Josh's new suggestion for Resolve is brilliant IMHO!

[JerekKruger]

Just bring back MIG, and give RES +5% Inspiration Duration (Received/Cast), +5% Affliction Duration (Cast), -5% Affliction Duration (Received) to make it more attractive.

 

Received yes, cast no (at least not if Intellect retains it too).

[thelee]

Ugh. I guess the Muscle Wizard fans win after all.

 

At the very least we can all hope *something* works out for Resolve other than going back to the Pillars 1 system where Resolve was terrible.

 

Resolve in PE was mediocre, but selectively very good. In the absence of organic concentration/interrupts like in PE1, Resolve would become merely mostly mediocre. Maybe if they bumped it up to +/-2 deflection per point...

 

And anyway, I am also surprised so many people are a fan of the random empower effect. I suggest it might just be people responding positively to a resolve solution that is not the current status quo, which I suspect is fairly unpopular. At which point, people might just be piling on to something in terms of the politician's syllogism instead of any actual merits on the resolve change itself (politician's syllogism: "1. we need to do something. 2. this is something. 3. let's do this")

 

I didn't use empower much early on with Deadfire, but a few recent attempts in between OS X deadfire crashes I've actually used it to empower spells (instead of just getting more casts) and I have to say resolve randomly empowering spells would just be waaaayyy too variant, unless they dramatically change how empower works. Empowering interdiction gives me just some lame accuracy bonus AFAICT, but Empowering minoletta's missiles gives me so many more missiles that I can almost one shot a foe even on Path of the Damned. Not only is it inconsistent across spells, but having my per-encounter-finite spells randomly spike in power sounds to me to be extremely unfun, especially since in PoE stats are symmetric between player and foe (and in my opinion, maintaining the symmetry between the player and foe is an important element of PoE and D&D-like systems). So, I could absolutely crush one encounter by just being lucky with a few consecutive empowered damage spell procs at the start of combat, but I can do the same encounter again and be crushed in turn by getting no procs and the enemies getting a few lucky procs at the start. That is not fun to me.

 

Variance is a natural part of infinity engine/D&D-style games, but that variance has to be in some reasonable bounds. Critical hits and such are fun and fine, and their effects have well-known long-run averages and the individual variance is not too strong. Randomly botching a fight because an important CC doesn't at least graze is an acceptable outcome, especially because such a disastrous outcome will only really happen when I'm doing a fight on the margin of possibility. Constant random empowerment on the other hand...

Edited February 26, 2018 by thelee

[Lamppost in Winter]

I'd also be worried about enemies getting this ability as well since being randomly one-shotted doesn't sound very fun.

[theBalthazar]

------------------------------------

 

Resolve

-2 % of Casting Time / point.

 

------------------------------------

 

Only the action. Not the recovery. Resolve is an instant fire of determination.

[khango]

------------------------------------

 

Resolve

-2 % of Casting Time / point.

 

------------------------------------

 

Only the action. Not the recovery. Resolve is an instant fire of determination.

 

I see resolve (in a non-mechanical sense) as more of an unquenchable flame of motivation that constantly burns than a momentary explosion of willpower.

Edited February 26, 2018 by khango

[theBalthazar]

You think it is more Recovery ? Your constant burning willpower to return to the fight ? Like that ? :

 

Dexterity : Casting Time -4 %

Resolve : Recovery -4 %

 

Problem with that, Casting time is generally more interresting for Casters. But the idea is also good.

[rothamon81]

Going back to PoE1 isn't possible bc concentration has been taken off, so resolve would be even worse. Why not totally scratch it, if it serves no purpose other than sounding good in RP? Otherwise (nearly) everyone will be running around with 3 RES, which to me sounds like some heavy depression character who wants to kill himself because his shoelaces are untied but can't because it seems too much of a hassle. And why stop at 3? Why not let it go down to 0 or -10?

 

So please either scratch it (which wont happen, bc 5 weeks left) or make it useful. Resolve means overcoming seemingly unsurmountable obstacles, geez, its actually the main stat of every hero in any fantasy story; in any good story. Why introduce it if you treat it so stepmotherly?

[Cheston]

I really like the idea of tying Resolve to Recovery Time. It makes sense for the stat, it's constantly useful for everyone, and there's already a whole interesting dynamic in place where some abilities have a higher Action Time or a higher Recovery. I can totally see a low-resolve wizard favoring the less physically "draining" spells (low recovery), or a high-resolve wizard burning through the more strenuous spells (high recovery).
 

It would require a lot of balance because Recovery is everywhere in Pillars' combat, but it'd fit so well. It'd feel as valuable as all of the other Pillars stats.

Edited February 26, 2018 by Cheston

[IndiraLightfoot]

You think it is more Recovery ? Your constant burning willpower to return to the fight ? Like that ? :

 

Dexterity : Casting Time -4 %

Resolve : Recovery -4 %

 

Problem with that, Casting time is generally more interresting for Casters. But the idea is also good.

 

 

I really like the idea of tying Resolve to Recovery Time. It makes sense for the stat, it's constantly useful for everyone, and there's already a whole interesting dynamic in place where some abilities have a higher Action Time or a higher Recovery. I can totally see a low-resolve wizard favoring the less physically "draining" spells (low recovery), or a high-resolve wizard burning through the more strenuous spells (high recovery).

 

It would require a lot of balance because Recovery is everywhere in Pillars' combat, but it'd fit so well. It'd feel as valuable as all of the other Pillars stats.

This too is a nice idea, and it would guarantee that Resolve isn't some common "dump stat".

[JerekKruger]

You think it is more Recovery ? Your constant burning willpower to return to the fight ? Like that ? :

 

Dexterity : Casting Time -4 %

Resolve : Recovery -4 %

 

Problem with that, Casting time is generally more interresting for Casters. But the idea is also good.

 

Doesn't Dexterity already reduce recovery? It did in Pillars at least. Not saying this is a bad suggestion, I quite like it, but it might involve modifying Dexterity.

[thelee]

 

You think it is more Recovery ? Your constant burning willpower to return to the fight ? Like that ? :

 

Dexterity : Casting Time -4 %

Resolve : Recovery -4 %

 

Problem with that, Casting time is generally more interresting for Casters. But the idea is also good.

 

 

I really like the idea of tying Resolve to Recovery Time. It makes sense for the stat, it's constantly useful for everyone, and there's already a whole interesting dynamic in place where some abilities have a higher Action Time or a higher Recovery. I can totally see a low-resolve wizard favoring the less physically "draining" spells (low recovery), or a high-resolve wizard burning through the more strenuous spells (high recovery).

 

It would require a lot of balance because Recovery is everywhere in Pillars' combat, but it'd fit so well. It'd feel as valuable as all of the other Pillars stats.

This too is a nice idea, and it would guarantee that Resolve isn't some common "dump stat".

 

 

I personally really don't like splitting up a different stat (Dexterity in this case) in Deadfire's system. I didn't like it when Might got split into Strength and Resolve, and I'm going to like it even less if Dexterity gets split into Dexterity and Resolve (because Dexterity's effect on your non-recovery action speed has to be bumped up to prevent this from being a stealth nerf to dex, which means combining Dexterity and Resolve becomes very good).

 

At this point, we are so close to release that I actually want Obsidian to be a bit conservative. Maybe, maybe, they can get empowerment to work, and maybe there's some system that doesn't produce the variance complaints that I had in my earlier message. But if they plow on this for a while and still can't get it to work, I'd rather they revert to at least a tweaked version of PoE's system (like I said, maybe +2 deflection instead of +1) rather than introduce a potentially radical new change ahead of release with minimal time to put it through its paces.

 

There'll be plenty of time post-release in patches to really deliberately evaluate the stat, but for launch you don't want to have too big of a moving part.

[vanyel54]

Random empower effect... Terrible Idea.

I will never base my strategy on this random event so i will ignore it. I really prefer the increase buff / decrease affliction solution.

[BrettNLowe]

Yeah, even if you steal recovery from Dex (worsening that stat), you've basically made a duplicate of Dex. Sure, it's slightly different, but they are both "do things faster."

[Gromnir]

Josh said in his latest Frog Helms Club update that they're thinking of adding a possibility of randomly Empowering a skill/spell to Resolve to make it more attractive. The higher RES, the higher chance you have of getting your skill/spell Empowered.

 

With such a change, it would be hard to forget about Empower, wouldn't you say?

 

Please do implement this, is all I can say, since it would make Empower a cooler feature, unlike so far...

(See my thread on Empower: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/95325-empower-babe-put-in-a-corner/?do=findComment&comment=1981303)

 

What do you guys think?

am thinking such a scheme needs to be cognizant o' the many spells and abilities which do not much benefit from empower.  casters have many spells which get zero or negligible benefits from power level.  is more than a few fighter and rogue abilities which would see little benefit from a random empower.

 

our templar with big resolve just got a random empower.  fantastic!  wait, what do you mean we got a circle of protection empowered? 

 

 

should not adopt a cheesy game show mechanic.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[draego]

From Josh

 

 

En Garde Mother****ers posted:

Do enemies empower skills in the beta currently? Will they get random empowers/depowers if resolve changes?

 

Enemies do not Empower currently. They would if these changes go through.

 

An important note: the Resolve-based random Empowers/Depowers would specifically only occur after a character has been in combat for more than a certain amount of time (e.g. 10 seconds). This is specifically to discourage save-scumming for a random alpha strike double Empower from stealth and similar tactics. 

 

And

 

 

Samuel Clemens posted:

You can't empower auto-attacks right? So a passive build wouldn't get anything out of Resolve?

 

Looking forward to a TPK due to a randomly empowered dragon's breath.

 

You’d still gain Deflection and Will. There is no “purely” passive build in Deadfire unless you steadfastly refuse to use your 1st level active power.

This proposal limits the impact of Empower (outside of restoring resources) to +5 Power Levels instead of the current +10 (though that could still be attained on a double Empower). I.e., while an Empowered enemy ability could be nasty, the leap in power would not be astronomical.

[Enduin]

This feels like a very gimmicky random chance that has very little interesting gameplay implications or mechanics for players to really influence or interact with in on any meaningful level as a last ditch effort to make Empower and Resolve have some kind of weight and relevance in the game. Pulling what I posted in one of the other dozen Resolve threads:

 

I would prefer to instead revamp the Injury system and have Resolve directly impact that to add more depth and Risk/Reward to it as a staple of combat.

 

Have two degrees of Injuries: Major and Minor. Major would function as the current injuries do now, but the only change would be they can only be healed by staying at an Inn, not just resting with food, so as to provide more weight behind choosing to heal them over simply choosing to rest and eat in the field. Acquire 4 of them and you die, same as it is now. Then you would have Minor injuries which inflict smaller penalties. You would be able to acquire 8 of them before perma death. They could be healed via resting/food, but the big difference is that Minor Injuries could be acquired via normal combat, and not just from Knockouts and Traps. I figured the easiest mechanism would be from Crits, with a % based chance to acquire an injury when dealt one, possibly influenced by the overall dmg dealt. When you are knocked out in combat that too would trigger a roll that would determine if you receive a Major or Minor injury, possibly again influenced by overall dmg dealt in the knockout blow.

 

Where Resolve plays into this is that your Resolve stat would help/hurt the overall % chance of acquiring Minor injuries from Crits in combat as well as the chances of receiving Major injuries from Knockouts. An alternative/additional possibility would be to have Resolve also decrease the effects of said injuries, so you can more easily power through multiple injuries with less of an impact on your character stats and fighting capabilities. And then obviously if you decrease your Resolve below 10 the odds of receiving Minor/Major injuries would then increase, as would the effects of said injuries.

 

To me this would help to make injuries a more interesting as a mechanic and fact of life you'll have to deal with in combat, providing a more meaningful risk/reward to resting and consuming supplies to heal, as well as giving Resolve a more substantial and real world impact on gameplay that doesn't favor or penalize any one class too much. Instead of just resting every time a companion gets knocked out and acquires an injury they would now become just another element to manage in combat. And while it's also random chance, it is one that the player has a much greater impact on via Attribute choices, buffs and overall tactics and strategy in combat to help reduce crits on their characters and overall execution of encounters to eliminate more dangerous enemies and protect those party members more susceptible to crits. 

Edited February 27, 2018 by Enduin

[wahmann1]

I don't mind randomness in general, but randomized empower does not feel like resolve to me. It feels like luck. Resolve is more of a grind. An appropriate (IMHO) random chance would be the equivalent of a death save: Maybe 20% +/- 2% per Resolve over 10 to jump back up with an injury after being "killed" every 10 seconds until the fight is over or until you've made as many checks as your Resolve. Maybe throw in some additional penalty based on the ratio of damage over what it took to "kill" you compared to your total hp. Even after the party is dead and you get that "Your Party was Killed" screen, you can add a "... or were they" option that allows anyone who can make the death save to crawl back to the world map and regroup. That's a pretty nice option if you are playing on Iron Man!

 

When somebody screams "Why don't you stay dead?!?" you know you've got resolve.

[Enoch]

Better than a random empower would be a random chance that an Empower that you decided to use would end up being costless.  Although by "better" here, I really mean "less bad."

 

Not sure what corresponding drawback a low-RES character would face.  A chance that an incoming Crit would knock off one of your Empower resources?

 

 

All that said, the least-bad outcome here, of those presented, is probably a reversion to Pillars 1 Might. 

Edited February 27, 2018 by Enoch

[Gromnir]

Better than a random empower would be a random chance that an Empower that you decided to use would end up being costless.  Although by "better" here, I really mean "less bad."

 

Not sure what corresponding drawback a low-RES character would face.  A chance that an incoming Crit would knock off one of your Empower resources?

 

 

All that said, the least-bad outcome here, of those presented, is probably a reversion to Pillars 1 Might. 

our thinking this resolve "solution" were necessarily linked to a reversion to might.  once might becomes the modifier for weapon and spell damage, then resolve returns to teh suk, yes?  is no reason to current power-up resolve, is there?   regardless, am preferring a random refund than a random empower, but... *shrug*

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Enoch]

Yeah, I should specify that I don't hate the current-BB STR-RES setup. 

[KDubya]

I'll have to wait and see what the numbers and the effects are. Would a 0 Resolve have 0% and then climb from there?

 

Randomly getting a powered up Empower might be fun.

 

Regardless if this is what it takes to get Might back I'm all in.

[draego]

quote josh

 

Subdividing duration bonuses categorically across multiple attributes would likely have the same effect as subdividing damage bonuses against multiple attributes. It's rare that a single class only has/uses abilities of a single type (e.g. Afflictions vs. DoTs vs. Inspirations, etc.).

 

Rip i dont think he likes some you guys ideas

Edited February 27, 2018 by draego

[Yosharian]

I think the random Empower idea is pretty good actually.  It's like a second crit system.  As long as it's not too brutal when enemies do it to you, it could add an interesting layer to combat.

 

I do think Resolve needs the boost.

 

I don't agree that it doesn't fit the Resolve attribute.  Someone with fierce resolve could definitely have a crazy 'spike' in power from time to time.  It's like a 'YOU SHALL NOT PASS' moment.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Yosharian

[dunehunter]

I think the random Empower idea is pretty good actually.  It's like a second crit system.  As long as it's not too brutal when enemies do it to you, it could add an interesting layer to combat.

 

I do think Resolve needs the boost.

 

I don't agree that it doesn't fit the Resolve attribute.  Someone with fierce resolve could definitely have a crazy 'spike' in power from time to time.  It's like a 'YOU SHALL NOT PASS' moment.

 

It's a crit system you cannot defend. With high deflection you can prevent enemy crit you, Res? No

[Yosharian]

 

I think the random Empower idea is pretty good actually.  It's like a second crit system.  As long as it's not too brutal when enemies do it to you, it could add an interesting layer to combat.

 

I do think Resolve needs the boost.

 

I don't agree that it doesn't fit the Resolve attribute.  Someone with fierce resolve could definitely have a crazy 'spike' in power from time to time.  It's like a 'YOU SHALL NOT PASS' moment.

 

It's a crit system you cannot defend. With high deflection you can prevent enemy crit you, Res? No

 

Prevent?  Reduce, yes, but not prevent.

 

As I said, as long as it's not too brutal when enemies do it...