe the time I spend paused is misleading me.

So I never felt there is not enough time to make use of it, but I definitely agree that it feels meaningless for many and especially melee characters.

 

So far I think I only used it once to empower a spell, very often to give priests or paladins more resources for another heal and once to give my rouge more guile to escape.

I very much agree that using it on a single spell is high risk, low reward. Since the accuracy doesn't scale with power level you are just as likely to miss which feels terrible. Getting some more resources in difficult fights is nice though 

 

I'm not sure if overall I like the feature, maybe if I spend more time with the same party I'll learn how to make use of it for every character. 

[IndiraLightfoot]

Hey, dunehunter just came up with a brilliant idea in the Casting too slow thread:

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/95293-casters-are-still-slow/?p=1965334

 

And it really means that Empower could be diviersified and intergrated into a new spell caster modal system, whereas melee classes drop the Empower thingie entirely.

[Wormerine]

My fight certainly tend to go for longer. I use empower often enough on my priest, not to boost spells, but replenish spellpools. I like using empower on knockdown, when I really want to hit enemy.

 

I don’t think it’s horrible, but i didn’t find it to great either.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Alright, folks. Josh has some info on Empower at his Frog Helms Fan Club site:

Josh: "I did look into what you had suggested re: people not wanting to Empower wizard spells because it didn’t seem worth it.  Our telemetry data doesn’t support that assertion.  In the Backer Beta, people Empower priest and wizard spells more than other class abilities.  Empower is underutilized overall (a small percentage of use in encounters), but when it used, it is used to Empower those class abilities.

The Backer Beta content is a bit unusual for Deadfire content in that it heavily features lagufaeth that aggressively paralyze casters with few remedies to deal with it.  Paralyze is currently acting as an Interrupt (it is not supposed to) and Concentration can’t block it.

We just had an internal play week and traditional casters, especially wizards, were used heavily and consistently.  The main issue with wizards is lack of access to spells (which we are addressing via a general increase in powers per new power level).  The main issue with long cast times (outside of paralyze) isn’t enemy Interrupts, but resource consumption on the first frame of the cast.  We’ve received so much negative feedback about it that we’re changing it to consume resources on the cast frame or when Interrupted.  This does open the possibility for micro-ing early cancels to avoid the resource consumption penalty, but that seems preferable (and for some players, desirable) to people being generally frustrated.

The casting class with the biggest issues at the moment is cipher.  They have a limited range of powers, limited access to Concentration, their Focus gain is slow, and their cast times are relatively long.  They’re going to get more attention than any other class in the next few weeks.

As for the general idea of moving back to per-rest primacy, that would require more than making an individual use of Empower better, as Empower is limited to 1/encounter/character.  The players who are using Empower have recognized how dramatic an Empowered long cast wizard or priest spell can be and are using it primarily for that purpose."

 

 

This has me a bit worried - a small percentage used, and mostly by wizard and priests (in desperation?) to enhance a spell during certain encounters.

Why even have this as a general feature if this is the case?

I'd much rather have modals for select spells then and ditch empower, if it's just a crutch for spell-casters (and that's not what it says on the tin, is it?)

[Wormerine]

I don’t think temeltry of how people use it has be representative of its usefulness. I have to admit to barely ever using “empower” on my non-casters, while I use it regularly with spellcasters - either to replenish spell pools, or empower a spell. It has less to do with my perceived usefulness of “empower” - I just forget about it most of the time. Sometimes empowering knockdown if I am really interested in an interrupt, but for a most part it’s just not part of my planning - possibly due to it being a new mechanic to this style of a game.

 

Either way, I don’t think it’s working terribly well right now. While I have seen this mechanic work wonderfully in other games (will in Banner Saga) in here the game doesn’t communicate clearly enough a benefit of using an “empower” to really encourage its use. In BS you spend a will point because you want something - move a bit further, or hit for a 1-3 damage more. You what you gain, you know why you do it, and how it benefits you. If you run out of it and leave an enemy alive with 2 points remaining you regret spending it earlier.

 

I usually use “empower” to replenish resources, because I know what I am getting. “I really could use another healing spells” Boom, here it is. But you empower a spell - now it is 2 power level higher. What does it mean? How much damage will it do? What is the accuracy gain? How much am I benefitting? I dunno.

[JFutral]

I've not had much luck using Empower with fighter-types. Doesn't seem to do much, but I am probably expecting something it doesn't deliver.

 

My favorites so far is Rogue's Finishing Blow. I've one shotted a couple of enemies with that. Definitely polished off a few. However, this is actually what I expect from vanilla Finishing Blow. So it took Empower to get it to do what I expected it to do from the beginning.

 

My other favorite is with Wizards or Druids with spells like Minor or Bounding Missiles or Druid's Firebug.

 

I haven't tried to use it for buffing yet. I forget with my Priests, for some reason.

 

Joe

[CottonWolf]

I use empower constantly, on all my characters. I actually can't imagine not using it. Empowered Minoletta spells are incredible, and an empowered full attack with a melee is generally worth it (empowered accurate wounding shot is great). Never used it to restore resources, because I actually haven't had to. I've complained about its terrible documentation, and I stand by that, but it is powerful. Empowered melee abilities get increased base PEN and damage, for example.

 

Besides, every character gets two empowers per rest, not point only using it on the casters.

 

(Personally, I'd make it one per encounter per character rather than tieing it into the vestigal resting system, but it is what it is on that front.)

Edited February 20, 2018 by CottonWolf

[MaxQuest]

I don’t think temeltry of how people use it has be representative of its usefulness. I have to admit to barely ever using “empower” on my non-casters, while I use it regularly with spellcasters - either to replenish spell pools, or empower a spell.y use “empower” to replenish resources, because I know what I am getting.

Must confess I haven't used empower even a single time during beta2.

I have briefly tried it in beta1; saw that it shows no normal description/tooltip, and thought that it is an unfinished feature that will have it's effects changed and tuned later. So why even test it now, as there is so much other stuff to check)

 

Btw, now that empower is set to give +10 to power level, I wonder how good the food bonuses have to be. Otherwise there will be many parties on hardtack, resting after each 1/2/3 fights (depending on how many empower charges they do have left).

[Nail]

Empower is extremely useful when playing solo, but with damage dealing abilities.

 

Talking about babies, have someone tested this pet?

It's not better then wyrm, right?

Edited February 21, 2018 by Nail

[dukeisaac]

For the first time, I used an empower on a fireball spell (with the mercenary wizard) and it came as useful, perhaps too much. It did over 100 damage on the Lagufaeth. So I guess it will be fun and useful on certain damage spells, not so much for others. As is the case with many things in Deadfire, this needs to be communicated much better.

[Wormerine]

I did find and "equip" baby boar, but did no experimenting with it.

[Soulmojo]

Honestly I hardly ever used them. Only when I needed more power pool points.

I tend to value extra power pool points over empowering a spell or ability which can easily miss. 

 

I never liked per day and per rest abilites and features. It always felt like a restraint.

I would hardly lose a days sleep if they would remove it.

In fact I would be much more happy if they would remove it all together and replace it with extra the power pool points so I can actually be able to use more abilites per encounter.

Edited February 23, 2018 by Soulmojo

[Bazy]

 

We just had an internal play week and traditional casters, especially wizards, were used heavily and consistently. 

 

After watching the lead programmer die to Beetles in POE1, I don't have much faith in the internal team's play-style insights. 

 

https://youtu.be/FoyrKRoknp4?t=9m29s

Edited February 25, 2018 by Bazy

[thelee]

 

 

We just had an internal play week and traditional casters, especially wizards, were used heavily and consistently. 

 

After watching the lead programmer die to Beetles in POE1, I don't have much faith in the internal team's play-style insights. 

 

https://youtu.be/FoyrKRoknp4?t=9m29s

 

 

There's a difference between being good at a game and good at designing games.

 

Edited to add: otherwise Magic: The Gathering design staff should all be world championship pros at MTG, or all MTG pros should be shoo-ins for new positions at Wizards of the Coast. Or Starcraft 2 players and Blizzard employees. Sometimes there's overlap, but one does not imply the other.

 

Edited further to add: also, early in PoE1 backer beta there was some bug that made those beetles really tough. I remember dying a lot and being extremely disappointed/frustrated but also some later update that fixed it. It could be that's what was happening.

Edited February 26, 2018 by thelee

[Nanawatzin]

Empower is extremely useful when playing solo, but with damage dealing abilities.

 

Talking about babies, have someone tested this pet?

It's not better then wyrm, right?

 

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh so pets in Deadfire give some bonuses to the party? That's really neat! :D <3

[IndiraLightfoot]

Yeah, and like in this case, you just have a bad day. I mean, even Kasparov and Roger Federer have days when the **** hits the fan.