Beta IV - General Feedback [The Good // The Bad]

[Boeroer]

@Doppelschwert:

 

Eh?

 

I would do the same with less passives if I was min-maxing. The situation of active abilites hasn't changed at all. Only now you are not forced to take competing actives as a single class character because you already took all passives so far (if you had any to begin with).

 

Now the situation is FAR better for single class characters and the level-ups are far less boring and frustrating. Also more passives add more build options which is always good in my book - even if a lot of players won't touch several of those new passives.

Edited April 2, 2018 by Boeroer

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

I posted this on SA first but I'll cross post it here:

 

 

 

I've made . . ten or twelve . . different little parties and taken six or eight of them around chunks of the map. The party I've settled on at this point at least, and used to clear everything that isn't locked behind the Engwithan Titan,  is fighter/rogue (swashbuckler), paladin/chanter (herald), Eothasian priest, wizard, PC cipher (Ascendant).

 

Overall I'm really really liking the gameplay now. The biggest surprise has been how much the AI scripting has changed how I play. There are a lot of abilities, especially wizard spells, that become a lot more useful once you can set them as AI triggers, and once you get it set up combat is just much much much easier to manage, to the point that I actually find myself increasing the combat slider speed (something I did not ever expect myself to do). 

 

The affliction/inspiration system is a really nice mechanic and makes the interplay of buffs and debuffs a lot more interesting. There's a nice interaction here with the AI scripting where you can just set your priest to (for example) hit anyone who has an intellect affliction (i.e., confuse/charm/dominate) with an Intellect inspiration, so no more worries (unless the priest is charmed)!

 

The Penetration/Armor system is  . . . a lot less visible. It's rare that a "no pen" message pops up. 

 

The Ascendant is boss. It has a very powerful "clutch hitter" feel, where you aren't doing much at first then your beat drops and you go to town with your high level powers.  It's very well suited to the high-might/dex/per/int, dumped res/con, build I used in most of the first game (and the availability of Inspirations makes dumping stats less of a risk).   In some ways it almost feels too good -- it might be a good idea to tone the Ascendant buff down to 15 seconds base instead of 20 -- but I could be wrong; the class feels very powerful but in practice I'm not actually sure that it's that much more potent than other classes are; all too soon the crash hits and you're back to a mere mortal again, and every so often you get carried away while Ascended and let something get too close and you get crunched, alas hubris.

 

Overall the Cipher power rebalance is very solid and most powers are quite usable now, but there are still a few Cipher powers that still need tweaking (Mental Binding still has the "duration is the same length as cast time + recovery" issue, although it is technically an AoE). 

 

The new expanded open talents are a great improvement but there's still some weirdness and wonkery with them and I'd like to see them expanded a bit more. A few things  I've avoided because according to reports at least they seem like either bugs or design flaws (two-weapon style reducing dual-wielded blunderbuss reload times to absurd minimums or making dual-wielded scepters insanely potent, for example). Mildly annoyed that there's no Gunner and Marksman available for people who aren't rangers. Due to all the armors and immunities, It seems like a LOT of builds can benefit from taking Arms Bearer for the extra weapon set.

[Boeroer]

Wait... the beat drops? When I do it the bass drops...

Edited April 2, 2018 by Boeroer

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Wait... the beat drops? When I do it the base drops...

 

 

<-- Pale Elf

Edited April 2, 2018 by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

[thelee]

The #1 good thing about BB4 is that it is a lot more stable on OS X now, since I most play the BB on my macbook pro these days (since we got a switch my wife has been hogging the TV for breath of the wild so no gaming PC for me). That alone makes the game feel much more enjoyable and closer to release-ready.

 

Agree with most of the other positives, especially the extra ability/passives. Also it's funny what a small difference a UI change can make; I definitely used empower somewhat in past-BBs, but now having this throbbing glowing UI element gets me to use it all the time. Before I rested mostly to deal with injuiries I accumulate. Now I also rest just to reset my empowers. I never really thought casters were underpowered before, but they are certainly more responsive now, thanks to all the re-tuned spell cast times. Still some balance issues, for example if I empower Minoletta's Concussive Missiles I can instakill the harder enemies in the BB on Path of the Damned; meanwhile if I empower Dire Blessing I get............ ?

 

I tried ship combat out and found it mostly baffling and tedious; in the end I just charged and boarded. I'm hoping this is something that gets fixed in the main game with a tutorial or something.

Edited April 2, 2018 by thelee

[AndreaColombo]

You can charge and board? I kept going full sail and never fracking reached them O_o

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

You can charge and board? I kept going full sail and never fracking reached them O_o

 

 

If they take out your sails you have to repair or you won't ever catch up.

 

Also sometimes they'll get in a loop where they just sail away from you forever

[AndreaColombo]

How can I repair stuff during ship duels?

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

How can I repair stuff during ship duels?

 

 

You have to reassign crew to work on the emergency, using Report!

[thelee]

 

How can I repair stuff during ship duels?

 

 

You have to reassign crew to work on the emergency, using Report!

 

 

Wow this was utterly unobvious to me that "Report!" was that.

[Harlath]

BB4 felt much better than the previous beta versions, particularly the introduction of passive abilities. A sprinkling more of these might be good, and perhaps tweaking a few to have more transparent effects (the various +1 penetration elemental traits might be easier to understand for players as a straight small +% to damage?).

 

- With the extra abilities for single class characters, I wondered if dual classed characters could get access to power levels at a marginally higher rate than at the moment, without quite catching up with the single class characters and still capping out at power level 7?

- The pace of ability use/combat feels a bit too slow now. Armour penalties are a bit too onerous and recovery times a little too high. This isn't just a "pace of play" preference - it also makes the game feel a little clunk and limits your ability to respond to changing conditions (damage, characters being charmed etc). Getting closer to Pillars 1 in this regard would be ideal.

- For a number of classes/abilities "Power Level" doesn't really do much, as noted above. Appreciate tweaking this is difficult, but it means for some classes "Empower" is almost always just used for getting extra abilities, removing a potentially interesting tactical option.

 

Keep up the good work Obsidian, thanks!

[Doppelschwert]

@Doppelschwert:

 

Eh?

 

I would do the same with less passives if I was min-maxing. The situation of active abilites hasn't changed at all. Only now you are not forced to take competing actives as a single class character because you already took all passives so far (if you had any to begin with).

 

Now the situation is FAR better for single class characters and the level-ups are far less boring and frustrating. Also more passives add more build options which is always good in my book - even if a lot of players won't touch several of those new passives.

 

My internet sucks so I'll need to wait another 3 hours for the patch, so this is for the most part baseless conjecture, but I have my reservations about all the passives being added being such a good idea.

 

In games like this, I always pick few active abilities and a lot of passives, so it felt refreshing to me that I was actually forced to pick up some actives once in a while, or had to multiclass to get around this.

 

Before, you could take several active abilities for different situations / strategies and use them on a situational basis without losing on anything on the passives side; you had a greater toolkit without sacrificing anything. The ressource pool worked as a way to let you choose the power that was the most useful, since you had several choices by default.

 

But now that you get access to enough useful passives (?), it just makes more sense to make characters that excel in one or two specific powers and load on all the supporting passives, which makes for very one-dimensional characters, and makes the ressource pool feel limiting rather than empowering; in principal, it's the same as the spell levels from PoE1 (they also had a common ressource, casts per spell level), which only feel like a choice rather than a restriction simply because they don't allow you to sacrifice spell slots for passive effects.

 

I also think the incentive for going multiclassing has been diminished greatly by this move, which I think is disheartening; I'm not even sure if there is a benefit in multiclassing for the character concept I had in mind now, but again, I'll have to look at the changes in details myself first.

 

At the same time, the change probably increased what you can achieve with min/maxing, which is not necessarily a good move in my book either.

 

All of this might all be just me being scared of change, but I'll get back to this thread once I had some time with the patch.

[thelee]

 

@Doppelschwert:

 

Eh?

 

I would do the same with less passives if I was min-maxing. The situation of active abilites hasn't changed at all. Only now you are not forced to take competing actives as a single class character because you already took all passives so far (if you had any to begin with).

 

Now the situation is FAR better for single class characters and the level-ups are far less boring and frustrating. Also more passives add more build options which is always good in my book - even if a lot of players won't touch several of those new passives.

 

My internet sucks so I'll need to wait another 3 hours for the patch, so this is for the most part baseless conjecture, but I have my reservations about all the passives being added being such a good idea.

 

In games like this, I always pick few active abilities and a lot of passives, so it felt refreshing to me that I was actually forced to pick up some actives once in a while, or had to multiclass to get around this.

 

Before, you could take several active abilities for different situations / strategies and use them on a situational basis without losing on anything on the passives side; you had a greater toolkit without sacrificing anything. The ressource pool worked as a way to let you choose the power that was the most useful, since you had several choices by default.

 

But now that you get access to enough useful passives (?), it just makes more sense to make characters that excel in one or two specific powers and load on all the supporting passives, which makes for very one-dimensional characters, and makes the ressource pool feel limiting rather than empowering; in principal, it's the same as the spell levels from PoE1 (they also had a common ressource, casts per spell level), which only feel like a choice rather than a restriction simply because they don't allow you to sacrifice spell slots for passive effects.

 

I also think the incentive for going multiclassing has been diminished greatly by this move, which I think is disheartening; I'm not even sure if there is a benefit in multiclassing for the character concept I had in mind now, but again, I'll have to look at the changes in details myself first.

 

At the same time, the change probably increased what you can achieve with min/maxing, which is not necessarily a good move in my book either.

 

All of this might all be just me being scared of change, but I'll get back to this thread once I had some time with the patch.

 

 

I think this might be you overstating how powerful the new passives are. I'm sure there are some situations where picking up another active ability is worse, but in practice my experience is that the vast majority of passives are not useful for my specific character build, so over the course of the backer beta I get like one or two of the new passives and put the rest into existing actives or existing passives. At least from my quick cursory look at some classes, an example power level of passives is like:

single weapon style, two weapon style, two-handed weapon style

OR

bear's fortitude, snake's reflexes, bull's will.

 

I mean... I *guess* you can just pick up a couple low-level active abilities/spells and spend the next 3 levels picking up all those passives, but in reality you'll probably pick on average one at most from that row of passives. They offer opportunity for diversification and a little fine-tuning of your character, but generally not much more.

Edited April 2, 2018 by thelee

[Doppelschwert]

Ok, I had a look now and I'm relieved - they mostly added new talents instead of making the class specific ones accessible to everyone, and I'm totally fine with that. I like in particular that each class gets a custom selection that is taylored to its class abilities.

 

I'm convinced now that the passives they added are a great addition to the game, although I have to say that they deviated heavily from their initial announcement that shaped my pessimistic outlook.

[theBalthazar]

Boeroer, you are right and wrong at the same time.

 

In fact, if you WANT min max, you pick one or two active abilities and the rest of passive.

 

Problem there is no more full list and simply less passives than before.

 

So, that's was there is this feel of "passives garbage remains". (Snake reflex, disengaging etc.) (and the true reason of my thread the other day : because I waiting true additionnals passive. Where I put my Point ? I want to hesitate you know ?^^ Hesitate when I choose x or y.)

Edited April 3, 2018 by theBalthazar

[Gromnir]

good

 

performance has, in general, improved

graphics look cleaner and more polished

ship combat has improved

single class accelerated power acquisition

 

bad

 

most o' the gameplay "improvements" are not

a few old bugs persist and new bugs emerge... as one would expect from a beta.

 

ugly

 

nothing genuine ugly

 

gonna start with (not) ugly as the current beta is darn close to release-worthy in our estimation. sure, is some bugs which cropped up in the recent build which we would hate to see in the release, but the current build is more playable than many releases we has played in the past decade.

 

the good includes, first and foremost, improvements to ship combat.  am finding with the recent release we need be much more involved in ship management than were the case with the earlier build.  fire-jibe-fire is no longer a default tactic and changes to the costs for move actions is much appreciated.  sure, is still a mini-game, so am not expecting a full-featured, tactical, turn-based ship-to-ship combat simulator.  ship combat is a useful gold sink with moderate fun and unique tactical gameplay inserted into a crpg. good.

 

additional powhaz for single class players is a good.  multi-class weapon havers is still outclassing singles in terms o' pure damage potential, but the additional rate o' power acquisition is a major boon which significantly levels the playing field. playing single class no longer feels like voluntary self gimping. however, there is the possibility this change will result in High level single class eventual oustripping the relative efficacy o' multis. is tough to make such guesses based on only  having access to mid-level gameplay, but more is typical better, and by high levels, single class will have much more. 

 

more subtle good is the noticeable improvements in performance is also appreciated.

 

bad

 

the passive abilities is bad.  the passives is either o' negligible usefulness, or they is functional essential.  bad.  tanks is gonna choose weapon and shield.  most weapon-focused single and multi-clases is gonna choose a weapon style.  etc. as with poe, functional no-brainer options has been returned to the franchise in spite o' the fact the earlier beta builds showed how such stuff were anything but necessary.  paladin single class tanks, for example, were extreme effective in earlier deadfire builds.  weapon-focused single and multis who did not take fighter has nevertheless been doing impressive dps w/o the advantage o' weapon styles to bolster.  yes, the caster classes suffered from a dearth o' passives in earlier beta releases. as such, providing the casters with a few useful passives were probable a good idea. provide those classes which suffered from a paucity o' passives were a good idea, but the more universal addition o' passives is wholly misguided.  

 

likewise, the reversion to might is a mistake.  return o' might is resulting in multiple bads.  the current op multis is those combos which exploit the passives or low-level abilities o' paladins, monks, barbarians, rogues and whatnot to be resulting in often ridiculous damage outputs.  not take more than a little imagination to be seeing how the damage potential to sages and witches and paladin/_______ has just increased substantial with a return of might.  again, is a situation wherein a fix were not genuine needed, but is nevertheless being applied. 

 

and yeah, resolve is no longer a clear and obvious dump stat for all builds save tanks, but such were the case when might were switched to strength.  instead o' strength/resolve, we now got might/resolve, with capped attribute scores made necessary by the obvious exploitive potential o' high resolve players and Foes.  a player votary tank with easily obtainable +30 resolve at mid-high levels will no doubt choose clarity o' agony to halve the duration o' already brief adverse effects. 'course is not so funny when +30 resolve deadfire enemies is laughing off any effect with a duration.  additionally, does anybody genuine think artificial caps is good game design? nevertheless, caps is made essential by the might reversion.  is not as if Gromnir is fundamental averse to might-- we liked poe might.  the thing is, the switch to strength were reasonable given the functional dump status o' resolve in poe.  the switch back to might does not appear to be similarly reasonable.  as with passives, the problem being fixed is less concrete.

 

bugs is also bad.  a few oldie bugs remain in spite o' fact they has been 'round since first beta.  ixamitil plains scholar background is still borked, becoming arcane apprentice (+2 arcana) following a reload. seems minor, but one would expect the fix would also be relative simple.  converse, new bugs such as the one involving two-weapon fighting has significant impact on gameplay. nevertheless, is still a beta, so bugs is an expected bad. 

 

regardless, in spite o' the badness o' the return o' passives and the ill-conceived implementation o' a return of might +resolve fix+attribute cap, am largely happy with the current build.  the change o' casting times hasn't altered our gameplay overmuch save for our casters run out of spells even quicker than they did in earlier beta builds. am still able to interrupt foes in spite o' quickened casts, though micromanagement necessarily has increased-- smaller window o' opportunity. is multiple minor changes am needing familiarize self, but overall am impressed with deadfire progress.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps kinda miss the previous sinister voice set compared to new. 

Edited April 2, 2018 by Gromnir

[rothamon81]

Beta is really good now, starting companions though still suck, rerolled two chars into multiclass (of course) with the starting money and game got enjoyable, even one level lower. Didn't find any bugs except the souldbound item, though maybe I didn't understand how it works.

 

Looking forward to playing, if I hadn't backed, I'd buy it now. Too bad we still have to wait a month.

[Wormerine]

ps kinda miss the previous sinister voice set compared to new. 

Never enough of Matt Mercer in my party.

[Cheston]

-Sleight of Hand being so tightly coupled to Stealth feels strange, since most of the other skills can stand on their own. (I.E. you don't need stealth to disarm or place traps.)

 

-Riposte has the same issue now that it did in Pillars 1- it procs maybe once a fight. This feels like a holdover from when Misses were 1-49 rather than 1-24. Any chance of Riposte being upgraded to include grazes like in Pillars 1?

[vilverin]

- The pace of ability use/combat feels a bit too slow now. Armour penalties are a bit too onerous and recovery times a little too high. This isn't just a "pace of play" preference - it also makes the game feel a little clunk and limits your ability to respond to changing conditions (damage, characters being charmed etc). Getting closer to Pillars 1 in this regard would be ideal.

 

Keep up the good work Obsidian, thanks!

 

I'd agree with that. Pacing of combat does feel better overall, but it's still a little bit clunky. I don't really like to use the combat slider to speed things up, because that speeds up animations as well, meaning that everything look like a timelapse video. Therefore, I'd still prefer the default combat pacing to be a little quicker than it currently is, especially for physical damage classes. I will admit that this might change as you get better gear (with recovery & action speed benefits) and skills in the final game.

 

Ship combat does feel better, but as others have noted as well, I mostly end up trying to get into a good shooting position in the very beginning and then just cycle through the same actions every turn, which seems a little boring. It also means that if my ship and the enemy ship are equally well equipped and staffed, the combat outcome mostly appears to depend on who gets more luck with the RNG.

 

Otherwise, definitely excited to see all the improvements. This is looking very good already!

[CENIC]

• Polished graphics - the game is looking beautiful!

 

• Hair - I think hair looks better now. It's different, but an improvement.

 

• UI - The enhancements made to the UI, especially the Empower button, are great. I did find myself forgetting I had Empower in the heat of battle before.

 

• Passives for everyone - My only gripe here is that Ranger is still hoarding Marksman and Gunner. Otherwise I thought all of the shared passives were good choices, especially making unarmed combat an option for all.

 

• Resolve - Really glad Obsidian decided to try out affliction duration for Resolve. Might/Strength/Resolve is a situation where there's no perfect solution. The current meta doesn't gimp hybrids and makes Resolve less dumpable, which is good enough for me.

[Soulmojo]

Hello,

 

I wanted to take my time playing a little bit before posting. I played through the game again almost two times now, and had a bunch of mechanics tries.

 

The good:

• I feel really comfortable most of the time regarding penetration and armor. Now it doesn't feel such too much penalizing and on veteran difficulty choosing the right weapons and gearing towards adequate amount of penetration is sufficient and balanced.
• I only tried Spells with the given companions, therefore priest and wizard, and casting times/power ratio in many cases seems adequate. There are numerous spells which feels useless, but that is due to the small number of cast times/combat.
• Combat pacing seems ok too when you don't use any excessive abilites, modals for example. Enemies and characters are adequately slow, and I don't feel the arcade style gameplay I was experiencing 2 patch ago.

 

 The bad:

 

 

Weapon modals:

 

Previously I couldn't put a handle what's really wrong with modals and how should they be fixed. So there is a 'disclaimer' that weapon modals are situation and they are not essential to gameplay. This is where a dissagree. Weapon modals which makes a weapon typ unique, which - other than special enchantments - makes it desirable when building a character.

 

I have a problem with modals which target recovery time with penalty. With the current weapon recovery times and armor penalty, adding an extra penalty seems too excessive. 

I constantly disregard weapon proficiency because by the time I can swing my weapon for said proficiency bonus, the enemy usually dead, debuffed by a faster character, or I could use the said character doing something other than standing there doing nothing for large periods of time.

 

These modals should target actual attack speed instead recovery time. That way you get penalized, you will swing much slower, and overall you will be slower, but not that excessive amount, and that amount is controlled. You will be much more vulnerable to interrupts, but you will not feel your character will suck if you activate the modal.

 

Resouce management + empower

 

This is one of my main issues still. Too few resouces to use abilites, and cant be increased possibly (the pool) because of empower.

Empower is a cool mechanic if you use it to empower your abilities. But it sucks because you can also use it to recover resource. I'm thinking because of that, your resource pool is balanced to be small. In fact you have so small resource pool that it discourages the player to use high level abilites except if they are really really powerful.

 

Empower needs to be what should be. A resource to empower your abilites, and only that. + remove the 1 / combat restriction.

Your power pool have to be 4pt starting and 2 pt. / new power level.

 

I was wondering how should I make my case, and here is the answer: 

I am a lvl 9 single class rouge. I have hobbling strike (1pt, Blinding strike(2pt), and withering strike(3pt).

 

First case scenario(current iteration):

I have 7pt power pool.

I will use 1-2 blinding strike on enemies and 3-5 hobbling stike in combat. I wont use withering strike at any given time (costs too much).

Second case scenarion (suggested iteration):

I have 12pt power pool.

I will use 1-2 withering strike, 2-3 blinding strike and the rest hobbling strike.

 

Basically I will always want to be more optimal. If I have less I will find the optimal choice of abilites and disregard the rest. If I have more resource I will use more expensive abilities because it will be more optimal. I wont spam hobbling strike if I have the pool to use a better ability. Especially if you can use empower on that said ability.

 

 

Ship management and ship combat:

 

I like it. I have two issues with this:

One is that when the crew gains xp I cannot spend it how I choose. It seems very random how the crew levels up, and I have no control over it.

 

Second is that sometimes when the one turn ends and a new turn starts sometimes the enemy ship gets two action in a row. Meaning one turn ends with his action and the next starts with his action. This is a ui problem and makes unavoidable damage sometimes.

Example: he ends the turn with a full stop, and theoretically at the start of the next turn I could make an action but no, he starts the turn he does a full broadside attack and I cannot do nothing to mitigate. -> double action. 

 

 

Passives:

 

It would be nice if casters could have passives which increases the number of cast they make, they would be less dependant on scrolls and weapons.

Not for high level spells, but for low level.

Also I would give the +2 quick item slot passive to all classes. 

 

The ugly:

 

Remove the moles(white dots) from pale elf face please!!!!!!

Edited April 3, 2018 by Soulmojo

[KDubya]

Everyone getting weapon styles cheapens Fighters and force specialization on everyone.

 

If you use weapons you will pick one of the styles, absolutely no reason not to. Now you'll effectively be shoehorned into a single fighting style. Before you could dual wield for greater dps and then grab a shield when you want more deflection or single wield when you want accuracy. Pure flexibility and freedom. No one was complaining that their Berserker/BleakWalker was doing bad damage dual wielding sabres. Now you will spend the point on a fighting style and stick with that to the exclusion of others because you spent a point on getting it.

 

Now your dual wielding will be 20% faster than before which was not needed. Adding a Fighter only gets you a stance, disciplined strikes and regen. All are good things but anyone can get the fighting styles now which cheapens the fighter.

 

They do need to give everyone Gunner and Marksmen so that Rangers aren't exclusive to them

 

I am pleased that they finally fixed the Monk unarmed damage bug where a save/load wiped it out.

[JerekKruger]

Remove the moles(white dots) from pale elf face please!!!!!!

 

Agreed!

 

As far as I understand it, Pale Elves are elves who have lived in very cold environments for long enough to adapt to them. Their current model makes them look almost like Frost Godlike's, with little bits of frost twinkling in their flesh.

[Wormerine]

If you use weapons you will pick one of the styles, absolutely no reason not to. Now you'll effectively be shoehorned into a single fighting style. Before you could dual wield for greater dps and then grab a shield when you want more deflection or single wield when you want accuracy. Pure flexibility and freedom. No one was complaining that their Berserker/BleakWalker was doing bad damage dual wielding sabres. Now you will spend the point on a fighting style and stick with that to the exclusion of others because you spent a point on getting it.

 

Now your dual wielding will be 20% faster than before which was not needed. Adding a Fighter only gets you a stance, disciplined strikes and regen. All are good things but anyone can get the fighting styles now which cheapens the fighter.

 

They do need to give everyone Gunner and Marksmen so that Rangers aren't exclusive to them

 

I am pleased that they finally fixed the Monk unarmed damage bug where a save/load wiped it out.

All yes. Yet this argumentation found deaf ears, when people complained that they cant pick dual wielding perk for their characters who weren’t fighters. The fact that such perk wasn’t needed to be effective didn’t have much impact.

 

Of course, all unique passives for each class would be preferable, but let’s be realistic here - it was never gonna happen.