Macrae

Why didn't anyone suggest simply to make points needed for each attribute increase after a certain point? This would be a very good solution to the current attribute imbalance. So for example attribute points up until 14 would need only 1, and then 2 for each attribute increase up until 16 and finally 3 for each (just an example). So this would incentivize people to spread out attributes instead of concentrating all of them in the same ones...we would get more wizards with a better balance of intelligence and might for example..

A problem that I see a lot from what I could see from the discussions and the streams is that the goal of not having any dump attributes and "bad builds" for now doesn't seem to work as intended. People still pump might and dex to max, and, as someone mentioned in the discussions, it's even worse now because might is important also for mages who also pump it up to max. So a solution that I would like to propose and that nobody seems to have thought about yet is this very simple idea of increasing the points needed to improve attributes after a certain point in character creation. Therefore it would take 1 point for every 1 attribute point (this is just an example) up until 14, then 2 points from 14 to 16 and 3 from 16 to 18. This would give much more incentive to spread out the points and have more of the other stats. So the bodybuilding muscle-mage who pumped might to 18 would finally consider getting a little smarter by putting a few points in intelligence too.. xD ----------------- So that's the basic idea, the details are open for discussion, and we could add a lot of smaller things to this idea, for example to discourage having people dumping stats to 3 the points needed to go below a certain point could be less that 1. So dumping an attribute from 7 to 6 could give 1 point, but then from 6 to 5 only half a point. Of course you would be able to use only full points, but that's only a detail that you could solve in other ways.

Orcs..

the mighty Bob! xD

... wow, you're completely serious. My point is proven, you've brought no arguments to debate, just "wow you can't be serious omg!" The "racism" thinking is stopping people from using intelligence... Last time the race card was used to fool everyone, and I agree even I fell for it (but it was the last time), was for the election for obama... Man we all believed that ****, thought something would change, I remember his speech in cairo, I was really hopeful....he really is a good actor, he's got the charisma.. In the end, it was all marketing for the fools...reality is not "a black guy president is better than a southern wasp texan", this is the way "anti-racist" ideology presents things, but reality is: military industrial complex and goldman sachs owns politicians, and if you don't understand that and keep on playing the race card, you're just falling for their game, you're being a fool... ------ And coming back to the subject of orcs, it is pretty obvious that an "anti-racist" criticism of tolkien's orcs is a very anachronic and unrational thing. It would be like criticizing ancient athenians for slavery and no votes for women, preventing you from seeing what was great about it, which was the great and still unmatched democratic system they had.. So yeah criticizing tolkien as being "racist" is very out of context and anachronic (and wrong of course)..

Guys, please stop using these retarded 18 year old leftist words...racism, fascism, homophobia, whatever...!! It's only about interests guys!! Rich Arabs and Jews get along very well!!! So called "racism" is created so that lower class workers can keep busy blaming each other instead of the real responsible which is global capital!! For fuk's sake stop it with these ready-made expressions used to categorize people!! SKull very clearly sums it up: "...it is used to slander people and to stop the conversation." These are expressions forced onto the population, especially on young 18 year old middle class western populations, to lock the conversation, prevent people from questioning and actually using their brains.. ------ Back to the main discussion, I don't think orcs are racist representations of any particular human social group EVEN THOUGH it probably is the representation of the accumulated collective subconscious perception of "threat from the east" in the minds of the western populations...nothing wrong or unethical here...

When people speak of "racism", it just tells me that person is ignorant.. There is no "racism" in the sense people fantasize about it, or it's really marginal. There is just exploitation of the weak by the poor, just like in class struggle, just like in liberal-capitalism how companies exploit each other. It is in human nature and we all have it in ourselves, because in the end we are humans. Europeans colonized africa not because of racism but because they had guns and capital and them no gun and resources.. So instead of saying which nation/ethnicity/race IS racist, just start by saying which ones are not...you'll see it really becomes difficult because all human social groups have had a time in their history where they exploited others and were "racist". So therefore is everyone is tall, no one is tall, racist doesn't exist.. Just like someone previously mentioned south africa, black people exploited now exploit poor whites by not giving them same rights, jews who were persecuted during ww2 now ethnically cleaning palestine, it's just in our blood...we're all the same after all.. So what you should be against is not racism but exploitation as a general rule...in a sense we're all being exploited by liberal-capitalism and yet thanks to virtual freedom fighters we all are against something that doesn't exist...therefore when I see a person "denounce racism" it makes me wanna 2d6 slap him in the face with no saving throws.. xD

I just can't believe how people can turn any subject around and call it racist....it's just such an intellectually weak and and ridiculous argument.. People are too influenced by big media groups and what politicians are ordering them to think... xD Often those who order us not to be "racist" are the most actual racist people themselves... Those who know know..

To be fair I didn't really exactly understand what you meant in your posts. But to put what I wanted to say simply: orcs are different than others races in many aspects and haven't been exploited originally and intelligently until now in fantasy games, therefore there is plenty of space to do interesting things with them, and if I had the choice to play one at the beginning an orc would be one of the choices I (and others) would consider playing, because they are fan favorites, a lot of people like them. So now that I have seen how the Obsidian guys have fleshed out different cultures/races currently in the game I just can't help but wonder what they COULD have done with orcs in this game..."renaissance orcs"...even the sound of it excites me.. would have loved to see what they would have done with them..

Completely agree with Sarog. I think a blend of original and classic orcish traits could have been blended to create an Orcish civilization in this game. You could have had different ethinicities/cultures of orcs present in the game and behaving differently, besides the "classic" Turko-Hunnic and Japanese styles that we have been used to I can very well see as original orcish cultures the Carthaginian/trading nation one mentioned by Sarog and the "Russian" nordic blend of orcs, I really think these cultures would suit the orcs perfectly! (So maybe for PoE 2 or a DLC.. ) There could even be mixtures between these cultures..

Completely agree...Obsidian had an opportunity to give a different spin to orcs which have been until now very under-developed in terms of lore in fantasy games. And I completely agree they could embrace a Hunnic, Turkic, "people of the plains" nomadic or, also maybe as a sub-race, a stationary culture more like the Russian, Finnic (hell even viking!! think of Viking orcs!! that's sounds badass... xD) not so much barbaric but rather the invader/predator type of civilization that others fear... Again, as a Turk myself I am pretty sure the whole orkish lore of wolf-riding invader nomadic culture thing is coming from the collective consciousness of the fear western Europeans had of Turks in the middle-ages.. Anyway, again, not necessarily a criticizm of design choices, as it is also cool to have new races, lore etc, but SINCE you include elves and dwarves I think something could have been done with orcs too...

I totally agree on some points, for example in my opinions the character 3d models look great in isometric view in-game but beyond aweful in the character creation screen... Man, there is a reason why BG and ID were very appreciated for their artistic design and not pool of radiance or neverwinter...3d clunky models make your eyes hurt from close up while 2d hand drawn pictures make you dream...can't compete with that...

In old IE games when you wanted to create a character with whom you could really role-play your way out of situations and unlock special dialogue options that made the story deeper you just had to pump charisma up. That of course gave you a weaker character in many situations as for many classes charisma was a dump stat. So basically some roles were more appropriate to become a role-playing character and this in some way forced you into making certain choices if you wanted to role-play. Now in PoE, because the focus has been put on giving us the chance to have all kinds of viable character types a real question is: If you want to have a role-playing-heavy character which attributes should you concentrate on? At first glance it seems that, out of the 6 attributes, the most important one will be intelligence for obvious reasons, then maybe perception, which apparently permits you to open-up new dialogues through noticing some details. Might and dexterity could be useful in some instances requiring a skill-check action. Resolve is a tricky one, it says it's basically a leadership skill but will that influence any interactions? It seems like an important one anyway. And finally constitution is the obvious dumb stat here....(or is it? ) Also, from what we can see from the latest gameplay vids, it seems that usually an attribute has to be around 14 to be able to enable certain options in interactions... Here's an attribute distribution I'm thinking about (for now) for a role-playing oriented char (total should be 71): Might: 8 Constitution: 7 Dexterity: 14 Perception: 14 Intellect: 14 Resolve: 14 So basically if you dump constitution and another sacrificed attribute you can pump all the rest of them...but of course one wonders if there is indeed a such a threshold as 14, and if it is interesting to have an attribute higher for example. But it seems you can basically get a "smart" character if you dump the "physical" attributes.. According to that, an "ideal" class it seems (at least for now) would be a non-combat oriented character, so the obvious, number one choice, would be chanter in my opinion, then priest/wizard/cipher, then it's a little more tricky.. So for now, although I'm not really complaining about this, it seems that the basic rule of intelligent-oriented characters being better role-playing characters is still valid. But for the definitive answer we have to wait for the game to release, it will all depend on what skills each class has, because this will make an intellect build viable or not. I would love to have an Aragorn-like rogue role-player who could use his intellect to pump one of his skills up in combat..

I have to say I'm terribly confused right now on what class and attributes my main character will have.. I usually like to go heavy on role playing in the first playthrough and choose a character that would be the most like me if I was in that situation. Usually I therefore choose a fighter with un-fighter-like characteristics like high charisma for the dialog options and the story. For PoE then of course attributes are much more balanced and intelligent fighters etc do make sense, but now knowing that there is no "charisma" stat I don't know which attribute to boost to have a "role-playing heavy" experience. It's actually a strength of the game but somehow it prevents me for now from having a clear idea of want I want to do... I'm also hesitating between fighter, who has something which I like a lot which is parrying/deflection etc, and rogue, which is in this game much more like the rogue Aragorn you can read about in the LotR books when Frodo first meets him in that inn than what we have been used to lately in rpg's which is basically a Gareth-like thief...I really like the concept of the rogue in PoE..

November 27th...obviously...

Well, but orcs are so cool too.. There's something "strenght and honor"ish about them..

They did, many, many times. The bottom line is that it's not as simple as just giving us an editor. 1) They don't own Unity. 2) The tools are just way too complicated. "Passion" and "Technical Skills" mean jack squat in the face of reality. You're also assuming that the average modder has the ability to afford "all the software required". Well, all games today, hard to mod or not, get eventually modded, because contrary to what you say there are people with the necessary technical ability and software. So why not help them? It would be a very low effort investment by Obsidian folks to make a post summing up things that they know by heart and it would have a huge helping factor for modding.. You are simply way too worked up over this perceived injustice. I'm not.. (why so serious?) I just think this should be encouraged..

They did, many, many times. The bottom line is that it's not as simple as just giving us an editor. 1) They don't own Unity. 2) The tools are just way too complicated. "Passion" and "Technical Skills" mean jack squat in the face of reality. You're also assuming that the average modder has the ability to afford "all the software required". Well, all games today, hard to mod or not, get eventually modded, because contrary to what you say there are people with the necessary technical ability and software. So why not help them? It would be a very low effort investment by Obsidian folks to make a post summing up things that they know by heart and it would have a huge helping factor for modding..

I am extremely in favor of modding support to this game, the potential is so huge. It would be great if developers made a forum post, after release of game and bug-fixing has past, detailing what is required, in terms of softwares and manipulations, to modify different parts of the game such as: - environments (including pathways, physics, lighting, all of the 5 layers..) - combat mechanics, core systems and rules - visuals of new items, characters, weapons etc.. - animations - visual special effects - scripts, dialogs and storytelling - etc.. Just a video of less than an hour explaining all of that, including all the software required. There is so much potential in it if they just help the community a little bit a the beginning.. (Of course people will say "it's not as easy as you say", but there are plenty of talented people with passion and technical skills who can do such difficult things too..)

Because Goblins and Orcs are lazy. The idea of an evil society devoted to conquest is beyond unrealistic. Furthermore, it leads to unrealistic conflicts. A small group of chosen warriors defend civilization against the illiterate, uneducated, unwashed masses, and other fantasy barf. This problem is aggravated when writers conclude that there must either be perpetual interspecies conflict, or that the solution is a rigid caste society. The only time they are done well is when they're given a distinct culture with conflicts that make sense, and PE already has enough heavy trope lifting to do. Each traditional fantasy element added has the significant risk of detracting from verisimilitude and makes the task of writing significantly harder. Bear in mind, the same criticism holds true of traditional elves; they're the inverse of orcs and just as unbelievable. Josh et. al seem to have had a significantly hard time making them interesting and relevant for that reason. But I would argue that elves are more core fantasy than orcs, because stories of elves and faeries played a significantly larger role in English canon than orcs. Dwarves don't have the same problem. They're different, but very obviously driven by human motivations. Interesting point of view that is quite logical too. But then, it all depends on how you design these races. For example in the Warcraft universe orcs are quite balanced, although in the Middle Earth one it's not: they're just the "generic" evil guys. But I really think that there are ways, if you want so, to integrate, at least orcs (maybe halflings too?), in a realistic and satisfying way. I would like to reflect on something that you said though: "The idea of an evil society devoted to conquest is beyond unrealistic." I don't necessarily agree. I'm pretty sure for example that the modern day image of the orc civilisation that we have (since tolkien let's say) has taken its roots in the underlying imagery european civilizations had in the middle ages of invaders from the east, basically turks and mongols, and one could actually say that you're description of a "evil society devoted to conquest" corresponds pretty well to what the turkic nomadic invaders represented in the european collective consciousness and therefore is not unrealistic (without the "evil" part maybe), so it's not unrealistic to have conquering nomadic civilizations and there are ways to include orcish civilizations that could seem realistic and logical. (btw no racism here, I'm turkish..) And lastly, I don't necessarily think you have to flesh out an entire civilization to include some races. You could very well have an orcish civilization in a region far away, not in the game, and have some rare orcish mercenaries employed here and there and the orc race available in character creation. Anyway I don't necessarily criticize the design decision of not including them, I personally believe they could have been included while also maybe giving them a particular, new, fresh, PoE touch to them, if the designers wanted to do that. it's true that halflings have been somewhat put into the game in the form of orlans though. I would have liked orcs to be included only in character creation for example, that would have been cool with me and the game wouldn't have lost that much of personality..

By the way, taken from the official wiki: So basically difference between easy, normal and hard will be enemy count. Expert mode will be basically removal of help messages. Trial of Iron is Ironman. And finally Path of the Damned is, contrary to what I had believed earlier, not a mode with goblins having health pools comparable to those of dragons, but rather many more enemies to face. It's basically hard+ difficulty level. Now this is EXACTLY the mode I was hoping there would be.. In this case I think It could even be worth trying to survive a hard expert trial of iron path of the damned on very first playthrough...although I have little doubt on how that will end up.. It would be soooo worth it if I miraculously survive the first 2 hours.. xD My only worry for PotD mode is this part: "...and the combat mechanics are amplified". If that means basically an enemy character comparable to mine will have bonuses in combat or mine will have negative effects, then this will be a no-no for me. It would be great to have details about that aspect of PotD..

Hi all, I just realized orcs, goblins and halflings weren't going to be part of this game. While I don't necessarily criticize this design decision, I was wondering what would you lose by adding them at least at character creation? They are at this point pretty much as "classic" as dwarves and elves in fantasy settings so why do you guys think they did not include them? Also, anyone knows if these races are out of this game or out of this universe entirely?

There DEFINITELY is There DEFINITELY is something absolutely charming about the idea of playing a very hard but yet realistic difficulty AND ironman mode ON FIRST PLAYTHROUGH. Because it maybe is the closest thing one can get to a pure realistic fantasy adventure experience you could ever have: trying to play a game "blind", without knowing anything beforehand, experiencing the story for the first time and most importantly making ALMOST LIFE-LIKE life-and-death decisions because indeed, one error could make you lose everything... You would therefore live each close-call, each life threatening situation and each loss much closer to what you would feel if it was real life, with sweat dropping off your face (and a comparable pride and joy if you succeed of course).. That would mean of course that in every decision you would make you would make decisions much closer to real life decisions you would have to make if you were in that situation, for example, should I take Edwin who is the best mage I can find in my party although I know he's not the greatest guy around? In some situations, you would HAVE to concede defeat to be able to fight another day and take decisions you would never take if you had the possibility to save, for example confronting a certain boss if he gives you a chance to live and avoid conflict, although that would require you to concede some things to him.. Of course another "benefit" to playing like this would be that when you lose a non-essential party member you wouldn't be able to load like the little save-scumming cheaters that we all are, but you would simply have to mourn the death of that valiant party member that fought with you to the end and honor his memory. And finally, to be fair and honest here, all of that can happen ONLY if you survive your first playthrough. One error, only one, could make it abruptly end, and after a few more attempts would make you give up ironman mode because in the end we all have a job and family in real life and not infinite time available. So in effect only A TINY MINORITY among us would actually manage to pull that off, ironman hard mode on first playthrough....but it is PRECISELY THAT point that is charming about it, ONLY a few will be able to succeed, a few among many, in other words that would be literally.....epic... So, yes, MY FIRST PLAYTHROUGH WILL BE IRONMAN HARD, and probably the following 5 to 10 retries after that, each probably lasting only a few tens of minutes, best case a few hours, after that I will probably switch to non-ironman hard mode and finish the game and still enjoy it, but at least I will have tried and have had a chance of living a unique, truly epic adventure... (I played and really loved XCOM too and also played first playthrough ironman impossible and....failed miserably for the first 50 or so attempts.. , but that game as you say has an inverse difficulty curve..)

Anybody here played ultima online? That game was awesome, and the most awesome looking cloth you could wear was the robe, with armor under it of course.. And then you had the death robe with a hoody, but that was reserved for ghosts...or modded servers.. Good old days..

Wow. It's actually really interesting to see what people enjoy, that people actually enjoy playing the game in a different manner that you do. I disagree. Greater scarcity, whether in loot, XP, or trading prices, is an excellent component of harder difficulty. Playing a game at a harder difficulty should be its own reward. If it's only enjoyable because it gives you shinier shinies, it's not very well done. I think on this point there can be different approaches. I personally think that it all depends on what you put in and take out of the difficulty level. But for example I don't see a problem of having a little extra XP for people playing in ironman hard mode, knowing that they can die at any moment. But indeed it would make no sense to give less xp if the overall difficulty of the enemies stays the same. But for item drop, trading prices etc, I agree that a higher difficulty should always bring less of these.. One thing I really enjoyed (regarding game difficulty and rewards) was for example the approach Kojima took on the metal gear series. If you finish the game in certain difficulty settings and in certain conditions hard to achieve you get after completion, first, a badge that gives you the right to brag and makes you feel you've actually achieved something, and second, it would give you a special, borderline cheating (infinite ammo bandana, cloaking device), but very cool items that are logical with the in-game lore. I actually really enjoyed these and really felt the game was rewarding me for the skill and effort I displayed with a fun thing. But then of course for an rpg like PoE it's different since it's not an pure action game. So for example you could imagine having an extra "special" character/race/class that you could play on second playthrough only if you beat the game in a certain way.. I personally think the best way to improve difficulty for a game like PoE is simply adding more enemies and reducing the supplies/potions etc you can carry. In that case increasing xp reward would make no sense, unless it's ironman..