Quote Originally Posted by The Blade Wolf View Post
Except, here's the thing. They aren't feats. They are Talents

Feats, you get one at every odd level, and that never changes. Sure, some classes give you bonus feats, but that's a class feature specific to the class, and not part of the system as a whole. Talents on the other hand, are not given to us at the same rate of feats. In fact, there is three different rates you can pick up talents. That alone is a significant enough distinction which shows that no. Talents and feats are not the same thing. But guess what? It goes even further than that! Because the Talents are split into groups known as Sphere's, and if you have a Sphere, you can grab basically any single talent that's available to you there. Feats don't function like that. Feats have prerequisites that stop you from taking some of the stronger feats right away or are locked to a specific level, which the Sphere's don't have - Legendary Talents notwithstanding. Plus there is not one single feat which functions as a prerequisite for 20+ feats like the base sphere's does. Not even Point Blank Shot has that many feats linked to it!

So in summary: It does not matter how much you might declare that Combat Talents are built off the base system and function just like feats. The way you have implemented Combat Talents means that They. Are. Not. Feats. So the entire 'Talents are just feats' bull**** you use in order to dismiss my arguments as to why Psionic Focus functions where Martial Focus fails, falls flat on its face. That's on top of how you completely and utterly ignore how I point out that the Psionic's Power Point system is completely separate from the Psionic Focus and that the Martial Focus is completely entwined with the Talent system, yet is so half-heartedly implemented that it falls flat on its face.

Edit: I can't believe that I can go to sleep, wake up and get instantly frustrated again. Good god its like banging your head against a brick wall, trying to get people to understand clear and 100% fact.
Let me give my 2c here:

The way that they're similar to feats (to us) is in how their power level is structured, that's around the level of power we're shooting for with them. I agree with you that there are mechanical differences, such as how they're obtained. Their implementation is different, yes. The way we internally see them is as feat-equivalents though. That's all that can be said from our end on how we view these abilities.

I agree with you that we've used focus in a different way than psionic focus, because while that might have been a basis for martial focus, we didn't want to retread the same water completely. We thought that including them for talents would be a nice way of limiting some things, and it seems you disagree. You have given us reasons for why you believe this, and as stated, we're listening to you as much as we're listening to everyone else. All we can do is take the opinions of everyone into consideration along with the experience we have as a team for things like this. There's quite a few things on which I've given feedback where I was certain I was right (and honestly still think I am) where I wasn't listened to, and that's how things go. We can only try to make a product based on what we feel works while listening to feedback, so while I do appreciate your passion in demonstrating your point, recognize that we will make decisions based on what we believe is best for the product.

I think we all need to step back and try to realize that no one here is attempting to be malicious, there is no agenda here, and that we all wish this product to turn out the best it can be. You have stated what you believe would help, and we honestly do appreciate that, as like was said earlier, Boxer has undergone some changes to make it less immediate action dependant. Focus is however an area in which we are rather invested, and any changes to it would ripple system wide and would cause far more changes than we can reasonably deal with involving the production schedule we have set. At this point, we're happy with focus despite recognizing it does have issues (everything has issues, nothing's perfect), so any changes we would make would have to be minimal. Please recognize the situation in which we're in at the moment when making commentary, as while we could continue to change things, we do eventually have to release and drawing things out hurts we as writers as well as others involved in this process. I do hope that you continue to give feedback where you can, I will do my best to take it into account, and I hope that you have a nice day.