Koth

Ok, for clarity sake I'm referring to this door: Anyone know how you get past it??

Why does my title in your show post still read "of the Obsisian" order? Should read Obsidian. Thx

Umm, I don't think so, I'm talking about the area where there are 2 trolls patrolling a circular pit in which there are 3 more plant / mushroom spore type dudes. It's just to the NE of that on the map. A big grey door / wall thing that is blocking a small room in which lies an urn which when tabbed shows an item highlight. I just can't find a way to get through that door / wall looking thing.

Yup, fair call. I too haven't seen any response on whether or not they'll modify combat pace. And if they do not, then I will completely agree with every point you've made thus far. However it is my honest belief that even if they do not change the default speed, they could speed up the "slow mode" a bit to the point where it isn't functionally useless (i.e. current slow mode) and simply have an option in the game to auto-switch to slow mode on combat and revert to "normal" speed on encounter end. Problem solved. Its a minor change and one I'd bet my left nut on that they'll make, well maybe not this exact change, but something to the same effect anway.

I asked about this earlier, I can't even get to the urn! it's behind some kind of grey wall / door thing... how do you open it?!

I'm still failing to see how PoE combat resembles anything remotely like the last *ahem* too many years of playing MMO's. BG2 had real time combat with pause to execute actions, so does PoE... Yes the combat pacing in PoE is completely borked right now, but once they tweak it, and provide better feedback as to which action was clicked, I can't see how they differ. Please note here I'm not trying to be negative or argumentative, I just honestly can't see the difference.

At the risk of getting involved in what is shaping up to be some kind of flame war, I did want to chime in on the last point. I think a lot of peoples gripes can come back to the Stamina system. Whilst I do find it jarring in its current state, the more I play, the more I can see the merrits involved with such a system. To respond to the above quote: I do feel that they are in essense the same thing. The stamina system was put in place to help mitigate the issue of the rest-scumming people used to employ by resting after every encounter. All the stamina system does is create an encounter based health mechanic. This way you're good to go after each fight, but will need to rest after multiple encounters. Is that really so very different from hp? I almost feel like its a terminology issue. As for per-encounter abilities, these are simply tied in with the stamina system so that you won't have to rest after every fight to get back encounter based skills. I think in the beta we are more subject to the negative side effects of this as a lot of the skills still need tweaking. But once they are, I'm confident it will become a robust system. Finally with regards to "IE games didn't measure actions by seconds.". Technically they did. They just called them rounds and turns. A "round" was 6 seconds game time and a "turn" was 10 round i.e. 60 seconds. PoE has just gotten rid of that and is calling a spade a spade here. The above post should be all qualified with an "in my humble opinion". I can understand that we're all passionate here and want a fantastic product! Personally I'm going to remain optimistic and have faith in the team. I think in a few more patches, as abilities get tweaked and better combat pacing, targeting, feedback ui improvements are implemented, it will feel a lot more like the IE games. Cheers! Koth.

I wasn't saying to renounce the entire title of the game as being the spiritual successor to IE games. I was referencing that quote in my original post that refers specifically to the mode itself: "Path of the Damned is a spiritual successor to Icewind Dale's Heart of Fury mode". Your second paragraph sums up how I feel as well with regards to the best loot going to the easiest mode. Think of WoW and heroic mode. /ducks before I get flamed for a WoW reference. On second thoughts, forget I even made the comparison for all of our sanity.

Yes I too will probably be playing on this mode regardless, I just like that in IWD I was locked into this mode and no matter how hard or frustrating some of the encounters were I always knew that it was worth it for the incentives. As it stands, I don't like my chances of not just lowering the difficulty when things get rough... I also would take issue with calling it the "Spiritual Successor" without these incentives. Otherwise it's just a boring static mathematic slider that increases mob difficulty by x% which doesn't really justify such a grandiose title as "Path of the Damned".

As per a suggestion from Grotesque in the following thread: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67163-please-bring-back-the-pencil-drawings-of-items/?p=1483683 Please bring back the pencil drawings of items from BG series. Its a minor thing and should not come at the expense of obviously more critical items, but it certainly would be appreciated.

lol, yes that's a word shutup... made me snort my tea... I like your style headbomb heh

Can't quite remember exactly, but I too was trying to see if there was some kind of feed back last night when I was playing. I seem to recall that there was some very subtle indicator in or around the portrait, but it certainly wasn't obvious. Either that or I mistook it for something else heh. But yes, I agree, clearer feedback would be much appreciated.

Ok thanks for the heads up, glad I asked, this kind of thing would have annoyed me had I not known it was bugged... Can anyone else confirm this?

Hi all, I have a question regarding one of the difficulty settings, here is a quote from one of the backer updates: "Path of the Damned is a spiritual successor to Icewind Dale's Heart of Fury mode" Having played Heart of Fury mode in IWD I loved that the game gave me incentives to play on a harder difficulty setting in the form of unique items that could only be found when playing on this mode. I would like to know if Path of the Damned will offer this same incentive. Cheers, Koth.

I wanted to ask for some help regarding one of the quests in the beta: Thanks in advance, Koth.

Great post, thanks for the link. Hits the nail on the head there. But one of JS's quotes got to me a little: "... If players read about the Vailian consuagli asegia (siege councils), they may not get the stress "right" or hit every consonant cluster correctly in their heads, but they probably won't stumble over the words." The problem is, that in this case I do stumble over the words, often. One every now and then is fine, but the game to me seems littered with them. It just makes the pace of reading much slower for me, which may be its intended purpose for all I know, to get people to slow down and read the dialog. But on the other hand if the reader has difficulty pronouncing a word they tend to become desensitised to it, it basically just becomes a placeholder in the mind for "oh that name I can't say that has something to do with those Norse barbarian type dudes", and in doing so is it easy to become desensitized to the surrounding context as well? I'm not sure... Anyway thanks for the link, will dive through the rest of the comments on that post to get a better idea of what others think. Cheers, K.

Anyone have any input here? Or am I alone in my OCD bubble?

Wow I'm so glad you posted this ctn... I pre-purchased W2 aaaages ago, installed the beta and had a bit of fun but was a bit anxious that the interface and mechanics were going to turn out too clunky for my liking. Glad to hear it's improved. In contrast, after playing PoE:BB i was left with the impression that we are going to receive a fully polished IE inspired game. Can't wait! Keep up the great work Obsidian!

Love this idea, but I don't like your chances of getting it implemented this late in the design cycle. Liked for props for a great idea however. Cheers, K.

Personally I many of the names of characters / races / places (proper nouns) difficult to pronounce, and for me I find this really distracting. I really want to take my time with this game and read every single piece of lore I can get my (figurative) hands on. After installing the beta and playing for a few hours I'm loving my time in Eora. But every time I hit a "Bîaŵacs", "Clîaban Rilag", "Edér", "Cean Gŵla", "Brîshalgwin", "Rauatai", "Jxamitl" etc I find myself doing a double take as the inner OCD in me finds a need to properly pronounce the name in my head so that I can place that name in context with the story and continue reading the sentance / paragraph. I find myself re-reading the same sentance 3 or 4 times just to get the pronouncation correct. The names are either difficult to pronounce or just feel... I guess... Awkward for lack of a better word? It might just be me, i've heard some people say that they don't care how complex a name is, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet etc, but for me, I find it to be a mental stumbling block. Every time I hit one its like tripping over, picking myself back up and continuing. Maybe I should just over my grammatical / linguisitc OCD? I'm sure that this will get easier as time goes on, as I start to piece together the lore of Eora, but it was just something I just wanted to raise as a question. So let me ask this: Is it important for you to be able to pronounce proper nouns in a story / game? Do you find such words distracting from the story? I don't want these to sound like loaded questions. They're not, I just want to hear other's opinions on the subject. Cheers, Koth. PS. I really didn't want this post to come across as negative, I love the work you're doing Obsidian, and I'm loving the beta so far, yes there are bugs, but I'm confident you'll have it all sorted by release. Keep up the great work!

With regards to the path finding issues. I'd be interested to learn what kind of pathing algorithm you're using. I'm assuming it's some variant of A*, but I'd be curious to learn what kinds of things factor into your heuristic? Regards, Koth

Just joined the obsidian order and requested Koth Arch Prelate of the Obsisian Order. Hopefully it goes through. Keep up the great work! Cheers, Koth.