After playing BETA Deadfire to me is absolutey epic

[Boeroer]

I thought you played the beta yourself?

[master guardian]

yeah i played the beta. 

 

The two main new differences from the first game i encountered where the new magic system and the boats encounters.

 

I briefly had a look at both

 

Not everyone racks up hundreds of hours like you do 

Edited March 13, 2018 by master guardian

[Lord_Mord]

 

By doing this they have really lowered the strategic capability of the game.....e.g less options available for casters.

Maybe. But what was it, that you found confusing about it? The way you describe it, it sounds less confusing, not more.

[master guardian]

 

 

By doing this they have really lowered the strategic capability of the game.....e.g less options available for casters.

Maybe. But what was it, that you found confusing about it? The way you describe it, it sounds less confusing, not more.

 

i only briefly played the BETA and ddint put too much time into trying to figure out the new mechanics.

 

Hence why confusing because i hadnt nutted them out yet

[Mannock]

 

 

By doing this they have really lowered the strategic capability of the game.....e.g less options available for casters.

Maybe. But what was it, that you found confusing about it? The way you describe it, it sounds less confusing, not more.

 

i only briefly played the BETA and ddint put too much time into trying to figure out the new mechanics.

 

Hence why confusing because i hadnt nutted them out yet

 

"I read about World War 2 for 5 minutes but I didn't get it. World War 2 is confusing."

 

*edit*

 

Edited March 13, 2018 by Mannock

[Wormerine]

What a royal Fup from Obsidian to implement this. By doing this they have really lowered the strategic capability of the game.....e.g less options available for casters.

 

I have to disagree. While current system has issues that need to be iron out I do find it to be more engaging and fun. iI’s a step in right direction. It solves problems old system had. I think one if it’s issues is, that it tries to patch old system to fit new gameplay flow, instead of building from ground up a system for per-encounter casting. It has potential and I am looking forward to see it in finished form.

 

EDIT: as far as confusing part: Deadfire has no tutorial right now. If like many of us, you would follow every update and bit of information right from gameplay announcement there is little confusing about beta. However, if you just jumped right in I can understand the confusion. Ship combat especially lacks a lot of feedback and some key mechanics don’t work in current beta build.

Edited March 13, 2018 by Wormerine

[JerekKruger]

My main problem with the new magic system is from a role-playing perspective. I always liked the aspect of finding and learning spells throughout the game, like my Wizard was a magical scholar, but I can't do that anymore. I don't mind per encounter spells in theory (though there are problems that need overcoming to make it great) but the loss of learning new spells bugs me.

 

EDIT: it bugs me more so because I think the reason Obsidian got rid of memorisation was to free up grimoires as part of a class trinket system that they have now scrapped.

Edited March 13, 2018 by JerekKruger

[VincentNZ]

 

And for those who didn't play the beta (like me): In which way is it different. All that I know is, that per rest is gone.

1) per rest is gone, which means you can spam spells in every fight, however, you are limited to casting 2 spells per spell level.

 

2) to compensate, now spells take time to cast. For example, in current build it takes 6 seconds to cast fireball.

 

3) in addition to that you can only learn spells when you level up. Wizards get grimoires which can expand their repertoire up to extra 2 spells per level but you can’t edit grimoires, so it’s very likely that one grimoire will contain spells which you already know or can’t cast due to subclass restrictions limiting its usefulness. Druids&Priest gain free extra spell every power level based on their subclass. (Personal note: small selection of spells makes singleclass spellcasters feel very restricted. It is confirmed that singleclass characters will get an addition talents [spells] to pick, when reaching new power level, however, there will be passives to consider as well)

 

4) new armour/penetration system applies to spells as well, so it’s possible to spend couple seconds casting spell, only to see multiple NO PEN messages and do a fraction of base damage, though it is not nearly as bad, as it was in beta1.

 

5) in current beta build (though it is likely to be changed for 1.0 release, if Josh’s Tumblr posts are to be trusted) strength governs weapon damage, while healing&magic damage has been moved to resolve. That makes spellcasters less flexible in combat and encourages either a specialised weapon build, or constant casting.

 

That is quite a good summary, thank you!

 

It would seem that spellcasting is a little more like "classic" RPGs with casttimes and a limit of use in each fight. I think this is more accessible, yet more limiting when thinking in the context of multi and subclasses. For the average joe I think this is more understandable and I think the general min/max guy will find workarounds.

 

The armour penetration sounds confusing, because there seem to two values, raw damage and penetration, yet a high penetration value will not mean more damage per hit, right? Say I have (note that I do not know numbers) 30 damage per attack and have a penetration value of 20, would this mean on a high armour target would be 20? Or is penetration a chance to make damage that is compared to the target's armour rating? All I read about is rather complex.

For me it would make sense to have a certain damage value and that is partly negated by armour. That is easy to understand. At the same time with heavy armour your actions become slower to make up for it. Add to that an evade chance and on the first glance you have an accessible and balanced system, but I do not have the full insight of course.

[Wormerine]

The armour penetration sounds confusing, because there seem to two values, raw damage and penetration, yet a high penetration value will not mean more damage per hit, right? Say I have (note that I do not know numbers) 30 damage per attack and have a penetration value of 20, would this mean on a high armour target would be 20? Or is penetration a chance to make damage that is compared to the target's armour rating? All I read about is rather complex.

 

Armour and penetration system is something I didn’t make my mind about yet. Josh reasoning seems good, however, I am not sure how well it plays in practice. It annoyed me a lot at first, than I played more and there were some improvements made. I don’t mind it now, though I am still not sure if it works well or not. Most enemies in beta tend to be weak toward crush damage, heavily favour if certain weapon types. It should be the case in full game, once we get a wider enemy variety.

 

First of all, this time around underpenetration is percentage based (- % of base damage done, instead of -number). This change has been made to have armour scale better throughout the game: as damage dealt would get bigger and bigger, flat number reduction couldn’t keep up. With % based system gain from high armour is consistent.

 

Every weapon/spell has a penetration stat. This penetration gets compared to target’s armour rating:

 

1) if penetration is equal or higher that target’s armour rating than the attack deals 100% damage.

 

2) if penetration is 2x value of target’s armour rating that the attack deals 130% damage.

 

3) if penetration is lower that target’s armour rating than damage dealt get reduced by 25% percent per missing point of penetration, with a cap being at -75% damage:

9 pen vs 10 armour = 75% base damage

9 pen vs 11armour = 50% base damage

9 pen vs 12+ armour = 25% base damage

 

4) raw damage ignores armour system entirely.

 

5) enemies (and you) can have different armour values for different types of attacks, including complete immunities in some cases. It is encouraged to switched weapons, if one used proves uneffective.

 

As a side not: first iteration was even more extreme: any penetration below target’s armour rating would do flat 30% of base damage. Josh reasoning was to make underpenetration easy to calculate - you have too low pen than you should switch. It felt bad, and didn’t find much support among beta players and was one of the first changes made. It was especially devastating for spells - it was enough for a fireball to be 1 pen below a target to deal only 30% of intended damage, assuming it hit (grazes weren’t in at the time either).

[VincentNZ]

Thanks for the insight.

 

This does sound needlessly complex though. And with additional grazes, crits and whatnot, damage would seem awfully inconsistent. For it to be transparent you would need a lot more info in every stage of the fight. Some stuff would just not seem really worthwhile, too. The incentive to use AoE damage spells and abilities would drop if there were more armoured than unarmoured targets, because damage would be so low.

If a fireball hits four targets but only deals 6 damage instead 24 because the penetration is so low, I would of course rather use a single target spell of that level, or a buff/debuff. And if I did not know about how armoured my targets are, I would never use it at all.

 

Maybe it will work out though, I do not have the full inisght, but I am inclined to regard magical damage in particular as something armour can not really protect of and this is why you have attributes like willpower or similar to defend against it. This makes armour not the go-to thing to mitigate damage.

 

But yeah in order to balance things out with all the different classes, weapons and skills you probably have to come up with something more complex to avoid a steamroll by certain set-ups or at higher levels. The times of fighter, rogue and caster as only roles are long gone.

[Wormerine]

It doesn’t really impact reliability as penetration and armour rating are stable - you either penetrate or not. The exception are crits, which double your penetration rating. It is not that different than the old system, except it scales, and is a bit less elegant.

 

As far as armour rating influecing AOE spells - it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. If fireball were 100% effective in 100% encounters you would always use fireball in every encounter now, when spells are per encounter. So you look at your enemies and decide what is the best approach. Maybe they do have low enough armour to blast a fireball. Maybe it will damage all of them, maybe just some squishy ones. Maybe fireball isn’t a good choice in that situation and you would do better using higher penetration but single target spells. It’s tricky in the beta as it’s a short excerpt of the game and you don’t get to “learn” enemies during one playthrough. Once you do, you never fight them again. In the full game, learning enemies should be an integral part of the experience.

 

The main worry I have is, if “penetration” is a god stat which makes every weapon and spell universally more useful. It all depends on how balanced the encounters are. Lower penetration, but higher damage potential could be a useful tool, if there are enemies to suffer to that. At the same time, high penetration weapon/spell will be always useful, while the former might be more situational. Which one will you pick on level up? I feel this is more of a balance issue, than a mechanical weak point, and it’s difficult to judge how those mechanic will behave is the full game.

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

 

I have cancelled everything in my diary for April 4 for 1 month

Poor sod! The release of the game's postponed to May the 8th.

[JerekKruger]

Poor sod! The release of the game's postponed to May the 8th.

Might as well cancel everything until June now.

[VincentNZ]

It doesn’t really impact reliability as penetration and armour rating are stable - you either penetrate or not. The exception are crits, which double your penetration rating. It is not that different than the old system, except it scales, and is a bit less elegant.

 

As far as armour rating influecing AOE spells - it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. If fireball were 100% effective in 100% encounters you would always use fireball in every encounter now, when spells are per encounter. So you look at your enemies and decide what is the best approach. Maybe they do have low enough armour to blast a fireball. Maybe it will damage all of them, maybe just some squishy ones. Maybe fireball isn’t a good choice in that situation and you would do better using higher penetration but single target spells. It’s tricky in the beta as it’s a short excerpt of the game and you don’t get to “learn” enemies during one playthrough. Once you do, you never fight them again. In the full game, learning enemies should be an integral part of the experience.

 

The main worry I have is, if “penetration” is a god stat which makes every weapon and spell universally more useful. It all depends on how balanced the encounters are. Lower penetration, but higher damage potential could be a useful tool, if there are enemies to suffer to that. At the same time, high penetration weapon/spell will be always useful, while the former might be more situational. Which one will you pick on level up? I feel this is more of a balance issue, than a mechanical weak point, and it’s difficult to judge how those mechanic will behave is the full game.

Yep I understand the reasoning, but I think it opens up a whole new can of worms when you think about how different classes use different armour. What about light or medium armour that would come natural to rogues, chanters rangers and such? Just from the information at hand you would want to maximize your armour if you want to shield yourself from ANY damage, or to go unarmoured to get all the benefits from that. Having a light or no armour will still mean you will get hit for the double value against many enemies. A medium armour for a non-tank melee might diminish some damage, but why not go all the way and use that full plate?

 

Yeah and as you say, it is highly equipment and engagement dependent. You might find some fights ridiculously easy against high level targets, simply because their armour was low. Or you just chip away at enemies and it takes forever because you only do half the damage most of the time because you are fighting six full plate fighters. Personally I never really switched weapon kits, because it is another form of complexity that needs to analyzed in an already complicated game. If I need to switch weapons than I need way more transparent mechanics than PoE had. The game needs to tell me exactly why my weapon is not effective without the need of going through menus and without cluttering the UI, otherwise many players would just be totally oblivious of the mechanic and why they steamroll/have a hard time.

[Wormerine]

Yep I understand the reasoning, but I think it opens up a whole new can of worms when you think about how different classes use different armour. What about light or medium armour that would come natural to rogues, chanters rangers and such? Just from the information at hand you would want to maximize your armour if you want to shield yourself from ANY damage, or to go unarmoured to get all the benefits from that. Having a light or no armour will still mean you will get hit for the double value against many enemies. A medium armour for a non-tank melee might diminish some damage, but why not go all the way and use that full plate?

 

Yeah and as you say, it is highly equipment and engagement dependent. You might find some fights ridiculously easy against high level targets, simply because their armour was low. Or you just chip away at enemies and it takes forever because you only do half the damage most of the time because you are fighting six full plate fighters. Personally I never really switched weapon kits, because it is another form of complexity that needs to analyzed in an already complicated game. If I need to switch weapons than I need way more transparent mechanics than PoE had. The game needs to tell me exactly why my weapon is not effective without the need of going through menus and without cluttering the UI, otherwise many players would just be totally oblivious of the mechanic and why they steamroll/have a hard time.

These are all good points and valid concerns and I am afraid I don’t know game nearly in-depth enough to confirm/relieve your worries. Medium armour has always had this issue where you either build DPS character, and put him in light, fast clothing, or you build a tank so you put him in the heaviest thing you can find. To encourage medium armor use its recovery got buffed. Whenever weak armour is useful depends on how much penetration various enemy attacks are. While it won’t save you from heavy hitter, it should be useful against smaller attacks. If you want your character to survive prolonged, direct confrontation you have to consider heavier options, no matter if it’s fighter, rogue, wizard or cipher. Classes in POE aren’t restricted in armour types they can use, and deflection is stat entirely seperate from armours.

 

I am afraid that in Deadfire you will have to get used to switching weapons. It is very encouraged by design - you can use any weapon without penalty no matter if you got proficiency for it or not, and proficiencies are rather plentiful. Luckily, penetration is very clearly communicated - if you are below penetration or do full penetration (2x pen vs armour rating) a tooltip above your target communicates it well, together with infamous NO PEN message.

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zFSsIEApvKo

1:34

 

It is as simple as taking a look at enemie’s stat sheet to check what armour rating is the weakest and making decision based on that (change target, swap weapon, use modal etc.).

[master guardian]

 

 

 

By doing this they have really lowered the strategic capability of the game.....e.g less options available for casters.

Maybe. But what was it, that you found confusing about it? The way you describe it, it sounds less confusing, not more.

 

i only briefly played the BETA and ddint put too much time into trying to figure out the new mechanics.

 

Hence why confusing because i hadnt nutted them out yet

 

"I read about World War 2 for 5 minutes but I didn't get it. World War 2 is confusing."

 

*edit*

 

 

this forum is full of pointless negativity and personal insults like this crap.

 

why doesnt everyone here try and move forward and aiming to be more positive or the mods should be getting rid of poeple like this instead of letting it flourish

[SonicMage117]

this forum is full of pointless negativity and personal insults like this crap.

 

why doesnt everyone here try and move forward and aiming to be more positive or the mods should be getting rid of poeple like this instead of letting it flourish

Yeah, you tell 'em! The other day they bullied me for my English, and it isn't even my primary language lol

[Mannock]

 

[

 

"I read about World War 2 for 5 minutes but I didn't get it. World War 2 is confusing."

 

*edit*

 

this forum is full of pointless negativity and personal insults like this crap.

 

why doesnt everyone here try and move forward and aiming to be more positive or the mods should be getting rid of poeple like this instead of letting it flourish

 

It was in jest you know. Hence the smiley at the end.

[Boeroer]

this forum is full of pointless negativity and personal insults like this crap.

 

why doesnt everyone here try and move forward and aiming to be more positive or the mods should be getting rid of poeple like this instead of letting it flourish

Negativity maybe. Personal insults not so much. I didn't see any in the last couple of days.

 

Moderators will intervene as soon as insults get thrown around. So maybe you are a tad too sensitive here.

 

Sometimes users who otherwise are not known for being naughty will react with sarcasm and irony if they think some posts are really stupid, trollish, full of self entitlement or such. Due to language issues this may also happen when posts are not really meant to be annoying. For example germans or russians with little experience in international communications or low English skills often come across as blunt because they usually are used to a more direct communication style. This can be interpreted in a wrong way.

 

Other users are known for their sharp tongue although they are reasonable. I remember getting a major clyster from Achilles when I first posted in these forums because I did some Cpt.-Obvious-post (in order to get a higher post count so that that stupid admin-approval would go away sooner).

 

Usually the Obsidian forums are a nice place compared to many other gaming forums. Usually the pointless negativity is kept within reasonable limits. It's just that some behaviours provoke pretty harsh reactions. Take SonicMage's style for example: He obviously has a knack for pushing the upset-button on several forum people without breaking any forum rules. Maybe even unintentionally (hard to tell). I usually identify a certain audaciousness and a "Whoa there - here I come" attitude or a "I'm the expert you know?"-shtick what annoys most forum fixtures.

 

At the moment - because of the pending release of Deadfire - the forums are more crowded than they used to be and discussions heat up more quickly.

 

I don't think it's all too bad though. Just don't victimize yourself and it will be ok.

Edited March 14, 2018 by Boeroer

[Lord_Mord]

 

The other day they bullied me for my English, and it isn't even my primary language lol

That is true for a lot of people here. So if someone said something about your English, maybe he/she really had problems understanding what you mean, or just had the impression that you didn't really try?

 

I always thought that you really were from Texas.

 

 

this forum is full of pointless negativity and personal insults like this crap.

It was not a personal insult, if you ask me. It's just that the forum members here are used to very deep discussions about game mechanics and stuff and there you come, saying the new system isn't good and very confusing, but admit on the other hand that you didn't even have a good look at it. All concerns are discussed here, but most members expect that you know what you are talking about. Maybe I went a little to far, comparing you to Sonic , but Mannock was just a little sarcastic.

 

Stop complaining and try to better articulate your point of view. That's a lesson many of us had to learn, including me.

 

[JerekKruger]

That is true for a lot of people here. So if someone said something about your English, maybe he/she really had problems understanding what you mean, or just had the impression that you didn't really try?

 

Given I am one of the "bullies" I can confirm that is exactly why I said what I said. My advice to anyone whose first language isn't English would be "use simple words and simple sentence constructions", and that was exactly what I was trying to suggest to Sonic.

[Wormerine]

 

That is true for a lot of people here. So if someone said something about your English, maybe he/she really had problems understanding what you mean, or just had the impression that you didn't really try?

 

 

Given I am one of the "bullies" I can confirm that is exactly why I said what I said. My advice to anyone whose first language isn't English would be "use simple words and simple sentence constructions", and that was exactly what I was trying to suggest to Sonic.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc

[master guardian]

if you are making any comment in regards to another user DONT SAY IT UNLESS IT IS POSITIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

say what you want about the game, criticism about the game is fine, but................

 

sarcasm , relentless annoying jibs directed at other users NO MATTER WHAT !!!! is terrible

 

IF ITS NOT POSITIVE DONT SAY IT!!!!!

 

KAPISH!!!!!  

 

AND A SMILEY FACE DOESNT MEAN SH$$$$t

Edited March 14, 2018 by master guardian

[Lord_Mord]

 

if you are making any comment in regards to another user DONT SAY IT UNLESS IT IS POSITIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

say what you want about the game, criticism about the game is fine, but................

 

sarcasm , relentless annoying jibs directed at other users NO MATTER WHAT !!!! is terrible

 

IF ITS NOT POSITIVE DONT SAY IT!!!!!

 

KAPISH!!!!!  

 

AND A SMILEY FACE DOESNT MEAN SH$$$$t

 

You are an excellent role model. So calm and reasonable.

 

Oh ... I just noticed: That was sarcasm.

 

Sry, man. I really tried. But I have enough.

[master guardian]

I have screen shotted this thread and a few other threads where the mods have let the trolls run rampant

 

I am sending it all to onsidians head office so hopefully we can get rid of the crap , maybe new mods