Assorted, consolidated feedback on the Deadfire beta

[Enduin]

I'm fine with the current recovery of weapons as there are a lot of means to counteract that in the builds I've been playing, but I know that's not the case of every class and every build type. And even for the build I've been messing with there could be more ways to mitigate that if not for the Stacking rules. 

 

I think keeping the relative baseline speed of combat as is would be fine if they then made the use of Modals, Passives, Drugs, Potions, Buffs, etc more integral to the experience and strategy of the game to overcome that, which it somewhat feels is the intention. But as it stands right now it feels a whole lot easier to drastically increase recovery times than it is to decrease it. Between Armor Penalties and Modals certain characters like your Fighter Tank could be looking at like 1 attack per 7+ seconds before they acquire Armored Grace, which only knocks less than a second off that.

Edited February 5, 2018 by Enduin

[theBalthazar]

I used slow mode in POE1.

 

I have no problem with this speed. But it is totally personnal.

 

My main problem is Casters. It is better, but I think there is yet 1s too high.

Edited February 5, 2018 by theBalthazar

[anfoglia]

At the risk of bringing the truly trivial into the this thread, I continue to be baffled by the qualifier icons in dialogue. Why put the player through the extra work of hovering over the icon to learn that a dove is benevolent and not diplomacy, a scroll is diplomacy and not history, and this type of head means insight while that kind of head means intelligence? Maybe there's a technical or aesthetic reason I'm missing. It's not a big deal -- if it bugs me so much, I can turn off the dialogue tags and embrace role-playing. But it strikes me as a weird change to a convention (just spelling out [Mechanics]) that I can't recall anyone criticizing.

[morhilane]

The pace actually feels good to me now (I sense I'm a bit of an outlier here). Recovery times were closer to "okay, I see that you are in recovery, and I can turn my attention elsewhere for a moment" than "foot-tapping while I wait for you to please god swing your sword again."

 

EDIT: As you can probably guess, I'm a slow mode person. So I would be more than happy with a tradeoff that involved reduced recovery for the return of slow mode.

 

I like the slower recovery as well, it makes combat less messy to follow.  I do think that enemies might have too much hit points though, but I had the same issue in POE1 too.

[Enduin]

At the risk of bringing the truly trivial into the this thread, I continue to be baffled by the qualifier icons in dialogue. Why put the player through the extra work of hovering over the icon to learn that a dove is benevolent and not diplomacy, a scroll is diplomacy and not history, and this type of head means insight while that kind of head means intelligence? Maybe there's a technical or aesthetic reason I'm missing. It's not a big deal -- if it bugs me so much, I can turn off the dialogue tags and embrace role-playing. But it strikes me as a weird change to a convention (just spelling out [Mechanics]) that I can't recall anyone criticizing.

I'm fine with it. It's a more elegant way of presenting these requirements with a mild degree of familiarization required upfront. I think once you are a few hours into the game proper it won't be that confusing. Just messing in the Beta and doing my best to skip over the dialogue I've come to recognize more than a few at a glance without needing the tooltip to reference it.

[Olauron Mor-Galad]

Stacking rules are inconsistent and counter-intuitive.

 

As discussed here, here, and here.

 

Good stacking rules are intuitive and make synergies immediately evident—the opposite of what presently happens in Deadfire. It should be as simple as same source = suppresses; different source = stacks.

 

It doesn’t help that the UI doesn’t provide any information at all as to what stacks and what doesn’t, to add to the previous point.

Stacking rules as described in the game journal are rather simple and easy to understand (though I don't know whether they are implemented for all abilities right now). They are the following: "All passive bonuses stack with each other. Active bonuses (from spells, items, abilities including modals that must be activates) use the highest bonus to a statistic". Active and passive stack.

[AndreaColombo]

If that is the case, I must concede that they are indeed simple and easy to understand—once you find out about them. The fact that it hasn’t crossed anybody’s mind that this could be the case until your post, however, speaks loudly of the rules’ being counter-intuitive, IMO.

 

Two bonuses to the same thing from a different source should stack; that’s intuitive and it promotes synergistic character building. Current stacking rules create a number of bad multiclass combinations that players can only discover by rolling the character first, then find out the key synergy they had in mind doesn’t work.

 

In this context, I’d sooner go through all skill trees and draw up a list of which abilities stack and don’t stack (all information that would be the UI’s job to provide in the first place) than to blindly pursue a character concept.

 

As a side note, resistances to Afflictions appear to be a glaring exception to the “passives stack” rule. The UI should communicate it, prevent you from picking a passive that doesn’t stack with another you already possess, or both. OR there shouldn’t be an exception.

[Boeroer]

So what's passive and active then?

 

- armor bonus of Gilded Enmity? Sounds like active.

- armor bonus of the bear form (spiritshift)? Sounds like passive? 

- Paladin's temporary armor bonus once he gets hit? Passive?

- Barbarian's Thick Skinned? This has to be passive... or not?

 

I tried several combos and it's not clear what stacks and what not. I ended up with a character that had multiple AR suppressions.

 

It's not always clear what is considered a passive bonus and what not. Like on PoE: why did Inspiring Radiance and Inspiring Liberation stack with everything? Whay did Devotions (that only raises melee and ranged ACC) stack with universal ACC buffs for melee and ranged? Officially those were passives or had other weird stacking rules, but were triggered by an active ability. This is not very intuitive and thus new players never knew about such things.

Edited February 6, 2018 by Boeroer

[theBalthazar]

ACTIVE abilities is not one usable abilities.

 

Active abilities are the abilities to the left of screen of level up. (So Paladin Aura is considered like an active ability for exemple)

 

So the rule is simple yes, but totally illogical. Since Osidian pushes the player to accumulate passives, less risk of conflict. He creates dead abilities. Why I take focus (paladin aura) ? Anybody answer this question, I give him 1 million dollars.

 

Zealous aura is push out by devotion of the faitful. Warrior stance and others. Absolutely not useful to take that.

 

You say, yes but, Balthazar, Focus can serve at the start of the battle, during the 5 seconds of casting time ?

 

Yes, but no. Because it stay a bad invest. If I am paladin / Fighter, I don't want invest two abilities points, which 1 is suppressed immediately, and the second in 5s -20 % of dexterity. I prefer invest in another domain.

 

And sincerely it limits the game to "who has the biggest". (Value) Personnal 5 (WS-Focus) VS All 20 (DotF). Choice is already done...

 

So perhaps Obsidian want decorative abilities, but not me.

Edited February 6, 2018 by theBalthazar

[Boeroer]

Sworn Enemy is on the left side of the tree. Gilded Enmity is linked to Sworn Enemy. Is it a passive or an active effect, hmm?

[theBalthazar]

Sworn Enemy is on the left side of the tree. Gilded Enmity is linked to Sworn Enemy. Is it a passive or an active effect, hmm? 

 

 

Totally agree. On the papers there is a rule, but there much exception (non sense)

 

Sworn ennemy is an active ability for the game (left side), but stack. So if said that, it is more to answer that :

 

 stacking rules as described in the game journal are rather simple and easy to understand 

 

 

Far from me to defend the actual system of stacking... Not so "simple" to understand and not so logical.

Edited February 6, 2018 by theBalthazar

[IndiraLightfoot]

Combat speed slider:

 

How would you feel about having a customizable slow mode, with a slider ranging from 0% to like 90% or something like that? I feel like every individual seems to have a personal combat speed preference.

We’re going to be implementing a combat speed slider that’s accessible from the HUD, so you can slow it down, speed it up, or leave it at the default game speed.

 

Yes, oh yeah, alright!!! Now, we all get to fine-tune the combat speed just to our liking. Brilliant stuff!

[theBalthazar]

I remember a thing, in POE1 (^^ ...)

 

Why I have never take officially a paladin in my teams. I have test it obviously, but there was three reasons of the problem for me :

 

1) Multiclass talents. +4 accuracy (against 6 for paladin) Pick +4 was so much more flexible. (only a loss of 2...)

+

2) Don't stack with majority of others propositions (like priest spell level 1, +x accuracy and +10 % damage).

+

3) the short reach of the aura

 

In the same time, 6 priests could accumulate the same stack (Holy radiance +10 accuracy...)

 

So yes, Obsidian don't want bad build and OP build, but if players don't pick a class for theses reasons, it is even more serious... Bad stacking rules can kill a class in the head of hardcore gamers (casual will not see anything and will be naive and will not try to optimize).

Edited February 6, 2018 by theBalthazar

[AndreaColombo]

Well, yeah, casuals won’t try to optimize at all costs, but if they build a multi-class character and find the key synergy they had in mind doesn’t work and they had no way to know, they’re not gonna be pleased either

Edited February 6, 2018 by AndreaColombo

[Enduin]

I think the simplest and most straightforward solution to this stacking issue is to just let everything stack. Keep the current framework of all Passives and the Highest Active buff stacks but then simply apply a fraction of the remaining active bonuses. Either by average or individual fractions of each based on rank of highest to lowest.

 

So:

2nd Highest divide by 2

3rd Highest divide by 3

etc

etc

 

The rules as they are right now are "clear" enough on paper, Highest Active and any Passives stack, but in practice the UI when leveling up and selecting abilities as well as the diplay of active effects in the character screen don't reflect that at all. And more importantly when in combat on the fly that kind of stuff is not at all clear and really has no way of being very clear in a simple and easy way to understand.

 

I think this is more an issue most people will simply never fully realize and they choose and apply buffs assuming they stack, with only a few actually figuring out that activating Swift Strikes and Frenzy at the same time doesn't actually confer a higher Action Speed Bonus. But by letting everything stack and simply decreasing the effectiveness of the additional bonuses you eliminate that issue and for those who are aware they won't feel as though certain builds, single or multi, in conjunction with other things like consumables aren't viable.