Why the hell are they dumbing down the game?

[InsaneCommander]

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.

 

 

Excellent question. I don't know if this can be answered here, maybe with spoiler tags, but is there a bigger battle in the beta? How interesting will mages be in this case?

[JerekKruger]

And it creates the aforementioned you can either be good at dialogue or good at melee combat but not both. 

 

Except, as mentioned, you absolutely can be good at both.

 

However you can be both excellent at dialogue and excellent at magical combat. 

 

Might is arguably more important for spell damage than it is for melee damage (there are very few +damage effects that work on spells). For Druids and Priests Dexterity is very important to give fast casting (Wizards get Deleterious Alacrity of Motion for that). Perception is good for getting spells to hit or even crit (particularly important for crowd control spells).

 

Or excellent at dialogue and excellent in ranged combat. 

 

Again Might, Dexterity and Perception are all just as important for ranged combat as melee combat.

 

By the way, Constitution is left at 10 for most builds (there are a few exceptions), being fairly useless and the only characters who might want Resolve are tanks (it's basically useless for any non-melee class)

 

Why this arbitrary distinction when it could be easily solved by just providing more dialogue checks based on something besides intellect and resolve?

 

Perception comes up a lot in dialogue checks as well. Might comes up less, but it does come up.

Edited March 20, 2018 by JerekKruger

[Guest Ontarah]

Deflection is mostly determined by class and unless you have a resolve of like 18 or 19 or something, the addition to deflection is negligible. Much less than you get from a good Shield. Just a crappy small Shield does a boost to deflection of plus 8 which is comparable to 16 in resolve.

 

And high interrupt is situationally useful but most of the time I'm more concerned with constraining raw damage dealers from getting to my back ranks, bottlenecking and whatnot. I can use ranged and spell casters to interrupt.

 

Having more Constitution certainly makes a tremendous difference just from comparing Fighters I've done with Eder who were way squishier and died much more quickly because they didn't have anything like his hit points even though their damage dealt and damage reduction was essentially identical.

[JerekKruger]

Agreed, the Deflection gained from Resolve is negligible, hence why I italicised might. In reality in Pillars Resolve is a dump stat for everyone apart from Paladins and Chanters attempting TCS.

 

As for Constitution, I play on PotD and haven't made a character with more than 8 Con in ages, and this includes tanks. If your frontliners are dying you're doing something wrong, most likely not making good use of crowd control.

[Achilles]

Deflection is mostly determined by class and unless you have a resolve of like 18 or 19 or something, the addition to deflection is negligible. Much less than you get from a good Shield. Just a crappy small Shield does a boost to deflection of plus 8 which is comparable to 16 in resolve.

 

And high interrupt is situationally useful but most of the time I'm more concerned with constraining raw damage dealers from getting to my back ranks, bottlenecking and whatnot. I can use ranged and spell casters to interrupt.

 

Having more Constitution certainly makes a tremendous difference just from comparing Fighters I've done with Eder who were way squishier and died much more quickly because they didn't have anything like his hit points even though their damage dealt and damage reduction was essentially identical.

1) Completely ignored concentration.

2) Increased deflection (even a little) means you're less like to get hit. Which mean CON isn't as important (don't need a lot of hit points if you aren't losing them).

3) High interrupt is not "situationally useful". An enemy who is interrupted isn't hitting you. 

4) If you want "raw damage" you should be playing a rogue or a ranger

5) High constitution = a bunch of hit points you don't need because you aren't getting hit. Eder's CON is nice because that means you can dual wield him and let him focus on harassing enemies that aren't tied up by your PC.  

[Guest Ontarah]

"the only characters who might want Resolve are tanks (it's basically useless for any non-melee class)"

 

We can go on nitpicking the minutiae of micromanaging builds, but this gets pretty much to the heart of what I'm talking about. Why should the dominant dialogue stat be based on something that's mostly useless for anything but that when literally every other attribute is versatile and useful for lots of different things?

[Achilles]

"the only characters who might want Resolve are tanks (it's basically useless for any non-melee class)"

 

We can go on nitpicking the minutiae of micromanaging builds, but this gets pretty much to the heart of what I'm talking about. Why should the dominant dialogue stat be based on something that's mostly useless for anything but that when literally every other attribute is versatile and useful for lots of different things?

It isn't. As many people have tried to point out many times, Intellect and Perception come up almost as frequently as Resolve.

 

But even if it were, Concentration, Will, and Deflection are useful for every class.

[Guest Ontarah]

@ Achilles

 

You're misconstruing what I said. I'm not talkin about dealing raw damage. I'm talking about constraining enemies that do raw damage, which is obviously what I said.

 

An example in a really mundane fight I just did last night. The guy who forged the affidavit to hide his soul lineage from The Crucible nights, I forgot his name. He has like four or five random trash melee guys that will attack you outside Dunryd Row. These guys are scripted to make a beeline for Durance. Eder and me can't Interrupt 4 or 5 dudes at once scattered over a dispersed area. What we can do is form a body barrier between them and Durance and hold them while they get torn apart by Aloth and my other ranged guys.

 

Damage dealt is fairly Irrelevant in this scenario. And my reasonably pitiful deflection bonus from like + 5 resolve or whatever that I have is not that big of a contribution.

[Achilles]

You're right. I misread that one sentence.

 

How about everything else I said?

[Guest Ontarah]

The negligibility of deflection granted by resolve has already been pointed out by me multiple times and confirmed by another poster.

 

The usefulness of concentration is implied in the above scenario I just described. If my ranged people and spell casters are interrupting the crap out of the people I'm bottlenecking or even better pummeling them with AoE effects, there are no attacks forthcoming for my tanks to need to concentrate against. But those few seconds where they formed a physical barrier were essential to let my ranged people get off those attacks.

 

Melee guys are never going to be as good at Mass interruption as spell casters or ranged people. At most they will be passing fair at interrupting a handful of people. They can be inordinately good at Mage killing I suppose, but that's hardly a high threshold to climb over. So are archers.

[Guest Ontarah]

Anyway, I think I've hit my quota on micromanagement arguments for the day so I'm out.

[master guardian]

Ah, the good ole "one more comment" routine. Up to this point, 5/7 of the replies are spam about how someone else is posting. Please address the topics and not the posters and if the thread is too painful for you, feel free to not participate.

FINALY SOME ACTUALL MODERATING!!!

 

WELL DONE I THOUGHT YOU GUYS DIDNT EXIST

[Achilles]

The negligibility of deflection granted by resolve has already been pointed out by me multiple times and confirmed by another poster.

 

The usefulness of concentration is implied in the above scenario I just described. If my ranged people and spell casters are interrupting the crap out of the people I'm bottlenecking or even better pummeling them with AoE effects, there are no attacks forthcoming for my tanks to need to concentrate against. But those few seconds where they formed a physical barrier were essential to let my ranged people get off those attacks.

 

Melee guys are never going to be as good at Mass interruption as spell casters or ranged people. At most they will be passing fair at interrupting a handful of people. They can be inordinately good at Mage killing I suppose, but that's hardly a high threshold to climb over. So are archers.

[Wormerine]

 

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.

 

Excellent question. I don't know if this can be answered here, maybe with spoiler tags, but is there a bigger battle in the beta? How interesting will mages be in this case?

Nothing of the sort. Beta includes sidecontent and gameplay wise focuses on fairly low level basic stuff. While there are some tougher names enemies there, there is nothing too epic there. It’s not that I want to hear the answer - I prefer to discover on my own. I am just curious/worried how they will approach it as those fights are usually ones where full “rest” of abilities was coming to play.

[InsaneCommander]

 

 

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.

Excellent question. I don't know if this can be answered here, maybe with spoiler tags, but is there a bigger battle in the beta? How interesting will mages be in this case?

Nothing of the sort. Beta includes sidecontent and gameplay wise focuses on fairly low level basic stuff. While there are some tougher names enemies there, there is nothing too epic there. It’s not that I want to hear the answer - I prefer to discover on my own. I am just curious/worried how they will approach it as those fights are usually ones where full “rest” of abilities was coming to play.

 

I agree, it's better to find out when we fight the first tough battle. I'll take some scrolls just in case.

[Torm51]

 

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.

I think that’s why they have story mode, normal and hard. The first game was accessible to everyone. Casual players and hardcore players alike.

[Torm51]

PS Con is hella good in dragon fights as none of them Target deflection with any attack. Auto attacks target Fort and breathes Reflex. On PoTD Fort is much more important than deflection. All the mobs that target deflection don’t hit hard enough against heavy armor and tanks have enough natural deflection to make most hits grazes anyway. Granted you could get be same

Fort by pumping Might and Not con but even when you have super Fort you may take a graze from a dragon swipe and a char with 18 Con will be better shape then a 10 Con character.

 

That being said if you CC the dragon 3 Con is fine but in my significant experience even with great CC a dragon will get 1 or 2 hits off which if you are weak or badly positioned could wipe you. Maybe I just play it safe and have balanced CC and good HP chars in case a CC fails.

 

I guess the bottom line is there are lots of ways to play. Maybe this isn’t relevant to the post but I love Con and saw it bashed!!!!!

Edited March 20, 2018 by Torm51

[jones092201@gmail.com]

I feel like character building in po2 is less about creating interesting characters rp or themewise, and more about creating efficient ones.

 

That, coupled with ‘all builds are viable,’ philosophy kind of necessitates some simplification, right? Devs can’t trust us to build our characters to viable unless they limit what we can do to control that...

 

I’d rather have the option to fail in a more complex system.

 

Still really excited though; play games more now for Narrative and immersion than the other stuff

Edited March 21, 2018 by jones092201@gmail.com

[Elkor_Alish]

I feel like character building in po2 is less about creating interesting characters rp or themewise, and more about creating efficient ones.

 

That, coupled with ‘all builds are viable,’ philosophy kind of necessitates some simplification, right? Devs can’t trust us to build our characters to viable unless they limit what we can do to control that...

 

I’d rather have the option to fail in a more complex system.

 

Still really excited though; play games more now for Narrative and immersion than the other stuff

 

Classless systems are the best systems

[Wormerine]

I feel like character building in po2 is less about creating interesting characters rp or themewise, and more about creating efficient ones.

That, coupled with ‘all builds are viable,’ philosophy kind of necessitates some simplification, right? Devs can’t trust us to build our characters to viable unless they limit what we can do to control that...

I’d rather have the option to fail in a more complex system.

Still really excited though; play games more now for Narrative and immersion than the other stuff

I don’t feel that way. PoE1 has been one of the few RPG where I could think of my character first and let my decisions be informed by it, rather than really worry about not screwing up. PoE system is fairly limited because there is a clear distinction between combat stats and personality stats. Every character you build is a combat trained veteran. Which does fit the setting. For the type of an RPG it is, I think it’s pretty well done, overall.

[Torm51]

 

I feel like character building in po2 is less about creating interesting characters rp or themewise, and more about creating efficient ones.

 

That, coupled with ‘all builds are viable,’ philosophy kind of necessitates some simplification, right? Devs can’t trust us to build our characters to viable unless they limit what we can do to control that...

 

I’d rather have the option to fail in a more complex system.

 

Still really excited though; play games more now for Narrative and immersion than the other stuff

Classless systems are the best systems

I don’t agree I find them boring usually, vanilla.

[Torm51]

@ Achilles

 

You're misconstruing what I said. I'm not talkin about dealing raw damage. I'm talking about constraining enemies that do raw damage, which is obviously what I said.

 

An example in a really mundane fight I just did last night. The guy who forged the affidavit to hide his soul lineage from The Crucible nights, I forgot his name. He has like four or five random trash melee guys that will attack you outside Dunryd Row. These guys are scripted to make a beeline for Durance. Eder and me can't Interrupt 4 or 5 dudes at once scattered over a dispersed area. What we can do is form a body barrier between them and Durance and hold them while they get torn apart by Aloth and my other ranged guys.

 

Damage dealt is fairly Irrelevant in this scenario. And my reasonably pitiful deflection bonus from like + 5 resolve or whatever that I have is not that big of a contribution.

They are not scripted to attack Durance, they are scripted to attack low deflection targets. Durance makes a great mini tank with his huge resolve. Give him a shield and the AI never looks at him.

 

Maybe I play defensively but i always give a backline priest a shield and a hatchet. My wizards always take Llengraths displaced image and arcane barrier. Everyone in my group can hold an enemy for a while and when it’s soft targets being attacked I just focus fire and CC the offender. In this fight Durance is ignored and my tanks resolve is useful because he’s getting attacked plus he’s doing what he should be doing and that’s taking hits. POE on path of the damned favors balanced builds or massive CC due to the number of Enemies. Resolve is useful on some of the builds. My frontline especially. I stealth everyone and pop out my Paladin and he’s face taking every spell and direct attack while the back line buffs up and annihilates.

Edited March 21, 2018 by Torm51

[Achilles]

 

@ Achilles

 

You're misconstruing what I said. I'm not talkin about dealing raw damage. I'm talking about constraining enemies that do raw damage, which is obviously what I said.

 

An example in a really mundane fight I just did last night. The guy who forged the affidavit to hide his soul lineage from The Crucible nights, I forgot his name. He has like four or five random trash melee guys that will attack you outside Dunryd Row. These guys are scripted to make a beeline for Durance. Eder and me can't Interrupt 4 or 5 dudes at once scattered over a dispersed area. What we can do is form a body barrier between them and Durance and hold them while they get torn apart by Aloth and my other ranged guys.

 

Damage dealt is fairly Irrelevant in this scenario. And my reasonably pitiful deflection bonus from like + 5 resolve or whatever that I have is not that big of a contribution.

They are not scripted to attack Durance, they are scripted to attack low deflection targets. Durance makes a great mini tank with his huge resolve. Give him a shield and the AI never looks at him.

 

Maybe I play defensively but i always give a backline priest a shield and a hatchet. My wizards always take Llengraths displaced image and arcane barrier. Everyone in my group can hold an enemy for a while and when it’s soft targets being attacked I just focus fire and CC the offender. In this fight Durance is ignored and my tanks resolve is useful because he’s getting attacked plus he’s doing what he should be doing and that’s taking hits. POE on path of the damned favors balanced builds or massive CC due to the number of Enemies. Resolve is useful on some of the builds. My frontline especially. I stealth everyone and pop out my Paladin and he’s face taking every spell and direct attack while the back line buffs up and annihilates.

I didn’t feel that it was a good use of my time to correct him on this one (I had my hands full with other things), however it’s worth pointing out that AI only targets low deflection some of the time. The enemy AI does lots of things; this is only one of them.

[No idea]

I backed the game because I liked the previous one without worrying too much about the new rules. I assumed they wouldnt change much. My opinion on the things you have said:

 

1. The mere fact of changing things is not good per se. Is the new system of rules going to be better than the old one? I will have to play it first, but I think playing a system you already know is always better than having to learn a new system when you dont have so much time to play (like it is my case)

 

2. I dont like the fact that health/endurance is gone and spells are per encounter. It makes you too focused on encounters instead of the overall picture. Once you win, you keep on going unitl you "clear" the area. No need to rest or think beyond the particular enconunter. That doesnt feel right, imo. Perhaps I am too old school for that (I am 40)

[Elkor_Alish]

 

Classless systems are the best systems

I don’t agree I find them boring usually, vanilla.

 

You find the ability to tailor a character your playing to suitably match your play style "vanilla."

 

. . .For some reason I get the feeling it's not a problem with classless systems.

Edited March 21, 2018 by Elkor_Alish