Combat is now mostly a dull chore

[Multihog]

@Multihog

Good post, agreed.

Though I never played Jagged Alliance, but as far as I remember, it's more a 4X/Turn-based strategy game like the two newer XCOMs and not an RPG?

If the injury system works anything like XCOM then it's pretty much impossible to implement in any way into Deadfire. In DF if your guys got injured and were "out" for a certain period of time you could just wait, no hurry, no rush. But the Avatar Project doesn't wait for your favourite ranger to heal up, no sir, it's time for a retaliation mission!

Correct, but it has some heavy RPG elements and provided nice contrast to how cRPG's operate pertaining to lasting consequence from battles, so I decided to mention it.

 

But yeah, I don't see anything wrong with a binary result in battles, meaning you either win, or it's a game over. This is how almost all games operate, anyway. Sure, some games benefit from more emphasis on resource management and attrition, but others don't. It depends on how well those systems fit in with the design of the game overall and whether they add anything positive. In cRPGs in general, party members dying mid-battle often spirals the situation out of control anyway and results in the rest of the party dying. Is it really needed, or desirable, that you're severely crippled after an intense, close battle in addition to drinking multiple potions, etc? I don't think so. 

 

I also don't think that every battle needs to be an equal threat or equally draining to your resources, regardless of per encounter or per rest. I don't mind killing some trash between the more significant fights. 

Edited May 22, 2018 by Multihog

[PangaeaACDC]

All I can say is that I played POE1 very differently to the rest-spammers that needed to go back to inns and re-supply. I routinely had to skip picking up camping supplies in dungeons and such because I didn't have room for more.

[lMarcusl]

All I can say is that I played POE1 very differently to the rest-spammers that needed to go back to inns and re-supply. I routinely had to skip picking up camping supplies in dungeons and such because I didn't have room for more.

 

To clear this one up...you don't have to rest spam to run out of Camping Supplies. On PotD, you can carry 2 Camping Supplies at a time. So yes, there were plenty of occasions where I'd be walking past 2 or 3 stacks of camping supplies, wondering why the hell I'd need them in the given area. Then I'd be in a more difficult area, like in Endless Paths a bit earlier than is healthy, and I'd camp twice on one level and need to backtrack a couple of levels to pick up what I left behind. And not due to ability spam, mind you, but because of health. Some classes get a better deal on health:endurance ratio than others, and if you dip your toes in min/maxing, your DPS class, with poor health:endurance ratio will have little in terms of HP and defense, relying on your tanks and cc to keep things in order. If stuff goes sideways, it's not rare for your DPS to get laid out twice in a fight, essentially depleting the majority of their health and inflicting some rather debilitating injuries that need clearing up for them to be effective as DPS. In addition to that, it only takes one unfortunate fight to force you to rest to get your squishies back up. Now say there was a stat check that you were making your way towards. Now you gotta haul butt back to the inn to reacquire to bonus to pass the stat check you were going for in the first place.

[Multihog]

 

All I can say is that I played POE1 very differently to the rest-spammers that needed to go back to inns and re-supply. I routinely had to skip picking up camping supplies in dungeons and such because I didn't have room for more.

 

To clear this one up...you don't have to rest spam to run out of Camping Supplies. On PotD, you can carry 2 Camping Supplies at a time. So yes, there were plenty of occasions where I'd be walking past 2 or 3 stacks of camping supplies, wondering why the hell I'd need them in the given area. Then I'd be in a more difficult area, like in Endless Paths a bit earlier than is healthy, and I'd camp twice on one level and need to backtrack a couple of levels to pick up what I left behind. And not due to ability spam, mind you, but because of health. Some classes get a better deal on health:endurance ratio than others, and if you dip your toes in min/maxing, your DPS class, with poor health:endurance ratio will have little in terms of HP and defense, relying on your tanks and cc to keep things in order. If stuff goes sideways, it's not rare for your DPS to get laid out twice in a fight, essentially depleting the majority of their health and inflicting some rather debilitating injuries that need clearing up for them to be effective as DPS. In addition to that, it only takes one unfortunate fight to force you to rest to get your squishies back up. Now say there was a stat check that you were making your way towards. Now you gotta haul butt back to the inn to reacquire to bonus to pass the stat check you were going for in the first place.

 

Yeah, I feel the same way. I only had to backtrack to an inn a couple of times on PotD, but when that happened, it was extremely irritating because the loading screens are frequent and take forever. And yes, you make a good point about health. It doesn't necessarily require spell spamming to be forced to rest. When your front liners' main health pools run out, you WILL rest. After this has happened a couple of times, enjoy your backtrack.

Edited May 22, 2018 by Multihog

[algroth]

 

EDIT: Actually, the Infinity Engine games have one very severe consequence for party members dying: having to pick up all your gear from the ground and re-equip it. That's a major inconvenience but hardly by design a punishment for dying. It's more of a silly design choice the devs made for whatever reason. 

 

 

Probably my most despised consequence to dying in the IE games was that not only did you have to re-equip all your dropped gear, but also you'd have to re-learn any spells acquired by that gear in case you were a spellcaster. In the same way I despised vampires and other level-draining creatures for the way they'd force me to re-select my spells to memorize all over again. That's honestly a thing which I'm very glad Beamdog corrected in their Enhanced Editions, and was definitely a major nuissance for me in the original games.

 

Re: per rest casting v. per encounter, I agree with Marcus that it hardly makes much of a difference with regards to the actual combats as most people will likely attempt to rest before any encounter they deem challenging enough... But with regards to per rest casting, I think this only makes sense in a context where resting is either severely limited or comes at a genuine risk, so that the player has to make sure of when it is convenient to rest and *if* they want to commit to resting. The most obvious example for this, for me, would be in a game that genuinely keeps track of time and has several time-critical quests and events - if you rest in the middle of one of these then you might run the risk of not reaching the objective in time, for example. But in neither Pillars is time much of a constraint, nor is your access to an inn ever truly restricted, or camping supplies scarce enough to ever *not* be at your limit, and so the act of resting, and thus managing per rest resources and so on, is all rendered pretty trivial and meaningless in the end. Personally I also feel that most games of this sort keep a per rest mechanism mostly because it's the way it was in the table-top games, and the more I see of it in videogames the more I feel it's something of an appendage that would in most cases best be removed.

Edited May 22, 2018 by algroth

[Multihog]

 

 

EDIT: Actually, the Infinity Engine games have one very severe consequence for party members dying: having to pick up all your gear from the ground and re-equip it. That's a major inconvenience but hardly by design a punishment for dying. It's more of a silly design choice the devs made for whatever reason. 

 

 

In the same way I despised vampires and other level-draining creatures for the way they'd force me to have to re-select my spells to memorize all over again.

 

Really? It was that bad? I played the original BG2 and other IE games back in the day, but having played the Enhanced Editions ever since they came out, I had completely forgotten about this. Wow, that was a major inconvenience. 

 

Regarding gear being dropped on death, it's always fun to have 3+ party members die in battle in the IE games. The rule I've set for myself is that I'm not allowed to load if one or two party members die, but I will load if 3+ die in the same fight because I don't want to spend 5 minutes re-equipping my characters. Not having having any means of resurrection with me makes it worse because I need to haul all their gear back to a temple.

Edited May 22, 2018 by Multihog

[ThacoBell]

Something that hasn't come up yet when talking about difficulty: How do you balance higher difficulty vs. the high number of class/race/ability combinations? There are already some un-optimal combos that make the game more difficult if you build for RP, rather than optimal power. Tuning the difficulty too high just results in having to use the 1 or 2 "correct" strategies to progress. Having to do things one right way or die is not fun. I want to be able to experiment with different builds, playstyels, off the wall concepts, etc. without feeling like I am playing "wrong".

[Lexx]

Problem with combat is that you can't just increase the mob difficulty / use simple level scaling, as that will just result in combat becoming tedious instead of an easy breeze. What's necessary is a mix of lowly trash mobs and some real tough combat scenarios to shake things up.

Edited May 22, 2018 by Lexx

[Stephen Unsworth-Mitchell]

 

@Mr. Unsworth-Mitchell

I kind of missed this before, but now that it was quoted: it seems quite bold naming yourself "a tactical thinker" and calling everyone who disagrees "a casual" on a gaming forum. Maybe you didn't mean it like that, but that's like dressing up in a moose costume and running across a shooting range.

 

 

 

 

Firstly not calling myself anything as been lots of different things depending on life.

 

Secondly and most importantly there nothing wrong in playing any game in any way person likes. So if your casual gamer I been casual game at times, if that's how you enjoy game or are limited to playing game its not problem.

 

Personally I prefer the per rest system, but that said I not saying its only way or should be in game by itself and if read my posts I advocate for it to be inclusive to all types of gamers.

 

I labelled things to make/show my points not as way to value any given group of people. Its descriptive and not negative label.

 

Tela2k thanks for making your point I quoted as it allowed me to correct my position. I didn't mean to offend anyone, and apologise if I did. tala2k your making me feel old with the MR 

[Stephen Unsworth-Mitchell]

Something that hasn't come up yet when talking about difficulty: How do you balance higher difficulty vs. the high number of class/race/ability combinations? There are already some un-optimal combos that make the game more difficult if you build for RP, rather than optimal power. Tuning the difficulty too high just results in having to use the 1 or 2 "correct" strategies to progress. Having to do things one right way or die is not fun. I want to be able to experiment with different builds, playstyels, off the wall concepts, etc. without feeling like I am playing "wrong".

 

A very good point especially with the per encounter system.

 

With one group a fight can be cake walk while taking another group will make that fight challenge. Number of possibilities with the multiclass increases the chances of having wrong group to counter player and been the cake walk.

 

Yes pushing difficulty up could make it very frustrating for people that like to RP over those that power game there characters.

 

Only way to really address it is to include options where choose if you want RP or want more challenge as you like to power game the characters, let people choose the bits the way they want to play it.

 

I am against pushing the game to much in any direction spoils it for others, so think obsidian need make options so game balanced for the different types of players playing game and not only make it balanced for one small group players.

 

Lexx problem with trash fights is people hate having lot of them especially if they are boring and to samey. Also true of having every fight boss fight doesn't make some people happy as becomes to stressful and doesn't let people relax between.

 

Again think it best have options and choices that allow a person to personalise game more towards there style/likes of playing game, not trying one size fits all.

[Purudaya]

 

 

 

EDIT: Actually, the Infinity Engine games have one very severe consequence for party members dying: having to pick up all your gear from the ground and re-equip it. That's a major inconvenience but hardly by design a punishment for dying. It's more of a silly design choice the devs made for whatever reason. 

 

 

In the same way I despised vampires and other level-draining creatures for the way they'd force me to have to re-select my spells to memorize all over again.

 

Really? It was that bad? I played the original BG2 and other IE games back in the day, but having played the Enhanced Editions ever since they came out, I had completely forgotten about this. Wow, that was a major inconvenience. 

 

Regarding gear being dropped on death, it's always fun to have 3+ party members die in battle in the IE games. The rule I've set for myself is that I'm not allowed to load if one or two party members die, but I will load if 3+ die in the same fight because I don't want to spend 5 minutes re-equipping my characters. Not having having any means of resurrection with me makes it worse because I need to haul all their gear back to a temple.

 

 

Level drain wiping your spells was one of the best things the EEs fixed, imo (that and dual wield/sword+shield swapping). That said, I actually wish Obsidian's fampyrs would do more to sap your character in addition to just dominating everything all the time. Incrementally greying out certain abilities during combat by draining your power level (maybe on crit?) would be more interesting than other effects like Terrified that disable all of your abilities at once.

[cokane]

can i ask the people who insist POE1 'forces' you to backtrack for camping supplies: why do you unload your spellbooks on every single encounter? don't you think the per-rest system incentivises and rewards, by design, judicious use of lower and higher spells and abilities over a period of time?

Do you just barge into the temple of Eothas at level 2 w/ Aloth & Eder, get 3 rooms in then hump it back, over and over until the temple is clear? and never think 'there has to be a better way?' cos that's funny as **** tbh

This is excellent and I think an important point. People talk about backtracking on dungeons in PoE1 but I'm skeptical many players actually did this. I asked previously for people saying that this happened to tell me how *frequently* it happened and, unless I missed it, got no one saying anything. Pointing out that things *can* happen under a certain system, while ignoring the *frequency* which they actually happened is a derailing tactic.

[PangaeaACDC]

 

 

 

EDIT: Actually, the Infinity Engine games have one very severe consequence for party members dying: having to pick up all your gear from the ground and re-equip it. That's a major inconvenience but hardly by design a punishment for dying. It's more of a silly design choice the devs made for whatever reason. 

 

 

In the same way I despised vampires and other level-draining creatures for the way they'd force me to have to re-select my spells to memorize all over again.

 

Really? It was that bad? I played the original BG2 and other IE games back in the day, but having played the Enhanced Editions ever since they came out, I had completely forgotten about this. Wow, that was a major inconvenience. 

 

Regarding gear being dropped on death, it's always fun to have 3+ party members die in battle in the IE games. The rule I've set for myself is that I'm not allowed to load if one or two party members die, but I will load if 3+ die in the same fight because I don't want to spend 5 minutes re-equipping my characters. Not having having any means of resurrection with me makes it worse because I need to haul all their gear back to a temple.

 

 

It sure was an inconvenience, and I'm glad something similar isn't in POE, but I'd rather do that all day long than pay for anything Beamdog has put their filthy paws on.

[cokane]

I say those things are un-fun, because I find them un-fun. I'm not going to argue about whether I find something fun or not. That's insipid.

Except the two of you have merely posted assertions and not actual arguments. You haven't articulated in any way how my suggestions would be "frustrating" and "not challenging".

 

 

 

If you can't articulate your points beyond "This is my taste", then you're not actually trying to make constructive arguments and you're not adding anything to the thread. You're also not taking the measure of any game mechanic. Again, in my original post, I did not just make a generic comment about how the combat/dungeon crawling is weaker in Deadfire, I wrote about how *specific* challenges cannot exist and how dungeon/wilderness design is limited to narrower experience because of it. Your pushback in this thread hasn't gone beyond vague attacks on others and vague rejections of others' suggestions.

[lMarcusl]

Something that hasn't come up yet when talking about difficulty: How do you balance higher difficulty vs. the high number of class/race/ability combinations? There are already some un-optimal combos that make the game more difficult if you build for RP, rather than optimal power. Tuning the difficulty too high just results in having to use the 1 or 2 "correct" strategies to progress. Having to do things one right way or die is not fun. I want to be able to experiment with different builds, playstyels, off the wall concepts, etc. without feeling like I am playing "wrong".

 

I don't think the issue is as complex as you think. Firstly, a great deal of it can simply be resolved by difficulty levels, after all, that's what they're there for. If you're being challenged at normal, you stick to normal. If you're feeling a bit bored on normal, just turn the scaling on (that should be an option you can change mid-campaign!!!). There are knobs to be turned, you can customise your experience. Obsidian rebalancing the difficulty does not have to mean turning all difficulties balls hard, it doesn't have to be a flat increase of X or Y across the board. They can touch individual fights as they see fit. Most PoE1 content was relatively middling in terms of difficulty, but there were those out-of-the-way, optional fights where you can truly test your mettle, if you wanted to. They can do the same with PoE2 and keep the main story content relatively straightforward while still providing us masochists something to squeal about.

 

Secondly, being forced to play "the right way" only truly becomes a thing if there are obstacles put in front of you that you cannot overcome in alternative ways. For instance, if you are facing a group of enemies with Dominate abilities, yes, it is best you have someone in your party to break these, like a Paladin with Aegis of Loyalty and resistance to Intelligence Afflictions. But you can just as easily apply an Intelligence Inspiration to protect yourself before Dominate even takes effect on key characters (Eldritch Aim on Wizard for example), or make it priority no. 1 to Paralyze/Petrify/Stun or simply Interrupt the caster before they can pull off their mean tricks, or focus them down with your damage dealers so that even though Dominate will be a pain, it will only happen once. Or you just blow through some high-end food to give yourself higher defense or resistance against such attacks. There are ways around this problem, and given the fact that your standard party will consists of at least 5 classes, often more due to multiclassing, chances are good that you will be able to pick up the tools you need to achieve at least one of the above scenarios.

 

If there was an ability or a combat scenario where one skill and one skill alone is the path to take to overcome that, yes, then we'd have an issue. To give an example from a different genre, it is optimal, if your class has access to it, to take a temporary immunity skill in an ARPG. But unless the game is designed entirely around you having access to the immunity and consistently one-shots you unless you got quick fingers, you can afford to not take such an ability (which is why I often don't) and find different routes to solve your problems. If you have to stand in a bunch of ground DoT in a small boss room, you can solve the problem by high HP/resists, mobility skills, more dps with resistance reductions...and so on and so on. Good ARPGs give you those options. If the boss had an Enrage timer that would make it absolutely annihilate you if you lack sufficient DPS to kill it before the Enrage triggers, that's an issue you can't bypass, and suddenly doing suboptimal things doesn't just punish you, but bars you from playing, which is what ARPGs designed by idiots do. In this respect, I'd say the only worry would be that if they rebalance the difficulty, some class combinations might be so powerful that even the difficulty boost won't slow them down, and they'll want more. There are still the options for those, though, such as taking fewer people into your party etc. to address that. Those who want a challenge can pick a goofy composition and go nuts. There is so much to mess around with in terms of how hard you make the game on yourself that I wouldn't worry about being punished for taking a party of 5 melee Battlewizards.

Edited May 22, 2018 by lMarcusl

[cokane]

 

All I can say is that I played POE1 very differently to the rest-spammers that needed to go back to inns and re-supply. I routinely had to skip picking up camping supplies in dungeons and such because I didn't have room for more.

 

To clear this one up...you don't have to rest spam to run out of Camping Supplies. On PotD, you can carry 2 Camping Supplies at a time. So yes, there were plenty of occasions where I'd be walking past 2 or 3 stacks of camping supplies, wondering why the hell I'd need them in the given area. Then I'd be in a more difficult area, like in Endless Paths a bit earlier than is healthy, and I'd camp twice on one level and need to backtrack a couple of levels to pick up what I left behind. And not due to ability spam, mind you, but because of health. Some classes get a better deal on health:endurance ratio than others, and if you dip your toes in min/maxing, your DPS class, with poor health:endurance ratio will have little in terms of HP and defense, relying on your tanks and cc to keep things in order. If stuff goes sideways, it's not rare for your DPS to get laid out twice in a fight, essentially depleting the majority of their health and inflicting some rather debilitating injuries that need clearing up for them to be effective as DPS. In addition to that, it only takes one unfortunate fight to force you to rest to get your squishies back up. Now say there was a stat check that you were making your way towards. Now you gotta haul butt back to the inn to reacquire to bonus to pass the stat check you were going for in the first place.

 

Potions of Infuse with Vital Essence are your friend here. You can craft them cheaply. A great sign of how attrition systems force the player to use in-game mechanics to solve problems by the way. Does anyone need to craft anything in Deadfire?

Edited May 22, 2018 by cokane

[lMarcusl]

 This is excellent and I think an important point. People talk about backtracking on dungeons in PoE1 but I'm skeptical many players actually did this. I asked previously for people saying that this happened to tell me how *frequently* it happened and, unless I missed it, got no one saying anything. Pointing out that things *can* happen under a certain system, while ignoring the *frequency* which they actually happened is a derailing tactic.

 

Ok, you want a number? I finished PoE1 three times. Once on Normal, then on Veteran with a custom party, then on PotD with a custom party. On PotD, I wrote down in my Notes every location of camping supplies I found and couldn't pick up, and returned to pick them up about 50 % of the game (only really stopped for White March II and the second part of the main campaign). Due to min/maxing, my damage dealers were cold-blooded killers, but squishy, which I addressed by making one of them semi-focused on CC (Cipher) and by taking on an off-tank. In harder fights (and I don't just mean bounties or bosses, a good deal of Endless Paths and White March I and II fell into this category) or fights that did not exactly go my way, it wasn't rare to force an immediate rest after to clear out key injuries on my DPS or to replenish health or key abilities. By the end of the game, I mopped up all but one camping supply stack that I found in the first half of the game and I regularly went to inns or stronghold for key resting bonuses to make my DPS more efficient or pass important stat checks. I'd backtrack every time I ran out of camping supplies, which happened every few hours on PotD. Yes, it is a thing. That happens. To humans.

[cokane]

 

 This is excellent and I think an important point. People talk about backtracking on dungeons in PoE1 but I'm skeptical many players actually did this. I asked previously for people saying that this happened to tell me how *frequently* it happened and, unless I missed it, got no one saying anything. Pointing out that things *can* happen under a certain system, while ignoring the *frequency* which they actually happened is a derailing tactic.

 

Ok, you want a number? I finished PoE1 three times. Once on Normal, then on Veteran with a custom party, then on PotD with a custom party. On PotD, I wrote down in my Notes every location of camping supplies I found and couldn't pick up, and returned to pick them up about 50 % of the game (only really stopped for White March II and the second part of the main campaign). Due to min/maxing, my damage dealers were cold-blooded killers, but squishy, which I addressed by making one of them semi-focused on CC (Cipher) and by taking on an off-tank. In harder fights (and I don't just mean bounties or bosses, a good deal of Endless Paths and White March I and II fell into this category) or fights that did not exactly go my way, it wasn't rare to force an immediate rest after to clear out key injuries on my DPS or to replenish health or key abilities. By the end of the game, I mopped up all but one camping supply stack that I found in the first half of the game and I regularly went to inns or stronghold for key resting bonuses to make my DPS more efficient or pass important stat checks. I'd backtrack every time I ran out of camping supplies, which happened every few hours on PotD. Yes, it is a thing. That happens. To humans.

 

Endless Paths is clearly designed to be a dungeon that you leave and come back to. The fact that it took place there seems to me a testament to the game matching the designers' intent. That's why Endless Paths had the master staircase, to give you an easy way to jump back into it, and also to give you a "goal" to try to push for while you're in the dungeon.

 

White March is the same. I get the sense that the designers never intended players to clear out total areas (i.e. Russetwood and the ogre dungeon, "Durgan's Battery" and its three dungeons) in one go. That's why Galvino gives you a quest to go back to town. That's why the rogue NPC's quest sends you back to Russetwood. That's why there's a second round of bounties. The dragon is clearly not intended to be fought on most players' first visit to Longwatch Falls, even though some skilled players could do this. This is why even the bear cave is a much tougher fight than the rest of Valewood, the designers were trying to teach the players this principle from the very beginning.

 

I'm also not talking about resting at inns *before* setting out again into the wilderness or dungeons. Obviously everyone did that. It's not part of the tedious mechanic (traversing empty maps, loading screens) people are talking about when they're talking about abandoning dungeons.

 

But what I'm talking about is did people bail out of Cliaban Rilag in the middle of it? Did people bail out of Raedric's hold in the middle of it? Regularly? It's clear, to me anyways, that the designers always intended entire hostile zones (i.e. a map location + every dungeon/cave within it) to be re-visited by the players, instead of clearing everything in one trip like you regularly did in the Baldur's Gate games. This is why I think it's important to measure the *frequency* issue here. If people are complaining about needing to go back to town while doing the Endless Paths, the White March or that you can't clear everything in Dyrford Crossing in one trip, well, that's what was intended. And they'd have to go back and forth, even without the battle and attrition mechanics, simply to complete quest objectives!

Edited May 22, 2018 by cokane

[lMarcusl]

Endless Paths is clearly designed to be a dungeon that you leave and come back to. The fact that it took place there seems to me a testament to the game matching the designers' intent. That's why Endless Paths had the master staircase, to give you an easy way to jump back into it, and also to give you a "goal" to try to push for while you're in the dungeon

 

White March is the same. I get the sense that the designers never intended players to clear out total areas (i.e. Russetwood and the ogre dungeon, "Durgan's Battery" and its three dungeons) in one go. That's why Galvino gives you a quest to go back to town. That's why the rogue NPC's quest sends you back to Russetwood. That's why there's a second round of bounties. The dragon is clearly not intended to be fought on most players' first visit to Longwatch Falls, even though some skilled players could do this.

 

I'm also not talking about resting at inns *before* setting out again into the wilderness or dungeons. Obviously everyone did that. It's not part of the tedious mechanic (traversing maps, loading screens) people are talking about when they're talking about abandoning dungeons.

 

But what I'm talking about is did people bail out of Cliaban Rilag in the middle of it? Did people bail out of Raedric's hold in the middle of it? Regularly? It's clear, to me anyways, that the designers always intended entire hostile zones (i.e. a map location + every dungeon/cave within it) to be re-visited by the players, instead of clearing everything in one trip like you regularly did in the Baldur's Gate games. This is why I think it's important to measure the *frequency* issue here. If people are complaining about needing to go back to town while doing the Endless Paths or the White March, well, it's clear that's what was intended. And they'd have to go back and forth, even without the battle and attrition mechanics, simply to complete quest objectives!

 

While I agree that the areas I gave as an example are ones where you are indeed intended to go back and forth, the question I'd pose is and the conclusion I've come to (and others such as Multihog also mentioned) when looking back at PoE2 is...why do you have to? You weren't always running back to turn in a quest or deciding to return later because of high difficulty in Endless Paths or White March areas. Sometimes you were just out of stuff. Other times, you would NOT backtrack or run out of camping supplies, but that was specifically because, playing on PotD, you had prior experience with the game, knew how long each dungeon was, and usually resupplied on camping stuffs before you went in. And why? Just so you don't waste the time to go back for that stuff later. The motivation? Save bunch of time on loading screens...and like 300 cp for the supplies if you went back to pick up ones you left behind instead of buying new ones. That is an illusion of a motivation, just like injuries are in PoE2. They don't really matter, you can clear them out easily. You can camp 5 times in one dungeon floor in PoE1 too, if you really wanted to. It'd be annoying for time reasons but not much else. I'm coming to the conclusion that those out-of-combat attrition systems might as well not be there to pay lip service to some table-top mechanics. No real need to rebalance them if you're not going to really commit to a system that matters, like in XCOM. Get rid of them for all I care. But provide the same stimulus and the same level of difficulty we had in PoE1 (same level of difficulty relative to the per encounter system we now have in place, not the old system of PoE1). Because looking back at it now, PoE1's attrition system was, though less blatantly, just as broken and meaningless as PoE2's is if you were willing to tolerate the loading screens. But I didn't care because the combat was so goddamn satisfying on higher difficulties I would tolerate all the dialogue I'm going to skip through just to get to it. I'm not willing to do that for PoE2, because in terms of enjoyment of combat, there is little there.

 

So yeah, if your point is that PoE1's attrition system wasn't any better, I agree. It's just that the game was much less open about it, since the resolution to your problems (injuries) wasn't a single button click away, you had to sit through some load screens too.

Edited May 22, 2018 by lMarcusl

[Stephen Unsworth-Mitchell]

For me I had go back to place to collect camping equipment I couldn't pick up earlier, on few occasions as was running out but not that often can't give exact number as never counted it and it wasn't enough to be bored or annoyed.

 

Often was my own fault as I made mistake in combat at some point and got short. Most the time I completed areas in one go without need to travel back and forth.

 

Lot of the fun in combat was the get to finish of an area without spamming rest or back traveling and it made lot good memories.

 

I realised fast that the endless paths where not a finish in one go didn't bother me I enjoyed endless paths, think couple of levels where bit trash fight is with no real reason for existing but loved having big place to explore and wish POE 2 had few longer dungeon crawls.

 

As for inn's used them if was in place with one never went back to one and rested for bonus mid way through area.

 

Honestly if person was back tracking more then me or having use the inn rest mid way through area then think the problem was person was doing something wrong or lack of understanding mechanics as really never had to do it.

 

We had potions, resting, food and party choice so don't really understand why the need keep going back.

 

Not best at combat don't try to use everything perfectly. One fight had meet lot of druids wasn't prepared for fight as my first time through that area. Lost 5 party members in couple seconds to 3 stags and thunderstorm, Eder was only one standing pulled him back. 3 enemy's chased Eder had fight them they died but had dropped Eder endurance to low. Then had switch weapons from Eder sword and shield to pistol shoot 6 vines/tentacles, then use Eder to bring my party back to life. Then buffed better and kicked those druid butts. Made me use camping equipment I hadn't planned to use and became fight I never forgot but got through it and finish area without back traveling.

[takamorisan]

I played on POTD difficulty, my feedback is on the encounters after lvl 15+ in general felt they were lacking in density, personal opinion but I wanted to feel swarmed and pushed to take more radical approaches in game like using potions and traps, in early game I felted the necessity to force my strategy but as the characters progressed, I felt that my power level went too high compared to the mobs.

Boss encounters should be more constant too. I enjoyed the bosses that I met but they felt short in the overall content.

My suggestions would be making arenas that force the party to spread having to activate certain mechanism to avoid always going for the Immortal Priest Electric Ball of Death party comp.

Ship Combat I just feel its not performing well at the current state but neither I have an idea on what to do with it that is within production and development reach.

[Crucis]

 

 

 

 

 

 

I find the combat to be a marked improvement. Now the combat in PoE1, THAT was dull and a chore.

Could you elaborate? I can perhaps see the "chore" part, as combat required more of the player's attention in the original. But, since most fights in Deadfire do not reward or punish the player for paying attention and actually using tactics, I'm failing to see how most combats are actually interesting in Deadfire?

 

With abilities and health regen between fights, individual encounters can be more dangerous. Because of this system, I try to punch above my weight far more often, seeking out red skull fights and seeing if I can pull them off. It also means I don't have ot conserve abilities as a resource, so I can comfortably steamroll trash mobs quickly. All the fights in PoE1 felt like they just dragged on. Resource management isn't fun. Playing with abilities and spells to solve an encounter is.

 

 

I see it 180^o differently.  Having to manage your health resources was a challenge and that's what made it more fun.  Seeing how long you could push into a dungeon before you were forced to fall back and rest.  What you describe as "fun" is completely mindlessness.  About the only resource you have to worry about is the 3 injuries before death.  Big whup. 

 

As for going for those "red skull" fights, you could do that too, in PoE1.  It's called reloading, for crying out loud! 

 

It was a challenge, but any joy that could've possibly come out of that challenge was marred by the fact that running out of camping supplies meant you'd have to suffer through numerous lengthy loading screens (despite having the game on SSD.) Fortunately, PoE2 loads much faster, so it wouldn't an issue this time around. 

 

 

I'm sorry, but I actually found that to be a challenge too.  One of the most fun and challenging things that happened to me in my first run of PoE1 was in the Endless Paths when you could go down/fall a hole from something like level 3 to level 6 (the one with the drake that barred your way from going deeper into the dungeon), was trying to fight my way back up through 3 levels with a fixed amount of camping supplies and a fixed amount of endurance.  THAT was a serious challenge, because I had to get past that Ogre level which with my relatively weak party and my own personal inexperience with the game was very difficult.

 

It seems to me that as much as people are complaining about the fights being too easy in PoE2, what they really want is no REAL challenges.  They want it all handed to them on a silver platter.

 

 

None of what you said had anything to do with the loading screen times, which is what the post you quoted was specifically complaining about.

 

 

I was replying to your comment about running out of camping supplies, since that would have been the root cause of needed to go through all those loading screens.  or are you going to say that if the loading screens were near instantaneous you wouldn't be complaining, but I'm kind of doubting that.

[alexis13]

This is what I said *BEFORE* the game came out, but noooooooooooooooooooo everyone said I was a ****ing idiot and kept posting with constant disagreement, so it didn't get changed.

 

Everyone said it was "wasting time going back to town" now the game is implemented and it's too late and NOW you all wanna agree with me.

 

Good job guys, as I said in my old post which everyone also disagree'd with  "There is more idiots than intellectuals in the world, and thats the reason everything is ****, because bad idiotic design takes precedent over good design by democratic majority" (not in those exact words but yeah)

 

Also you don't mean combat, you mean mostly the game mechanics and consequences of combat.

 

*shrug*

Edited May 22, 2018 by alexis13

[takamorisan]

This is what I said *BEFORE* the game came out, but noooooooooooooooooooo everyone said I was a ****ing idiot and kept posting with constant disagreement, so it didn't get changed.

 

Everyone said it was "wasting time going back to town" now the game is implemented and it's too late and NOW you all wanna agree with me.

 

Good job guys, as I said in my old post which everyone also disagree'd with  "There is more idiots than intellectuals in the world, and thats the reason everything is ****, because bad idiotic design takes precedent over good design by democratic majority" (not in those exact words but yeah)

 

*shrug*

I don't even know you mate, but I'm curious on what you said to sound so resentful now and make your post a bit more productive and with more context.

[alexis13]

 

This is what I said *BEFORE* the game came out, but noooooooooooooooooooo everyone said I was a ****ing idiot and kept posting with constant disagreement, so it didn't get changed.

 

Everyone said it was "wasting time going back to town" now the game is implemented and it's too late and NOW you all wanna agree with me.

 

Good job guys, as I said in my old post which everyone also disagree'd with  "There is more idiots than intellectuals in the world, and thats the reason everything is ****, because bad idiotic design takes precedent over good design by democratic majority" (not in those exact words but yeah)

 

*shrug*

I don't even know you mate, but I'm curious on what you said to sound so resentful now and make your post a bit more productive and with more context.

 

There is no point in being constructive, I tried to be constructive about 3 months ago and was ganged up on by inferior intellects and shouted down.

 

The game is already made, they aren't and probably cannot change the mechanics of the entire game now that it's set in stone, what I'm doing is renouncing people and that's what I planned to do because I'm bitter that the games revolutionary design from pillars 1 was watered down to the old bg playstyle due to nothing but peer pressure from the childish, lazy, drooling, mouth-breathing masses.

 

I don't even understand why they were so cowardly to buckle, the original recieved critical acclaim, they already succeeded, if they were ever gonna buckle it shoulda been the first game, not when they were already successful and already knew their old system worked.

 

Talk about fixing what ain't broke.

Edited May 22, 2018 by alexis13