[POTD Difficulty] Launch NOT tuned discussion thread

[PizzaSHARK]

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. 

 

The problem with restricting resting to inns is that it doesn't really make it any different.  Sure, there's a real-world time cost as you go through loading screens, sailing animations, etc - but there's no in-game cost to any of it (oh, fine, a few coppers - but who cares?)  I don't think it's possible to make resting a meaningful decision in Deadfire without reworking whole sections of the game rules, which is why I advocate just tossing the whole thing out and pretending it wasn't there to begin with.  Pillars had the same, exact problem - sure, you were artificially limited on how often you could rest without enduring loading screens via camping supplies, but there was absolutely nothing stopping you from ****ing off to Caed Nua for a nap, then returning to pick up where you left off... so resting was meaningless as a gameplay fixture and was pointlessly tedious.  Pillars did FORCE you to rest via the Health system being an effective cap on how far you could go before resting, but I don't think that made the game any harder, just tedious.

Edited May 28, 2018 by PizzaSHARK

[evilcat]

People are focusing too much on resting. Which is not broken right now, and trying to fix will create new kinds of bugs.

Resting is very uninvasive in this game, so if you dont like you may almost ignore it.

The times it is somehow useful:

Give feedback that you are dieing too much, or just often.

RP reasons

Rest bonuses which sometimes could be used as Witcher Elixirs.

 

Just focus on some real issues:

Bugged abbilities (like breaking or not breaking stealth)

Broken stuff (procs to infinity, High tier spells with massive PL boost)

Named weapons distribution.

 

Raising HP will not solve all problems, but will make aoe nukes less effective, and just seems to have too litle health.

Extra Mooks will probably die in aoe, but it is one way to make encounter harder.

 

Buffing classes (Priest) and abillities which are too bad in comparison to avarage, even without broken stuff.

 

Different aproach to buffing, debuffing. So it will be more important to care for debuffs we have on. Also with means to cure debuffs, or gain immunity.

[PizzaSHARK]

People are focusing too much on resting. Which is not broken right now, and trying to fix will create new kinds of bugs.

Resting is very uninvasive in this game, so if you dont like you may almost ignore it.

The times it is somehow useful:

Give feedback that you are dieing too much, or just often.

RP reasons

Rest bonuses which sometimes could be used as Witcher Elixirs.

 

Just focus on some real issues:

Bugged abbilities (like breaking or not breaking stealth)

Broken stuff (procs to infinity, High tier spells with massive PL boost)

Named weapons distribution.

 

Raising HP will not solve all problems, but will make aoe nukes less effective, and just seems to have too litle health.

Extra Mooks will probably die in aoe, but it is one way to make encounter harder.

 

Buffing classes (Priest) and abillities which are too bad in comparison to avarage, even without broken stuff.

 

Different aproach to buffing, debuffing. So it will be more important to care for debuffs we have on. Also with means to cure debuffs, or gain immunity.

 

I've never had issues with enemies placing debuffs on me thanks to inspirations overriding afflictions.  Fighters always have a Perception inspiration active so they never have to worry about being Blinded, Barbarians always have Might and Constitution inspirations up, Paladins have permanent resistance to ****ing everything through passive feats, etc.

 

Did you have issues with debuffs in your playthrough?  I was actually pretty disappointed I never really had to worry about getting stunlocked etc like in Pillars.  The resistance mechanic on top of inspirations suppressing afflictions is just way too good, especially since enemies with such buffs and resistances are pretty uncommon and are typically bosses and not regular mooks.

[PizzaSHARK]

 

 

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 think Obsidian dramatically underestimated how broken multiclassing makes martials, because it's really only martials you see talked about being overpowered (well, I guess chanters are technically sort of a spellcaster?)  Martials don't gain nearly as much from power level advancement as casters do, and a lot of the best abilities are fairly early (Fighters get effectively permanent Aware and Concentration at 1st level for only 1 resource, Barbarians get Hardy+Tenacious for 1 resource and no penalty with Intelligence resistance, Monks get an exploding dice AOE attack at tier 3, etc) and hitting things with a pair of swords costs zero resources while Wizards, Druids, etc must spend finite resources to do anything particularly meaningful.  I have a hunch that someone, or several someones, on the design team really hate quadratic wizards and wanted to really "punish" people for playing casters in Deadfire.

 

My first character was a Devoted/Helwalker because I never really tried a Monk in Pillars and it sounded fun.  Turns out I sort of stumbled across what is arguably the strongest melee DPS build in the game (there's a lot of competition so they're all better in some areas, I'd say Streetfighter/Goldpact is the only other build that comes close, trading raw DPS potential for being basically invulnerable) and it basically made a joke of everything.  Like you, anything remotely close to my level was a joke.

[Gregorovitch]

Someone at Obsidian must play only martials in tabletop because jesus christ did spellcasters get smashed with the nerfbat between Pillars and Deadfire.

 

...

...

 

 Powergamers are just going to rest after every encounter and open with an empowered fireball to obliterate everything (or any number of other, similar things),

 

OK......,so, er, which is it?

[drael6464]

In pnp games, you can also just camp in the middle of a dungeon. The mechanic that stops you doing this too often, is that encounters can get the jump on your while half the party is sleeping - not in armour, and without weapons drawn.

 

So I can actually see how this could be fixed the same way. But you'd need to introduce random encounters to resting, and make it so the party is not wearing armour, and have some extra unarmed "weapon slot". 

 

But I kind of agree that rest isn't really broken. It's not the thing that makes the game unbalanced, or less strategic. I reckon the empower ability is OP, is one thing. Things like cleave and flurry need to be tweaked, and in particular bonus attacks should have a stacking maximum. 

 

AoE spells would be easy enough to tweak. Either you lower the damage done, scale down empower, or beef up enemy immunities to fire, ice, lightning etc. 

 

In general I think it does relate to the system, and the enemies. Trolls in pathfinder/dnd are hard because you can't kill them without fire or acid damage. One enemy I found quite hard in this game were the fampyrs. Even at high levels, because of that charm/domination. So I someone hit the nail on the head here about players having too many immunities. Those times you get stunned or dominated, is when you really start thinking about your approach.

 

One of the reasons, side comment, that cyphers could be great, but aren't - those charm, stun, domination powers could be game changers, but it's not the focus of the character. 

 

More backstabbing enemies might help too - with all the reliance on cleave and furry - usually in a pnp game you don't always rush in to be surrounded by enemies because you get flanked. If the battlefield was filled with for example some poison wielding assasins, that poleax wielding fighter monk might think twice. Likewise a stone golem with an insane DR to peirce might discourage bow users.

 

The more I think about it, beyond the lack of 'stack limits', and the OP of empower, one of the core issues relates to the buff/debuff system and general vulnerabilities. Those are often the things that make you alter your approach. I never once had to change my weapon set in this game to get a different form of damage. Or rely primarily on ranged weapons, or spellcasters. And those are all things you sometimes have to do in pnp games - Plus - a breath weapon wielding dragon will fry your front line fighters. A vampire will screw them too. As will a medusa, or beholder. Some beefy enemy abilities and defenses is what creates this. 

 

Those little sigils have the sort of power that some creatures could have, if you really want to beef up the drama. There's a death one that within a certain range, basically auto-kills the whole party. If you could have some attacks, debuffs, and defences that were not easily overcome - things like gaze weapons, breath weapons, high specific DRs, spell resistance and so on, that would bring in the strategy. Make people not just bomb AoE, and run in swinging. 

Edited May 28, 2018 by drael6464

[Isslair]

Tbh, I'd prefer quality over quantity in regards to encounter design.

 

Instead of adding more mooks  (making any attmepts at tanking even less relevant and overal combat experience even more chaotic), I'd like to see us fight balanced 5-man parties with dedicated roles and stats comparable to a palyer party. With enemy priests throwing clutch sanctuaries on a ranger that's being focused, paladins reviving people, enemy rogues stunlocking your support casters, while enemy mages drop an arcane dampener. That kind of stuff.

 

Would be even funny to see OP builds with swift flurry/empowered missiles used by AI against players. Such encounters could kinda encourage strategic/reactive usage of skills, instead of relying on spamming the best AOE available and watching endless mob stance procs decimating everything. 

 

 

Another idea, also this would have to wait till DLCs at least, is to implement some actual mechanics in the combat encounter. Currently, all fights are just tank'n'spank with no other requirements  aside from maximizing the damage per second. Would be interesting to see some dynamic stuff happening during  boss fights, e.g. environment hazards forcing to repositiong your party, priority targets that require you to stop killing the boss and do something else, perhaps some 'big'n'bad' abilities for bosses that should be countered in a specific way, etc.

 

Simply adding hp/damage/mobs is always the worst possible answer (aside form not doing anything at all).

[Keldaur]

I actually like per rest and attrition gameplay. It forces you to be as clean as possible, it's a motivation and a reward system to how well you perform in every fight. A per encounter system makes every encounter pointless because it reduces the result to a binary win or lose the encounter withouth "by how much you won" result. It also makes trivial fights feel way more trivial and a chore, since you know beforehand that you won't lose any resource to clean it up and you will move forward effortlessly to your next encounter. What you and me call tedious are different things. Tedious for me is to have to do a big number of things that are completely pointless (most fights with a per encounter system or a big number of loading screens to replenish resources), the first one no matter how much you change the numbers will continue to be the same, the second one atleast gives me an incentive to play better.

 

It is a problem that is exharcebated by how the game currently works, i play a fanatic, i pretty much one shot everything with FoD (since the beginning of the game).

Edited May 28, 2018 by Keldaur

[Wormerine]

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

 

Isn’t ther an Ironman mode like in PoE1, or did they remove it for now?

[Wormerine]

In pnp games, you can also just camp in the middle of a dungeon. The mechanic that stops you doing this too often, is that encounters can get the jump on your while half the party is sleeping - not in armour, and without weapons drawn.

 

So I can actually see how this could be fixed the same way. But you'd need to introduce random encounters to resting, and make it so the party is not wearing armour, and have some extra unarmed "weapon slot". 

 

And it was like that in IE games, the problem is that didn’t work. That’s why resting supplies were introduced.

 

When you rest and get ambushed you either:

1) can handle the encounter and it’s annoying

2) you can’t so you reload.

 

It is a mechanic which can work ONLY in a setting with perma death and no reloading.

 

Just a note - it makes no sense to have no armor and weapons when ambushed. It’s an adventuring party, not a Holliday trip. It’s not like they put up a tend and change into pijamas.

[Ganrich]

Nah, you see Martials being discussed because they MC better in the sense of synergy.  The caster combos just get more spells from a second class, and maybe something like Spirit Shift, grimoire swap, or holy radiance.  Martials get to mix their fighter's tankiness with their Rogue's single target DPS, or the Paladin's FoD damage for quick focus generation on a Soul Blade.  Another example is the Monk Swift Flurry giving another instant attack on crit meets the Skald's 50% chance to generate a phrase on crit.  These synergies are what power builders look for.  The casters are just as good, but the guys making builds look for those synergies.  That is why they discuss them so much

 

There is a fighter or paladin (can't remember which) combo that was on the Build forums that was mixed with Wizard that gets upwards of 200 Deflection.  Single classed casters nearly just as broken.  They can wipe the whole battlefield (or enough as it doesn't matter) in a single spell. 

 

The issue is a combination of stuff. 

 

1) Gear stacks its effects now, and there are some stupid powerful gears that give a lot of stats + gear that stacks with it.  When you have 3 +15ish deflection items stacking things get out of hand. 

 

2)  Empower and PL stacking makes certain abilities hit like a truck.  This seems to be worse with spells.

 

3)  Encounter composition mid-late game.  Still a lot of smaller skirmish battles.  Your party vs 8ish enemies with a boss/sub-boss mixed in. 

 

4)  AI for enemies could be further improved. 

 

5)  Some synergies make certain MC combos immortal (see Fighter/Chanter with Unbending, Mercy and Kindness phrase, and Set to Their Purpose Invocation).  That is 50% of damage converted to healing, +100% healing phrase, and a buff that replenishes 1 class resource per 6 seconds.  So you can keep all 3 of those up 100% of the time, and you will never die.  A Troubadour can gain 3 phrases every 6 seconds with Set to Their purpose running and they need 6 phrases to cast Set to Their purpose, and the fighter side gets 1 Discipline every 6 seconds and needs 3 discipline to cast Unyielding.  The plus 100% healing phrase makes Unbending go from 50% to 100% damage converted to healing.  Unbending lasts 15 seconds at 10 Intellect, but a Chanter combo would have closer to 20.  So that 15s just turned into 22.5s.  100% uptime on not dying. 

 

6)  Probably some stuff I am not thinking of.

 

And yes, I would say Chanters are a spell caster.  They just have the benefit of having nothing to do while they are building phrases.  Some of their phrases are a bit overtuned for something that can be used nearly 100% of the time, and some of their Invocations (the buffs in particular) are stellar. 

[BillyCorgan]

Be careful this is not provocation, but, does the fact that the game has to come out on console soon did not influence this approach (and game design) of too simplicity?

[lpro]

In response to the complaint about pure spell casters: nonsense, wizards are still capable of excellent single class damage output. plus Concelhaut, Ninguath and Vaporous Wizardry boost Wizard //a lot// either via amazing spells or 1+ spellcast per encounter. high level single class wizard spells are also kill everything spells (although PotD difficulty is unbalanced and there are few 18+ level encounters anyway, as we all know). OP is evidently not maximizing the potential of wizard at all. if OP can’t hit on Wizard spells, try bringing a Priest and using Devotions and dire blessing? or boosting perception on wizard.

 

second, wizard is not merely a damage class but also an incredible tank /melee dps multiclass. (long version follows). battlemage seems very viable solo PotD bc of stacking defensive spells that can all be cast quickly.(Llengrath spells can stack together to grant some +45 to deflection +40 reflex, 50% hit to graze—just cast contingency, let enemies bloody you, cast displacement). imo battlemage is actually quite a lot tankier than paladin single class (except you have to heal from athletics/consumeables/fighter passive). through high int you can make your defensive abilities last for the entire encounter. vary Llengrath’s displacement and Citzal’s martial power later for enormous bonus to accuracy and three inspirations vs pure tankability. Llengrath’s Contingency and/or ironskin (don’t stack imo, but haven’t tested) means a battlemage in plate can routinely have about 20 AR. have not tried this w Cadhu Scalth shield and sword and shield but would guess deflection could spike to 200. i tested the viability if this by soloing some higher level bounties on current PotD w scaling...

 

riposte spellblade would likely be viable bc of absurd buffed defenses.

 

tldr; the point is that OP doesn’t seem very knowledgeable about spellcasters. the only one that is weak r/n is single class priest although xoti has some amazing spells to counteract.

[dunehunter]

We can design some prototype for enemies.

 

So what if the enemy team is made of an unbroken/wizard tank, a bleakwalker/assassin to kill backrows fast, a blackjack/ranger for interrupt caster and dispel protections. A single class wizard for blast, and a few minions.

 

I’m pretty sure this can be a challenging encounter. Now? We only meet with enemy of ****ty combos, pure fighter pure priest pure wizard, pretty lame I’d say. They rush to us like headless fly that being killed without doing anything.

 

Also it would be nice if we can customize AI for enemies, and share our best AI sets to others.

Edited May 28, 2018 by dunehunter

[mazeltov]

Also it would be nice if we can customize AI for enemies, and share our best AI sets to others.

 

*enemy spams Empowered infinite proc combos on your party*

*enemy spams summons at every opportunity*

 

The horror. The horror.

[Ganrich]

Be careful this is not provocation, but, does the fact that the game has to come out on console soon did not influence this approach (and game design) of too simplicity?

 

I don't think so.  Things like every item bonus stacking are because PoE1 had a mix of things that did and didn't stack.  It was convoluted.  Gear bonuses stacking would be fine, but some gear has such high bonuses that it becomes a problem.  So, that fix has nothing to do with consoles in my estimation. 

 

Going from 6 to 5 people in a party might help consoles, but with all the actives that every class has every fight it still makes sense even if you don't consider the console port.  The melee in this game are very active vs the IE games where they just auto attack.  Mix in multiclass and wizards/druids/priests having 2 casts per spell level in each encounter and you have a lot of abilities to throw around.  So, to some extent, love it or hate it, reducing party size makes sense given the game's design. 

 

Reducing combat's overall speed could also be attributed to consoles, but I think that would be a dubious proposition as well.  Going back to PoE1 after Deadfire and seeing how absurdly fast your Monk can spam Torment's Reach will make you realize that the combat speed needed to be fiddled with. 

 

Empower is there to give an incentive to rest, but not be as overbearing as the pseudo-Vancian system of PoE1.  So, they are trying to retain something of the IE experience while trying to move forward.  Some hate this, and some don't (I have grown fond of it tbh).  However, I can't attribute it to the console ports.  Empower just does too much for a lot of damage spells/abilities.  Simultaneously, it may do too little for some buffs/debuffs.  So, IMHO you either use Empower to get back resources, or you use it to make your next AoE wipe the field.  There are some situations where either one of those options are optimal. 

 

So, to sum up...  No I don't think it is because of future Console versions that the game is the way it is.  Some of these changes will make the console port easier to be sure.  I just think there are other equally valid reasons things were implemented this way, and that they just happen to coincide with making the port to consoles easier.

 

@dunehunter - Absolutely.  Enemy compositions are just way out of whack.  AI is strange at times.  And so on.  I would also say there are a few late game encounters that could be bumped up by adding more enemies.  There are still a few "trash fights" that are a bit too trash, imho. 

 

@mazeltov - yes you have to be careful with the AI for sure.  It could get obnoxious very easily, and it is something that they need to keep in mind when working it out. 

[Lokithecat]

Horrifying solution for PoTD difficulty.  Leave all mechanics as is, give any 'major' encounter one of the broken builds from build forums, and enough scripting to use it aggressively / properly, and watch the tears roll in.

[dunehunter]

An encounter with 8 Crusader with best gears full resistance Watch them charge into your team’s weakest member and stomp them with FoD :D

[Rumpelstilskin]

I never once had to change my weapon set in this game to get a different form of damage. Or rely primarily on ranged weapons, or spellcasters.

you might have had to if you had been all ranged to begin with, since there are some enemies that are fully immune to pierce, and some that have very high resistance to it. but i guess bows can solve it partially, since they do pierce+slash.

[drael6464]

 

In pnp games, you can also just camp in the middle of a dungeon. The mechanic that stops you doing this too often, is that encounters can get the jump on your while half the party is sleeping - not in armour, and without weapons drawn.

 

So I can actually see how this could be fixed the same way. But you'd need to introduce random encounters to resting, and make it so the party is not wearing armour, and have some extra unarmed "weapon slot". 

And it was like that in IE games, the problem is that didn’t work. That’s why resting supplies were introduced.

 

When you rest and get ambushed you either:

1) can handle the encounter and it’s annoying

2) you can’t so you reload.

 

It is a mechanic which can work ONLY in a setting with perma death and no reloading.

 

Just a note - it makes no sense to have no armor and weapons when ambushed. It’s an adventuring party, not a Holliday trip. It’s not like they put up a tend and change into pijamas.

 

 

Okay, you try sleeping in full plate. The most actual medieval soldiers slept in was something like a chain shirt. You can barely get up from a lying position in full plate anyway, so if you did sleep in plate, you'd spend half the fight getting to your feet. 

 

But I still don't think resting is the major problem in terms of producing tactical encounters. It's buffs, debuffs, ailments, specific DR resistances, spell resistances, gaze weapons, breath weapons etc.

 

The vulnerability, invulnerabilities and abilities that make pnp encounters tactical. The most tactical combat I had was either too low level with golems, or high level combat with the fampyrs - that's because with the golems only crush weapons and spells worked, and with the vampyrs, I had to manage getting attacked by own own party.

 

Imagine what it could be like if certain encounters had basically invulnerability to piercing, or slashing, or complete spell resistance, or deadly cone attacks, or paralyzing vision, or death touch - invulnerability to flame, or a swift assasin mob with poisoned backstabs and quick weapons (good luck to their cleave fighter monk then)

 

Each one of those would require a different approach, and be deadly.  Even if people can reload, they can't just "get lucky', they have to change their tactics, like people do with these situations in pnp games. 

 

I think the paladins resistances would have to be lower anyway, but that's what makes for a challenge and requires tactics - when your opponent has unique attributes that make you revist your whole normal approach. 

 

In this case it's about the underpowering of enemy special attributes. Not so much they need a general scale up, but rather in specific areas. Golems should be basically untouchable with swords and daggers. Liches should be - oops he touched you, you lost a level (or two). 

 

Life drain of some significant note would be an easy tactic thing to add. Your front line fighters would also switch to range, and everyone would start running. 

Edited May 28, 2018 by drael6464

[PizzaSHARK]

I actually like per rest and attrition gameplay. It forces you to be as clean as possible, it's a motivation and a reward system to how well you perform in every fight. A per encounter system makes every encounter pointless because it reduces the result to a binary win or lose the encounter withouth "by how much you won" result. It also makes trivial fights feel way more trivial and a chore, since you know beforehand that you won't lose any resource to clean it up and you will move forward effortlessly to your next encounter. What you and me call tedious are different things. Tedious for me is to have to do a big number of things that are completely pointless (most fights with a per encounter system or a big number of loading screens to replenish resources), the first one no matter how much you change the numbers will continue to be the same, the second one atleast gives me an incentive to play better.

 

It is a problem that is exharcebated by how the game currently works, i play a fanatic, i pretty much one shot everything with FoD (since the beginning of the game).

 

Rest and attrition gameplay are clearly not what they're designing for, though.  That's kind of the point - it's a vestigial d20 feature that they don't seem to be willing to just cut off and be rid of.  They'd have to rewrite more than half the game to make attrition-based gameplay relevant again.

 

 

In response to the complaint about pure spell casters: nonsense, wizards are still capable of excellent single class damage output. plus Concelhaut, Ninguath and Vaporous Wizardry boost Wizard //a lot// either via amazing spells or 1+ spellcast per encounter. high level single class wizard spells are also kill everything spells (although PotD difficulty is unbalanced and there are few 18+ level encounters anyway, as we all know). OP is evidently not maximizing the potential of wizard at all. if OP can’t hit on Wizard spells, try bringing a Priest and using Devotions and dire blessing? or boosting perception on wizard.

 

second, wizard is not merely a damage class but also an incredible tank /melee dps multiclass. (long version follows). battlemage seems very viable solo PotD bc of stacking defensive spells that can all be cast quickly.(Llengrath spells can stack together to grant some +45 to deflection +40 reflex, 50% hit to graze—just cast contingency, let enemies bloody you, cast displacement). imo battlemage is actually quite a lot tankier than paladin single class (except you have to heal from athletics/consumeables/fighter passive). through high int you can make your defensive abilities last for the entire encounter. vary Llengrath’s displacement and Citzal’s martial power later for enormous bonus to accuracy and three inspirations vs pure tankability. Llengrath’s Contingency and/or ironskin (don’t stack imo, but haven’t tested) means a battlemage in plate can routinely have about 20 AR. have not tried this w Cadhu Scalth shield and sword and shield but would guess deflection could spike to 200. i tested the viability if this by soloing some higher level bounties on current PotD w scaling...

 

riposte spellblade would likely be viable bc of absurd buffed defenses.

 

tldr; the point is that OP doesn’t seem very knowledgeable about spellcasters. the only one that is weak r/n is single class priest although xoti has some amazing spells to counteract.

 

I don't think you understand.  I'm not saying casters are weak (aside from Priests, who are basically brought for Devotions and that's it), I'm saying that they are vastly more limited than martials because they no longer have a whole toolbox of things to work with and that negatively impacts encounter design possibilities.

[ilsendoodle]

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. 

 

 

Definitely shouldn't be able to rest a screen away from a bunch of baddies without any chance of ambush.  Doesn't make a lick of sense. 

[Keldaur]

 

I actually like per rest and attrition gameplay. It forces you to be as clean as possible, it's a motivation and a reward system to how well you perform in every fight. A per encounter system makes every encounter pointless because it reduces the result to a binary win or lose the encounter withouth "by how much you won" result. It also makes trivial fights feel way more trivial and a chore, since you know beforehand that you won't lose any resource to clean it up and you will move forward effortlessly to your next encounter. What you and me call tedious are different things. Tedious for me is to have to do a big number of things that are completely pointless (most fights with a per encounter system or a big number of loading screens to replenish resources), the first one no matter how much you change the numbers will continue to be the same, the second one atleast gives me an incentive to play better.

 

It is a problem that is exharcebated by how the game currently works, i play a fanatic, i pretty much one shot everything with FoD (since the beginning of the game).

 

Rest and attrition gameplay are clearly not what they're designing for, though.  That's kind of the point - it's a vestigial d20 feature that they don't seem to be willing to just cut off and be rid of.  They'd have to rewrite more than half the game to make attrition-based gameplay relevant again.

That's beside the point. You said it was tedious, i explained why that's completely subjective rather than factual.

[lpro]

 

 

I don't think you understand.  I'm not saying casters are weak (aside from Priests, who are basically brought for Devotions and that's it), I'm saying that they are vastly more limited than martials because they no longer have a whole toolbox of things to work with and that negatively impacts encounter design possibilities.

 

 

Nope. Single-class Wizard at lvl 20 will be able to decide between around 40 spells before swapping grimoires. For ex., Aloth had a pool of 39 different spells . With two named grimoires in his quick item slots he could cast almost every good wizard spell. He could use 17 spells before empowering his pool -- 23 by equipping the Grimoire of Vaporous Wizardry (8,000 cp).*

 

How is 20+ spells per encounter out of a pool of 40+ spells not a 'toolbox'?

 

We both agree that priest is weak. But at level 20, single-class Xoti had the ability to cast 18 spells before empowering out of a total pool of 30 spells.  I agree that the priest is a bad class currently (see above for massive contrast to wizard). But the options just need to be more meaningful with fewer bad spells and 2 spells per power level given freely based on deity, not one. (This would bring priest closer in line w/ Wizard in total spell pool and achieve better multiclass balance too since multiclass wizards have /at least/ two spells per PL simply from grimoires). Priests also need more +spell-per-encounter items and more heal spells since half of their heal spells appear to have been taken out. Still, the priest has quite a lot of potential versatility if you count just the number of unique abilities that can be used per encounter and the total pool of potential abilities. 

 

It's true that single-class spellcasters have fewer options than they used to in POE1, but compared to single-class martials they remain quite a lot more versatile. 

 A pure lvl 20 fighter will have maybe 9 actives to select from plus the three modals -- and some actives take 4 points from a limited pool of 10-14 discipline. The contrast should be obvious.  

 

The least versatile class remains ranger, since Obsidian sadly went w/ the boring, ranger-as-marksman + animal companion concept. Single-class rangers are o.k. dps but bland to play as I experienced w/ Maia, although devs showed some love w/ items. Ranger would be much deeper and more fun if it had some environmentally-specific abilities based on the type of environment--and this would also be thematically sound. Here I am close to agreeing w/ you! 

A pure rogue will also burn through all guile in about 60 seconds and be reduced to auto-attack since most abilities cost 2 or 3 guile. They too should get some modals and night-cycle based passives cos come on they are goddamn rogues. Last, rangers **and** rogues should be able to take a passive to apply poisons more effectively and potentially craft more potent poisons as well. Frankly, anything to make them more versatile and as they quickly are reduced to auto-attacking even at high level. But it's those two **martial** classes that aren't versatile -- not spellcasters. And that rigidity is plainly a hold-over from design decisions in POE1, not a result of the new per-encounter system. 

 

*I like the concept of grimoires adding spellcasts, but unique grimoires should not grant +1 to /all/ spell casts, it's absurdly OP. And other casting classes also need +1 spell per encounter items, I have only seen a few.

Edited May 29, 2018 by lpro

[PizzaSHARK]

I'm not sure why you're using level 20 as an example.  You should be using level 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.  Or do you think the entire game is designed and balanced around level 20 gameplay, and the player starts at level 20?