Opinion: Relationships and skills

[RADN3CTAR]

If a negative relationship forces a random debuffed skill on your character skill bar, then a positive relationship should always target an equipped skill from the character skill bar.

[Mojk]

To be fair I also found it annoying but I guess it is for you to adapt and adjust skill as you go. It wouldn't be as bad if not for trinkets/paths because some push you to use certain skills. If certain character has good starting skills kit then it technically incentivies not unlocking other skills for that character ever.

[poppindancers]

but that would not make you frustrated. They don't want that.

[Valravn]

I think that's fair.

[Domino/DarkEyv]

I thought about it for a bit and it's clear that the main reason it's randomly selected from all your unlocked skills, equipped or not, is to prevent people from cheesing it. If it was always from skills you had selected, someone could just change a character's selection of skills right before leaving the inn or better yet, only have ONE skill equipped to guarantee that one would be the chosen one, and just keep doing that any time they anticipate a relationship between two characters. It honestly would be too powerful if you could heal stress/health/DoTs for free almost every turn by getting it put on your main attack skill, for example. It's definitely annoying, but there probably isn't a better way of "fixing" that.

[Valravn]

Originally posted by TTV DarkEyv:

I thought about it for a bit and it's clear that the main reason it's randomly selected from all your unlocked skills, equipped or not, is to prevent people from cheesing it. If it was always from skills you had selected, someone could just change a character's selection of skills right before leaving the inn or better yet, only have ONE skill equipped to guarantee that one would be the chosen one, and just keep doing that any time they anticipate a relationship between two characters. It honestly would be too powerful if you could heal stress/health/DoTs for free almost every turn by getting it put on your main attack skill, for example. It's definitely annoying, but there probably isn't a better way of "fixing" that.

I never even thought of that. I guess it's a balance decision then.

[RADN3CTAR]

Originally posted by TTV DarkEyv:

(...) If it was always from skills you had selected, someone could just change a character's selection of skills right before leaving the inn or better yet, only have ONE skill equipped to guarantee that one would be the chosen one, and just keep doing that any time they anticipate a relationship between two characters. (...)

The game should check and force every character to have 5 skills equipped. IMO this is a design flaw. Every character starts with 5 skills and, besides the cheese scenario you pointed out, I see no scenario where having less than 5 skills equipped is advantageous. However, in the current game state, you do make a strong point.

[Nitaire]

My main gripe is that for the past couple of runs my Vestal has unequipped either divine grace or divine comfort and replaced it with something worse after getting a negative relationship with another member of the party.

It's on me for not checking it after my party leaves the inn though, I haven't yet had a pop-up for a negative relationship elsewhere but it can probably happen.

[Valravn]

Originally posted by Nitaire:

My main gripe is that for the past couple of runs my Vestal has unequipped either divine grace or divine comfort and replaced it with something worse after getting a negative relationship with another member of the party.

It's on me for not checking it after my party leaves the inn though, I haven't yet had a pop-up for a negative relationship elsewhere but it can probably happen.

My current team is PD, Jester, Flag, Hellion. You gotta diversify your healing options and self heals are great.

[Nitaire]

Originally posted by Valravn:

Originally posted by Nitaire:

My main gripe is that for the past couple of runs my Vestal has unequipped either divine grace or divine comfort and replaced it with something worse after getting a negative relationship with another member of the party.

It's on me for not checking it after my party leaves the inn though, I haven't yet had a pop-up for a negative relationship elsewhere but it can probably happen.

My current team is PD, Jester, Flag, Hellion. You gotta diversify your healing options and self heals are great.

I already have multiple options for healing, I will still complain when my healer takes off one healing skill because in my compositions that's her second main role.

I rarely have negative relationships so it often doesn't happen that I double check any skills to see if they unequip one.

[Pixel Peeper]

This game likes its penalties to be bigger than its bonuses. Choices at locations, for example, will raise Affinity by 1 with those who agree and reduced it by 2 with those who disagree.

As with everything else, it's not about going for bonuses, it's about avoiding penalties. In the Relationship system, getting positive Relationships is very nice, but avoiding bad ones is far, far, far, far, far more important.

[Divvu]

Unfortunately, I don't think it's a very well thought feature. Or at least it clashes with my playstyle quite a lot. Most of the time I can work around it with no major issues but in 2 different occasion I had to basically abort the run because my jester/occultist had become unplayable, in that particular team setup, without the full 5 skill bar.

I call it a pretty badly thought feature since the game already favors "static" parties, with a powerful trophy and numerous trinkets and items enhancing that tactic. This is yet another slap in the face of dancing teams, that are usually much more variety-hungry.

Dunno if I made myself clear and I understand this isn's an universal problem.

[The Face]

Also,as an aside, I can find the dev note if you want, but with the launch the positive choices are heavily weighted to what you have equipped, just not guaranteed

[AirSniffer]

Nothing more frustrating than working towards a positive relationship only to have it pick a trash skill - I really hate this mechanic.

[The Face]

Originally posted by Hepheos:

Nothing more frustrating than working towards a positive relationship only to have it pick a trash skill - I really hate this mechanic.

Well it does heavily favour picking one, plus you get the mid fight buffs even on a whiffed skill pick :P

[gonzo]

Originally posted by TTV DarkEyv:

someone could just change a character's selection of skills right before leaving the inn or better yet, only have ONE skill equipped to guarantee that one would be the chosen one

Have a function that remembers skills being toggled on/off so that in case you decide to cheese it, it still rolls for 1 of 5 of the last selected skills.

Or alternatively, do like the Butcher's Circus and disallow leaving empty skill slots.

Why would you not have all 5 skills on your bar anyway? For challenge runs you can just ignore the skills you don't want to use.