Welcome! These forums will be deactivated by the end of this year. The conversation continues in a new morph over on Discord! Please join us there for a more active conversation and the occasional opportunity to ask developers questions directly! Go to the PS+ Discord Server.

Confounded By Second Edition

6 posts / 0 new

Last post

Tue, 2018-06-05 00:16

DiploRaptor DiploRaptor's picture

Confounded By Second Edition

Ok I'm gonna be blunt I went in excited for 2nd Edition but well I just do not from my go to faction just being gone and treated as villains among other things I am at a loss for how to handle it. I love some changes like removing Scrounging, and narrowing PSI stuff. But I hate how Asyncs work, how Moxie works, I would have prefered seekers/kinetic/beam be the 3 types of gun with it being you have a penalty to using the other types instead of this universal system and more. Just what I'm saying is I'm lost on what to do and take from 2nd Edition it feels less like a game and more like a mouth piece and I am not sure where or what to take from that. And really what I wanna here is the good from others on it what you've found that has really helped you enjoy it. What things you liked and disliked personally from what was losed to waht was gained over 2nd edition

—

Welcome, we shall watch your madness please inform us when you are fully insane

Tue, 2018-06-05 01:38

ubik2

Ultimates aren't listed in

Ultimates aren't listed in the default starting factions, but there's no reason you can't still have an Ultimate. If you're not the GM, and your GM doesn't want them to add them as a player faction, you can just be factionless, take Know: Ultimates at 30 and have +Ultimates Interests as one of your motivations. That's pretty much all a faction is. The Remades are still included, and the description mentions that they're popular with the Ultimates faction. I think it's likely that if there's ongoing metaplot, there will be some questionable actions done by people associated with the Ultimates faction. This was certainly the case in EP1 as well. Lots of players have enjoyed playing factions like Scum where this has also been true, so I don't think that's a real problem. In any case, it's not clear to me that the devs are even going to add metaplot to EP2. I'm not sure I know what you dislike about the way Asyncs work now. I think they work really well for a face character, and are a cool addition to combat characters and techies, without being a must-take option. Similarly, I'm not sure what's wrong with Moxie (perhaps the pool issue?). I personally liked the skill consolidation. It was never clear to me why an expert marksman with a firearm wouldn't be able to hit the broadside of a barn with a laser rifle. I understand that's not for everyone, though. I'm not sure what you're saying with the mouth piece bit. EP has always had some of the Kurzweil idealism about the future. The main twist is the way they combine that with horror themes. Things that I like in EP2:

As mentioned, skill consolidation - before, it was too easy to have these trap characters where you think you'd be competent, but you're missing some skill that applies in certain situations, so you can't do what you built the character to do.
Morph points - I'm not exactly a fan of pools like this, but they work really well to resolve which part is the morph and which part is the ego. As a side effect of this, the player is much more the ego, and the morph is more like equipment. This was part of the original vision, but is better realized now
Removal of morph aptitudes - This makes resleeving much less of an accounting nightmare, where all your skills need to be updated. It also gets rid of a stupid issue in EP1 where you would want to tank your ego aptitudes so you could buy the skill to 80, then sleeve in something with a high morph aptitude to get it higher. It didn't make any sense that the best hacker was an idiot without his morph.
Reduction of gear porn - In EP1 there's so many items. If you know the system, this can be pretty fun, picking out all the good items across all the books and combining them for +100 to whatever roll. That wasn't good for game balance, and wasn't good for new players, who didn't have in-depth knowledge of the system. This reduction of modifiers applies outside of gear too, which makes the game less about fishing for modifiers and more about the story.
Fewer actions - In EP1, multiple actions was a must-take option. Now, while you can still use pools to take extra actions, you don't get them all at once, and you don't get to keep doing that all day.
Better opposed tests and superior results - These dice mechanics are a nice addition.
Cleaner remote operations and hacking rules - The new remote operations and hacking rules are much better. Previously, the jamming/remote control rules were almost as bad as Shadowrun. Now, they actually make sense and are consistent, while preserving the choice between autonomous mode and jamming. Mesh mechanics are simpler as well, which means you don't need a flowchart to figure out how things work.
Eliminating the networking skills - Replacing these with the simpler reputation system means you don't need to sink tons of points in skills just to use the other set of points you spent in reputation.
Gear points - I found tracking the individual credits to be a hassle in EP1. I play enough spreadsheet games.

Edit: From reading your other post about "the four different types of Moxie", I'm assume you mean that what was previously one pool is now four pools. As I mentioned, I'm not a huge fan of these pools. Nevertheless, I think it ends up working out pretty well. It's the lesser of two evils, where the other option is to put aptitudes on morphs, which just doesn't work well.

Tue, 2018-06-05 03:25

CordialUltimate2 CordialUltimate2's picture

I like EP2 in overall. I

I like EP2 in overall. I dislike morph not having apttitudes as simple charsheet rearrangement would suffice to make resleeving not a accounting nightmare and it somewhat lessens the superhuman feel. Pools ALMOST do the same job, but I have to play as a player more to evaluate that. Reduction in skills is great IMO. Up until the May29 update I was on the fence on PSI now it is better at worldbuilding and mechanically easier than Ed1. I play an Ultimate and do not plan on stopping because they are not listed. I plan on stopping because I roleplayed him into a satisfying ending. Overall I still feel that the things that people disliked: Morph apttitudes and Speed gave the game its transhumanism vs posthumanism feel and I will probably hack 2nd ed to include those. EDIT: In first edition it sucked that my competent soldier character could only shoot 1 type of guns because I didn't have enough points to make him a rounded character otherwise. I think 1 guns skill reflects well the simulspace training environment, where like in today's gun simulator you can shoot anything you want. It even makes sense that there are people who could shoot anything but are bad at soldiering. They play Overwatch 15 not Breakout: Tactics. The new more general skills are great at allowing you to create more competent characters. The only caveat is that when the general skills changed the field skills stayed the same so they are now very expensive in comparison.

—

Exurgents wanna eat your ass and you are low on ammo? Register to mobile gear catalogue at [url=http://eldrich.host]eldrich.host.mesh[/url]! ORDER NOW! FOR FREE PLASMA MINIMISSILE PACK! *explosive delivery options included

Wed, 2018-06-06 05:26

DiploRaptor DiploRaptor's picture

I got to admit I kind of

I got to admit I kind of liked being unable to contact people personally like the networking of old but I also really do like it just being a check mark thing now in some ways. I got to agree the gear thing is troublesome. Also what changed about PSI to prompt this thought about it for 2nd Edition? I still think its an unnecessary hassle to include 4 types of moxie why not just have morphs have there own kind and decking out morphs was/will always be fun I still do not like the take away that the creators removed a faction for such randomly and in some capacity arbitrary reasoning I get the worry and concern but still couldn't it have been handled better? Ohhh hacking works better now? I'm curious about the improvements too it and more The dice mechanics thing you will have to explain because as far as I know it sounds the same to the 1st edition with dice mechanics being blackjack Really? Cause I liked to max the aptitude because spending 50 point to upgrade a 20 to 65 vs a 10 to 60 made more sense And with the +10 from a morph making it 75 vs 70 Further if the person in question spent the stuff to get the added +5 from mods they could match but losing the body made them suffer making it a more valuable piece of gear Which seems wasteful. So i never really had that issue though it does sound discouraging personally I'd just cap the morph bonus at +10 or +15(+20 for SOM on large morphs) or make it so the morph bonus can only be up to the aptitude So a aptitude of 5 cannot benefit from a +10 they only get a +5 its a bit extra work but it encourages investment

—

Welcome, we shall watch your madness please inform us when you are fully insane

Wed, 2018-06-06 06:54

ubik2

DiploRaptor wrote:I still

DiploRaptor wrote:
I still think its an unnecessary hassle to include 4 types of moxie why not just have morphs have there own kind and decking out morphs was/will always be fun

So the Insight, Vigor, and Moxie pools are solely morph pools (so they're their own kind). Flex is shared between the Ego and the Morph.

DiploRaptor wrote:
The dice mechanics thing you will have to explain because as far as I know it sounds the same to the 1st edition with dice mechanics being blackjack

There's superior successes and superior failures now, so if you roll over 33, and still have a success, you get a better result. If you get over 66 and still have a success, you get an even better result. Doubles (11, 22, etc.) gets you a critical (failure or success depending on whether it's over your target). That lets you immediately get some dynamic things, like finishing a task faster or doing more damage. It's also used for called shots, where you hit if you make the roll, but you only hit that armor chink if you get a superior success. If you have a really low skill, you can't get a superior success, since that 34 is a failure. If you have a really high skill, you often end up with a double superior success. Anyhow, Game Mechanics page 3 for more detail.

DiploRaptor wrote:
Really? Cause I liked to max the aptitude because spending 50 point to upgrade a 20 to 65 vs a 10 to 60 made more sense And with the +10 from a morph making it 75 vs 70

So you want to take a 10 as an ego attribute, then buy the skill to 80 (for 90 points), then get +20 to the aptitude in the morph. That leaves you with a skill of 100, which you couldn't otherwise get. If you had started at 25 and bought the skill to 80 (for 75 points), you couldn't add 20 more, since there's a cap on your attributes. If you're capped at 30, you only get to bump your skill to 85.

Wed, 2018-06-06 16:47

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

(Responding here with no

(Responding here with no special knowledge, just running a bunch of demo games.)

DiploRaptor wrote:
Ok I'm gonna be blunt I went in excited for 2nd Edition but well I just do not from my go to faction just being gone and treated as villains among other things I am at a loss for how to handle it.

The Ultimates aren't gone, and aren't more of a villain than they were before, which is to say... kind of? But I think, just like with skills, they've consolidated things on the character sheet. Select Brinkers as the faction and continue with everything else normally. They're still in the setting, still have their Remade morphs, still have the titles and such from Rimward. We just lost it in the 'background' slot. And between you and me, I've been writing whatever I want in that slot anyway.

Quote:
how Moxie works,

I feel like I'm losing some, but the new system totally opens resleeving like it wasn't before. That trade-off is so worth it.

Quote:
I would have prefered seekers/kinetic/beam be the 3 types of gun with it being you have a penalty to using the other types instead of this universal system and more.

You know why they simplified it. But it's easy to fix. Require your players take a specialization. Or return it to the previous way it ran.

Quote:
And really what I wanna here is the good from others on it what you've found that has really helped you enjoy it. What things you liked and disliked personally from what was losed to waht was gained over 2nd edition

I am awfully grognard about things. I still play SR3, carrying some SR2 rules as houserules. But when I ran tables, EP2 was really fast. There was nothing it does where I was like 'ugh, why'd they do that?' Even when it didn't make sense in the book, it ran really well in play. But at the end of the day, the mechanics aren't radically different. This isn't an SR3/SR4 break. If you keep the EP1 rules, it looks like they'll work fine. I hope the setting material is improved, either by being more readable or providing new information. There's no metaplot, so you don't have to worry about your old campaign or adventures getting tossed out. So I'll wait until the final version comes out and say the proof is in the gameplay and the reading.