Urthor

The Marshal drops multiple explicit hits that you *can* definitely delay this battle for as long as you want, hand waved as sabotage, presumably so that people can go get the other two armed forces to aid you and generally level up. To a lvl 12 party the fight was defo trashmob humans, basically barbarian bait. Nobody forced you to do the fight at lvl 4-5, same as nobody forced you to go into the Temple of Eothas with 2 party members at lvl 3 on PotD

They were more annoying back when they're Prayer spells only raised defenses instead of making you immune. I'll admit they're less of a headache nowadays, although those Dank Spores in the catacombs are still annoying since you won't have Prayer against Confusion. Oh what. I forgot that was a change, yea that makes sense

Wolves because they're boring trash mobs? It's hard to complain about difficulty when people are soloing POTD. Like if you just get better tactically, anticipate the mob or the dragon leap barbarian, you can do much better vs it. I was very pleased to see that white march was shaking the formula a lot more than the base game. More stuff like Barbs Monks Wizards that throw a different curveball at you than "human enemy with sword/bow doing DPS" Dank Spores in particular have never been an issue, just pause the game more often and cast the right priest spells.

Durgan refinement is ver powerful: more speed, more hit-to-crit, higher crit damage. Hard to compete with that. A fully enchanted, durgan refined Hours of St. Rumbalt is just awesome. And eveybody can use that. Optimal two handed sword rogue because of overbearing+annihilation? Hilarious.

Apparently it's old news and everyone knew about it, the former CIA agent is just bringing it up. Saudis apparently did a deal with Pakistan years ago for rent a nukes, basically the quid pro quo was if Iran got nukes and Saudis were wedged between Israeli nukes and Iranian nukes they would buy some Pakistani nukes, and they apparently paid for the nukes from Pakistan already, so they're a nuclear nation whenever they feel like it. Diplomatically seems more like it was a tool to put pressure on Obama and the United States circa 2009/2010 than anything, and it was kept very quiet because do you think Obama wanted it known that he'd let the country where Osama Bin Laden is from to acquire nukes when he was running for re-election in 2012 to get out. There was a friggin BBC report in 2013, followed by Time of London one according to Wikipedia.

It was pretty low level without expansions mechanically. Narratively, yeah, to paraphrase Todd Howard "the world was definitely eating itself." But if you look at the kind of spells you see at lvl 6 for example, it was definitely nothing like lvl 9 2nd ed spells that's for sure. White March has definitely brought it up to a high level finish. Lvl 16 feels like lvl 18, well probably lvl 16 in 2nd Ed there's no timestop, but still. They probably planned it out as "high level stuff in the expansions" and then kind of regretted it a little is my guess, which is why they said they would make a future game a high level campaign that went all the way to lvl 18.

There's no way on god's green earth you can call it a disaster. Obsidian's changes to the AD&D formula with Might and Intellect is rolled gold game design, only butthurt Codex grognards wouldn't give them credit for it. Tabletop mumblers might get away with saying they did it first though. On release people, and not just on SA, were definitely buttmad about perception/reflex before the change though. Tanks had to target 3 different stats just for defence, DPS got to pick 2 out of might/dexterity/intellect to max and had points to share with the rest. If they keep the attribute setup identical in a future game, whether it's released in a 3 year cycle on the same tech or 5-6 years, I'll print out the game script and blend it into my cereal.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/83339-poe-2/page-2?do=findComment&comment=1756141 There's a million ways to do save imports. Dragon Age's method for one instantly springs to mind where they absolutely rolled a new character so that narratively you wouldn't be a superhero right off the bat. Now THAT I can see as being super likely, references to player choices like Act 2, the Mega-Dungeon boss and the ending. Doesn't indicate a Throne of Bhaal high powered setup at all. He could also be hinting they're throwing the idea of setting up a multi-game trilogy with PoE2, where PoE2 is game 1 and PoE2.5 and/or PoE3 build from that into a Throne of B setup. Your Aedyran protagonist gets to play a high level game in the Deadfire Archipelago or w/e -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Save importing characters directly would make less sense if they do fix one of the bigger things they've said they've regretted, the attributes, which involves going to a 5 attribute setup. I think THAT is a far bigger reason against save importing, even if narratively they're super fine with putting the Watcher on the boat to the Aedyran empire, you're prolly going to roll through character creation all over again because Josh is 100% going to go to a 5 attribute system after what has happened. Sensuki was defo raging about that back in the day before he rq over engagement. Basically all these decisions were probably decided between Josh/Fergus months ago if they didn't get the Fallout 4.5 contract and decided to switch the PoE team straight into producing another Pillars game, so it's all up in the air. In short, someone needs to go decrypt the Somethingawful password database, extract Ropekid's stuff, hack his emails so we can get the juicy goodbits on how notworldoftanks is going and how much of the Pillars of Eternity money is being spent funding console games I want it to be more in the vein of "Eye of the Beholder". Make it POV and fully set in a dungeon. idk about you (actually I lied 100% know, anyways) but chugging through the Endless Paths was the worst part of my playthrough tbh. Like the individual levels were reasonably well made, but I just wasn't up for that much dungeoneering even though they hung plenty of narrative, I'm not a big fan of Diablo. More fun when you actually come up for air more frequently than Endless Paths.

Err if you want to build around the hammer, you want to make a critical hit party built around priest buffing for critical hits to support attack speed rogues for example, and just teching a Barbarian carnage critical build. Barbarian swings the hammer, prone on criticial, keep swinging, keep critting, they don't get up off the floor until they gibb.

There's like one difficult fight and two trash mobs between where you are and the final quest objective Nothing "difficult" about it.

Gameplay wise, yes that's true to an extent. Mask of the Betrayer was an expansion pack however, calling it a full game is a real stretch because they made Betrayer with the assumption that the low level play had already been done in the previous expansions Narrative wise, not really. Every single Bioware RPG feels like a high level campaign, ditto most of the others curving into a high end, fans demand it and the studios feel obliged to deliver it. The need to reset to a new character is driven by this, if they don't, there's little to no way to create any sort of suspense after the end of WM2 and PoE1. It's almost guaranteed there WILL be a new character. Also, Fallout 4.5 hasn't been unconfirmed yet. If Zenimax gave Obsidian the contract, which seems pretty likely all things considered, forget the past they upgraded the amount of Fallout 4 DLC on the basis of Call of Duty tier sales and money talks, then PoE2 is going to be a while. Studio turnover will potentially happen etc, World of Armored Company of Honor Tanks or w/e it's called could be a raging success and absorb most of the studio's resources.

Wasn't the bash shield formula insanely good in 1.0, Larder Door was absolutely mandatory for all builds I guess they've changed it now or sumthin

The thing everyone is missing about the role of perception is that the difficulty of Pillars of Eternity as you go through the game isn't static, the beginning is FAR harder than the mid/endgame, and in the beginning literally anything related to accuracy is at a massive premium because it's flat out extremely hard to hit without the level bonuses. For PotD, what is realistically the only challenging difficulty for anyone attempting to powergame, you'd jack perception to the max. I mean, shades. 'nuff said. Surviving till you hit defiance bay is the name of the game.

Ironic that Xcom apparently did badly enough on Consoles that Firaxis isn't even launching Xcom 2 there much?

If they haven't changed mental at all, Ciphers will STILL be Paralysis machines though, and therefore ahead of the pack. Turn denial is by far the best strategy in any turn based game, and that extends to real time with pause. Ciphers will still be extremely good, it's just awk that Blunderbuss Cipher has bit the dust. Islander quick switch build will probably grow in importance for increased burst focus gain.

The question is, if you're stacking Sanguine and Sura's, what's the best one handed weapon to pair with them? What weapon's going to have the unique enchants

Having a second Cipher isn't overdoing it lol, having a 2nd Cipher is just strictly better. You don't lose anything from having twice as much mental binding and ectopsychic, the optimal build for PotD is probably 2 Fighter 2 Cipher 2 free slots for DPS. Fighter just gets 2 more engagements, it's a mandatory class that should be in every party, 2 more engagements means 2 more enemies tied up, making it strictly better than every other tank.

Um well for starters, if you go Cipher/Barbarian/Rogue/Druid/Wizard/Priest you will have a party of 6 squishy characters and get instantly murdered, so there's that. You want 2 tanks in PoE, at least 1 Fighter because fighters can engage 2 more enemies than any other class which makes them far and away the best tanking class, and if you were going balls to the walls min/max you'd take 2 unkillable fighters as your best possible tanks, but your options for the 2nd tank can be a Chanter/Paladin/Monk or Barbarian/Ranger builds, those are the classes that can go into melee and take damage. Ciphers can't tank lel. Idk where you got that idea from, but they're a clothes wearing caster class who don't survive being attacked. Melee kinda works if you engage with the two tanks then have your cipher melee attack someone who is attacking a tank, but the optimal build has 2-4 blunderbusses and penetrating shot. There's flat out no such thing as a Kensai in PoE, if you want to take damage you have to give up your ability to do damage by putting on armour and getting some DR. Priests also can't tank to save themselves, they're squishy. All caster classes basically want to cast as fast as possible once they hit lvl 9, cast an endless string of lvl 1 spells as fast as possible while holding hatchets, not wander around in heavy armor or using any sort of weapons.

Yea that's fair, change it to 20/30%, and leave the Barb at roughly the same point it's at currently. Like the fact every single non-Barbarian class can't put out meaningful DPS in melee is the problem here, not the fact that the Barbarian can in fact put out some meaningful DPS. If it's a design decision for it to be like that, well it's a pretty bad design decision.

Melee weapons flat out just don't deal much damage in this game. Anything that goes into melee combat and hits things isn't going to be very effective except if it's a min/max'd class using a specific build. And even then it's still not going to do that much. Rogue in general is a class that depends on getting very high damage single attacks from stacking sneak attack+crippling strike/blinding strike, which makes it focused on using burst damage weapons like guns/crossbow/2h sword, which do 1 very high damage attack. In my experience I find if you're not min/maxing them, then micro managing them by debuffing your opponent to trigger sneak attack THEN using abilities, they do very little damage period. They're a pain in the ass without a big pay off at the end. Pillars of Eternity is a game where it's all about sending in 1-2 invincible tanks, then having 4-5 guys stand back and unleash the DPS.

If that's not bugged then its really unbalanced, lol. It's not even unbalanced. Barbarians are designed that One Stands Alone is a mandatory must take ability, but even though that one single ability increases their damage output by about 50%, it doesn't make the class stronger than Druid/Cipher/Rogue/Chanter etc etc. What is broken is the fact that One Stands Alone has a terribly written tooltip that doesn't explain how good it is, so players can miss it, and if you don't take it your Barbarian is going to be very weak.

If you're going to play the realistic ranged weapons card Hunting bows are completely useless in RL warfare even hundreds of years before guns had even been invented, zero draw strength vs metal armour. So 100% historical realism in PoE, a hunting bow designed to kill deer is useless against human beings. Non-longbow European warbows weren't very useful against armored targets in the era where guns were beginning to see use because again, not enough penetration compared to crossbows which penetrate extremely well even though they're slower. Few European forces fielded large units of archers that weren't using crossbows or longbows because crossbows were that much more effective even though they fired slower.Crossbows>everything except Longbows and Composite bows. Basically nobody used longbows and composite bows in Europe, ever. Relatively speaking a few randoms in the British Isles were a tiny minority in historical warfare, and composite bows, although incredibly effective game changing weapons that were far in advance of European archery, just didn't exist in Europe. 100% historical accuracy to Pillars of Eternity. Crossbows and guns co-existed and over time guns replaced Crossbow. The status quo for most of continental Europe in the 1400s and 1500s was well equipped crossbowman=extremely effective, missile weapon of choice for Spain/France/Italian Penninsula/Holy Roman Empire, and eventually guns took over as they became cheaper and cheaper. So just like Pillars of Eternity, where in the early game Guns are both hard to find and the -5 accuracy renders crossbows far more viable, while Not surprising for Josh Sawyer, the Pillars of Eternity setup is coincidentally doesn't make much sense at all from a gameplay perspective, entire weapon types are redundant, but is fastidiously accurate historically speaking.

Melee mage is actually very good, the Mage melee spells actually do pretty well if you use them correctly. Melee DPS wise, none of the melee builds really match up to the Cipher/other casters if we're going to be brutally honest, but Barb/Paladin/Rogue/Monk all have top tier melee DPS builds, and I think ranger as well. You do realize most(if not all?) of the druid AoE are foe only?.... plus you probably need to work on your positioning and targeting in battle if you can't land his AoEs, learn to plan in advance. Sunbeam/Blizzard/Overwhelming wave are by far the best AOEs for their levels and aren't Foe AOE, Blizzard/Sunbeam are your best per encounter spells and overwhelming wave is probably the best spell in the book after the two storms and insects because great damage+amazing base 10 stun. Regardless you're right, the difference between Foe AOE spells and non-Foe AOE is pretty negligible, with max'd intellect most fights you can easily position your spells so they don't catch your casters, and only very occasionally you'll be casting onto your tanks, which is fine because Vigorous Defence is probably the best (non-Cipher) per encounter ability in the game. Non-Cipher Casters are just not that great in Act 1 that's it. Cipher is the best caster class in the game by a country mile, and it gets its best abilities EARLY, 1 Cipher+figurines using Antipathetic Field/Ectopsychic at lvl 1 and lvl 5 does almost as much DPS as two Druids.

A lot of the class strongholds in BG2 did exactly what the OP said but worse. Hiding service behind too many load screens was rampant because the strongholds were designed as dungeons first, player housing second. And honestly most of the strongholds were more cosmetic than in depth. Really felt a big weakness of BG2 was the fact that there were too many mediocre strongholds, they should have had max. 3 strongholds as well done as possible. Regardless the OP's criticism is rock solid. I'd actually make resting an option in the Stronghold interface menu myself, rather than turning on auto rest when you enter the area. I think they felt the need to rest the bed location as "fairly inconvenient" to get too from Old Paths of Nua, but that just made it annoying. They just need to accept that one you get to a main stairway in Nua most people are going to take the free rest+supply restock. And yea the rest bonuses should be redone. It's ridiculous to make resting at the stronghold so much worse than the inn resting bonuses.

The intro sequence has dialogue necessary to establishing the backstory, that's why you play through it every time. The dialogue in there effects dialogue later in the game, even mods probably wouldn't/shouldn't make it skippable