JDizzle420

In the update today it says "You may now retrain your party members to modify their attributes, skills, and abilities. Now you can try out new builds quickly and easily." When I retrain a party member i don't see an option to modify their attributes. Is this not the most important aspect of retraining?

I think spears were designed so that you could attack while behind the front line fighters. I haven't tested them.

Please increase melee range. Is it just me or does it seem like everyone is standing on top of each other in melee combat? I think increasing the melee attack range just a bit will help fix the crowded mosh pit cluster f****. I can't really tell what the hell is going on half the time. Other than that I'm finding combat quite enjoyable. Maybe an increase of 10% - 15% across the board would be enough. (for everything, people, beetles, spiders, everything)

i've read that this quest is bugged. It seemed bugged when I tried to do it.

I'm actually not having any problems here. My first playthrough was on normal difficulty with my PC being a fighter. I was able to leave town, clear the the cave, defeat the ogre, and return to town without having to rest even once. I took the same path that Adam did in the gamescom streams. Both of my fighters had over 50% health remaining.

You actually ca't hire a level 2, 3, or 4 hireling. You are charged for whatever you select, but the hireling always starts at level 1.

What I meant was that I hope shields aren't useless. I rarely used a shield in the IE games because it just didn't seem like the defensive bonuses outweighed the damage of dual wielding or 2 handed.

"For Obsidian though, the veterans of this style of game.. I am sure they have a way to evaluate how many creatures are in a given area and how much total net worth XP they are worth so they can devise a general pacing for the game." You may very well be correct that the devs at Obsidian could have tricks for getting this kind of work done alot faster than other companies. But what about the different difficulty settings? They've said that changing the difficulty doesn't just increase the health and damage of existing monsters, but that it also changes what monsters you'll encounter and how many of them there will be. This makes it even more time consuming to devise a general pacing for the game.

I'd also like to point out that the fighter wasn't using a shield in those streams. So his deflection wasn't as high as it could have been. I'm not sure how much of a deflection bonus shields provide, but I hope that it is balanced to make the decision whether to use one or to wield another axe a difficult one.

In Adam's defense, he may have been trying very hard to avoid the pathing issues. I saw a character spaz out a few times and he seemed to jump on it almost instantly. It isn't a big deal really to the backers because we know that it's going to get fixed (hopefully) before the game launches. But for people who have never seen the game before it may be a bit jarring. That's really the only thing I can think of that even partly explains Adam's performance at gamescom.

If I recall the player house stretch goal was reached even before the stronghold stretch goal was announced. So perhaps they've decided to somehow combine them.

Good insight, Bazy. I must concede the point that such an exclusive fighter ability would be a bit OP. We really just need to wait until we get our hands on the beta.

that wasn't my argument. At least it wasn't intended to be. I wasn't being sarcastic.. I would seriously pretty much just murder everyhing. My main arguments are (which I'm sure have been stated many times over by others): It encourages people to play how they want to play and not worry about missing out on kill xp. Because they went with an objective based xp system the developers didn't have to spend time on any of the kill xp balance, pacing, or anything. That means that they put that time=money into other aspects of the game. <~~ I'm not a game developer but it seems to me that this is something that takes alot of time, time they didn't have perhaps.

At first I was as outraged by this dicision as alot of you guys obviously are. How dare they take away my combat xp! It's like they found the one thing that they could do that would crush my soul, and then gleefully set about it. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that this is actually a good thing. In the IE games I would always just murder everything for its delicious, delicious xp. Why would I sneak past something or talk my way out of something when there is MURDER. Murder solves everything. I think that objective based xp will encourage me to play in ways that I haven't in the past. It encourages people to play how they want to play and not worry about missing out on kill xp. This is a very "gamey" way of doing it, but any system that has xp as a reward is going to be nonsensical and "gamey" at times. Because they went with an objective based xp system the developers didn't have to waste time on any of the kill xp balance, pacing, or anything. That means that they put that time=money into other (and in my opinion more important) aspects of the game.

1. Xp for killing monsters isn't the only reason for doing it. 2. Probably.

There are always going to be players who will find a way to amass a large amount of currency. I personally remember being asked for "a copper or two" by a beggar in BG2. I looked at my fortune of 10,000 gold (or however much it was) and thought "No way... my moneys." But seriously, they are absolutely taking steps towards avoiding this issue. If you've watched any of the gamescom livestreams you may have noticed that it costs 4000 cp to hire a lvl 4 adventurer. 4000 cp?!?! That sounds like alot to me.

Oh I'll find a way to make a paladin a "frontline powerhouse" even if I have to break the game in the process.

Nope. Good point. We'd have to restrict it to lost health, only, or it would get ridiculous. Yeah, I'd assumed we were talking about regenerating some of the health actually lost in that particular encounter.

If I go kill a rabbit in the forest should he regen health just because he engaged in combat? Well I don't expect a dead rabbit to regen health under any circumatanses. Unless we're talking about a zombie rabbit. I'm just trying to think of ways to help manage fighter health loss. If fighters are supposed to be "steadfast and stalwart" as well as "low maintenance" then we shouldn't have to rest after every encounter solely because the party fighter's health is too low. In the IE games I would usually rest because one of my high maintenance party members was out of spells. I'm almost certain that this isn't the way that the game is meant to be played. It is more than likely that the problem was with the characters' equipment as well as Adam's less than stellar performance rather than a problem with the game's mechanics. I'm still a bit concerned with what i've seen so far.

I was going to roll up a paladin for my first beta run. But after watching the gamescom streams I'm leaning more towards an aumaua fighter. The paladins just don't seem like they can take a punch as well as I'd hoped they would.

Most of the scaling actually looks pretty good to me. I took a closer look at the door. The two party members closest to the door are standing on the same level as the door. Look at the taller of the two. The door handle is right between his hand and elbow. I walked over to my own front door and can you guess where the handle is in relation to my body? Its right between my hand and elbow. How much closer could they have gotten?

I think having fighters replenish some health after an encounter is an excellent idea. A set percentage health regeneration, even as low as maybe 10%, after every fight would go a long way.

The green bar on the left is health. The red that fills up over the character's face is stamina.

The only way to restore health is by resting. The heals restore stamina.

I was also concerned about this. Another thing that I absolutely hated was when I saw the paladin die because his health hit 0 even though he had around 75% of his stamina left. I think the longevity issue can be helped if front line characters stop taking health damage when they get down to 1 health as long as they have stamina left. After the character runs out of stamina, if they only have 1 health remaining, they should die. And perhaps characters could take more stamina damage once their health reaches 1. It may just have been because the characters were wearing level 1 armor, but it did seem very odd. I guess we will just have to test it for ourselves when we get our hands on the beta.