Resolve, Strength vs Might and Casting Time

[Jojobobo]

So I don't have access to the beta, but I've been avidly looking at the related threads, and I had a few ideas:

 

1) Revert Strength to Might. The idea of Might being a combination of physical and magical/mystical potency (with characters not necessarily representing as physically muscular) seems to be a popular one, and Strength now seems extremely niche and unnecessary spell-caster characters for the most part - and instant dump stat. I think healing should probably stay with Might too, to make attribute balance more complex and less by-the-numbers - but it can be moved to Resolve if necessary.

 

2) I think the increase in casting time is a result of the idea to drop interrupt from every attack - with it now being attached to some attacks - and so casting time was adjusted to fit with the fact spells won't typically get interrupted. Therefore the role of maintaining minimum Resolve in order for a caster to have reasonable Concentration is now out the window. Why not have Resolve decrease spell and ability casting time - probably in a rate of 4 or 5% (and increase/decrease casting time with these reductions until the fit feels right)? This fits somewhat thematically, as you're better exerting your will on the world around you.

 

Keep Dexterity the same, so it can also decrease casting time, but in the standard 3% reduction per point over 10 for all animations/recovery - not just those associated with Casting. A DPS caster now needs Resolve, Might, possibly some Dex, Int - etcetera - to be effective, and we maintain the complex situation of attribute balance we saw in PoE 1. Depending on how ability casting is balanced, this could also be used to discourage non-caster classes from entirely dumping Res.

 

This would solve to be two things:

 

A) A problem of the devs' making - keeping Resolve relevant after eliminating Interrupt for the most part. We're already seeing a (currently) poorly implemented part of this in effect - the increased casting time. Resolve previously facilitated casters to cast spells un-impeded - reducing cast time through Resolve achieves much of the same practical effect, and stops casters being sitting ducks (in PoE 1 they could be sitting ducks if interrupted constantly, in PoE 2 they're now sitting ducks because of the long cast period). Resolve is still very much functionally similar to how it worked in PoE 1.

 

B) Another problem of the devs' making - stopping Strength being a straight dump stat for any casting class not frequently using Summoned Weapons - which currently seems like a lot of them due to the aforementioned casting time problem.

 

I guess the main problem with all of this is that the system is now even more unintelligible to the uninitiated than it was in PoE 1, but it really depends on the kind of broad appeal the devs are wanting/anticipating anyway - so whether that is a problem so much is hard to say.

 

Sorry if I'm talking out of my ass having not played the Beta, but it seems like these are the main problems that are arising. I guess possibly someone else has already suggested something similar, but I thought this was a reasonable solution to preventing both Resolve and "Strength" becoming dump stats (or at least Resolve would be no less of a dump stat than it was in PoE 1 for high melee damage builds, whereas its usefulness is now inflated for casters - just not painfully so like it currently is where you'd have to be mad to dump it).

 

Thoughts?

Edited January 1, 2018 by Jojobobo

[Guest 4ward]

 

don't play the beta either but judging from feedback, IMO Obsidian would do good to look into spell design more. If players want their casters to fight with summoned weapons and/or use spells instead of armour for protection then they shoudn‘t be neglected. Using spells is already always a trade-off because of spell effect duration.

[Ninjamestari]

If an artist decides to change a feature of his work based on what 'seems to be popular', he ceases to be an artist and becomes just another craftsman marketing just another product. I wish Obsidian trusted their own visions more and took less feedback from the people. Chasing popularity just to end up delivering an incomplete vision is never worth it.

 

That being said, I absolutely hate the Might stat, and I'm really glad to see it gone and replaced with Strength. The problem seems to be that since the other stats have been left unchanged, there seems to be two competing visions when it comes to the stats. I think all the stats should be somewhat re-designed to reflect the new approach that separates mental and physical attributes in the more traditional sense. What I'd go is something along the lines of

 

STR - Simple Physical prowess and Muscle Mass:

increase melee accuracy and melee damage, requirement for heavy equipment such as hammers, large bows and armor.

 

DEX - Agility and Coordination:

increase both melee and ranged accuracy, deflection and action speed (Ranged weapons should have static damage, no modifiers from stats beyond accuracy)

 

CON - Health and Toughness:

Hitpoints and Fortitude Defense

 

WITS - Alertness and Quick thinking:

Spellcasting/Ability bonus accuracy, Reflex Defense, Power Source Cost Discount for abilities/spells.

 

INT - Learning and Reasoning:

More skill-points during level-ups, Increased Damage and Increased Healing for activated spells/abilities.

 

RES - Willpower and determination:

Increased effect for passive abilities, Increased Duration and AoE for all abilities/spells, Will Defence

Edited January 2, 2018 by Ninjamestari

[Lephys]

If an artist decides to change a feature of his work based on what 'seems to be popular', he ceases to be an artist and becomes just another craftsman marketing just another product. 

 

While I'm 100% behind this statement, I find it somewhat of a struggle to apply it to attribute mechanic design.

 

That being said, they do need to stick to their objectively-evaluated-to-be-good decisions more, and stop worrying quite so much about what people frivolously desire. Not that it's completely insignificant how people subjectively feel about the game systems, but it's 100% secondary to the objective value of said game systems within the context of the initial design Obsidian themselves have set forth.

 

To put it overly simply, why shouldn't Deadfire be changed into a side-scrolling competitive fighting game (a la Street Fighter)? The answer is because Obsidian subjectively wish to make a certain style of RPG. With that in place, there are now lots of objective things that make that goal more or less completed.

[Ninjamestari]

 

If an artist decides to change a feature of his work based on what 'seems to be popular', he ceases to be an artist and becomes just another craftsman marketing just another product. 

 

While I'm 100% behind this statement, I find it somewhat of a struggle to apply it to attribute mechanic design.

 

 

Yeah, I kinda edited my post to elaborate on that a little more, but the main point of that was A) there seem to be two competing designs working at cross-purposes in the stats right now and B) Jojobobo kinda suggested reverting back to Might because that 'seems to be popular'.

[Salinger]

I agree with anything, if there are no more muscular mages.

[Lephys]

Yeah, sorry. I was attempting to point out that, while the statement itself didn't directly pertain to the objective functionality of attribute mechanics, your point on top of the statement DID pretty directly (inversely, sort of?) apply to the idea of changing something that works just to not only make it more artistically/aesthetically pleasing, but also pleasing in accordance with someone else's tastes rather than your own.

 

'Twas hard for me to convey that without one of my usually walls o' text, and I'm trying to kill those. Haha.

[vanyel54]

I agree with anything, if there are no more muscular mages.

 

There was no "Muscular mages" in POE1. Might wasn't Strength. But I agree with you that the interactions scripts with Might wasn't well written.

Actually, with the new STR/RES model, you have finally your Muscular Mage. Rod, scepter etc... are visibly so heavy that they need muscles to boost damage

 

 

 

If an artist decides to change a feature of his work based on what 'seems to be popular', he ceases to be an artist and becomes just another craftsman marketing just another product. 

 

While I'm 100% behind this statement, I find it somewhat of a struggle to apply it to attribute mechanic design.

 

 

Yeah, I kinda edited my post to elaborate on that a little more, but the main point of that was A) there seem to be two competing designs working at cross-purposes in the stats right now and B) Jojobobo kinda suggested reverting back to Might because that 'seems to be popular'.

 

 

Your stats proposition seems good but i think that's a lot of work and change.

And honestly, POE2 was a sequel. People expect to find the same mechanism as in POE1.

And when i say i prefer reverting back to Might, it's not from popular pressure. I'm not opposed to the change but Obsidian need to resolve the impact of it.

Actually there is problem with the hybrid class (goodbye cipher), ranged weapon bonus (high STR for rod damage boost doesn't make change).

As i have said before, it seems strange to introduce multi-class at the same time you separate the boost damage ability.

[Ninjamestari]

Your stats proposition seems good but i think that's a lot of work and change.

And honestly, POE2 was a sequel. People expect to find the same mechanism as in POE1.

And when i say i prefer reverting back to Might, it's not from popular pressure. I'm not opposed to the change but Obsidian need to resolve the impact of it.

Actually there is problem with the hybrid class (goodbye cipher), ranged weapon bonus (high STR for rod damage boost doesn't make change).

As i have said before, it seems strange to introduce multi-class at the same time you separate the boost damage ability.

 

 

I don't think it's honestly that much work. A couple of talented coders and a designer to go over the in-game items, a weekend an a steady stream of coffee should be enough, and then a couple days off for a little hard partying to recover from the coding-induced brain damage. Josh for example obviously has enough vision to come up with with the details, someone just needs to repeatedly kick him in the nads until he has the confidence, focus and the will to trust his own vision, so even the overall design changes that impact the whole game shouldn't be that much of an issue. I'm 100% certain that if they begin to focus more on mining the gray matter of their own talented people rather than the opinions of forum/social media users, they will in the end begin to deliver far superior games for it.

 

Oh, and the fact that it's more difficult to make ridiculous min-max-builds doesn't mean RIP Ciphers, and a multiclass and/or hybrid character isn't supposed to be as focused as more 'pure' characters. For a 3rd ED D&D example, take a Bard versus a Fighter.

[vanyel54]

Oh, and the fact that it's more difficult to make ridiculous min-max-builds doesn't mean RIP Ciphers, and a multiclass and/or hybrid character isn't supposed to be as focused as more 'pure' characters. For a 3rd ED D&D example, take a Bard versus a Fighter.

 

 

1) Calling ridiculous min-max builds is your opinion. It's not mine. Each player choose the way he wants to play.

2) In the current state, the cipher will be less effective than in POE1. That's a fact. The same for the druid.

3) For the multi-class spell/physical, it's a penalty. Ok why not, you could say it's logical to have slightly less impact than a single class. I don't' like it but I could understand this point of view.

[Lephys]

 1) Calling ridiculous min-max builds is your opinion. It's not mine. Each player choose the way he wants to play.

 

Each player chooses the way he wants to play, but that doesn't mean that no build can possibly be ridiculous. The goal of the game sets the criteria for that designation. For example, the game is designed such that you have a limited amount of health, so that combat is SOME level of a challenge, instead of just a matter of time dealing damage greater than 0 and eventually winning all the time. That would be pointless. A "skip through combat and automatically win" mode would serve much better if never losing combat were a goal-option to provide to the player. Thus, if the game could allow you to make a build that gave you 73-times the number of hitpoints anything else in the game had, so that you'd effectively never feel the limitation of Health at all, that would be a ridiculous build, by the game's own definition.

 

To look at it another way, the idea that his calling min-max builds ridiculous is his opinion is your opinion. Thus, a difference of opinion never gets us anywhere. I mean, it can be fun for conversation fuel, in learning about each other. But it doesn't help an objective discussion.

 

If you feel that he's objectively incorrect or mistaken in thinking that the builds he's thinking of are ridiculous, that's a perfectly valid point to make. However, "Well, the sheer idea that something could be problematic or ridiculous is just an opinion, and nothing really can be" isn't a notion that does anything but designate discussion, itself, to be pointless. The statement negates its own purpose. If we're down to pure subjectivity, then every single opinion is incorrect, AND every single opinion is correct, simultaneously. End of all discussions.

[vanyel54]

@Lephys : the way you end all discussions left me speechless

More on the subject, i don't think that the STR/RES change anything in the possibility of making ridiculous build. You could still choose the wrong attributes and doing a ineffective character if you want.

[Jojobobo]

 

 

If an artist decides to change a feature of his work based on what 'seems to be popular', he ceases to be an artist and becomes just another craftsman marketing just another product. 

 

While I'm 100% behind this statement, I find it somewhat of a struggle to apply it to attribute mechanic design.

 

 

Yeah, I kinda edited my post to elaborate on that a little more, but the main point of that was A) there seem to be two competing designs working at cross-purposes in the stats right now and B) Jojobobo kinda suggested reverting back to Might because that 'seems to be popular'.

 

I wasn't talking of reverting back for popularity's sake, more so that it offered a unique vision that people liked in the first Pillars that was quite different to what you saw in other IE games and that also worked well in practice (hence, which is why it was popular in the first place). The fondness for that original vision of Might is due to the devs' previously solid design choices, and not just thinking it was neat for the sake of being arbitrary.

 

If anything, switching to Strength would be the "popular" choice - as it's a slightly easier concept to wrap your head around and so would go down easier with the masses rather than Might which seems to incorporate a few separate ideas (physical strength and mystical potency).

 

I was also massively addressing the Resolve changes too which you haven't referred to, rather than just looking at Might vs Strength, which seem to lend themselves more and not less to min-maxing than the PoE 1 system (Resolve is a straight dump for most physical builds, Strength is a straight dump for most caster builds, and while there will be multi-classing relying on both melee and casting broadly speaking this picture is accurate). You say you're not a fan of "ridiculous min-max" builds, but I would say the PoE 2 system caters much more towards that than PoE 1 - because the Resolve and Strength changes create non-complex black and white situations when approaching your character build, likely leading to a polarising effect in attribute choice based on class.

 

This is all inside of the frame of reference that PoE 1 was designed with a view of making no dump stats to prevent min-maxing to a large extent, which seems to be a vision the devs are pulling away from in the sequel.

Edited January 3, 2018 by Jojobobo

[Salinger]

There was no "Muscular mages" in POE1. Might wasn't Strength. But I agree with you that the interactions scripts with Might wasn't well written.

Technically no, there wasn't. But in fact there was. Interactions was written well, it's just might was considered as strenght. Broke the wall with bare hands? Can do. Grab some guy and lift him by the neck? Easy.

There is two ways to fix this: rewrite all interactions with taking into account the character class or just split physical and mental powers. The second is much easier.

[Ninjamestari]

1) Revert Strength to Might. The idea of Might being a combination of physical and magical/mystical potency (with characters not necessarily representing as physically muscular) seems to be a popular one...

 

If anything, switching to Strength would be the "popular" choice...

 

This here, ladies and gentlemen, is called weaseling. Don't do it

 

As far as the min-max stuff, you've got to understand that the concept of the stats and their mathematical implementation to the game are two completely separate issues; it's not the design of the concept that causes min-maxing, it is bad mathematical implementation. There are ways to combat min-maxing, such as diminishing returns point-buy systems and fundamental attributes tied to each stat in a way that any low stat actually does limit your game-play as much as a high stat opens possibilities. Those ways simply got ignored in the stat design causing the current situation. In other words, the Might versus Strength debate has absolutely nothing to do with min-maxing and vice versa.

Edited January 3, 2018 by Ninjamestari

[AndreaColombo]

Min-maxing isn’t evil and should not be prevented, “combated”, or discouraged. It’s a play style like any other and some people, including me, enjoy it. Playing a character with a mixed bag of average stats isn’t my idea of fun.

[Ninjamestari]

Min-maxing isn’t evil and should not be prevented, “combated”, or discouraged. It’s a play style like any other and some people, including me, enjoy it. Playing a character with a mixed bag of average stats isn’t my idea of fun.

 

And being forced to make ludicrous builds with 3 in the low stats and 18 in the high ones in order to power-game properly isn't my idea of fun. There's nothing wrong with powergaming, powergaming is a fundamental aspect of any RPG, but there definitely is loads and loads wrong with a system that actively encourages blatant min-maxing. The point is, going for the super high stats should carry with it the opportunity cost for doing so, if it doesn't, it isn't a relevant choice, and you might just remove the numbers completely and simply have the player choose an x-number of "max" stats and the rest will remain "min" stats.

 

And truly, I love powergaming, I always do it in RPGS, min-maxing simply is such a cheap and dirty way of doing it, it's more an exploit of a broken system than true powergaming.

[AndreaColombo]

Did you feel PoE1 was forcing you to dump stats to 3 to powergame? The lowest I’ve gone myself is 6 or 7 and my characters were pretty powerful. In the latest beta build, the removal of Healing from MIG, along with a couple other changes, turned my build of choice from a powerhouse to a barely viable character—and that’s with 10 as a minimum score. Fun times!

Edited January 3, 2018 by AndreaColombo

[Jojobobo]

 

1) Revert Strength to Might. The idea of Might being a combination of physical and magical/mystical potency (with characters not necessarily representing as physically muscular) seems to be a popular one...

 

If anything, switching to Strength would be the "popular" choice...

 

This here, ladies and gentlemen, is called weaseling. Don't do it

And here's what we call lowering the tone of a conversation. It's surprising from a person calling others ladies and gentlemen.

 

The point was quite clear, it's a popular concept with a lot of the fanbase. Strength would likely be a more popular concept with a broader demographic. Raking over semantics is pointless, everyone else seems to get the idea apart from you who seems more keen on throwing insults around. I hope next time you pick one slightly poorly chosen word in something you've taken a bit of time writing someone tries to railroad your entire discussion about the subtext of that one word rather than the merits of a particular concept.

 

I get that you like the idea of Strength, I've seen you post in other threads, but there's no need to stop being civil. I don't think anyone around here is looking to be called a weasel by implication in threads, and I doubt other people enjoy seeing it either for the sake of posturing and bravado.

 

In other words, the Might versus Strength debate has absolutely nothing to do with min-maxing and vice versa.

You were the one who first raised min-maxing in the thread. If you didn't think it was pertinent then why did you personally raise it as a point? I know you were referring to Resolve, but the two concepts to many have become linked as many of the benefits of Might were moved into Resolve - they're inextricably linked.

 

Min-maxing isn’t evil and should not be prevented, “combated”, or discouraged. It’s a play style like any other and some people, including me, enjoy it. Playing a character with a mixed bag of average stats isn’t my idea of fun.

I don't really have a problem with it either. However, I always thought part of Sawyer's whole thing was to discourage the idea of particular dump stats - increasing the risk and reward aspect of min-maxing if you take that route. This makes it all an interesting logic-based challenge when it comes to building, as it's not trivial to dump certain stats on any build in particular.

 

My main issue is that with the current Strength and Resolve, there's no difficult decision to be made when it comes to dumping those stats for a melee focussed or caster focussed builds in particular. I'm all for min-maxing, but it shouldn't be such an easy choice to make that anyone who remotely cares about strategic attribute choice will dump those stats automatically.

Edited January 3, 2018 by Jojobobo

[Lephys]

More on the subject, i don't think that the STR/RES change anything in the possibility of making ridiculous build. You could still choose the wrong attributes and doing a ineffective character if you want.

You could still do that, yes. I think the STR/RES change is still valuable, though. Does it fix all the problems? Probably not. There's most likely more tweaking to be done.

 

There are really 2 problems with the stat system issue:

 

1) People tend to think that if there can be any problem within the system, it's just broken (i.e. "well, this isn't perfect still, so see, we should just do the thing that I happen to like and not even worry about function/effectiveness")

2) People tend to think that if a change doesn't fix EVERYTHING, then it's fixing nothing.

 

Granted, I'm not saying you're suggesting that. You very precisely said that the STR/RES change just doesn't prevent ridiculous builds. And that's correct. My only direct emphasis on the ridiculous builds thing is that we consider how to make sure, to the best of our ability, that the system doesn't blatantly allow builds that sort of go against the goal of the interesting limitations of the system to begin with. It's easy to just slap together an attribute system, maybe just based on things about characters you'd like to simulate, and end up with problems. The blatant ones are "this one stat does oodles of useful stuff for my character, and this other one doesn't do much at all, no matter how much I like the idea of it." That sort of thing.

Edited January 3, 2018 by Lephys

[illathid]

I agree with anything, if there are no more muscular mages.

 

Well then we are mortal enemies. My bodybuilding muscle-mage was my favorite character I played in PoE. I won't stand for anyone trying to ruin a character I love.

 

Edited January 3, 2018 by illathid

[Ninjamestari]

 

You were the one who first raised min-maxing in the thread. If you didn't think it was pertinent then why did you personally raise it as a point? I know you were referring to Resolve, but the two concepts to many have become linked as many of the benefits of Might were moved into Resolve - they're inextricably linked.

 

 

I didn't raise it as a point in the Strength versus Might context, min-maxing is a separate issue that has to do with the mathematics of the game, not with the concepts of the stats. You know, concepts as in "Strength means physical muscle-power" and "Might is the power of your soul" - stuff. All the "this stat increases this effect by x-amount" is mathematical implementation of those concepts, which is a completely separate issue, and the source of any min-maxing headaches one might have.

 

And the min-maxing has been a standard argument of the pro-might crowd, so it naturally becomes part of the rhetoric here, even though it is a silly argument considering that PoE1 stat system is every bit as much min-max BS as the IE games with their AD&D stats ever were, saying that the change to STR is bad because it causes min-maxing is simply false.

 

And here's what we call lowering the tone of a conversation. It's surprising from a person calling others ladies and gentlemen

 

Grow a thicker skin, you'll go further in life. If I catch someone weaseling in their arguments with me, you better expect me to call them out on that every single time, and I fully advice you and everyone else to do the same. **** the tone of the conversation, honesty and intellectual integrity are far more important and preserving them in the long run is well worth 'lowering the tone' of the conversation. Respect and politeness have absolutely nothing to do with one another, and the first one is important, the second one is not. People are polite when they're either trying to sell you something or trying to feed you their bull****.

[Jojobobo]

Grow a thicker skin, you'll go further in life. If I catch someone weaseling in their arguments with me, you better expect me to call them out on that every single time, and I fully advice you and everyone else to do the same. **** the tone of the conversation, honesty and intellectual integrity are far more important and preserving them in the long run is well worth 'lowering the tone' of the conversation. Respect and politeness have absolutely nothing to do with one another, and the first one is important, the second one is not. People are polite when they're either trying to sell you something or trying to feed you their bull****.

You say you appreciate intellectual integrity, but tried to devolve this all into cheap shots at an early opportunity. I would say that demonstrates a lack of intellectualism, as you have been unable to talk about a subject without making things personal - rather than discussing the logical merits of the topic itself.

 

If I was trying to raise your point I would have called it a "logical fallacy", rather than calling someone a weasel. A person can relay an "honest" opinion in an intellectual way without descending into rudeness and you will get a better discussion from people if you did so, you failed to do that here.

 

However, I also don't see anything particularly honest about you focussing on a single word as a total strawman to let you ignore nearly all the other points presented, clearly Strength is a hot button issue for you and you're letting it cloud your judgement. As I said, you got me, I could have chosen a more fitting word to articulate what I was going for in that singular position in that particular sentence. However throughout the entire post I think the larger idea of what I was trying to say was clear, so calling someone a weasel rather than someone typing in a rush because it's the holidays and I had other things to be getting on with is a conceit on your behalf.

 

Much more that the Might vs Strength, I wanted to talk about giving Resolve a buff to spell casting speed as an alternative - which I really intended to be much more the main thrust of the thread. If you make that change to Resolve, there's no need for Resolve to have any of Might's original benefits I would say. I think Obsidian should have looked more at what other benefits could have been given to Resolve to reflect their new systems, rather than reshuffle benefits from one attribute to another.

 

My skin is thick, I just think it's nonsense for someone to claim they're championing intellectualism and honesty when they personally have exhibited neither. If you were talking to anyone else like this on the forum who wasn't me, I'd be calling you out just the same.

 

I didn't raise it as a point in the Strength versus Might context, min-maxing is a separate issue that has to do with the mathematics of the game, not with the concepts of the stats. You know, concepts as in "Strength means physical muscle-power" and "Might is the power of your soul" - stuff. All the "this stat increases this effect by x-amount" is mathematical implementation of those concepts, which is a completely separate issue, and the source of any min-maxing headaches one might have.

 

And the min-maxing has been a standard argument of the pro-might crowd, so it naturally becomes part of the rhetoric here, even though it is a silly argument considering that PoE1 stat system is every bit as much min-max BS as the IE games with their AD&D stats ever were, saying that the change to STR is bad because it causes min-maxing is simply false.

While min-maxing happened in PoE 1 even on the hardest difficulties, it would likely be one or two members of your party who were pure tanks or heavy hitters. Even if you think that's an exaggeration, I would say objectively two or so party members would at least be not be min-maxed, and if you put limitations on yourself to play with a smaller party or solo the min-maxing becomes less and less.

 

The difference is in PoE 2, there's readily a situation where everyone in your party will be min-maxed arbitrarily because that's what the attributes lend themselves to - a maximisation of benefit lacking any sort of interesting cost. In PoE 2, it's become innate to a much greater degree.

 

While you see Strength vs Might as a separate issue, Sawyer originally pitched the PoE 1 stats to avoid min-maxing and the whole choice made made about the conceptual (not only physical strength) and mechanical effects of Might were informed by that desire. Might would have not have been the concept it was without the mechanical underpinning it was based on.

 

And as I said - the main point here is changing Resolve to casting speed reduction, which means Might doesn't need to be touched to shore up the new short-fall in Resolve. As you keep going back to Might over and over again, when really the main point is a reversion to Might is a byproduct of a better implementation of Resolve, I'm really failing to see the merits of discussing Might in a bubble any more. This wasn't an "in a bubble" discussion from the off (look at the topic title), and proposed several changes that complemented each other.

Edited January 4, 2018 by Jojobobo

[Ninjamestari]

STR vs MIGHT *is* a separate issue, there's nothing subjective "i see it this way" about it. The problem arose when they changed the concept of one stat but didn't touch the others and only slightly tweaked the others. The STR and MIGHT issue is purely about the concepts involved, but if you think you can change the concepts and just slightly tweak the math, then you're dead wrong. That's why I've always said that they need to rethink the whole package, not just change one thing here and one thing there. Start by deciding with the concepts, separate physical and mental stats and THEN figure out what to do with the mechanical implementation. The point is that the whole process they're going through is wrong and absolutely cannot produce satisfying results. The concepts for the stats are the very cornerstones upon which the mechanical implementation is built upon, that's why you need to begin with them and not worry about "this stat affects this" until your concepts are balanced properly. There is a larger picture here and no one will get anywhere by stubbornly staring at these two particular details. The conflict between the concepts has to be resolved before the math can be built properly.

 

Oh yeah, and in PoE, a min-max character is always more powerful than a non-min-max character, especially on higher difficulties. If you really want to powergame in PoE, which is to make the most powerful party you can, then you will min-max every single character based on their roles in the party.

Edited January 4, 2018 by Ninjamestari

[Jojobobo]

STR vs MIGHT *is* a separate issue, there's nothing subjective "i see it this way" about it. The problem arose when they changed the concept of one stat but didn't touch the others and only slightly tweaked the others. The STR and MIGHT issue is purely about the concepts involved, but if you think you can change the concepts and just slightly tweak the math, then you're dead wrong. That's why I've always said that they need to rethink the whole package, not just change one thing here and one thing there. Start by deciding with the concepts, separate physical and mental stats and THEN figure out what to do with the mechanical implementation. The point is that the whole process they're going through is wrong and absolutely cannot produce satisfying results. The concepts for the stats are the very cornerstones upon which the mechanical implementation is built upon, that's why you need to begin with them and not worry about "this stat affects this" until your concepts are balanced properly. There is a larger picture here and no one will get anywhere by stubbornly staring at these two particular details. The conflict between the concepts has to be resolved before the math can be built properly.

 

Oh yeah, and in PoE, a min-max character is always more powerful than a non-min-max character, especially on higher difficulties. If you really want to powergame in PoE, which is to make the most powerful party you can, then you will min-max every single character based on their roles in the party.

And here you've fell apart. And let me say I'm blasted drunk right now, but I'll still try and go for more intellectualised posting than implying people should be called a weasel - because that's quite simply how I roll. 

 

I'm not going to lambast you for cosying up to poor concepts while not being able to properly articulate yourself in the heat of the moment - because I'm just not that guy. However you say things like, "Start by deciding with concepts," like they already did in PoE 1 which is why the Beta testers in PoE 2 aren't necessarily converts - and then you're more than happy to approve the PoE 2 change from Might to Strength, even though they're running entirely contrary to the PoE 1 design spec. Can we please, please, get back to my Resolve casting speed argument - which was the idea in the first place (look at the topic, which I've told you for the second time)?

 

Jesus, can we please get onto my Resolve changes? Ninjamestari is not a "weasel" for not having done so, just not someone who can separate thoughts from feelings when trying to discuss the issues (again sorry for calling Might "popular", jeez) at this moment in time - I think we're all hoping for a mechanically fluent game which is what I was trying to address. Somehow apparently more min-maxing was worse on lower difficulties than on higher difficulties - which makes the least sense I've ever heard and paints a fundamentally poor understanding of the arguments concerning PoE 1 (despite of merit worthy arguments being available on either side of the fence). 

 

Can we re-railroad this maybe? I mean one day? Even if it is Strength in the end, I was just trying to show another path - sorry guys.

Edited January 4, 2018 by Jojobobo