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Scorchy posted:Skills systems is completely revamped, you don't level Stealth/Athletics/Lore/etc individually any more, talents are every 2 levels now and have the skills advancement attached to them. Parenthesis posted:Without having tried it, I don't like the sound of it, as it sounds like it reduces the number of possible builds. I don't mind having talents that only gives a lump sum of points towards skills, but making talents be the only way to increase them seems to be a step backwards. Doesnt sound like a good change to me, but I also havent been using the beta.
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Oct 25, 2014 10:16
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Hey Obsidian, you're making your crunch fluffy. Why did you think this was a good idea with a game targeted at this audience?
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Oct 25, 2014 11:44
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Even with the announced delay it sort of worries me that the game was supposed to be out within the next two months and they're making such big changes to the skill systems. I know we'll get a cool game eventually but I really hope there are no more delays.
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Oct 25, 2014 11:49
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drat, they removed the additem cheat. Back to picking Cultures based on weapon choice again ... welp.
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Oct 25, 2014 13:43
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FRINGE posted:Doesnt sound like a good change to me, but I also havent been using the beta. I have been using the beta and I am not sold on this change at all. It feels like it does a lot of things that they said they wanted to avoid. Either I ignore skillpoints on my talents favour of the best choices and probably end up with a very large amount of athletics and whatever is tied to my class talents. Or I try to go for specific skills and end up with a messed up talent selection that is all over the place. The previous method was not exciting but it worked. IF they want to keep skill points tied to talents they need to separate combat and utility talents and let you select them separately.
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Oct 25, 2014 16:27
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I would be perfectly okay with skills tied to talents (as long as they balance things so fighter talents aren't shoehorned into athletics, mages into lore etc) if you could also still use the old triangular skill system on top of it. I haven't played the beta yet but from the sounds of it they're falling straight into the old traps again.
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Oct 25, 2014 16:40
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The Grieving Mother now has a portrait Awesome!
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Oct 25, 2014 21:02
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I was hoping for the portrait to be more of a old, fat, baba-yaga-esque ghost lady.
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Oct 25, 2014 21:15
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SoggyBobcat posted:What was the impetus for such a major change? In watching how people play PoE, skill advancement was bordering on mindless. Every player I watched simply mashed one skill for their chosen character, effectively making it a non-choice. In practical terms, there were still problems with redundancy because, as in many RPGs, skills often act as keys to locks (literal and figurative). Only one person needs to be able to open the lock, meaning anyone with redundant skills simply has wasted points. Linking skill advancement to Talents is an attempt to make the choice more meaningful and making redundancy less relevant since the primary investment for the players is the Talent, not the skill. The normal skill progression system is disabled so we can see how it works using only Talents.
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Oct 25, 2014 22:14
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That makes sense and a lot of the backlash is probably because it wasn't the system from the start. But if you want talents to naturally skill a character (so skill choice isn't something you do, just something that happens naturally as you build your character) there really shouldn't be "useless" skill-only talents. They make you choose between out of combat "power" and in-combat power (and that's bad in my opinion).
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Oct 25, 2014 22:46
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I like the talent system and your justification makes sense, perhaps in order to spread things out a little, every few levels, characters can choose a free bonus to a skill that isn't their current highest skill. So, for example, Fighters are broadly athletics focused but they can be off-skilled into other directions.
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Oct 25, 2014 23:05
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DatonKallandor posted:That makes sense and a lot of the backlash is probably because it wasn't the system from the start. But if you want talents to naturally skill a character (so skill choice isn't something you do, just something that happens naturally as you build your character) there really shouldn't be "useless" skill-only talents. They make you choose between out of combat "power" and in-combat power (and that's bad in my opinion). Nah not necessarily. I know the skill feats in D&D 3rd edition were notorious trap options but as long as the bonuses are worthwhile then they could very well be viable for a skill monkey type character who wants more dialogue and puzzle options. Of course if you just wanna bash heads as videogame Conan then obviously you wanna avoid those.
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Oct 25, 2014 23:22
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I'll be streaming the new closed beta build in about 10 minutes: http://www.twitch.tv/scorchies Besides the leveling changes there's quite a bit of new stuff, so I'll try to show that off. With the new talents in, gonna try to play a muscle wizard this time.
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Oct 25, 2014 23:52
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Krowley posted:Nah not necessarily. I know the skill feats in D&D 3rd edition were notorious trap options but as long as the bonuses are worthwhile then they could very well be viable for a skill monkey type character who wants more dialogue and puzzle options. It's a combat game. It has unavoidable combat. It also has unavoidable non-combat sections. One of the big stated design goal was not gimping people in fights because they want to roleplay their character. Non-combat talents purchased from the same choice pool as combat talents is directly counter to that.
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Oct 25, 2014 23:54
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DatonKallandor posted:It's a combat game. It has unavoidable combat. It also has unavoidable non-combat sections. One of the big stated design goal was not gimping people in fights because they want to roleplay their character. Non-combat talents purchased from the same choice pool as combat talents is directly counter to that. I think it can be solved fairly easily, given that there are currently a bunch of plain "4+ to this skill" talents could be purchased on level up separately to all the talents that aren't primarily about skills.
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Oct 26, 2014 00:30
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El Pollo Blanco posted:I think it can be solved fairly easily, given that there are currently a bunch of plain "4+ to this skill" talents could be purchased on level up separately to all the talents that aren't primarily about skills. So basically the old skill system, just with talents?
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Oct 26, 2014 01:25
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They really need to rethink this new talent/skill system. I'm locked out of a lot of roleplay options now because I can't easily put points into Lore to open up dialogue, and my Rogue can't even open the locked chests in the inn because her Mechanics level is only 2 (3 and 4 required for the chests). I think talents should be given every level, and you should be given multiple points to spend between combat and non-combat talents. Or, if you don't want to run into the problem of people aimlessly focusing on a particular skill on one character (one guy maxes Mechanics, another guy maxes Survival), have skillchecks work on the group total. Like if my Rogue only has 2 Mechanics, but my Fighter has 1 Mechanics, my party can open anything requiring 3 Mechanics. And if during dialogue I need 4 Lore to select an option, it uses my party total instead of just the Lore on my main PC. Right now you run into the problem of characters having spread out skills and being ineffective in battle if you want to focus on something. Hell, is there even a Bash option if your Mechanics level is too low or you're lacking in Lockpicks?
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Oct 26, 2014 03:35
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Stream archive up now, sorry bout the mic, still new to this. I said I wouldn't go over every talent and then I pretty much did, oops: http://www.twitch.tv/scorchies/b/581890166 TL;DW - Loading screens are in! They look good, the green brick wall texture looks a little cheesy but in that BG1 sort of way. - There's new 'recommended' major/minor attributes now, depending on class. They have little gold/silver stars next to them at character creation. Rogues for example have Perception and Dexterity/Resolve recommended. You can ignore them still but it's good for new players. - Non-spellcasters get some love at character creation now, they previously had their core abilities auto-assigned to them (Knockdown on Fighter, for instance), but now they all get at least 2 paths to spec their character at the start. Fighters - Knockdown (active) or Armored Grace (passive to reduce armor speed penalty) Barbarians - Carnage (AE melee hits) or Barbaric Yell (AE fear) Paladin - Flames of Devotion (+fire dmg) or Lay on Hands Monk - Swift Strikes (+attack speed) or Turning Wheel (passive, +burn dmg per wound) Rogue - Crippling Strike or Blinding Strike Ranger - Swift Aim or Crippling Shot - Seems like all the spell icons are now in, item icons are still getting there but noticing a lot more in game as well. - More appearance customization. 1 or 2 more faces, including one with more African features, and up to 20 hairstyles for males and 19 for females. - Tons of new talents in - for a new Fighter I counted like ~47 talents to pick from, and most are generic and selectable across all classes. If you've played D&D 3.5 or NWN2 or whatever I imagine most will be familiar as they are similar to those Feats. There's some cool ones let you specialize in fire or freeze dmg, or to be a ranged bow or gun expert. There's also some auxiliary talents that let you switch weapons faster or slip past disengagement attacks better. - Character backgrounds now have default +skills attached to them, as mentioned before. So do classes. Starting a Wizard with merchant background for example, gave me +3 Lore and +2 Mechanics, there's no more choosing. - So the new skills leveling system, you basically end up with a lot less skill points overall, and I'm assuming the skill checks in the game haven't been re-balanced to reflect that. One of the quests was bypassable with a 7 in Mechanics to lockpick a door; with the new system I was trying to figure out a way to see if I could get my Wizard's Mechanics high enough to pick it, and it doesn't seem I could without taking bullshit I didn't want, like the multiple talents to lay better traps. Since the new talents in the game are now so good, you just have to pick whatever talent you want and let the chips fall where they may with your skills. I just created a muscle wizard with the melee talents I wanted and I ended up with like 3 Athletics, 7 Lore, 1 Mechanics. It is what it is, I guess. - In-game the skill changes aren't quite as severe as they first seem, because skills definitely take a backseat to the other combat systems in the game. In-combat I'm never going, "Boy I wish I had more Athletics instead of Lore", and they don't seem to come up in dialogue option as often as attribute checks. They play a real minor role overall, until the point where you can't lockpick a door and then you're cursing you didn't bring a Rogue. So in that sense it's old-school as gently caress I guess. - I didn't keep count, but overall it seems Athletics (fighty talents) and Lore (magicky talents) are over-represented, Survival is on a lot of the 'weirder' build talents, there's barely any Mechanics, and I had trouble even finding Stealth. - Anyway beyond the character creation, a lot of little UI improvements. Tons of new tooltips everywhere, especially in the character sheet, telling you what key terms mean, and a lot of colour differentiation. The glossary for all those terms is in as well, it's all hyperlinked so it works like a wiki. Overall the UX is slowly getting there. - New Scouting/Stealth mode UI graphics - there's like an eye under your feet that opens wider based on visible you are - you can watch the stream to see it. It's immediately intuitive. I like it. - XP changes - the big change is you get little bits of XP for going to new areas, opening locks and doors, and killing stuff to fill out your bestiary. The XP amounts being doled out is completely imbalanced right now in the beta, like doing 1 quest gains me an entire level, so I can't judge whether the kill XP is too much or not enough or whatever. At first glance I think it's alright, it gives you little bits of XP in dungeons to keep your dopamine levels going, while saving the majority of the XP for quest rewards. - Enemies are a lot more aggressive, or it seems that way due to the fog of war fixes. They'll run after you as soon as they see you. Before you could kinda sight them in the distance before they notice. Muscle Wizard: - I didn't try to play any weird builds before the talents were in, but they promised muscle wizards were possible so I tried to do one. - I'm happy with the options available I think. There's a variety of spells to address the Wizard's deficiencies in Deflection, and Accuracy, and there's a level 1 spell to summon a magical staff to wield. So the bases are covered there. - Most of the combat talents are selectable across all classes, so that's good, I was able to pick some melee oriented stuff for my wizard. There's even a wizard-only talent to cast your defense spells faster, which is tailor made for this build. Hopefully more of this kind of talent, for all classes. I love weird builds. - The main barrier holding this build back? Out-of-combat buffing. You can't cast buffs outside of combat, so you have to do as the fighting starts. You have time to cast like 1 buff basically before you should really wade in to engage. So I was kinda like picking between buffing deflection or accuracy. I'm not really sure what the solution is, because I loving hated the whole boring process of loading up on buffs before combat in BG/IWD and NWN2. But as it is, melee wizards waste valuable time getting up to speed when the fighting starts, and even when buffed they're just decidedly average at hitting things. I guess I could have concentrated on tanking buffs and then mixed in some touch spells.
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Oct 26, 2014 04:01
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Scorchy posted:because I loving hated the whole boring process of loading up on buffs before combat in BG/IWD and NWN2. I absolutely loving hated this as well, and hearing from designers and the like that you pretty much needed to prebuff before fights was a kick in the nuts, it just feels like metagame cheating that needs to be done - and it was boring. There's gotta be better ways than that poo poo. Maybe you could simulcast a buff with a non-buff spell and have it cost half again as much magic points than on its own or something. I don't know. Or a buff contingency spell that you can pre-cast out of combat that requires sustained spellpoints while it's set or something that casts when you see an enemy. I don't know, I've not really thought about solutions to my annoyance. Drifter fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Oct 26, 2014 |
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Oct 26, 2014 04:12
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Not in the beta, but this skills/talent change sounds interesting to me in theory. It sounds like it needs work, though.
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Oct 26, 2014 04:42
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rope kid posted:It's not really that major a change in terms of the time to implement. One of the problems is because it took like 20 button clicks each time to just to get through the skill screen. Many people (such as myself) are only doing testing, and when I'm testing combat it doesn't really matter what skills I have, so it's faster to just mash one skill as high as it can go so you can get out of the level up screen faster. I have found that I only really care about the Athletics skill in combat, because it forces me to rest when I don't want to. Characters with 0 Athletics get fatigued after a pitiful amount of time without rest. I don't care about Lore because you'll most likely get the Bestiary XP entries anyway, and even though I do look at the monster stats, I hope to be able to disable Combat HUDs altogether when the combat feedback is improved. I haven't really been using consumables, so Survival hasn't mattered, and I don't try and avoid combat, so Stealth hasn't mattered ... stock Stealth appears to be fine for setting up on enemies. Traps have not been working up until this patch, so I haven't needed Mechanics in combat yet, and all the traps were removed from BB Rogue's inventory so I haven't set one yet. I really don't think it's a good idea to try to remove autonomous skill maxing, because that logic is just a simple reaction to how RPGs are designed. From what I've seen, Pillars of Eternity's out of combat scripted interaction and dialogue design also encourages it. The reason people just max two skills (or whatever) is because when you do that, you are guaranteed to experience all of the available environmental, scripted interaction and dialogue related options to that choice. Spreading out skills is almost always a bad thing when it comes to environmental checks and dialogue checks because it locks you out of higher tier options. You get access to more lower tier options, sure, but if you want to experience the skill choices of the higher tier options, you have to max those skills, not just dabble in them. If I intend to play a game a few times to try and experience all of the content/choices then I am going to max different skills on different playthroughs so I can see all of those options. No mechanical changes to skills at the low level (such as trying to give them an in combat benefit) is going to change that mindset, if I don't max a skill, then I'm going to miss out on the highest checks, and thus miss out on content - no thanks. If I'm going to play through the game 20 times, then yeah, on some of those playthroughs I might not max my skills, but I'm always going to max skills on the first few playthroughs so I can experience all of the highest tier options for each skill ... and then on any playthroughs after that I will decide whether or not to max skills based on that information, usually games still promote maxing skills because the content that max skills lock off is too good to pass up. Tying skills to talents only forces people to either pick certain talents to get the skill allocation they want OR build their character the way they want for combat at the cost of missing out on the options locked out by the skill allocation they wanted. Personally I think that stinks to high heaven. Sensuki fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Oct 26, 2014 |
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Oct 26, 2014 06:14
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I'm in agreement there. I think it feels *very* counter-intuitive for have the skills tied to the talents as is right now. Sure, it makes for more of a "choice" during the level-ups, but is it really a good choice? I don't think so. Sure, people will make the choice to punch two skills through the roof with the original design, I do too. But there will be replays of the game. There will be experimentation. As is now, it feels more like I have to choose between gimping either my combat skills or my non-combat skills (which would be fine in my opinion if all this leveling up was a skill-point pool where I actively decided where to put my points). The previous skill-leveling-up-system wasn't particularly fun due to how much of a "clickfest" it was. Maybe just have that use a skill-point system ala Bloodlines where you can save up points to buy the higher levels instead of going clickclickclickclick each level. This system really also seems to work against what I perceived some of the original design-goals were, to have that flexibility to develop the character you want without gimping yourself. Now, if I want to have a Fighter with Survival or whatever, I'm gonna have to take whatever talents are tied to those or if I want a Fighter with certain feats, I have to accept that the game ties a certain skill to those feats.
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Oct 26, 2014 10:09
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rope kid posted:In watching how people play PoE, skill advancement was bordering on mindless. Every player I watched simply mashed one skill for their chosen character, effectively making it a non-choice. In practical terms, there were still problems with redundancy because, as in many RPGs, skills often act as keys to locks (literal and figurative). Only one person needs to be able to open the lock, meaning anyone with redundant skills simply has wasted points. This seems like a bundle of non-problems. In a party-based RPG a player generally considers the skill composition of the entire party rather than a single character, and that means that the choice is effectively made before leveling up (the thought process is something like "I'll have one character that's good at Athletics for those skill checks, my main will be good at Lore", etc.*), rather than later. Even when you consider that some companions come with pre-equipped skills, I'd imagine you'll get most of them at a low level and be able to control their advancement from there, so, again, not a big problem (and that's not considering the Adventurer's Hall). Honestly though, even if we disagree on what is a problem and what isn't with the skill design, this is very much one of the worst possible ways to solve it. You're not making a skill choice agonizing, but rather you're making the player artificially agonize between skill and talent advancement. I'll always concede that I need to try a system extensively before making the final call, but my first impression of this is really, really negative. * This was probably not the intention, but it's actually how the system works right now. There really is only a skill that is useful for your entire party (Stealth), while the rest have inconsequential benefits to make them seem more palatable for more than one character. Stealth frankly sticks out like a sore thumb in the skill selection: it's the only skill that completely opens new gameplay opportunities, and the only one that's genuinely useful for all characters. You can either give it to one character and use him or her as a scout, or give it to your whole party and go through a dungeon unseen, which has caused a huge ruckus among some of the more IE traditionalist backers. Compare it to something like Lore, that either.. gives you new dialogue options, or some gameplay bonus I don't think anyone actually considers a bonus at all. Or Athletics, that can be dumped entirely on one character for the skill checks in the text adventure sections.
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Oct 26, 2014 10:46
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rope kid posted:In watching how people play PoE, skill advancement was bordering on mindless. Every player I watched simply mashed one skill for their chosen character, effectively making it a non-choice. In practical terms, there were still problems with redundancy because, as in many RPGs, skills often act as keys to locks (literal and figurative). Only one person needs to be able to open the lock, meaning anyone with redundant skills simply has wasted points. I don't see the problem in this? If a player chooses to do this, let him. Why take away flexibility in choice because some people (no offense) "do not play the way you would"? You know there are people out there who want to roleplay the poo poo out of this by creating "creative" chars and you are gimping that ability by tying things together. I think everybody should be able to play the way they want. If it means boosting only 1 skill and wasting points, let them. Just explain this fact in the manual or something and let them make an informed decision. (In a way this seems similar to one of those cases where devs "nerf" a weapon in a non-competitive PVE game for everyone because some people loudly yell "it is OP" instead of not using it if they don't like it.)
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Oct 26, 2014 11:05
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:This seems like a bundle of non-problems. This was one of the things I argued about back when Crafting was a skill. Needlessly tacking on combat benefits to non-combat skills just so that they were like the Stealth skill. Seemed to me that it would have been better to just remove Stealth from the skills and make it a separate feature/system entirely. The combat benefits on other skills (other than Athletics, which drastically affects the length of the adventuring day) are minuscule/uneven and in Lore's case, pointless. It's also a little bit disappointing that enemies don't use Stealth themselves, although they didn't in BG1 either, I guess. I believe it was first used in Icewind Dale - Lower Dorn's Deep. Fair Bear Maiden posted:Or Athletics, that can be dumped entirely on one character for the skill checks in the text adventure sections. I don't think Athletics is dumpable, it is when you are only testing but if you do a couple of maps, characters with 0 Athletics become fatigued very quickly, and Fatigue isn't the Baldur's Gate fatigue it's like the IWD:HoW holy crap rolling 1's on everything Fatigue when it ramps up. I had characters with at least half of their health left in v301 and they became Fatigued, then Moderately Fatigued shortly after and thus useless in combat. Sensuki fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Oct 26, 2014 |
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Oct 26, 2014 11:10
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I've never had a problem with fatigue during my time with the beta playing on Normal personally. Maybe it changes on Hard, but I found Athletics to be pretty dumpable. 
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Oct 26, 2014 11:23
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Leinadi posted:a skill-point system ala Bloodlines where you can save up points to buy the higher levels
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Oct 26, 2014 11:29
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:I've never had a problem with fatigue during my time with the beta playing on Normal personally. Maybe it changes on Hard, but I found Athletics to be pretty dumpable. I only began to notice it in v301. If I travel to the Dyrford Crossing, kill all the beetles, wolves, wurms, and the Drake Egg party and do the Spider Cave as well .. somewhere in there my characters with 0 Athletics become fatigued. However, characters that put points into Athletics were fine. I had to rest though because BB Wizard had -50 to various combat stats because of it.
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Oct 26, 2014 11:43
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There is nothing wrong with copying from Dragon Age: Inquisition. Bioware is a great video game company, and if they decide to tie stats increases to talents, why can't Obsidian do the same?
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Oct 26, 2014 11:44
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Torrannor posted:There is nothing wrong with copying from Dragon Age: Inquisition. Bioware is a great video game company, and if they decide to tie stats increases to talents, why can't Obsidian do the same?
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Oct 26, 2014 11:51
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Torrannor posted:There is nothing wrong with copying from Dragon Age: Inquisition. Bioware is a great video game company, and if they decide to tie stats increases to talents, why can't Obsidian do the same? 
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Oct 26, 2014 11:57
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Cadegund got a gender swap and was changed to someone called Durance?  How very creative. I wonder how much endurance he has.
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Oct 26, 2014 12:12
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Hopper posted:I don't see the problem in this? If a player chooses to do this, let him. Why take away flexibility in choice because some people (no offense) "do not play the way you would"?
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Oct 26, 2014 12:31
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:I've never had a problem with fatigue during my time with the beta playing on Normal personally. Maybe it changes on Hard, but I found Athletics to be pretty dumpable. I found it to be completely dumpable because as soon as 1 or 2 party members get tired (the ones without Athletics), then I might as well just set up camp and rest everyone. So that just kinda means the ones who put points into Athletics feels wasted.
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Oct 26, 2014 12:47
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Scorchy posted:I found it to be completely dumpable because as soon as 1 or 2 party members get tired (the ones without Athletics), then I might as well just set up camp and rest everyone. So that just kinda means the ones who put points into Athletics feels wasted. On Hard you only get two camping supplies though, and the way I play I like to try and get the most out of my adventuring day. I don't rest spam ever. Might be a different story on other difficulties. I recently did an IWD LP, and I did all of Easthaven, Orc Cave, Kuldahar Pass, Kuldahar and all of the Vale of Shadows tombs except the main one - then I had to rest. In Baldur's Gate it's a bit different due to longer travel times, but I prefer to get good gameplay out of an adventuring day.
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Oct 26, 2014 12:58
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rope kid posted:I think people are giving good feedback, but I did not say that and I sure as poo poo did not make these changes for that reason. But you totally should though. Some bros need to be slapped because they play RPGs like RPG Satan : (
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Oct 26, 2014 13:27
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Sensuki posted:Cadegund got a gender swap and was changed to someone called Durance? Oh wow that's actually an IRL name ... fancy that. Ignore previous comment then. But still Lament Cadegund.
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Oct 26, 2014 13:46
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So Cadegund is a guy now? Wasn't she an awesome gun-paladin or something? What's going on?
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Oct 26, 2014 14:53
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Yep.
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Oct 26, 2014 14:58
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 15:38 |
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Drifter posted:So Cadegund is a guy now? Wasn't she an awesome gun-paladin or something?
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Oct 26, 2014 15:20
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