Azmodiuz

lol m16's with 203's please! (for the closer ranged accuracy) I enjoyed the EE versions of the BG series for "The Pitts" that they had. It was like a more IWD like storyline/game play. Would be neat to have this in PoE too! edit: could be a small add-on expansion even, make a tiny bit of extra cash with it as small DLC XD .

I use my rogues as archers. I hate Rangers that have companions, so never tank my rogues. I tank my Chanters though. Like longsword and shield and heavy/medium armor+Buffs. If someone has a explanation how to use rogues properly, in melee, please tell me. I have difficulty using them in PoE in melee combat, they just see to die and be of very little use, maybe its the abilites im using or lack of interest in rogues or experience using them, idk. how does flanking work, exactly ? And what happens when you are engaged by more opponents then you can engage (the engagement limit thing). I may have winged through the Beta a few times, but I wish to understand the mechanics before the release is live. Thanks in advance if you can explain these, and also how it helps playing as a rogue. Also, if you can not use a rogue what class makes the best rogue/non-actual rogue? (Like ranger ? druid ? Cipher..chanter etc...or is there something Im missing here..)

sorry, just had to publicly LOL that... (I hate diablo2/3. the original was fun, and a master piece for its day) Edit: Wonder if someone will Kickstarter a game based on that kind of game, where things are more realistic, and dark, and brooding and more unforgivable. The later versions of diablo, are made for increasingly younger audiences. Which I hate, because Im from the original Audiance. Its bad enough they killed warcraft to death. The original, and warcraft 2 were amazing, then it all went downhill with the stupid jap-anime like garbage mainstream childish crap they made afterwards. Blizzard = total sell outs. Its all about the money. (Which is fine, its a business. But they do not get my money any-more.)

Does disintegrate destroy loot in PoE ? Is this confirmed ? Like in AD&D items used to get saving throws, but mundane items you might as well have just thrown away, but magical items get bonus's depending on value or power, etc.. (Would be funny if this was in diablo3, and it destroyed loot. would be hilarious...damn I hate that game)

Its worse then this , Amulets take up the cloak visual.... So, i have to choose between amulet or the visual of having a cloak which feels neat and cool (and the fact, PoE has the nicest cloaks on any model i've ever seen in any game) I feel, they are taking away from the quality of the game by making cloaks and amulets share the same place. Cloaks in this game are definetly something very visually stimulating, but if you want the bonus form something around your neck - that is not a cloak , you can not wear one then. Wish we could add at the very least, a cloak visual to the armors and clothing we wear, even if it adds nothing mechanically, but like just a box we can select, and POOF adds cloak visual. Would have been nice to have same with head gear too ! I think Blackguards does it right, or was it divinity:original sin ? maybe both ? Either way, this would make this game so much better, considering how small of an overall feature it is.

How high have you gotten your stealth ? (Just curious, and did you use the +2 stealth gear?)

Thats what bothers me. We have been testing for almost a year, and last minute that was thrown in AFTER... but guess its water under a bridge now. They said they will make the feature they are describing/adding optional in a future patch.

My mistake. It seemed as though your intent was to counter my points, which is why I confusedly wondered why we were saying the same thing. Not to nitpick, but I didn't say that. Merely that it's quite obvious that removing ALL of something is too far. My point there is simply that, just as you can't remove something purely because it isn't "necessary," you can't include something merely because it is nice. Or rather, that cannot be the criteria by which you decide what to include. Otherwise, you would include infinite things that may-or-may not follow any rhyme-or-reason. I realize that subjectivity is at work in a game. I mean, 7 weapon types isn't "necessary," but that doesn't mean we should only have 1. If an additional weapon type didn't contribute any new mechanics, though, then it'd be a lot less cost-effective to put in, regardless of how nice some people thought it would be. But, as we are talking about things the player is allowed to be directly responsible for, there are certain things that don't serve much purpose, examples for which are hard to produce without being blatantly overboard (such as "the player can control pooping" or "the player can pluck individual blades of grass out of the ground, until there is no grass.") Essentially, it is implied that if you, the player, decide in your head "I want to see what that corpse has on it," the decision to move close enough as to be within range of looting that corpse is a given. That's why people's examples of PnP sessions are so great. How many people tell the DM "How many steps away from the corpse am I? Okay, I'd like to take that many steps toward the corpse. I'm there now? Okay, I'd like to reach down with my hands and remove the corpses backpack. Okay, now I'd like to dump the contents of that backpack onto the ground and observe them." No... you just tell the DM "I'd like to loot that corpse." It's understood what the required actions for physically looting that corpse are, and being able to control those does nothing, unless you're (for example) playing a game involving detective work/forensics, and it's designed to be first-person. I would argue that many do not ever think about what it actually means to loot a corpse. That your essentially/possibly stripping down a cadaver to steal its belongings. Some pretty gruesome acts, especially if its bloodied to all hell too. But I agree with most of what you are saying. Wasteland 2 has it using perception to govern the circle around you that is the radius in which you will find things. Is it like that in PoE ? like if your scouting, and in stealth mode, do you only find things base don a radius which in turn is based on attributes? Also, it would definetly be neat to make more use of perception for looting. A keen eye, should be able to spot things quicker and faster, and even further. And for those who like looting multiple things in a radius all at once, attributes should be able to extend that radius. But, it should still be optional. BG series still had the best loot system. A combination of what we have now, and what they did, showing what was dropped, would be even better. It would be a trend setter. On the latter note about loot,dropping mechanics, never make the mistake of having all articles of clothes nicely folded when dropped. Or make graphics that soon as you killed someone or something, the loot drops from mid-air wherever they are standing. Nothing more stupid then killing a giant beast and watching it magically turn into a pair of folded pants that start falling from the sky. Though, it almost reminds me of the first time a DM caught the group surprised with a wand of wonders. !0 minutes later we were in very large grass that was inside a dining room, shrunk to the size of a rodent while a very slow extra large deathknight was chasing us and trying to stomp on us. Meanwhile the thief in the party was running with a diamond half the size of his body that was moments earlier thrown form the wand at the deathknight... or something like that.

The stats on the weapons , individually are available in the beta, just by viewing details. Though , I wonder what a weapons speed translates to. There are some that are slow and some are fast. But, no in depth explanation exists that I have seen. (there might be, but I haven't seen it, link it if it does, if you seen it/know it)

I just rolled up a chanter to see hat all this is about. Very interesting class, I only briefly read the lore on them too, but, they seem pretty powerful to me. I could potentially just stand back and use them like a caster class, with the ancient knowledge and whatever feats they are supposed to basically heal the party too. (Though testing it, its basically pointless, combat in most encounters is only a few rounds.. thus you waste a talent to maybe add 3-4 health/endurance overall) anyways, I have a question : what are the stats of the summons we summon with the chanters abilities ? AND..do they get stronger based on our stats, like does intelligence or resolve or such make them stronger or does it only affect the usual, like distance we can cast the spell/invocation etc... I really have alot of mixed feelings towards the chanter class, it seems great but there are many limiting aspects to it too. You really can't make a great front liner with a chanter, though don't get me wrong, they have the defence, just not the endurance.

Chants are composed of phrases that each have their own effect while that phrase is active. There is a phrase counter that is incremented at the start of each new phrase. Chanters also have invocations. These invocations can be cast once the phrase counter hits a specific number (this depends on the invocation). Once an invocation is cast, the phrase counter zeroes out. haha I was thinking cypher, lol... there is very little ocntent in the beta so, i played through it once and forgot mostly everything I learned. We really hope (if I can speak for many toher sin the same position) that things are better explained in the release when its live, like a tutorial for every class or something. Or at least have a downloadable manual.

There are many gold sinks, like food, and enchanting, and upkeep on your keep/castle and upgrades, plus normal equipment etc... plus resting at inns.. people won't be so rich as to not know what to do, if I had to guess. And you can sell from stash directly when with a merchant, there is an icon that shows the stash icon... There is also an option to use stash while in the wilderness or no matter where you are, so its not just a stash while in the city, if you need this convenience. For me, I plan to only enable this after I get the keep, in which case I justify it as a lord is / was usually accompanied by a wagon and cart and others in old times, when travelling. Before that, I will assume I'm too lowly and poor to have a cart with myself. I enjoy imposing small restrictions and things like this on myself when I play, gives me extra things to look forward to and obstacles to overcome and rewards once I get there. I'm all about the RP.

God I hope so on those sparkles. While I can appreciate sparkles in some contexts, sparkles on corpses or game loot in general is definitely not one of them. On the general subject of loot. IE games did it better than any other RPG games out there I've come across with the exceptions of the tedium one encountered in shops (simply allowing the buying of more than one item at a time would have gone a long way), and one might encounter when managing their inventory. For the latter an on toggle (meaning not always active) auto sort for individual characters as well as the party would have been all that was needed. But these were UI issues/improvements. Insofar as how the character interacted with loot in the game, and how loot appeared in the game it was done no better in any other RPG game I've seen. If what we have in PoE is glowing piles that all look the same (ala NWN2), this is the opposite of an improvement over what IE had. Yeah, you actually saw what sort of thing dropped in IE games. If it was just arrows or another gemstone or rings or leather armor etc... even if it was multiple, you could tell. They did have it better then any other game has ever done so far. I wish the things we killed didn't disapear either. At least not the way they do.

That would be perfect, adjust to taste, that would be perfect innovation, within keeping to the old school way of it.

I like that explanation very much. Very good. +1 for that.

You have alot of freedom in choices for weapons. I forget how the chanters fill up they're power. Either by damage or hits.

I also wish the the things we kill stayed there on the ground with all the blood and gore, even after looting. Makes things more fun and interesting. Could potentially even make things expire over days months or years.. like corpses get rotten and bugs get attracted etc, or things decompose... might even add loot after some time, like bones and rotten flesh for some crazy necromancer.. anyways...

What we want is not what we always get. We can live with this, sure. What we were told, is that this is a old-school -like game to be modelled heavily after those old-school isometric games like PST and BG and IWD etc.. Many new features are improvements, some welcomed some not and maybe resisted as too much change, some are even just optional. Looting is something that, I personally believe, should be handled very carefully. Simple, and not to complex, easy to master and get without much explanation, like how it was in the old games. But, now we have some advanced and convenient features, that help us loot faster and easier. They also remove small elements that many have come to expect as given and enjoyed and now miss. We already can not choose freely who we are going to steal items from (Thieving) but not we can not easily determine who dropped what items when we loot an area ( If the implementation is a 3m wide area for instance..). We spend less time now arranging our loot. But there is also probably much more diverse loot too, but its a give and take scenario with who likes what. This is why I believe it should be optional. OR changed in some way to allow option for greater control. Just like the "LOOT ALL" button is there to help, we can still click one item at a time, or drag and drop (I think we can still do that, right??) When I play BG or IWD, i specifically have certain characters loot specific types of enemies or things. I do this to organise who carries what and such. This type of play is largely removed now. I can no longer pretend one fighter found the specific item in question on the body he killed. I used to use my imagination and add even more adventure to the game by doing this, by almost roleplaying each character as having they're own say in who gets what, instead of just auto- controlling it myself and assigning what makes most sense, i would pretend whomever got the last hit, gets first pick. This is not typical playstyle, sure, but my first few runs through these rpg's was with one of my friends in multiplayer, so we RP'd our own conversations alot as if we were playing PnP. The habit stuck, so I continued to play that way, which would give me soo many more laughs and giggles over stupid things. It makes these games more fun, I can take my time and enjoy them much more. Theres so many random creative quotes that come to mind that we came up with that i still 15 years later quote when we're hanging out as a joke. We grew up on the old games, and its our heritage almost, its our cherished past. So naturally, some of us care very much how certain mechanics are handled. Too many publishers got in the way of mechanics and improvements over the years, and completely lost touch on what the old school genre had to offer in its simplicity. So, I implore you, if you read this, to at least under stand that why we can all the imagination in the world to improve things on paper, systematically making things more efficient with our time, if ultimately telling the story as quickly as possible was the goal, then this would be a movie, with maybe a questionnaire at the beginning to determine most varying factors.

Maybe not everyone cares. But some of us do, and are concerned about spiralling downward trends in the genre of isometric rpg gaming.

Quite true, we might actually like how it is implemented, but we will not get to see it until going live. It was not put into the beta. This game is supposed to be a traditional game, like the older ones it emulates in so many ways. I like the idea of looting a few things at once, that are in an area, this prevents things from overlapping and being unable to loo them or click on them, and I like how it was in wasteland 2 to a very small degree, however, I do find it detracted from loot value and prestige and awe abit, and made it very mediocre, like the only thing we get that we cared about was junk and ammo. Guess xp too. might as well go grinding away in a game of diablo, where the loot means more. But this is what bothers me, is the trend to improve upon things small bits by small bits that ..well...made the entire genre disappear to begin with. Skyrim is ultimately complete improvement on the older RPG genre in every way, yet, its just not the same. You start making things too modern and changing them, and you are losing what made them feel special. Looting was very important, so was thieving. Taking them both out.. what gives??? This is a HUGE part of customization, it takes us time, and we carefully weigh and consider what we do and such.

What's this mechanism? I thought we were talking about loot area? You know, this thing? Do you see the tabs on the right-hand side? Those are corpses. The tabs on the left-hand side are player characters. With area looting, you're just spared a bit of clicking. You still know which corpse had which piece of equipment, and you choose where it goes. You're talking about something else in your original post, I think. Loot vacuuming or something. Not loot area. Thats not a loot area wide, thats what we have now in PoE though it doesn't seperate the bodies. Its loots everything within a small distance. Not the entire area. Also, in wasteland, it took away form old school genre of looting, and made it more generic and mediocre again. Its a trend towards people who are more familiar with games like WOW or something. Go play that instead if you prefer to have your hand held rather then the old school basics. And you can fail at looting by missing something or being too lazy to bother walking around and looting. Looting everything within 3 meters with a single click makes ense, because it stops things being missed from clipping and overlapping, and we have all had that issue where something just wouldn't click properly. But the whole area ?? ****, I its off screen leave it off screen. Wasteland 2 does not have a area wide looting function, it has a radius looting function, and it stays individual as well. Even though there is a loot all function. Its bad, but no one ever expected great things from wasteland 2 to begin with. Its fun, but still, in the end, a bit mediocre and not that large of a game. I've played the whole thing through twice.

Thats a 6th level ability too. Wouldn't that require a higher level character then the game will even allow..? thought i read somewhere we will get to like level 6 or 7 only or 8 or something. Theres a cap or something I am assuming.

No, what your speaking of, is the looting function that is already in place. Its everything within a few meters , that is looted together. Its already one step towards area- wide looting. At least in wasteland 2, you know what is coming from whom, and you still have to walk over and loot. At least its not magically teleported into your loot/stash. (Which is very bad for games that try to aim for realism regardless of using magic mechanics and stuff)

Well, I ma sure you can go search for whatever is new in the stash, in worse case, right ?

What was missing is PoE team, mentioning that loot mechanics are going to drastically change, and not be like in the beta at all. they made a non-optional choice to make it area wide looting. So it is said, in another tread by developpers. Funny how we been play testing all this for like a year, and they didn't think the backers should have some input to just drastically change how the game is played. Anyways, here is a petition from change.org. https://www.change.org/p/pillars-of-eternity-make-looting-functions-optional-not-forced-area-wide I won't sit by as we screwed with, we're the fans, we made it possible too, we should have a voice. Or stop saying this is our game that we made possible, that we had influence on shaping.