[POTD Difficulty] Launch NOT tuned discussion thread

[ilsendoodle]

 

 

That being said they are clearly aware of it so I'm not sure what else needs to be said. They will fix it. No use bitching about it at this point. 

 

Got nothing else to do while waiting.

[darkhain]

There are some difficulty tweak mods on nexus, if you can't wait.

[Slotharingia]

I'm on my second playthrough and almost done. I'm level 19 and have been doing everything possible. My last playthrough I also wasn't max level for long. Not sure how some people level faster than others.

[ilsendoodle]

I'm on my second playthrough and almost done. I'm level 19 and have been doing everything possible. My last playthrough I also wasn't max level for long. Not sure how some people level faster than others.

 

Simply not possible.  You're missing loads of stuff somehow.  It's not a matter of "faster."  There is a set amount of available exp and a set amount required for 20.  Do the companion quests and faction lines and you you will hit 20 without even starting the main quest.  I don't have the numbers, but if I had to guess, when I finished the game I had enough for level 26-27 if not higher, and that's assuming an increasing curve.  The game keeps showing that you are earning XP it just doesn't go anywhere, which is actually worse than if it just stopped showing exp, like some games do.  

Edited May 27, 2018 by ilsendoodle

[PizzaSHARK]

You ask for greater difficulty, then make a bunch of suggestions to make the game easier instead.

 

1) Lack of Terrain Interactivity and the AI's Capability of Using it: You say this will allow some of the bounties to be "completely doable at much lower levels than "intended" if you could utilize rocks and bushes and trees to break line of sight with spellcasters...." How is allowing bounties to be doable at much lower level making the game harder rather than easier? Sheesh.

 

2) Spellcaster Spellbook Limitations: You say you want to not be "completely screwed if you run into an encounter your blaster mage is ill-suited for" and you advocate for increased spell selection so that "all players will have the same tools available to them at all times!" Again, how does this make the game harder rather than easier?

 

The Rest/Injury Mechanic is Designed for Attrition-based Gameplay in a Game That's Largely Done Away with Attrition-based Gameplay: You say that Empower should be made permanently available via on/off toggle and eliminate the need to rest to refresh its uses. How does this make the game harder instead if easier?

 

It's fine to want an easier game, but your title and intro were misleading.

 

It has nothing to do with wanting an easier game, it has everything to do with wanting a challenging game that is difficult not just because the player has the numeric odds stacked against them, but because they're presented a wide variety of tactical issues and problems that each need to be solved - often in different ways.

 

1 - Doorway battles were a problem in Pillars because the AI couldn't react to them appropriately.  It makes sense for mindless animals to get funneled into a chokepoint.  Sapient creatures would just back off and set up an ambush, throw a persistent AOE (Chill Fog, etc) at them, etc.  If I wasn't clear enough, this assumes the game's terrible enemy AI gets substantially improved.

 

2 - It makes the game harder because the designers can then specifically create encounters that require or strongly encourage the use of particular tools.  Was I not clear enough?  If all you have is a hammer OR a wrench, everything has to be solved with just the hammer OR just the wrench... even if the problem isn't a nail, or whatever.  You can't design a fight around needing Arcane Dampener to disable enemy buffs at specific times, for example, because you can't GUARANTEE that the player's Wizard has that spell available to them at the time they come across that encounter (they will either have to brute force it, go sailing around until they finally find a grimoire with Arcane Dampener, go back and respec their Wizard and then have to respec them AGAIN afterwards, etc.)

 

3 - I feel like you missed the point.  Resting doesn't make the game "harder."  It doesn't make it "easier," either.  It's effectively pointless.  If powergamers (or any player who realizes it can be done - even normal players will notice certain mechanical "loopholes" if they're paying attention during play) know that you can just rest to recover their empower points after literally every single encounter... why even bother having the pretenses of per-rest abilities, ESPECIALLY when the game has already gone to great lengths to mechanically separate itself from attrition-based rules systems?

 

I think you missed the entire point of my post.  It has nothing to do with "hard" or "not hard," it has to do with systemic design problems that are going to prevent PotD from being tactically interesting and nuanced.

[PizzaSHARK]

I don't agree with all the points but I agree with the sentiment; as a rule, it's always better to introduce challenge via mechanics and tactics, over HP and mob numbers. Of course, the latter can still contribute to creating a tactical challenge, and in POE2's case it will be a positive change.

 

But points 2 & 3 do attack a wider underlying issue in the POE2 system: the way it variously restricts/enables abilities and combat capabilities, from smaller spellbooks to grimoires to empowers, all combine to a very weird and not particularly systematic experience. You don't really have to conserve your abilities within or between fights, you don't really have to mix it up as much between fights. And that's the key to an enjoyable and challenging experience.

 

That's specifically what killed my interest in trying self-imposed challenge runs, another playthrough with a completely different playstyle, etc - I didn't see how they'd REALLY be any different aside from maybe being forced to use specific gimmicks to work around the imposed challenges, etc.  For me, it wasn't that PotD was too hard - I think while it's easier than Pillars PotD it's not really "too easy" - it was that PotD never really made me THINK, never really made me tackle encounters with wildly different approaches.  Even Pillars, with its "craft Scrolls of I Win, spam Scroll of I Win against anything not immune to I Win" problem at least had enough encounters that made me approach things differently - the early encounters with Phantoms, for example (especially before they got nerfed to being "strong but manageable") required me to dramatically alter the way I was approaching fights up to that point.  Some monsters still do that (Shades in Deadfire, for example, have that AOE attack on teleport so you're encouraged to spread out rather than bunch up like you did vs Shades in Pillars), but they're few and far in between.

 

The comments about adding more enemies is what prompted this post, when normally I'd just stay quiet and find something else to play.  I utterly adore everything BUT the combat (and ship combat, but that's a different post) in Deadfire, and it seems like Deadfire is suffering from being too limited in some areas (enemy AI is just too simplistic, to paint it in broad strokes) and from trying to be too many things at once in others.  There probably should be a few extra bodies in some encounters, and enemies across the board probably need a fair bit more HP in PotD in general (particularly named NPCs/elite mooks), but if they think that just giving everything +25% HP and an extra 3 mooks in every encounter will "fix" PotD... they're wrong.

 

 

Specifically to resting, I advocate basically removing it entirely (via removal of ALL per-rest abilities, items, etc - rebalance and retune them as needed based around being "always available") simply because the game is clearly MOST of the way there already.  When I got empower points and saw they were per-rest, I scratched my head and wondered what argument in the design team resulted in that happening.  I mean, they can keep in Injuries if they want, since they're effectively meaningless as it is, but if they're meaningless to begin with, removing them won't hurt anything.

[PizzaSHARK]

No they need to fix the broken abilities. They need to tune certain gear better. They need to take a serious look at empowering on AoE spells/Attacks. They also need to give encounters better tools to screw you over. You should have to be afraid of enemy mages. You should definitely need to be afraid of enemy dragons!

Stacking armour is too strong and too easy. Same with deflection I've heard.

 

They need to have a serious look at the classes. Maybe Paladins Deep Faith is tad too strong? Maybe Rapid recovery is a tad too strong too? Maybe Cipher spell dmg need some buffing?

What about the insane passive lashes on the monk? Etc etc etc.

 

A Troubadour can stay in stealth all day long safe from enemy fire spamming summons quicker then the enemy can kill em.

 

Rogues stealth need to NOT break combat and should be disabled if u move too far away from the enemy and the enemy need a longer aggro leash. As of right now a rogue can stealth in,kill one guy and then teleport away and go invisible then enter stealth to deactivate the encounter and repeat the process.

 

Paladin Death save should imo only work once per encounter.

 

Procs should absolutely not trigger additional procs. Cleave and swift flurry will still be very very strong.

 

I cannot comment on Druids or priests cuz I haven't tried them and I haven't seen any videos proving them broken OP yet.

 

What about two handed weapons vs dual wield? I always DW for obvious reasons.

 

 

Druids are about what they were in Pillars.  They're really strong, but I don't know if they're OP unless you start stacking certain spells (multiple Druids with Returning Storm stunlocking enemies, etc.)  A blaster Druid is probably better than a blaster Wizard right now, I'm not sure if that's acceptable or not.

 

TWS is always going to outperform everything else except maybe OWS (OWS is only competitive to some extent because of the massive amount of Hit to Crit conversion you can stack and because of how valuable that +12 Accuracy is when enemies all have +15 Deflection) unless TWS itself gets nerfed.  Take a page from other RPG systems and give it an overall Accuracy penalty, offhand damage penalty, or even both.  Pathfinder, for example, imposes a -2/-2 BAB penalty even with Two-Weapon Fighting (and it's higher than that if your offhand weapon isn't a Light weapon, which means lower damage) and only applies half of your Strength bonus to damage with the offhand weapon until you get the Double Slice feat at later levels.  In Deadfire context, that'd probably be a -4 or -6 Accuracy penalty, or maybe a -25% Damage penalty while dual wielding.  A damage penalty is easier to overcome, and would maybe be TOO easy to overcome, but an Accuracy penalty could make dual wielding so weak as to be unusable in PotD.  Another solution might be to lower Penetration, since Penetration is so important in Deadfire.

 

Nerfing classes is expected and will happen but my concern isn't that PotD is too easy or too hard, it's that it's too BORING because of how limited Deadfire's systems design requires it all to be.

[Sanctuary]

2.) Grimoires - if you want different spells carry multiple grimoires and actually switch in combat. A grimoire gets you two free spells per level which is like 14 - 18 free abilities as you'd need to spend a valuable ability to get a spell. 

 

I use offensive spells frequently with Aloth and do not find them terrible on PotD. I also hardly ever use empower, mainly just as a recharge in case I run out of spells in a long fight.

 

 

Except that this is only true if you were going to bother spending points on those spells in the first place.  Many of the spells are either redundant, or simply not worth casting over something else right now, so you aren't actually saving anything.  The missile spells already hit more than a single enemy, and they scale better than any of the other spells too.  It's also better to outright kill an enemy than it is having 3-5 that are half dead roaming around (which happens aside from empower cheese).  About the only time I could ever see it being worth switching grimoires over simply keeping the Vaporous 100% of the time is if you've already used up some of the bonus casts that it gives you from a specific tier, but not from another and you really need a specific spell.  I've yet to encounter any sceneario where this happens though.

 

I guess we'll see how things look though after the supposed balance adjustments.

Edited May 27, 2018 by Sanctuary

[drael6464]

Few quick thoughts.

 

On the first topic, I don't think the game engine is currently designed to label elevation. It's possible that because some walls are able to bounce things, that there is some level of 3d for "cover", but I doubt this includes every object. As such, this is a great suggestion for a future isometric from obsidian, that will in all likelihood make greater use of 3d, but I don't think it's applicable to the current game state. 

 

Regarding spells you are right, that tactically having fewer spells is an obstacle. Some spells are really powerful, others pretty ineffective, and the cast times for some spells is too long (like weapon summons, or healing). The spell system could be tweaked both for balance, and also to allow casters more tactical options. Even allowing more casts of a specialised area (such as illusion or one spell per level) would allow players to develop a specialised play style with their caster more, rather than falling back on damage spells. It's great to have more spells than poe1, but it's still a little lacking next to d20 games. The wall spells don't seem particularly effective for example. For strategy you don't want to rely purely on damaging spells. 

 

Regarding rest, well there's a pretty easy way they could make rest meaningful on POTD. They could make it time constrained, so you can only rest once per day, or make injuries help per time, rather than per rest. With the way injuries result in permenant death, that would make getting an injury in a fight a bigger deal. 

 

It's odd you say that there is some dislike of d20, or class systems in obsidian, because that's totally what this is. The attributes might be in theory closer to a narrative pnp, but in practice the whole system is not unlike pathfinder, just with a per encounter system rather than per day, and empower points replacing hero points and empower feats.  There's a slight 4e/5e ishness to it as well, that the classes don't really feel that different, even if they have different tactical power. If they'd wanted something classless, it'd be more like gurps (just a large collection of attributes and skills you can select).

 

I can see where though, they focus on sort of minor powers that are like other classes, and multi-classing, where they might be trying to make everything blend. But honestly something like pathfinder's hybrid classes (brawler, arcane archer) etc works better than multiclassing, because those are generally not under powered or overpowered and individually balanced for each hybrid. The ability to for example stack things like flurry and ranged bounces, or flurry and cleave is pretty unbalancing. Power gamers are always going to power game, and these are the EXACT same tricks people use in pathfinder - ranged weapon monks for combining flurry and multiple missles, monk/fighters with reach based pole arms to stack cleave and flurry with more targets, fighters with heavy cleave focus, especially two weapon weilders for dps. 

 

In fact a fighter monk with a pole arm was my last pathfinder character lol. It's kind of amusing to see the exact same exploits being used here. 

[baldurs_gate_2]

I'm on my second playthrough and almost done. I'm level 19 and have been doing everything possible. My last playthrough I also wasn't max level for long. Not sure how some people level faster than others.

Maybe with a group, but solo you reach level 20 way earlier and then it becomes boring to do any sort of quest for xp or money you don't need anymore. I believe, Nemnok's quest alone nets 15k xp but by that time, you don't need it anymore. I killed not even all his followeres, because i did not need the money and xp.

Edited May 27, 2018 by baldurs_gate_2

[BillyCorgan]

Same with a group. 

He can not say that he did everything and not be at level 20, group or not. It's impossible. Of course he had to leave a lot of quests or bounty aside.

[Slotharingia]

 

I'm on my second playthrough and almost done. I'm level 19 and have been doing everything possible. My last playthrough I also wasn't max level for long. Not sure how some people level faster than others.

Maybe with a group, but solo you reach level 20 way earlier and then it becomes boring to do any sort of quest for xp or money you don't need anymore. I believe, Nemnok's quest alone nets 15k xp but by that time, you don't need it anymore. I killed not even all his followeres, because i did not need the money and xp.

 

Hmm. I'm just about to do Nemnok and I now just hit 20. I have been avoiding killing people wherever possible this pt, but idk how much difference that makes xp wise if any. I seem to recall POE1 only giving xp for quests, not enemies killed but I may be confused.

 

I'm on my second playthrough and almost done. I'm level 19 and have been doing everything possible. My last playthrough I also wasn't max level for long. Not sure how some people level faster than others.

 

Simply not possible.  You're missing loads of stuff somehow.  It's not a matter of "faster."  There is a set amount of available exp and a set amount required for 20.  Do the companion quests and faction lines and you you will hit 20 without even starting the main quest.  I don't have the numbers, but if I had to guess, when I finished the game I had enough for level 26-27 if not higher, and that's assuming an increasing curve.  The game keeps showing that you are earning XP it just doesn't go anywhere, which is actually worse than if it just stopped showing exp, like some games do.

 

I'm pretty sure I've done everything possible before He Waits in Fire, besides Nemnok, maybe one longboat & one remote island, a couple of quests that haven't been handed in yet and stuff related to Maia who I haven't recruited.

[baldurs_gate_2]

 

 

I'm on my second playthrough and almost done. I'm level 19 and have been doing everything possible. My last playthrough I also wasn't max level for long. Not sure how some people level faster than others.

Maybe with a group, but solo you reach level 20 way earlier and then it becomes boring to do any sort of quest for xp or money you don't need anymore. I believe, Nemnok's quest alone nets 15k xp but by that time, you don't need it anymore. I killed not even all his followeres, because i did not need the money and xp.

 

Hmm. I'm just about to do Nemnok and I now just hit 20. I have been avoiding killing people wherever possible this pt, but idk how much difference that makes xp wise if any. I seem to recall POE1 only giving xp for quests, not enemies killed but I may be confused.

 

I'm on my second playthrough and almost done. I'm level 19 and have been doing everything possible. My last playthrough I also wasn't max level for long. Not sure how some people level faster than others.

 

Simply not possible.  You're missing loads of stuff somehow.  It's not a matter of "faster."  There is a set amount of available exp and a set amount required for 20.  Do the companion quests and faction lines and you you will hit 20 without even starting the main quest.  I don't have the numbers, but if I had to guess, when I finished the game I had enough for level 26-27 if not higher, and that's assuming an increasing curve.  The game keeps showing that you are earning XP it just doesn't go anywhere, which is actually worse than if it just stopped showing exp, like some games do.

 

I'm pretty sure I've done everything possible before He Waits in Fire, besides Nemnok, maybe one longboat & one remote island, a couple of quests that haven't been handed in yet and stuff related to Maia who I haven't recruited.

 

Have you done all the bounties and looted off the most of the ships? Because that needs you very much xp.

[BillyCorgan]

There must be something yes (bounty i think) ... or else he has a different game from us. :D

[PizzaSHARK]

 

2.) Grimoires - if you want different spells carry multiple grimoires and actually switch in combat. A grimoire gets you two free spells per level which is like 14 - 18 free abilities as you'd need to spend a valuable ability to get a spell. 

 

I use offensive spells frequently with Aloth and do not find them terrible on PotD. I also hardly ever use empower, mainly just as a recharge in case I run out of spells in a long fight.

 

 

Except that this is only true if you were going to bother spending points on those spells in the first place.  Many of the spells are either redundant, or simply not worth casting over something else right now, so you aren't actually saving anything.  The missile spells already hit more than a single enemy, and they scale better than any of the other spells too.  It's also better to outright kill an enemy than it is having 3-5 that are half dead roaming around (which happens aside from empower cheese).  About the only time I could ever see it being worth switching grimoires over simply keeping the Vaporous 100% of the time is if you've already used up some of the bonus casts that it gives you from a specific tier, but not from another and you really need a specific spell.  I've yet to encounter any sceneario where this happens though.

 

I guess we'll see how things look though after the supposed balance adjustments.

 

 

A bigger problem is that grimoires can only be equipped to quick action slots, so that basically means that in order to have a decent toolkit, Wizards can't use potions or scrolls or explosives or drugs or other consumables and Priests and Druids can apparently just get bent because they don't even get the option of grimoires.  I'd really like to hear what the team was thinking with these changes, what they intended for it to result in and what gameplay goal it was intended to fulfill that the previous system failed to accomplish, because I can't understand any of it unless the point was "casters too strong, make them weaker."

 

As for some spells being redundant or just bad, that's probably because it sure seems like Obsidian created the consolidated inspiration/affliction setup and then directly ported spells across as often as possible.  It's why Priests generally feel really weak (most of the buffs they can provide are redundant because a lot of classes, and especially a lot of martial classes, can already provide them on-demand by themselves), etc.  The balance changes can and presumably will be fixing a lot of that, though.

[Slotharingia]

I've done all the bounties AFAIK and all the ships except maybe some of the "vikings". I think there are 3 or 4 and I've done 2. Maybe you can tell me if I'm missing something major from my quest list:

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Ship
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[BillyCorgan]

I do not know what to tell you.

My game, and that of many others, must have a magical XP boost... because I (and we) reached level 20 well 10 hours before the end of the game ... and with plenty of quests to do.

 

But no problem, we'll say that each game is unique.

Captures before to go to the end :

 

[Keldaur]

 

I'm just level 9 and most fights seems tough for me. Not sure why everyone say the game is too easy? Was it because my main character is caster? I'm not sure why most of my spells still miss or the accuracy of my spells still couldn't penetrate most of the enemies.

 

I don't have numbers, so I can't say "most of these people" are running power builds in a game mode that hasn't yet been tuned for difficulty, so of course it is too easy.

 

I didn't powerbuild i am cruising through PotD. I am by no means a good player or a min maxer. I have to look for combats 3-4 lvls ahead of me to even have a contest. PotD is certainly underdeveloped, which is a rather sad thing on release.

[PizzaSHARK]

Few quick thoughts.

 

On the first topic, I don't think the game engine is currently designed to label elevation. It's possible that because some walls are able to bounce things, that there is some level of 3d for "cover", but I doubt this includes every object. As such, this is a great suggestion for a future isometric from obsidian, that will in all likelihood make greater use of 3d, but I don't think it's applicable to the current game state. 

 

Regarding spells you are right, that tactically having fewer spells is an obstacle. Some spells are really powerful, others pretty ineffective, and the cast times for some spells is too long (like weapon summons, or healing). The spell system could be tweaked both for balance, and also to allow casters more tactical options. Even allowing more casts of a specialised area (such as illusion or one spell per level) would allow players to develop a specialised play style with their caster more, rather than falling back on damage spells. It's great to have more spells than poe1, but it's still a little lacking next to d20 games. The wall spells don't seem particularly effective for example. For strategy you don't want to rely purely on damaging spells. 

 

Regarding rest, well there's a pretty easy way they could make rest meaningful on POTD. They could make it time constrained, so you can only rest once per day, or make injuries help per time, rather than per rest. With the way injuries result in permenant death, that would make getting an injury in a fight a bigger deal. 

 

It's odd you say that there is some dislike of d20, or class systems in obsidian, because that's totally what this is. The attributes might be in theory closer to a narrative pnp, but in practice the whole system is not unlike pathfinder, just with a per encounter system rather than per day, and empower points replacing hero points and empower feats.  There's a slight 4e/5e ishness to it as well, that the classes don't really feel that different, even if they have different tactical power. If they'd wanted something classless, it'd be more like gurps (just a large collection of attributes and skills you can select).

 

I can see where though, they focus on sort of minor powers that are like other classes, and multi-classing, where they might be trying to make everything blend. But honestly something like pathfinder's hybrid classes (brawler, arcane archer) etc works better than multiclassing, because those are generally not under powered or overpowered and individually balanced for each hybrid. The ability to for example stack things like flurry and ranged bounces, or flurry and cleave is pretty unbalancing. Power gamers are always going to power game, and these are the EXACT same tricks people use in pathfinder - ranged weapon monks for combining flurry and multiple missles, monk/fighters with reach based pole arms to stack cleave and flurry with more targets, fighters with heavy cleave focus, especially two weapon weilders for dps. 

 

In fact a fighter monk with a pole arm was my last pathfinder character lol. It's kind of amusing to see the exact same exploits being used here. 

 

Yeah I don't see any indication that the Pillars engine can handle Z-axis stuff, but its complete absence mystifies me since even systems with relatively simple rules (such as 5E) still make terrain a relevant concern and often include spells or abilities or items that allow players to alter it to some extent.  I'm not expecting or even wanting, like, XCOM-style cover mechanics, but at least some means of breaking line of sight, gaining simple cover bonuses, a high ground advantage, using low ground to avoid line of sight from enemies on slightly higher ground, etc would dramatically expand what can be done with the system.  All of that is pointless if the AI wasn't changed to be able to make use of it, though - you'd just have the Pillars problem where allegedly intelligent and sapient creatures casually funnel themselves into a slaughter chute by lining up at a doorway with a tank planted in it while the Wizard and Druid place persistent hazard AOEs on the opposite side.

 

Making resting 1/day or injuries take time wouldn't change anything.  Players would just hit the Wait button until injuries are healed or the Rest button refreshes.  You can't have a meaningful rest system without a game DESIGNED around permadeath/no saving (aka tabletop rules), or without making the narrative time-sensitive.  It costs nothing to spend a week in a dungeon just twiddling your thumbs until you can rest again or your broken bones magically pop back into place... unless you only have three days (including travel time to and from!) to retrieve the macguffin before the quest automatically resolves (probably in a way that denies you XP, money, and a positive outcome.)  The problem is that neither solution is going to be easy to cram into the system as it's currently built - you kind of need to build the game around these concepts, not paste them on after the fact.  It's not that I don't think you can't make resting and injuries and stuff meaningful, it's more than Obsidian has clearly taken a number of big steps towards outright removing or minimizing the attrition-based gameplay concept... so it makes more sense to just cut off the vestigial bits (if it's not a big deal in regular gameplay, then it's also not a big deal to just remove it outright) than try and justify keeping them around because you want to appeal to the two or three Baldur's Gate grognards that somehow haven't been alienated already and would pitch a temper tantrum if you dispensed with a d20 cliche.

 

 

I agree that as a concept multiclassing in Deadfire is overpowered.  I agree that Pathfinder's hybrid classes tend to offer the best solution, or you could look into their Variant Multiclassing rules - you retain the save progression, attack progression, abilities and features, etc of the primary class, while gaining selected features of the secondary class instead of feats at specific levels.  If you VMC'd a Fighter, you would get Bravery +1 instead of a feat, then you'd get Armor Training +1, Weapon Training +1, and so on.  Your primary class loses no caster levels, no ability scaling or progression, etc - you just lose feats.  You are effectively trading the open-ended customization and variability of feats for the set progression of a second class's features.  In practice, this is rarely worth it (it might as well be "make Fighters more interesting/less useless"), but as an overall rules concept it can work very well

 

Personally, I don't see the point in every class having a unique resource in Deadfire, other than it maybe being necessary for certain "recover spent resources" features.  Making a Fighter/Paladin draw from the same power pool for all of their abilities would probably substantially nerf them since you could no longer use Disciplined Strikes for "free" while still spamming out Flames of Devotion, for example.

Edited May 27, 2018 by PizzaSHARK

[MortyTheGobbo]

I think Rogue abilities should all be Full attacks as a dual wielding Rogue is iconic. Make this for backstab as well.

 

Dual-wielding rogues are iconic, but one of Pillars' strengths is that it doesn't cleave to what's "iconic" or "traditional". A rogue shouldn't feel like they're losing out by picking a two-handed weapon or a single one-hander.

 

Anyway, I don't have much to contribute otherwise, except to say I feel like they should have rewritten the spell lists much more than they did. The motley assortment of situational spells might have fit the first game, where wizards, clerics and druids had access to all of them, but the tighter balance of Deadifre makes a lot of them fall by the wayside. The same applies to chants and invocations.

 

It'll be interesting to see them fine-tune the balance over the years. Pillars had many changes that came with patches, so Deadfire will too.

Edited May 27, 2018 by MortyTheGobbo

[ilsendoodle]

They need to attack about 10 different things to make it remotely challenging.

 

Since you brought up resting, I like the idea of only being able to rest in an inn.  I never even bothered, just rested outside with my fire skewers every fight.

 

I mean sure making terrain and AI better and all that would be great, but they could still do a lot just by tweaking some easy stuff:

 

1)  Halve XP gain.

2)  Decrease the value of exceptional and superb items to 20% of their current value.

3)  Tone down the broken skills.  (I can personally vouch for whispers of the wind being completely broken, I'm sure others are equally bad.)

4)  Increase enemy hp/damage.

5)  Restrict resting to inns.

6)  Limit of one save and have the game autosave when anyone falls.  (Like DOS hardcore mode.) 

 

I'm sure there are a million of other ideas, but this would help, and it requires very little. 

[ilsendoodle]

 

 

I'm just level 9 and most fights seems tough for me. Not sure why everyone say the game is too easy? Was it because my main character is caster? I'm not sure why most of my spells still miss or the accuracy of my spells still couldn't penetrate most of the enemies.

 

I don't have numbers, so I can't say "most of these people" are running power builds in a game mode that hasn't yet been tuned for difficulty, so of course it is too easy.

 

I didn't powerbuild i am cruising through PotD. I am by no means a good player or a min maxer. I have to look for combats 3-4 lvls ahead of me to even have a contest. PotD is certainly underdeveloped, which is a rather sad thing on release.

 

 

I thought it was reasonably challenging for a while.  That's why I understand why level 10s or whatever don't understand what we're talking about.  But it quickly became 100% faceroll, like flipping a switch.  

[bgi123]

The game would need to be restructured a bit for the resting mechanic to work out.  For now you can rest pretty much infinitely with zero repercussions other than losing some food. 

 

Resting should allow you to eat more food, but it doesn't rid 100% of all ailments and only restores fractions of your abilities. Resting in dangerous areas should have a chance of you getting ambushed. Maybe make it that you need to rest 3 times to fully recover all ailments or make resting have like 35% chance of healing one debilitation out of many you can get, and 30% chance to regain 1 empower charges.

 

Make events that can interrupt resting like stray animals messing with you or getting ganged by wolfs, bandits, assassins, treasure seekers, or simply soldiers who want to loot you, etc. Make some companions events that can reduce the effectiveness of resting. Like if Aloth's awaken soul takes over him when he is sleeping and she messes around, or if your broken wrist made it difficult to rest without ale. 

 

Maybe have areas regenerate some (not all) monsters or NPCs as time passes. The NPCs generated doesn't need to be same ones that was native to the area. It could be troops sent there to check who murdered everyone, looting bandits or mercenaries, scavenging carnivorous animals, or spirits from those slaughtered. 

[bgi123]

Few quick thoughts.

 

On the first topic, I don't think the game engine is currently designed to label elevation. It's possible that because some walls are able to bounce things, that there is some level of 3d for "cover", but I doubt this includes every object. As such, this is a great suggestion for a future isometric from obsidian, that will in all likelihood make greater use of 3d, but I don't think it's applicable to the current game state. 

 

Regarding spells you are right, that tactically having fewer spells is an obstacle. Some spells are really powerful, others pretty ineffective, and the cast times for some spells is too long (like weapon summons, or healing). The spell system could be tweaked both for balance, and also to allow casters more tactical options. Even allowing more casts of a specialised area (such as illusion or one spell per level) would allow players to develop a specialised play style with their caster more, rather than falling back on damage spells. It's great to have more spells than poe1, but it's still a little lacking next to d20 games. The wall spells don't seem particularly effective for example. For strategy you don't want to rely purely on damaging spells. 

 

Regarding rest, well there's a pretty easy way they could make rest meaningful on POTD. They could make it time constrained, so you can only rest once per day, or make injuries help per time, rather than per rest. With the way injuries result in permenant death, that would make getting an injury in a fight a bigger deal. 

 

It's odd you say that there is some dislike of d20, or class systems in obsidian, because that's totally what this is. The attributes might be in theory closer to a narrative pnp, but in practice the whole system is not unlike pathfinder, just with a per encounter system rather than per day, and empower points replacing hero points and empower feats.  There's a slight 4e/5e ishness to it as well, that the classes don't really feel that different, even if they have different tactical power. If they'd wanted something classless, it'd be more like gurps (just a large collection of attributes and skills you can select).

 

I can see where though, they focus on sort of minor powers that are like other classes, and multi-classing, where they might be trying to make everything blend. But honestly something like pathfinder's hybrid classes (brawler, arcane archer) etc works better than multiclassing, because those are generally not under powered or overpowered and individually balanced for each hybrid. The ability to for example stack things like flurry and ranged bounces, or flurry and cleave is pretty unbalancing. Power gamers are always going to power game, and these are the EXACT same tricks people use in pathfinder - ranged weapon monks for combining flurry and multiple missles, monk/fighters with reach based pole arms to stack cleave and flurry with more targets, fighters with heavy cleave focus, especially two weapon weilders for dps. 

 

In fact a fighter monk with a pole arm was my last pathfinder character lol. It's kind of amusing to see the exact same exploits being used here. 

 

 

As with my previous post. The duration of ailments is a nice addition to what I previously proposed and could work very will within the existing game engine. 

[dudex]

empower really trivializes any challenge the game has and will provide if it doesnt change. doesnt matter if skills and enemies are balanced because with a push of a button u can fire multiple empowered abilities every fight to steamroll everything if u wanted to. personally i think it should be removed from potd.

Edited May 28, 2018 by dudex