Fiebras

Correct me if Im wrong, but do projectile models and speed even matter to the damage calculator? As in, does the projectile need to arrive at their destination for the "hit" to be registered? Ive seen my Rogue´s attack damage be registered in the combat log soon as she starts her animation and ive seen the damage be registered only after the projectile hits. Its not consistent enough for me to know for sure.

Have you actually used this feature? Especially this patch? I dont see people discussing it, which I find strange since Ive found it to be a good way to think and issue commands in combat instead of making combat a pause-fest. It gives you less time to think and manage everyone perfectly but I find it more enjoyable than pausing every time to issue commands. The slow also lets you catch enemies using abilities more often. Im suprised people arent discusing it more considering how many threads about combat there are. It may even make RtwP enjoyable to those who hate RtwP since then it would be RtwS). For the sake of giving feedback on it: try it. And tell me what you think. PS:

Right now you automatically enter "combat stance" when you tell any character to attack something maybe saving it for mele engagement could work but I have my doubts. And Im not sure how adding an aditional animation to it would help. You could also add an animation to the circles showing a small "locked to each other" icon. This would be really useful for when your Fighter is getting swarmed by 5 spiders so you dont know how which ones would suffer a disengagement penalty whould thye leave. Actually, Im not certain at all how engagement and disengagement mechanics work when you are engaged with more enemies than your engagement threshold allows. On the other hand Im worried the combat elements become too many for the the sake of "feedback" that it all becomes a mess. The combat log is now a good tool to let you see what is actually happenning and tells you of the engagements. Clarity =/= feedback and I err in favor of clarity. Engagement character animations and sounds are clarity, more icons to clutter the combat landscape may not be.

New head models? Godlike with hair? Why am I not seeing these on mine? Also, the Aumaua do need a whole redo so that they appear more akin to the portraits of them, which look fantastic. Anyone know why one of the Aumaua portraits has a beard when we can't make one with a beard? Female Fire and Moon Godlikes have hair now. Male Death Godlikes have one or two new models, Female Moon Godlikes have one new model, also with hair. I think some Death Godlike heads were removed/reworked. They look good IMO. Now they need their own portraits. And yeah Ive been whining about the Aumaua models for a while since their portraits all look so good but the models dont reflect them/do them justice. I think the biggest fault likes in the muddy textures.

The thing is Fighters, Barbarians, and Monks all have very good defensive abilities that already make them good Front Liners. But with the INT change now you could have a high INT Chanter that can be a front liner while also benefiting from the AOE. Barbarians benefit from the INT because of Carnage, yes but that was the case before. Dex is very useful on everyone especially DPS classes. The only Dump stats I see now are Resolve and Might but even that is arguable as Matt has said. BTW Matt, Im not arguing that the system says Might means more DPS than Perception, Im arguing that because of the potential enemies in this "campaign" having high defenses stacking accuracy would be better in the long run. Its the diference between having a D&D campaign were you have a wide variety of enemies and having a D&D campaign were you will face many trolls. Obviously in the troll campaign you will value burn/fire damage more than in the other campaign. But we wil have to see just how high the enemy defenses get in this game before we can conclude with certainty wether Might, Dex, or Perception/Accuracy is better for DPS. Im gonna stick with Accuracy/Perception for now because I enjoy crits.

Hormalakh that looks good but how does it look in isometric perspective? The complex dashed arrows might get lost with one another or elipsed by ground textures or spells. Could you photoshop it on a screenshot of the game? Preferably one with busy ground texture (shadows, rocks, varying tones, vegetation etc.).

Oh I always give her the Arbalest. Only you dont get it until you finish that particular fight and I always feel shes attacking too slow (killing strike and the hobble attack seem to get slowed down too as they seem to have the weapon´s speed). Havent tested how fast she attacks now with an arbalest on the new atribute system. Also Im wondering my previous point about it being best to have a Might-centric character and give him accuracy items. If you have an Accuracy-based character and give him all the accuracy items and buffs, you could be criting every attack and that would make it much better than a Might-focused character with accuracy items. Especially when you have high speed, light armor and a powerful weapon. And carnage. They cant kill you if theyre dead. Are you saying you dont believe in the Heart of the CardsTM, Matt? RNG-fu is a skill in itself as any D&D player will tell you. Also RNG-based DPS is just a matter of making the odds of what you want happening (hits and crits) more likely to happen. Hitting people is RNG based anyway with or without high Might. So it would be better to make the hits and crits happen more likely as oposed to just relying on high damage (which, again doesnt feel that high anyway atm in our current sample size). Theres only like 3 combats (4 if you count the druids in stormwall gorge as "priest-like") in the beta that have an enemy Priest to cast +defensive spells afaik. And if my experience with Medreth´s group is any indication, they wil be casting them more often. Also, Elder Lions and Stone Beetles have high defenses too (like 30-50+ deflection I think while your characters have mostly around 30). Bear in mind im making logic leaps based on gut feeling and personal experience with rpg game enemy progression here: Enemy Priests make enemies tougher---> They may be present in many human enemy parties and boss battles due to how useful they are and because they are the kind of class that you love to have on your side and dread to see on the other side (also many classes have defensive abilities already)---> The game will have many high defense enemy encounters because of that ----> Being able to punch through their defenses is gonna be better than having big damage I rather like the idea of all my attacks hitting and criting often. Though all of these points of course depend on what kind of enemy we are facing as you say. In which case I would say I would personally rather not have most of my attacks become grazes against the high defense enemies as they will probably be the most challenging ones (also Wizards have loads of +self defense spells and Id rather they die as quickly as possible because Wizards).

There ought to be weapon specialization point every 2 or 5 so levels that let you pick either weapon accuracy bonuses or + defenses such as the new talents. That theres a "poison your weapon" talent available to everyone is petty nice, even if its an ability insead of a passive like Rogue´s Deep Wounds.

I dont think Engagement arrows show how many targets the Fighter can engage with, only who is attacking who.

Love the new Godlike head models. Especially the Death Godlikes. Moon and fire Godlikes look so much beter with hair. Super props to the modelers. Death Godlikes when from "okay" to favourite Godlike models. Is it me or do Orlan have better eyes in general? They seem clearer than I remember. (Aumauma still need texture clarity though. Yes, ill never stop with this.) Combat arrows are really great. Helps with the clairty a butload. We are missing ranged combat arrows though. Make them dotted or a bit more transparent/thiner than the others if tyou think they would block things out. And Ill reiterate that I disagree with us needing more combat feedback, its combat CLARITY we need. Lets not overwhelm the screen with information here when games like BG didnt have any feedback beyond the priests and mages casting spells and the effects of those spells and worked just fine (even if rudimentary and obtuse at times). Combat in general feels much more understandable and I can see what everyone is doing. The ability/spell icons in the above-head bars are a really great help. Now I feel like interrupt spells and abilities are really valuable. Medreth fight is much MUCH harder. Did he have a priest before? He sure does now (those ability icons sure help with enemy recognition. Cant praise them enough)! And hes level 8 now because he has Deep Wounds. I always found this fight triial, now its a proper challenge, as all adventurer group combats should be imo. Very much enjoyed it Combat log is great. Feels a bit tutti frutti but its great. New ability icons look great. New invenotry screen is much better. Closing Crafting or Enchanting menu doesnt close inventory. Im very thankfull for this. Could you access stash in town before? I dont think you could. Im not sure anymore. You cant access it in the wilderness which is sorta fine but I cant remember if you could in town. If this is a change its a welcome one. New stealth is pretty nice. Though it seems you can abuse "pulling" single enemies more now. Still wish we had individual stealth. Also, New Stealth movement animation. Very nice. though with sincronized movements it looks like everyone is dancing in a Michael Jackson music video.

Arent traps bugget atm so you cant really place them?

So that means getting more Might is only worth it once you have decent Accuracy (be it from Perception, Class, Specialization, Abilities, Modals, Talents, Spells, etc). Correct me if Im wrong. That would mean any + Accuracy spell and item would be pretty valuable for Might-focused Characters and + Might spells and items would be very valuable for Accuracy-Focused characters. So, you could argue building all your DPS characters with high Might and then getting items that increase accuracy would be the way to go for DPS characters as AFAIK there arent any + Might spells, items, talents and abilities as oposed to + Accuracy (There arent any +Perception items either afaik but that doesnt matter since you want Accuracy, not Perception specifically) Ok fair enough. Might would indeed be better in that context. Metagaming. Still not sure how much Impact 20% more damage means when your average hit is like 20 and your crits are like 50. Would depend on the weapon granted, but then you gotta think of the weapon speed. Side note: As expected everyone has around 30 accuracy while BB Rouge has like 60+ with Reckless assault on. Wowzers. BB Fighter has the highest might in the party. Unfortunately he never got a hit in. Shield Accuracy penalty does that. But yeah, Im just going witn gut feelings here, which can be wrong, as oposed to hard science/math. Agreed that % bonuses and maluses that atributes give should probably be bigger (though none of that "Bigger numbers! Awesome numbers!" thing).

They changed around the atributes. Perception is your accuracy and + range to abilities stat. @Matt: Yeah Ive seen your charts and math (good job btw). I realize Might is better against low defense targets but from what ive seen of the current damage values a +20% damage bonus doesnt seem as significant as being able to crit regulary. And Im sure defenses will be higher and higher as the game goes on. If not natural then by priest spells and the like. Im just going with my gut feeling based on what Im seeing. And what Im seeing is that being able to crit often seems better than just having more flat damage. In other news I made a max PER and DEX Cipher with 3 Might. Used a Fine Hunting Bow (9000 cp to buy wow) as oposed to the BB Rogues Short Bow While my grazes were doing 0.8 damage in contrast to the Rogue´s 1 damage, the Rogue was critting and hitting far more often thanks to Dirty Fighting and Reckless assault. Seems balanced as the Cipher has all those damage spells while the Rouge is limited to autoattacks and Deep Wounds DPS.

So you got 22 Might. Thats +22% Damage AND Healing! Thats awesome right? But...what does it matter if you cant actually hit anything? The BB party all has 10 perception with the exception of the Wizard´s 12 and the Rogues 22. The BB Fighter has 22 Might. And this is hitting a stationary target. ...Ok that stationary target was a priest and he was buffing himself with armor spells. So this log is a bit of an exageration. BUT IS IT? I mean we are gonna be facing spellcasters and priests in our travels and those bonuses to deflection, DT and reflexes are gonna stack and get bigger with creatures too. And you see how much damage the Rogue is doing. And she has just 9 might and is using a shortbow. 9 Might. Bonkers. 22 Perception + Reckless assault (+10 Rnaged Accuracy and x1.2 damage). Genius. After trying out the new vanila PoE system a bit Im starting to think the +% bonuses and maluses should be doubled. +2% of 30 damage isnt significant when enemies have +200 hp. Neither is +15% of 30 damage. I dont know how damage values in the endgame are gonna be but I think that even with 200 damage atacks +15% of that isnt gonna really matter and the difference between 3 Might vs 20 Might is gonna be one autoattack. Im no math guy but the one time I could see Might being more useful than Perception would be with DoTs since you hit more and most of those hits are guaranteed. For autoattacks you should go with Perception. Considering you have things like INT that give you much needed Deflection and AOE, CON that makes you live longer and DEX that makes you attack faster, I would say the current "Dump Stats" are Might and Resolve. Make a 22 Perception 3 Might Character. Max DEX. Try it.

D&D rules in IE gave you weapon specialization points. At the moment the class-specific talents are so much better for your class and abilities than the general/"available-to-everyone" weapon and defense talents that its not even a contest (with the exception of the defense against prone talents). The problem is that without weapon specialization accuracy bonuses you are doomed to tickle everything to death unless you put serious points in Perception. I really think we should be able to have a separate selection for "weapon + defense" talents every 2 or 5 levels or a bonus talent every 2 or 5 levels so we can take a weapon specialization and defense talent. Since 10 Perception means ALL your hits will be grazes I think its pretty necesary for classes to take a specialization unless you have 22 perception like the BB Rouge. In addition to this Base Accuracy for all classes should maybe be a bit higher so you arent just grazing everything. Edit: All the characters in my party had 10 perception except for the Wizard´s 12 and the Rouge´s 22, with no weapon specializaton that Im aware off. Also the Rouge ha Reckless assault (+10 ranged accuracy, + 1.2 damage): Considering enemies have +200 hp at minimum this can get silly.

Thank you for the update! There so many things I want to say about it. Except that it's terrible for Barbarians, Fighters and Monks. Which is failing the stated design goals. Nope, Perception is ridiculously important for any class that wants to actually hit anything. I would actually argue its better to dump Might in favor of perception.

ctn2003 I think you are aproaching the problem from the wrong angle, over-worrying about simple issues and misinterpreting the situation. For starters items on the ground and items on your stash are not the same processing-wise afaik. Relax, its not as bad as you think it is, if at all.

Completely agree. Though I think there could also be more elegant ways to implement what you are proposing. More separation here and there. Its a design refinement thing that you shouldnt worry about showing as this is all you presenting the idea. More easily accesible information on those combat stats would indeed be nice. Especially if you have an item that affects either.

Looks very good. Does it affect beetles and other mobs?

I agree with some of your design decisions, and disagree with others. AGREE: - Vertical alignment of weapon sets with damage values displayed. This is very very useful. - Inventory tabs: We already have tabs but they only highlight items instead of sort them. If we go with the Per-character inventory model its fine to make these tabs only highlght. Mid and lategame when you are swimming with items, a common party inventory would need to be sorted by tabs that blocked out all items. Whatever the case, any big party inventory should be sortable by type as oposed to only highlight because its gonna become a mess as the game progesses. -Ground inventory: Though it feels like a "BG because BG" design choice a ground inventory may be a good quality of life idea. Though I would argue that the only times I used it was when either my inventory was too full so i had to use it to move stuff around between characters (which would never be a problem in your stash inventory or in the current per-character inventory) or because there was too many item bundles on top of each other clutering the ground that it was a real pain to select the one you hadnt looted (which Im assuming wont be an issude in PoE). So Ground inventory seems to be a "nostalgia for nostalgia´s sake" additon as oposed to being something you will actually use and so it can end up just being dead space (and so, better relegated to the sides as oposed to the important centre). DISAGREE: - 95% of deadspace removed/more item slot colums and rows- The dead space is there for a reason. Separating elements to make them stand out is good design. Otherwise everything ends up looking like a spreadsheet, which I feel is a problem with your proposal. This is basic design. Its why many products are displayed on white backgrounds with ample space between them. I would argue that your proposal occupies too much space. - Party inventory as oposed to per-character inventory/Stash and quest item buttons removed: I simply prefer per-character inventory all in one screen and enjoy the idea of a common stash. I think with expanded character inventories the feeling you need one huge inventory should diminish greately. Stash invenotry screen should be separate maybe, and bigger. Also, quest item stash. Keep it please. Even if you consider automatically knowing if a quest item is a quest item gamey or not. I can count how many times I accidentally skimed over a quest short sword or dagger in BG because it looked the exact same as all the other daggers and was in the exact same locaton in the Hobgoblin/Gnoll inventory as the rest of those generic swords/daggers. NEITHER AGREE OR DISAGREE: - New pane with camping Supplies and Charname-While the Carname should go in that location and should be framed better (in the BB version) the camping supplies and money could be moved anywhere really so long as its easy to see (corners, center, top, bottom). -Portrait Location: Your preference for BG is showing Though Im not sure how much its gonna affect functionality and design to have the portraits as they are now as oposed to how they are in you picture unless theres an option for vertical portraits. Should vertical portraits be a posibility (even if they wouldnt be as easy to read as having them as a bottom bar) it would be great if the inventory had similar portrait location. On the other hand, a more central character portrait location in the inventory allows for much easier switching between their inventories as your mouse doesnt have to travel so far. -Other useful stat info: I dont know what could be there other than skills like athletics and the like or specific elemental and damage type resistances for easy access to that information as oposed to using the character screen. Though then you may not use the character screen at all (I remember barely checking my character screen more than 10 times beyond leveling up in BG and that was because of needing to see what the status effect I was getting afflicted with was bcause BG had no tooltips for status effects in the portraits [or the character sheet for that matter]. PoE doesnt need you to go to the character sheet for leveling up). I think the Inventory screen should be there for the most important/general and inmediate information while the character sheet should be for the detailed information. No need to clutter it up, though I see where youre going with that. If that other info is implemented it should have different icons, otherwise it all looks like one big blob of stats that overwhelms you. More spaces. -Inventory tab location/sorting buttons: We already have inventory tab sorting/highlight buttons to the left of the inventory slots. I have no strong opinion on wether they should be moved to the right, top, or remain where they are but they should have more contrast to be more noticeable. I would prefer they be kept as icons. Would be good to have Alphabetycal and by type and tab sorting for things like the stash. Those are my opnions on your proposal. Good work.

Hey guys: Step 1- Progress through the game content, optional progress or "main story" progress Step 2- Get rewarded from doing Step 1 Simple isnt it?

This always happens with any "release update at unestimated times" ever. Players get impatient and ask developers/themselves when they wil get an update. Developers cant actually answer with certainty and give an estimate if they respond at all. Sometimes this estimates is purely speculation on the players part. When that estimate gets reached players beging getting more and more anxious/grumpy and start complaining more even if the estimate was purely assumed on the player´s part. Time may pass. Questioning of profesional practices and comparisons to other developers are made. Sometimes insults get thrown. In the worst cases players may even raid developer or related twitter, facebook, an official pages like retarded drooling animals frenzied through mob mentality and "needing my nex fix" like braindead junkies. Whatever happens the developer eventually posts the update and the players are placated and many times act like nothing happenes (even if they were acting like animals just seconds ago). Rinse and repeat. The effect gets worse depending on the size of the playerbase and just how silent the developer is on the matter. I know you gentlemen arent drooling animals, you have all for the most part proved yourselves quite intelligent, in fact. Obsidian has responded to topics in the forum wether or not its as much as you would want. What Im trying to say is that posting more "Are we there yet"-coments isnt gonna make them update faster, even if you or I feel they should update NOW because reasons. TL;DR: Patience.

Im almost sure it was reported. Dont know if the slow bug has been reported. Im noticing web+ big aoe spell has a high chance of becoming the Stinking Cloud + Grease/Sleep of PoE in your videos. Though abilities like Blade field (i think its called that) and the other wizard and druid "DOT AOE" area creation spells may be better candidates especially combied with knockdown AOEs like grease or whatever the wizard spell with the oil icon is called. Granted Web + Fireball is nowhere near the "instant I win, please die quickly while I sand here lobing arrows at your unconcious body just to seal the deal" that Stinking Cloud was (expecially combined with Grease/Sleep), for which Im rather thankfull as that kinda trivialized most fights. Considering how FAST beetles are it may be a good idea to have web slow down more, though not enough to be BG grease slow. Theres also the root Druid ability, though the range of that is basically melee range.

I agree with this. Though, mind you Bioware IE also had their moments of everyone having perfectly syncronized animations and movements, but they werent as notiecable because of the random delays. I would love unique movement and idle animations depending on the weapon type if they get enough time.

Good work Sensuki, though I wish you used more druid spells (some of them overlap in function with other classes´s) since you have such a short timing window to record yourself experimenting with them, might as well go all out. The druid is like a battle version of a wizard/Priest hybrid atm. Can cast a variety of CC and DOT spells and still be useful as a melee character while not being suited bo the THE frontliner like Paladins, Fighters, Barbarians and Monks. Like the Chanter a reach weapon would probably be ideal, though that depends on how weapon reach works in PoE. 2:27 - It seems beetles have enough reach in their attacks to reach your Wizard through your party. If memory serves in BG you had 3 reaches: Short reach weapons (punches, war hammers, daggers, long swords, short swords, etc.), long reach weapons (any two-handed, swords, halberds, spears, etc) and ranged (longbows, shortbows, composite bows, slings, etc.). Maybe the values of attack reach are all different for every enemy as they are not set in stone. Maybe this is one of the big factors that contribute to the feeling of dogpiling combat. Id like it if there was only 3 types of weapon reach like in BG, maybe with a fourth "very long range melee weapon" if we are gonna include giant squids and pikes but it would be best to keep this from simple. 5:55 -If you pause-unpause too many times in a short period some sounds stop playing. I think theres an even worse bug were if you press the slow and un-slow button too many times you get stuck in a permament slow mode were every sound repeats itself.