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PrimeHydra

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Everything posted by PrimeHydra

  1. It's not about the terminology, it's about communicating the right thing to the player. When your portrait fills up with red vs. when the little bar to the left depletes and you die "for real". The terminology is just a means of communication. Again, that's not a reason to not try and make a system clearer. If my company released quirky and inconsistent UIs because our customers are intelligent (they are) and can figure it out (they do), would that be OK? UI and naming conventions in games, as with any software, should only be broken when it makes sense to do so. They certainly shouldn't stay confusing just because one tester didn't mind. I'm hardly the first beta backer to suggest that endurance as health (and health as endurance) doesn't make sense. What makes the current system better than one that mirrors the IE games, one that uses endurance as fatigue/stamina (gaming synonyms for endurance)?
  2. That's not much of an argument--they could as well have called endurance "marklar", but that's OK because different games use different terminology? 99% of RPGs--if I may guesstimate--call it health, HP, hit points, or life. "Endurance" is not synonymous with these. Making the system more intuitive would not be a huge investment in time. I agree that there are more important matters, but in terms of effort vs. improvement this is low-hanging fruit. If this system always made sense to you, that's great, but I suspect you're in the minority. I'm picturing someone coming to PoE without having touched the beta, but perhaps having played the hell out of the IE games--the games that PoE models its UI and systems around very closely. They will find health/endurance awkward in its current state.
  3. Now, now, hear me out. When I see my character's portrait fill up with red, that says health to me. Having played the IE games as well as the backer beta, I can say without a doubt that anyone coming from those games is going to be disoriented. "Endurance? WTF is that?" Well, they'll have to learn, as far as combat is concerned, it's really your health. When it reaches zero, you're out of it. That secondary bar? That's your actual health. Do you see the potential for confusion? In RPGs, health is the resource that keeps you in the fight. There is simply no reason to change this for the sake of having a two-tiered system. Any secondary system should be just that, secondary. In the current build, what's called "health" is really a secondary "wounds" system (I want to call it "endurance" because it depends on resting), while what is called "endurance" is, for all intents and purposes, your health. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a deal breaker. I had never picked up D&D before Baldur's Gate 2, and I had to learn about this "THAC0" thing; without really understanding it, I just had to know that lower armor numbers were better. Fine. Some game systems are quirky. But while BG and friends had to be true to Dungeons and Dragons--replete with oddities--Obsidian gets to do whatever they want. There is no reason this can't be both intuitive and tactical. I'm not asking for complexity to be removed, so take your "you're not hardcore" flames elsewhere. I'm asking them to refactor some terminology. It doesn't make sense that healing spells affect endurance, but to restore your health, you rest, an activity associated with restoring fatigue. How can priest spells make you feel peppy but are powerless against rended limbs? There's magical sleep for that. I get that gameplay trumps simulation--when the gameplay makes sense. Switch the strings "Health" and "Endurance" in all UI text and suddenly the systems click. Mostly. The remaining issue is of character "death". Not the falling-down "knocked out" when your portrait turns red, but the "true death" as Vampire Bill would say. "Endurance" doesn't quite fit this. So, what to do? Let the portrait represent "Health". Your actual health. When it runs out, you're maimed or dead depending on whether you have "Death" enabled. Increase health accordingly, so that it's no easier to die now than it was before this change. Restore health using the same spells/abilities/potions we already have for Endurance, or by resting. And--this last bit is optional--let resting restore a limited amount of health. I liked how in the IE games, if your character was hurt badly, they'd need to visit a temple, quaff a potion or get some clerical attention--unless you want to rest a few times. This part is debatable; the terminology change is the key point. Let the secondary, little green bar next to your portrait represent "Endurance" or "Fatigue". It depletes over time as you travel and exert yourself (use abilities etc), not when you take damage. It is a limit on the "adventuring day", basically a more granular stamina system. When the green bar depletes, your characters become tired and start accumulating penalties. Restore fatigue by resting. With these changes: Health works as it always has in RPGs throughout the ages, and portraits reflect health like they did in the IE games. Everything makes intuitive sense. Endurance (Fatigue) determines when you (should) rest. It's a natural delimiter on the adventuring day, only loosely tied to how much you've fought.
  4. I kind of find myself agreeing with this. Why do we need endurance? When I see my character's portrait filling up with red, I think health. The little green bar next to it seems more appropriate for a secondary fatigue system. Even the fatigue system--characters getting "tired", like the sleepy eye status in Baldur's Gate--is separate from endurance, if I understand correctly. It just doesn't make sense that enemies whacking you reduces your endurance. If endurance exists, it should simply be a more granular implementation of said fatigue system. Over time, your endurance/fatigue bar depletes, when it's gone you get the "exhausted" icon and associated penalty.
  5. I didn't even know how to set them, and didn't want to look in the Options > Controls because I heard there was a bug in which keys, once bound, cannot be unbound. (Sounds like a prophecy out of Lord of the Rings.) Including the bound key in the ability/spell tooltips, a la Knockdown (W), would be really helpful here. (If it's there I might have missed it.)
  6. Honestly, if you want to play games, install Windows. It's great when publishers aim to support Linux, but expecting them to make it a high priority is just silly. Dual boot Windows/Linux FTW.
  7. Hmmm, I'd forgotten about that statement. The new system certainly seems to go against it! It may be a goal that looked good on paper but didn't play very well in practice. There just aren't enough non-combat skills--or enough reason to do anything other than max one per character--to justify a separate skill-buy system.
  8. Ah, I misunderstood...while I wouldn't use walk mode, it does feel kind of odd charging around town when everyone else is strolling leisurely. So I can appreciate the request. Not sure if this would require a host of new character animations.
  9. You probably already know this, but you can speed up annoyingly slow parts (like waiting for your team to walk to the other side of town) by pressing "D" for double speed. If there were a run mode in addition to this, it might be too much speed and too many toggles...also, double-speed is nice for speeding up scouting in stealth mode.
  10. This is really interesting...so the skills would be a major point of character development, and the talents would further specialize. Kind of the inverse of what it is now, where talents unlock further talents, which may in turn have skill bonuses attached... The only downside I see to such a system is that it might further encourage specialization (maxing) of one skill per character, in order to not only pass skill checks but also have the strongest (read: most costly) talents. In the current system it seems less punishing to get a little bit of this and a little bit of that, because you're not missing out on (most) talent unlocks by choosing a certain skill bonus over a specific talent. On the other hand, some talents could require multiple skills (e.g., 4 Atheltics and 4 Survival), so it wouldn't have to favor specialization. It still means that certain talent selections would tend to appear with certain skill selections. This is already the case with the new design, just less so.
  11. It's a considerable design change, but I like it because: It's more strategic. It's now harder to mindlessly max out a specific skill. You actually have to sacrifice a talent if you want to be maxed Mechanics, maxed Lore, etc. You can have more/deeper talents, focus on more/deeper skills, or find a balance. This is more interesting to me than deciding which guy is going to max Mechanics, which one Lore, etc. It's more logical. Linking talents and skills makes flavor sense--Hold the Line tying into Athletics, for instance. Having skills exist in their own vacuum, completely independent of talent selection, seems odd now. It's more fun. I don't miss the dull process of pumping more points into whatever skill I want to max in order to reach gated content or unlock chests. Let's see what you guys think. If you don't like it, how would you redesign it?
  12. I've noticed that after clicking the Level Up cross on a character, the level-up screen is still mostly black when the Talent selection icons appear. Thus they look like they're showing up in a black void before the res of the level-up screen fades in. Managed to ninja a screenshot:
  13. When loading a saved game, the animal companion always spawns next to its Ranger, even if it was tactically positioned somewhere else when the game was saved.
  14. Just leveled up the BB Wizard and chose the Heart of the Storm talent. The tooltip under Talents (which I assume is Heart of the storm) shows an empty/overlapped/incomplete tooltip when mousing over it.
  15. Clicking while hovering over a glossary item (e.g., "Damage") in an item description disables the tooltips until you move the cursor outside of the item description window. [Reproduce] Bring up the Inventory screen and select the BB fighter. Right-click on the BB Fighter's Arbalest. Mouse over a keyword like Accuracy to see the tooltip. Now click the word Accuracy to dismiss the tooltip. Keeping the mouse within the item description window, hover over another keyword like Damage. The tooltip doesn't appear. Move the cursor outside of the item description window, then back in...the tooltips are working again.
  16. When opening the inventory for the first time in a session, 0's briefly appear in the corner of all inventory slots. After a split second they go away, and from that point on no longer appear. I managed to hit Printscreen fast enough to capture the anomaly
  17. It turns out this happens in newly-created games, but not after loading a savegame. [Reproduce] Start a new game, creating any sort of character. Run over and grab the vegetables from the barrel next to the Inn. Open you inventory to confirm the veggies are there. Go into the inn. Open your inventory. No more veggies! Send someone into the kitchen to nick the beer off the shelf. Open your inventory. Beer is there. Leave the inn. Access inventory--beer's gone! That drunk by the door must have swiped it... Again, this doesn't seem to happen in games that I load--only when playing a new game.
  18. Love that we have something to read while waiting for areas to load. And that I can play a ranger with a bear companion again. But the bear is still very small! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO THE BEARS
  19. Noticed in build 333 that items I loot from barrels and boxes outside (fruit and vegetables, or beer from the kitchen in the inn) don't always survive area transitions. I'll collect the item, look at it in my inventory, go to a new area (e.g., enter the inn or leave it) and then go into inventory--no more veggies/fruit/beer. Wanted to provide a savegame to repro this but of course "now it's not doing it." Will update this post if I manage to create a reproducible scenario, but wanted you to be aware of it.
  20. Not trying to be politically correct, but when you can select non-pasty colors for your character's skin, there really ought to be some portraits of people of color. Just created a dark-skinned female character, and the only non-white portrait was of some godlike with fiery eyes. Reporting as a bug since this is kinda important. Thanks!
  21. Creating a new Ranger, on the screen where you choose your animal companion. I click on Bear, and notice that the description of the Bear companion is scrollable. So I move the mouse over to the description, hoping to scroll down and read the rest of it. As soon as the mouse is no longer hovering over Bear, the description reverts to the generic Animal Companions text. This is true of any companion and I assume this problem may apply to other talent/ability selections as well. PS _ the "Character Creation / Adventurer's Hall" tag is currently not selectabble as a topic tag. I get "Tag incorrect, they must be between 2 and 30 charactres."
  22. Yup, that or...Obsidian working their asses off to get us a build before the weekend
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