PrimeHydra

Wait, you're right--my bad. I maintain that such information would be invaluable, though!

I felt the same way about the Cat and Mouse quest, Honshu. It's like I had to side with the baddies waiting outside, just because I didn't have enough of whatever stat would allow me to lie convincingly. Killing all of the thieving scum should be a valid solution. Or turning them in. Something other than colluding with the first half of the bandit brigade. It's really weird to kill the leader of a brigand pack and see "Quest Failed".

+1 to OP, I miss the good old weight system of the IE games. These inventories feel too small by half, and I find myself selling extra stuff rather than dealing with the stash.

I'm definitely missing the AI scripts as I play through the beta. There's so much micromanagement that it feels like the game wants to be turn-based rather than real-time pause-and-play. I made heavy use of the simpler pre-made scripts in the IE games. They let me not worry about dumb things like whether my summoned bear was just standing around.

It's hard to know what's worth buying unless you've memorized what each of your guys is wearing. Would be nice if you could view your toons' armor/weapons without closing out a complicated trade. Then you know whether that expensive sword really beats your equipped +12 Hackmaster. Since you don't know what the merchant will have to trade, you won't know whether he'll have a relevant upgrade until you've opened trade. This improvement would allow us to sell our equipped mace if the blacksmith has an enchanted warhammer we can afford.

Suggestion: Rotating Quicksaves I didn't stick with Divinity: Original Sin for long, but this was a brilliant feature. You have up to five quicksave slots (the number is configurable in options). Hitting the quicksave key saves into a new slot or overwrites the oldest one if you're at the maximum number. This minimizes the annoying, immersion-breaking process of hitting Esc, Save, and click a new game slot, while mitigating the fear of overwriting your one quicksave slot. With this in place I would seldom need to save the game "the hard way". What do you guys think? Trial of Iron players won't care, but I would love this. It would be easy to implement, too.

This is true, they'd have to balance forum overwhelm against thread overwhelm. They could probably do with fewer than I suggested. Maybe no more than five.

Hey, thanks for the link. I see where a moderator responded to your thread, but he makes an exception for the case of a beta forum. In this situation I think we'd be well-served by multiple sub-forums. This isn't the main "community hub", for which I agree that too much fracturing is bad. This is a case of needing to provide/find feedback more easily.

As the number of beta backers jumping into the game grows, those General Threads are going to explode. It will become harder to find specific posts and ideas. But we still need some way of taming the fire-hose nature of excited gamers' brains. I propose multiple forums a la my "other PoE", Path of Exile. Note the categorized Feedback forums. I think the intent of the General Threads matches up well with these. In practice, though, we can't just sticky all of them because it uses too much screen real-estate. So the threads just kind of float around, hoping someone clicks on the General Link at the top and then into the correct sub-thread. Possible sub-forums: Beta Feedback - First Impressions Beta Feedback - Classes, Builds, and Balance Beta Feedback - User Interface (Non-Combat) Beta Feedback - Combat Beta Feedback - Story and Dialog Beta Feedback - Graphics and Animation Beta Feedback - Music and Audio Beta Feedback - Other These sub-forums would provide: More discoverability--currently there are plenty of posts outside of a General Thread that belong in one, because not everyone (myself included admittedly) noticed the General Threads sticky. So currently the devs probably need to look both at the forum and these super-threads. Links on the main beta forums page would nicely funnel the feedback. Better granularity of discussion--users having feedback around the spellbook UI, for example, won't need to "threadbomb" users in the same thread already discussing the Inventory UI. More readability--keeping up with sub-threads is not much easier than refreshing the main screen only to find the post you were just looking at just went to page 2, due to the sheer volume of posts (due people not using the General Threads for reasons explained above). More fun--a player especially interested in the UI could "hang out" in an area separate from the storytelling feedback, for example. Better for devs--as a programmer, if I were focused on the UI, I'd love to have a separate feedback forum targeting my area of the codebase. Please consider doing this, I think it will make our beta testing, reviewing, and discussing much easier! PS--super excited for the next build.

There was some conversation option in ToEE where your idiot would say "Brown clouds? You poop in sky?" So yeah, absolutely essential

If you right click on the wizards spellbook in his inventory, it allows you to choose which spell for each level you would like. Hopefully for it will be explained for people in-game somewhere, I only knew this from obsessively reading every update along the way. A number of testers, myself included, were confused on how to access the spellbook. This is a major UI omission. There needs to be some sort of spelbook icon along with a hotkey. The IE games had it right in this regard. Tying a crucial UI to right-clicking an item in your inventory is non-discoverable.

Gotta give it a minute! +1 to your idea. I used double-tap of selection hotkeys all the time to center the screen in the Infinity Engine games.

Well, maybe mine is just shy.

This discussion is getting pretty heated. I think we all want the same thing here: A fun, rewarding game. I'm as passionate as any of you are about making Pillars of Eternity the best freaking RPG ever made. That's my wish. I think that's what we all want. Whether combat rewards XP or not is not about who are the "psychopaths" and who are the "true role players". For me, kill XP seemed like a natural fit that worked well in every game this project is trying to evoke. But I could be wrong. And the designer made the same admission (coming from the other side) in his quote that got buried earlier in the thread. Paraphrasing: They'll change it if it doesn't work. It's not that hard to change. So let's quit antagonizing each other. We all cared enough about this project to pay no less than $70 in order to beta test. Let's keep it respectful. [[Quest Complete: Quell the Flames]] +1000 XP (I could have just clubbed you all instead, but I chose the high road. Your drops probably suck anyway.)

The self-harm mechanic (being able to attack yourself) is amusing, but could annoy new players. I showed my wife the bear companion and let her loose to maul some villagers with it. The bear's selection circle overlapped the villager's, and she accidentally clicked the bear, which proceeded to maul itself. Just desserts or design flaw? You be the judge

Am I to understand that you played the beta and enjoyed the combat just fine until reading on the forum that you weren't receiving XP for each kill? Because, if so, that's absurd. Please tell me that you didn't get retroactively upset about not having received an instant gratification reward that you didn't even miss at the time. I'll just hope that you haven't played the beta and you just meant that you thought per-kill XP was hidden from view in gameplay videos you watched. Actually, I've been playing the beta for a while and noticed that my guys weren't progressing at all after clearing out wilderness areas. This was rather unrewarding, so I thought I'd go on the forums and bait a few flamers with my opinions. Much more fun The Infinity Engine games were not stealth games. They weren't even negotiation games (Torment was a hybrid negotiation/combat game). A big part of the fun and excitement of the games was combat. It was unavoidable, and I don't care how diplomatic you were in Torment, fighting was central to the experience. Killing the kill XP will dampen the reward of this key activity. Look at your your stats, your weapons--at the end of the day, all that fiddling you did with your inventory? It was for one purpose: To be more effective in combat. The IE games were at their heart tactical fantasy role-playing games. Rewarding XP for kills was a big part of the reward mechanic. I backed this game because I wanted a modern successor to said classics. It will feel really odd if winning fights doesn't grant some token experience. Give me a break. Video games are all about dopamine injections. Whether it's romancing the elf, solving the trap puzzle or slaying the dragon. Reward is reward.

I'm happy to oblige: A relevant quote from Josh, on where he and Tim stand on this is on the bottom of page 14 in this thread: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67140-experience-point-system-in-the-beta-and-onwards/page-14 While you are there, feel free to cast your vote in the poll there as well. Thanks--the quote is here, for folks like me who might not have been following the forums/game conventions/etc. since the game was announced: In other words, they might change this decision if doing so makes the game better. So all you anti-kill-XP fanatics can stop trolling me (you know who you are). Time will tell what the best system is for Pillars of Eternity. But as a game that wants to evoke Icewind Dale? Not rewarding players for killing monsters seems counterproductive. What I will say for this choice, though, is it puts the onus on their storytelling to really compel the player to complete quests. There will need to be a lot of interesting non-combat content. Why can't there be a balance of both worlds? What was wrong with the hybrid system that the IE games used? Quests provided the big reward cakes, while combat/trash mobs were the frosting. I don't know about you but I like my cake with frosting. Nobody would call Planescape: Torment a mindless hack-and-slash-fest. And that game gave you experience for killing demons.

Until discovering this poll I thought we got XP for defeating baddies, but it was hidden. Now I'm just thinking "WTF did they do?" You kill stuff, you get XP. It's part of the reward system of any role-playing game with combat. And for good reason! Please Obsidian, convince us this is for the best. Anyone have a link to an interview or something where they defend this odd design choice? PS I get it, one could beat the final boss of Planescape: Torment by dialog-treeing him to death. That was cool. But not getting any XP for killing annoying trash mobs is just...unrewarding. Let's all be rogues and go around them! puh-leez.

Seconded! We need a slider for scroll speed.

Ah...they should still sticky the individual threads IMO. There aren't that many of them, and posters will be more likely to notice them this way. I've come to instinctively ignore the very top sticky in forums anyway, as you can see :D

Glad to hear it will be resolved in the next build. This is the one issue that frustrates me to the point of wanting to quit. My fighter keeps losing his axe!

Double-clicking an area of the map should close the map with that area centered, as in the IE games. PS--shouldn't these collector threads be stiickied??

It has probably been mentioned, but Tab should highlight loot piles. Just fought some Elder Lions and they were behind a tree when they fell...had to pixel hunt a bit to find their dropped fangs.

The animal companion chosen for a ranger that you hire as an Adventurer from the inn, does not initially appear. Reproduce: Hire an Adventurer at the inn (I chose a level two Nature Godlike Ranger with a Bear companion; haven't tried other animals yet). Notice his/her animal companion does not come along for the ride. Rather than ask the bartender for my money back, I left the inn, thinking maybe animals aren't allowed inside? But stlil no bear! Workaround: On a whim I saved and re-loaded the game. The bear was there!

Interesting to see how split people are on this point. Maybe minor bonuses are a good compromise. I certainly don't want to feel like I have to play a Dwarf from Wherever if I want the baddinest-assinest fighter. But the culture stage of character creation adds depth, and I was happy to see it provided bonuses--albeit minor ones. Otherwise it's just cosmetic, so what's the point? It might color conversations...meh. So, I'll be unpopular with both sides and say that minor race/culture bonuses are probably the way to go. As it stands, they might be a little too minor.