Backer Beta Update 3: Patch Notes

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Thank you for the update and the detailed patch notes guys. Much appreciated!)

mini note: unedited notes also include changes from previous update

 

What is the auto-attack setting and how is it broken?

There were two things: you can't auto-attack a team member, and this one.

 

Attribute Cap of 35 - To prevent the effects of Attributes from scaling away into infinity, they are now capped to 35. We chose this number based on both where we wanted the influence of Attributes to max out as well as what we believed was within the reach of aggressive min-maxers.

Feeling strange about this one ^^ because:

- a cap of 100, would achieve the same thing, i.e. prevent "from scaling away into infinity"

- in PoE1 we could achieve up to 43 dexterity; although do note: it was not worth it

- hard caps do smell bad. Sometimes it's indicative that the game loses it's balance outside of certain range; and that the system can't handle it gracefully itself. No hard cap in PoE1 was a healthy sign in my book, and it was really well handled, as dropping attributes was stinging, while maxing them to the roof was affected by intrinsic diminishing returns; not to mention that there were often wise to smooth the spread a little: think of MIG and DEX both contributing to dps, and at a very simplistic level: 15x15 > 20x10.

It's no big deal though)

 

 

I was a lilttle skeptical of the attribute cap at first but 35 is pretty high -- that's about where the "soft cap" of effectiveness was anyway in the first game. If it were lower I'd have more concern but at 35 it seems almost more like a UI feature -- "it's ok, you can stop bothering now" -- and it might make character planning a little simpler and give the designers more room to play around with weird bonuses (like drugs, etc.) 

 

I mean I see where you're coming from and it's definitely the most interesting change listed but it might work out to be a good thing iafter all.

[Aramintai]

Everyone talks about mechanics improvements while I'm simply glad that more hair color options got added and some heads got rid of the rash dots   HUD improvements look nice too.

 

As for mechanics, I'm not deep into them but having two abilities per level for single classes does feel better.

Edited March 30, 2018 by Aramintai

[M4xw0lf]

I never wanted beta access, but I want beta access.

[AndreaColombo]

Quick feedback after just messing around a little bit:

 

• Very good-looking new icons and UI improvements. Love that font ligatures and solid UI are in!
• Great to have more hair and beard options, though some beards still look very patchy.
• Great to have more passive talents; some of them look very interesting.
• Love the parallax camera option à la Diablo II!
• Great job on background noises in Tikawara. I played Baldur's Gate earlier today and the city felt so alive; now Tikawara feels like that too!
• Good job on environmental audio too in Tikawara. Hope to hear more of that as I visit different environments.
• Still no final graphics for Firebrand and Citzal's Spirit Lance
• Noticeable performance improvements; kudos!

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I'm very happy about the MIG/RES changes!

Edited March 30, 2018 by AndreaColombo

[BillyCorgan]

[Breckmoney]

Image

Sorry, this does happen now? Or did you mean it just as a suggestion? Or has it always worked like that and I'm just blind?

[BillyCorgan]

A suggestion.

 

I'm on a new run on Tyranny and this feature (and others UI elements) are good idea that i'll hope to see in deadfire.

[M4xw0lf]

Soo, another 20 bucks later I'm now downloading the beta. Come here my precious!

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Sadness: Ciphers cannot choose the Gunner talent

[SaruNi]

Dragon Thrashed and Come Soft Winds of Death are implemented as DoTs (i.e., every time the chant is started it attacks all enemies in range and applies a DoT to each it hits individually, with crits getting longer duration and grazes getting shorter duration). Contrary to what the tooltip says, their duration is influenced by intellect. Multiple instances of the Dragon Thrashed can stack with each other (I'd guess the same is true for Soft Winds of Death). 

 

Very nice. This makes Dragon Thrashed worthy of being a 5th tier ability. I like that you have to use a bit of strategy to make maximum use of it.

Edited March 30, 2018 by SaruNi

[thelee]

 

Thank you for the update and the detailed patch notes guys. Much appreciated!)

mini note: unedited notes also include changes from previous update

 

What is the auto-attack setting and how is it broken?

There were two things: you can't auto-attack a team member, and this one.

 

Attribute Cap of 35 - To prevent the effects of Attributes from scaling away into infinity, they are now capped to 35. We chose this number based on both where we wanted the influence of Attributes to max out as well as what we believed was within the reach of aggressive min-maxers.

Feeling strange about this one ^^ because:

- a cap of 100, would achieve the same thing, i.e. prevent "from scaling away into infinity"

- in PoE1 we could achieve up to 43 dexterity; although do note: it was not worth it

- hard caps do smell bad. Sometimes it's indicative that the game loses it's balance outside of certain range; and that the system can't handle it gracefully itself. No hard cap in PoE1 was a healthy sign in my book, and it was really well handled, as dropping attributes was stinging, while maxing them to the roof was affected by intrinsic diminishing returns; not to mention that there were often wise to smooth the spread a little: think of MIG and DEX both contributing to dps, and at a very simplistic level: 15x15 > 20x10.

It's no big deal though)

 

 

I was a lilttle skeptical of the attribute cap at first but 35 is pretty high -- that's about where the "soft cap" of effectiveness was anyway in the first game. If it were lower I'd have more concern but at 35 it seems almost more like a UI feature -- "it's ok, you can stop bothering now" -- and it might make character planning a little simpler and give the designers more room to play around with weird bonuses (like drugs, etc.) 

 

I mean I see where you're coming from and it's definitely the most interesting change listed but it might work out to be a good thing iafter all.

 

 

I'm almost positive the cap was introduced just as an arbitrary restriction so that Resolve could be allowed to reduce hostile durations meaningfully per point without worrying about degenerative cases of high resolve (which JE Sawyer cited as a reason of why he was hesitant of resolve doing this effect). They could theoretically have gone up to 43 (any more and resolve would give >100% reduction), but i'm guessing the way resolve is implemented there are significant increasing returns (each additional 3% reduction is more of the remaining hostile duration). I haven't tried the new BB yet, so this is an assumption based on how intellect works.

 

EDITed to add: "while maxing them to the roof was affected by intrinsic diminishing returns" 

 

Not actually true. By my calculations, while perception had diminishing returns, might, dex, int and con all had linear returns. Resolve actually had increasing returns, because deflection had increasing returns and resolve boosted deflection (similarly all the other stats have slightly increasing returns because they all boost a defense of some sort). As someone who did both triple crown solo and the ultimate achievements, the difference between a 19 resolve and a 20 base resolve can be a run-breaker (more so than 18 vs 19). Now, it is possible that to achieve really high levels in the stats you had to sacrifice a bunch where the net effect was diminishing returns, but the stats do not have "intrinsically" diminishing returns.

 

historical fact: back in the day intellect used to boost radius instead of total area. that was stupidly increasing returns, which they eventually fixed. (hint: area = pi*r^2)

Edited March 30, 2018 by thelee

[CottonWolf]

Anyone know if it's possible to roll back to a previous version of the beta? I'm trying to work whether mac performance really has decreased or if I'm misremembering how well it ran before.

[Tanred]

The enhancements to the UI feel good. And kudos for the combat speed slider.

Edited March 30, 2018 by Tanred

[JerekKruger]

 

Steel Garrote Lay on Hands is now a 2 point cost ability.

 

 

Secret character option, or secret companion?

 

I am going to go with option 3: not so secret enemy.

[JerekKruger]

I love that you can pick up little titbits of information about the full game from these patch notes. It's renewing my excitement for the full release.

 

The Resolve change is surprising. I remember Josh (I think) saying that reducing the duration of hostile effects wouldn't work well because it would apply to enemies as well, so facing a Resolve 25 Dragon wouldn't be fun. Still, it seems like a nice, fitting addition to Resolve and I hope it works out well and that attributes are now finished.

 

Still no final graphics for Firebrand and Citzal's Spirit Lance

 

Oh that's a shame, I was hoping to see what their final form would be.

 

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I'm very happy about the MIG/RES changes!

 

Ditto!

Edited March 30, 2018 by JerekKruger

[bleedthefreak]

Ship combat still confusing AF. I just tried to run straight at a ship and it let me "full speed ahead" three times in one "round" and it clearly states you can only full speed ahead once per round. But in a previous battle with the same ship at one point I was out of range (444m) so I tried full speed ahead like 3 rounds in a row and 444m never changed. I don't know if there are some bugs with this ship combat (I have noticed a few bugs with the UI/gameplay so far but nothing I wrote down so I'll be back when I find them again)?

[Katarack21]

The UI improvements are fairly major and make a *real* difference in the quality of the game. Really digging them. Noticed that movement on the overmap is rather choppy, though. Wonder why that is.

[blotter]

- Do monk fist bonusses no longer disappear after reload?

The damage bonus from Transcendent Suffering still shows up under the inventory screen's unarmed damage popup from one saved game to another, at least. There's also a Haymaker modal for unarmed attacks which provides a penetration bonus at the cost of increased recovery time.

[LordFey]

Single-classes now are so much fun to play. I rolled a Fury Druid and the added abilities really make a difference. Especially spell based classes will have a much better time now.

Edited March 30, 2018 by LordFey

[injurai]

Expanded Passive Abilities - To address feedback about the loss of Talents from PoE 1, we have added many more passive abilities to class trees and increased the number of abilities that single class characters receive at each power level (see below).

 

Single Class characters gain 2 abilities at PL increase - All single class characters will gain 2 abilities every time they achieve a new power level.  This change was made to address concerns that single class characters felt like they didn't have enough options at any given character level.  It also allows characters to dip into passive abilities (which have been expanded considerably) more easily.

 

Might/Resolve Change

 

General Casting changes

• Shortened cast times of Very Slow and Slow
• Shortened Recovery of Slow
• Summon Weapon spells now Average cast

 

This right here has me ecstatic and represents some of the best addressing of feedback that I've ever seen. Obsidian are really in a class of their own. For the time being I don't think there is much else for me to complain about.

[Katarack21]

Indeed, just the changes of cast times have really helped combat feel much better. It's a vast improvement.

[CENIC]

Really glad they brought back Might.

 

Getting two ability points as a single-class character makes them equally viable to a multi-class character where before they felt gimped to play.

 

The passive talents are awesome, although I do wish Gunner and Marksman were available to all.

 

Cast time and Penetration changes make combat feel a LOT better.

 

All in all this update makes me feel confident that the game is going to be AWESOME.

[Aramintai]

I recall them saying it somewhere that single class rogue was underwhelming. Now that we have two ability points for single classes across the board, isn't single class rogue still underwhelming compared to other single classes? Is that gonna be it, or some classes will get buffs to some abilities?

[M4xw0lf]

Is there a way of retraining your characters (player first and foremost) without starting a new game? My build choices already feel quite underwhelming. 

[DexGames]

Here us out Gentle Devs, & Please, Rework the Spiritshifter Subclass : [Past Launch // Expansion]

 

You heard us by adding more Passive choices to every Classes, so thank you for that. But for Shifters... looks like you've picked random ones, without really thinking about it.

This // that, & put it here // there. Let me developp...

Within the round of their new additionnal Passives, Shifters got, [as an exemple] :

• Single Handed // Two Handed // Dual Wielding // More Sets of Weapons...
• Which Shifter out there, is going to pick one of these, when they're using Claws /Tusks / Horns & Teeth as "Weapons" ?
• [Or tell me which one would you choose ? Dual Teeth Wielding, Two Handed Horn or Single Handed Tusk... Which Category applies here ?]

Shifters are going to be in their Shifted Forms most of the time OR cast Magic Spells, therefore these passives are useless.

I & some others, have been calling for it some time ago. But Shifter is a Unique Subclass by nature, so it does need a truely unique & appropriate treatment.

 

You can't say, let's make a Shifter Subclass, give it all the Forms at Lvl 1, shove randoms passives & stuff in it, [that doesn't make any sense with the theme & core nature of the Class btw]

The least that can be done at the moment, is too actually give it passives that makes somekind of sense, & match the core nature of the Class. It's not right now.

 

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/95087-single-class-druid-shifter-subclass/

Everything in this topic isn't 100% absolute truth, or "we're right, it's undeniable". But it's nonetheless true, that this Class needs to be worked around.

It's unique at its core, its uniqueness is even defined in its name. it's not a Caster Druid, it's a Beast. It deserves proper treatment, as suggested in the link.

 

[Jerek's suggestion is still valid to this day, imo]