termokanden

I guess that's a valid point, although then it feels odd to define all kinds of other things, but you can't decide if your character lifts weights or pizza slices.

No, I fully understand that. The problem with might is that it's abstract while the other attributes are concrete.

I think this is a good idea. It's easier to figure out what "extreme" even means when the game starts out by showing you the average. I was also thinking about previous systems where it was more expensive to increase starting stats the higher they got. You could certainly max the stats you found most valuable, but for specializing you had to pay a price by lowering something else. Even in such a system, it can be useful to max something if you want a very specialized character and will be covering their weakness with other characters. At the same time, there's a big bonus for taking a little bit of everything since you get much more out of your points.

For me, the six attributes were also about flavor. They were your way of telling yourself that your character was this strong, this smart and could move like a dead snail. I couldn't care less if it's not challenging to pick your stats because that's not what it was about. In PoE, it feels like too much like a mechanical exercise, carefully constructed so you really don't know what to pick, and sadly also so you might as well go with the same distrubtion for different classes. I actually enjoyed the fact that in AD&D, different classes need different attributes. If you're a skinny bookworm who faints at the sight of blood, you really are more likely to become a mage than a fighter. Somewhere along the way, some people apparently started to hate these fantasy stereotypes. The system is by no means going to be a deal-breaker for me, and I can't really say I expect it to change all that much, but I can't help but ask the following question: if we really want every attribute to matter equally much to everyone, why don't we simply throw out all the attributes? I know it has been said already, but I'm seriously wondering if we couldn't just as well do that.

I think it's fine that killing gives no XP as long as the reward system is well-balanced. It really makes sense from a roleplaying perspective. My character would very likely want to focus on the goal rather than starting as many fights as possible. Well, depending on my character's personality at least

This is exactly my concern. Basically, I was hoping that all skills would not always be equal for everyone. That doesn't mean you should be allowed to dump stats completely without a penalty of course.

My first impressions: 1. There are incredibly many bugs. I know it's a beta, but still. I kind of gave up playing it when my wizard couldn't cast spells and I realized I was missing items I thought I had picked up. 2. The characters don't look very good, but the environments are beautiful. 3. The combat system seems promising. With bug fixes, I think I'm going to like it. 4. I dislike the attribute system but like the other parts of character creation. It may sound a bit negative, but overall I'm sure that if they give this game a heck of a lot more polish and get to work on those bugs, it'll be a very good game.

I like: - that so far it feels fairly deep - the environments are beatiful - the dialogue so far has been good - the rest system because rest spamming was bad and needed to go

Just tried the beta and agree with the OP on this. I have some problems in general with the attribute system. I don't want to have to focus on all attributes all at once on every single character. There could still be more than enough room to experiment with many different builds without forcing a barbarian to focus on intelligence. I also think might is probably the least well-defined attribute I've seen. It seems to be 100% about game mechanics and doesn't help me define my character. In AD&D, a character with 15 strength was a pretty strong character. You knew that. A character with a high might in PoE just has +X% damage/healing. It does say that it makes you both physically and mentally strong, but I don't think it makes sense to have that in one and the same attribute. So to be a strong wizard, I need to go to the gym (feel free to pick a medieval equivalent)? I guess what I want is a relatively simple way to define my character and make it work rather than a mathematical exercise in balancing the different variables to optimize my performance according to some formulas I don't even know. Despite all of its problems, AD&D gave us exactly that. I don't think it's inherently bad that some stats are worth much more to some classes than others, and I think we're overreacting to dump stats in Baldur's Gate. I'm sure that if the game had just reacted properly to low charisma, not many people would have wanted to play a character with a charisma of 3. When you look at what people are actually saying about dump stats in the old games, they specifically mention how little something like charisma is used, not simply that it isn't used in combat. As for every attribute necessarily being important for everyone, I don't remember anyone from my old pen and paper roleplaying groups complaining because you didn't need high strength to wield a spellbook, or because you didn't need to be a genius to smack someone with a mace. We accepted it because it makes sense.