Why the hell are they dumbing down the game?

[Andraste]

I don't approve of all the mechanical changes, but I don't think that 'dumbing the game down' is why most of them are being made. Arguably the Health/Endurance split is being taken out because it confused lots of more casual players, but the rest of the alterations seem to have other reasons behind them. I suspect that the need to balance multiclass characters is the source of a lot of it.

 

Based on the beta, I dare say there will be some changes I love, and some I dislike. So far: love the new rest system because I thought the way the last game handled resting was dumb and this is a much better use of food. Hate the replacement of Might with Strength because I'm going to have to completely change the way several of my characters work, and I liked them they way they were. To be honest I have never much liked Vancian casting, and I found Wizards, Priests and Druids over-powered in the first game so I'm fine with the changes they've made there. In the beta, I found myself having to think about when and how I used my spells a lot more than I do in the first game. More than once I ran out of casts early on and had to struggle through the rest of a fight, something that never happened to me in the first PoE, so I'm not sure that per-encounter spells actually make things easier.

[Sedrefilos]

Pretty sure most people using the phrase "dumbing bown" don't know what it really means (or implies). In an extent, I find it offensive.

 

Most mean "streamlined" but I don't think Deadfire is streamlining anything. It just presents them differently or switch some mechanics to a different (in most cases worst for me) version.

[Wormerine]

It’s frustrating. All the changes listed here have been known from the very start of the fig campaign, over a year ago. Reason for and against them have been made over and over again. Devs made it clear why they make them. And yet a bit over a month before release, a poster comes with a very aggressive attitude flipping out as if it is new info, as if we were cheated, while claiming some kind of intellectual superiority over everyone else without even stating tangible reasons for disliking said changes. But as news has been slow, and nothing of value has appeared in forums for quite a while, let’s go back and talk about the same topics for the 4^th of the 5^th time.

 

1)

They are also dumbing down the stats, very inspired before, that ALL stats were useful for everyone and you could make really diverse chars where you had to either balance or sacrifice some to get great weaknesses in exchange for great strenghs (I loved tha)

Huh? If anything, splitting might into two stats makes it more difficult to not sacrifice something. Keep in mind resolve governs all abilities that are not tied to physical attack, meaning not just spells. The change was made precisely to make all attributes valuable to everyone – due to changes made to armor and penetration resolve lost its usefulness.

 

However, there is little reason to argue for that. That was an experiment (keep in mind this is beta, this is not finished game and balance, mechanics and features are a subject to change) and one that wasn’t well received by many. From what we know might will return and there are some further attempts to make resolve more appealing. I don’t have high hopes, but we will see what they will come up with.

 

2)

They are dumbing down the health system, removing their inspired health/endurance system that really makes it feel like you are getting continously weary and worn down and hungry.

Pfff, again with offensive “dumbing down” standing for “I don’t like it”. This time I am not a fan of the change to injury, though with current playthrough of PoE1 I am less disappointed. For the most part the new injury system fulfills the same role as the old health/endurance system – it forces players to rest every once in a while. However, as the old system forced players to rest not matter how well they played the new system is a result of failure on players part – you let your companion get knocked out, you stepped into a trap. This is actually a part of the system I really like. Considering you would want to keep bonuses from good food for as long as possible, keeping rested tied to your failures seem like the better way of doing it. What the old system had, which the new doesn’t is “in combat” resource. No matter how much healing you had your tank would run out of health if he took too much damage. It was, however, an element of only the toughest fights and as healing is much more limited and valuable, after all there are only that many spells you can cast within one fight and they take time, such additional resource might not be needed. Overall, while playing Deadfire beta, I am missing health/endurance much less than I thought I would. It was a bit more nuanced than the new injury system, but only “a bit”.

 

3)

Aswell as dumbing down the spell system (see here) (https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/96465-what-does-everyone-think-about-the-new-casting-system/)

 

So spells no longer feel like truly grand abilities that should be used sparingly and totally deplete your soul until you rest.

 

Requiring for you to have a nice cozy camp with you and your party members and use your limited supplies as you rest up for the night and get some food, to replenish your health and magic.

First things first: Baldur’s Gate and Pillars of Eternity didn’t have resource management outside each individual combat. Except some rare instances (Spellhold’s Labirynth) player can rest whenever they want, how often they want with only drawbacks were 1) annoying random encounters 2) wasting time running back to the town and buying supplies. While those games fake resource management by those soft restrictions, they do not have resource management – spending your “resource” badly isn’t punished in any way. It is similar to a health system or ammo, if you could simply refill those by pressing a button when you run low on it.

 

I get that some people created self imposed restrictions, like resting only in taverns etc. but if players have to design their own rules to make a system fun, that means the original system has issues.

 

With that in mind, there are two paths we can take to improve on that flawed system: rethink structure of the game to add an element of resource management (perma death dungeon run with limited system within? Aka. Darkest Dungeon) or focus on resource management which already is in the game – each individual combat. They went for the second. It might be your preferred way of doing, hell, I am not sure if it’s my preferred way of doing – I am a fan of tough decisions. But it is better than the previous system.

 

This is an idea Obsidian was playing around even back in PoE1. March’s addition of free use of low level spells and later mastery of few spells was just that. If the old system worked – players played the way devs hope them to – I doubt they would change it just for the kicks. Obsidian revealed couple things, like people never switching Grimoires. I imagine way they paced and used spells also wasn’t what Obsidian was hoping for. So they changed it into something that better encouraged intended way of playing.

 

As far as my concerns – I really have only one. How will Deadfire handle epic fights? In previous games those were handled by requiring players to use all their tools to win. For Deadfire they will have to rethink how they design those. It could lead to some fresh, dangerous opponents, but it also could be a big letdown, where fight with the epic dragon feels the same as an average fight.

 

4)

**WHY ARE WE CATERING TO IDIOTS!? THE GAME HAS BEEN BACKED!**

Well, someone should have paid closer attention to campaign rather than blindly backing and assuming that the game will be what one imagined it will be. All those changed discussed above were announced early during the campaign. Shame on you.

EDIT: Typos and grammatical incompetence.

Edited March 19, 2018 by Wormerine

[DexGames]

 

 

Health/Endurance. [Now : Full Life every f**king Fight ! Yey ! *Clapping*]

 

That's bull****. We have injuries.

 

 

 

Your Character is Injured ? Don't worry man, just buy 10 Stacks of x99 Hardtack & you're good to go ! 

[JerekKruger]

I don't know if it is being 'dumbed down' and I am going to keep an open mind until I play the thing. However I was a big fan of the Vancian casting system and the health system in the first game. Having them changed so dramatically is theoretically a disappointment for me. But we will see if they are a disappointment in fact.

 

Pretty much sums up my position too. I loved the health/endurance split so I'm sad to see it go, and as a non-rest spammer I liked the challenge of deciding when and when not to use spells* that per rest brought. I'm trying to remain open minded to per encounter spells, though the best I can hope for the new health/injury system is that it's not too bad: health/endurance is better in my opinion.

 

Actually, when it comes to spell casting the thing I miss most from Pillars is the ability to learn spells from grimoires. That feature always gave me the feeling of my Wizard being a scholarly type, and whilst it has nothing to do with game mechanics this loss bothers me a lot.

 

*As a side note I feel the problem of rest spamming could have been largely solved by simply removing all camping supplies from all locations apart from shops. That way to truly rest spam you'd have to trek back town every two or three rests, and whilst some people were willing to do that I doubt most were (especially with Pillars load times).

[Lord_Mord]

 

Your Character is Injured ? Don't worry man, just buy 10 Stacks of x99 Hardtack & you're good to go !

 

As far as I understood, injuries won't go away unless you rest.

[algroth]

 

 

Your Character is Injured ? Don't worry man, just buy 10 Stacks of x99 Hardtack & you're good to go !

 

As far as I understood, injuries won't go away unless you rest.

 

Yes, but if I'm not mistaken, resting is no longer restricted to supplies, but to food. If you want to remove an injury, you need to eat something while you rest. Obviously hardtack is also a resource to be used by the crew and so on so that has to be managed as well.

[JerekKruger]

 

 

Your Character is Injured ? Don't worry man, just buy 10 Stacks of x99 Hardtack & you're good to go !

 

As far as I understood, injuries won't go away unless you rest.

 

 

Which is what DexGames is saying. Resting requires food, Hardtack is food (and its cheap), you can carry tonnes of the stuff and rest after every battle if you want.

[Boeroer]

Yes, but you can rest all the time because camping supplies are gone. Now you use food. Hardtack is food and you can carry 99 with you.

[Gfted1]

I think Ive seen it mentioned in the sailing threads that "hardtack" causes -1 morale? Does the same happen when consuming that type of food on land?

[Boeroer]

No. It is just very inexpensive and doesn't give you any resting bonus. Other food (which you can find and buy for a bit more copper) does give you bonuses.

Edited March 19, 2018 by Boeroer

[Veevoir]

Basically - the party eats crap you wouldn't feed your crew with. 10/10

[Wormerine]

I think Ive seen it mentioned in the sailing threads that "hardtack" causes -1 morale? Does the same happen when consuming that type of food on land?

Its different. You use food to feed both crew and your teammates.

 

Moral is a mechanics tied to crew. Feed them with hardtacks for too long and they be unhappy, gaining xp slower, possibly rebelling etc.

 

Feeding your teammates with hardtacks won't lower moral but it also won't provide bonuses. To encourage people to not rest too often a high quality food gives your team bonuses (similar to those gained from resting in high quality rooms in PoE1). You rest again, you loose this bonus. So yes, you could rest after every fight if you stock up on hardtracks. However, unlike in previous iterations you gain very little by it. The only per-rest resources are willpoints and potential special abilities from items. In previous games resting spam was breaking a game and needed to be discouraged because using your abilities made game trivial. In Deadfire by resting you are not really making things easier, unless you really want those willpoints. Resting is result of player's failures (falling in battle, running into traps) rather than a punishment for using resources at their disposal.  

[Lord_Mord]

OK, that is something I really dislike. I always ignore those bonuses.

Edited March 19, 2018 by Lord_Mord

[JerekKruger]

OK, that is something I really dislike. I always ignore those bonuses.

Yeah I suspect my party will eat nothing but hardtack with the exception of just before boss fights (probably not there either).

[Wormerine]

OK, that is something I really dislike. I always ignore those bonuses.

Unexpected. Any specific reason? I find UI easy, so its not like in the first game where buffing with food was a pain in the butt. Did you dislike survival bonuses from PoE1 as well, or is it something else?

[Guest Ontarah]

Seriously the **** are they doing? No one complained about this, we complained about the graphics and mostly ****ty companions, if anyone did complain about these things they were few and far between.

 

Btw, the health/endurance system is PISS EASY to understand, if people couldn't understand it then news flash THEY DIDN'T DESERVE TO AND DESERVED TO BE DISADVANTAGED FOR LACK OF INTELLIGENCE, it's an RPG and this one in particular was quite a high brow one, or at least it was.

 

**WHY ARE WE CATERING TO IDIOTS!? THE GAME HAS BEEN BACKED!**

 

I am replaying PoE right now in anticipation of PoED and figured I would actually bother to get on the forums and look up updates for it as I haven't followed development closely on this one.  I was literally just complaining to my SO last night about some of the arbitraryass cheapness of the POE combat system which was the main thing that kept me from enjoying the game as much as the old Infinity Engine games.  I told him that like 60% of the point seemed to be so that certain types could brag about how many character build spreadsheets they had and how many ledgers full of party optimization calculations they had run through.  And that I played BG1 as a 12 year old girl and it was my first ever computer game and I still managed it just fine and that I thought that would be impossible for me to do with PoE at that age.  Etc. Etc.

 

Then I find out today to my pleasant surprise that apparently most of the arbitrary rubbish is being removed in favor of something that doesn't require a Masters degree to achieve baseline competency at and this comedic ragefest topic is at the top.  I got some good laughs as it literally just gives evidence to my point.  Thanks especially for this quote "I actually liked sacrificing what obsidian though my primary stat should be (might) to make my own unique char, which 1 man solo'd Path of the damned btw, and not in that ****ty chicken **** rogue way either." I will definitely be showing him that when I get home.

 

Disclaimer: This is not a disparagement of anybody who like challenging gameplay, tactical combat, building optimizations or whatever.  I like that stuff a lot too or I wouldn't be here.  It's rather a disparagement of people who want these games to be as inaccessible, esoteric, and unfriendly as possible so they can feel superior to everybody else when they beat them.    

Edited March 19, 2018 by Ontarah

[Yenkaz]

I feel like the overall negativity of this thread could repel most user's internet from properly accessing it, as their precious electrons would be repelled. That's probably a good thing for them.

 

Anyway, I don't really feel like you had to had a super optimized party to get by in POE, standard companions would do just fine and in a few situations an average player would face party annihilation and have to switch strategy or do something else first - not dissimilar to BG2. I got my ass handed to me more than a few times both on normal and a following hard playthrough and still wouldn't trade the custom companions for any optimized ones.

 

POE taught you well with the hover-overs, but admittedly there were only really 3-4 spells of each spell level I ever bothered with.

 

... With all of this middle-of-the-road nonsense out of the way: I feel like this is all extremely hyperbolic. I'll miss the feeling of resource spending with tents and special spells as well, but it's not the end of the world.

Edited March 19, 2018 by Yenkaz

[SonicMage117]

They've definitely dumbed down the game in some areas (comparing to the first), regardless, even if a game still doesn't hold you hands can still be casual. We've been tricked into thinking "It's uncommon or niche so it could not possibly be considered casual." Let us set this record straight...

 

 

 

That said, I believe they've dumbed down the game for a few reasons:

 

1.) To appeal to a new audience this time around. Deadfire sold great on pc, nobody is denying this. However, it was one of the lower selling games on consoles. Fix this by making it more accessible. Simple, yes?

 

2.) To balance the experimental systems and functions. Some people may not understand how this works but from a developer perspective, developers will realize that too complex is never good. Balance things to make things easier for players to grasp while introducing new experimental systems ensure for better times from new fans and nit worrying about people saying "It's too hard!" And leaving a bad review for your game.

 

3.) The theme of ships and beaches screams casual so it makes sense to have a more casually immersive hame than the first one which has a complex vibe/tone set up through darkness and depressing. Deadfire is an ocean of sand with screams "Have fun with me!" And not very many people thing if hardcore or overly complex as fun.

 

4.) Console and mobile ports. Which have a more casual player base. Players who are on console and mobile generally do not like wasting time on difficult rt+p games but the will enjoy something that they feel to be more welcoming and more chilled environment.

 

This is just my opinion on the subject. Take it as a grain of salt and not a pinch of pepper. When more is added, just as much will be taken away. Simply.

Edited March 19, 2018 by SonicMage117

[Guest]

This is just my opinion on the subject.

FTFY

[SonicMage117]

Thank you, I fixed/edited it

[Gfted1]

 

smh.

[Wormerine]

I love how as soon as you announce "there will be a consol port in the future done by a different company" people immediately claim the game has been somehow compromised.

 

3.) The theme of ships and beaches screams casual so it makes sense to have a more casually immersive hame than the first one which has a complex vibe/tone set up through darkness and depressing. Deadfire is an ocean of sand with screams "Have fun with me!" And not very many people thing if hardcore or overly complex as fun.

[sarcasm]

I know, the same happened to BG! After excellent first game they dumbed it down for the sequel! Arabian setting just screams casual. They even added romances to attract female audience. Dont get me started on those "highlight interactive object" scrubs and removing weapon degradation.. It all would be good if the game wasn't designed to appeal to tablet casuals.
[/sarcasm]

Edited March 19, 2018 by Wormerine

[Elkor_Alish]

Just an aside, was there really anything wrong with Resolve? In my playthroughs, I found Perception and Resolve the primary attributes for my Paladin, with Dex and Intelligence my second tier. Con and Might were my dump stats for the most part. I mean, I had five other dudes to build for combat support, but only one for dialogue and discovery. All he really needed to do was be competent and hold his own.

 

Which he did. Better than Durance, that is for damn sure.

Edited March 19, 2018 by Elkor_Alish

[Yenkaz]

3.) The theme of ships and beaches screams casual so it makes sense to have a more casually immersive hame than the first one which has a complex vibe/tone set up through darkness and depressing. Deadfire is an ocean of sand with screams "Have fun with me!"

 

There are two imperial powers trying to make the entire area a colony by any means necessary, there are pirates I assume are of the "murder, rape and pillage" and not the funny Pirates of the Caribbean kind and a fragmented local power that can't figure out to do what must be done to repel them.

 

Meanwhile there's a resurrected god who's, as I understand it, walking around sucking up people's souls to regenerate.

 

I don't really think we're going to get pretty beaches and good times all around. It's not Obsidian's style.

Edited March 19, 2018 by Yenkaz