Lord Vicious

This bug really ruins the game for anyone who wants to play with character death or make a custom party (because now the only way to free up party slots is by killing off the default party members) Great to hear that fixing this is given high priority.

Exactly. Other self-funded classic RPG project - Age of Decadence - used this approach, sharing its working beta with backers as it expanded. At the current stage the AoD backer beta includes about 2/3 of the game's content, AFAIK, and it's pretty awesome. The game is available for pre-purchase on steam, and a big working beta is a great incentive to buy into the project well before release. (although the game itself is only for hardcore CRPG players, it's pretty unforgiving).

Please consider making custom party members a free and easily accessible option like it was in the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games.

That is a minor issue which is easily solvable via CheatEngine (just before getting some XP, search for a 4-byte value of 0, then search for the amount of XP received, and change to match your party XP level). A much more serious issue with hired adventurers is that: A) Without Stronghold, you cannot dismiss party members to free party slots for custom characters; B) Character Death is completely bugged so that if your default party member dies, his "ghost" remains a "placeholder" in the party, irreversibly bugging any new adventurers you hire in his stead (saved games become unloadable, characters disappear, etc). Together with disappearing items, this bug that takes away all the enjoyment from the demo.

Actually it's a very fun take on the Charm/Dominate mechanic. I think it deserves to be kept, maybe in a special Dominate Monster kind of spell that will actually make the monster attempt to kill itself. That would be awesome and hilarious at the same time.

This is a widespread gamebreaking bug that not only kills your hard-earned items, but makes the game impossible to progress by killing quest items. Making gameplay a painful experience.

The analogy is as follows. In chess, you are given a full set of pieces, and it's up to you how to use them. Chess players construct various debuts, gambits, endspiels from the given options. In an RPG, you are given a full set of classes (items, abilities etc.) and it's up to you how to use them. RPG players construct various builds and other gameplay strategies from the chosen options. In chess you might favour a Queen gambit. In RPGs, you might like the Wizard class. "Forgetting" how your class works is like "forgetting" that you have a Queen in chess. It's incompatible with playing the game. I am sorry, but if in BG you pumped INT at the expense of STR and CON for a fighter - that means you have no idea how the fighter class and the game in general work. I.e. you don't know the rules of the game you are playing. I am sorry, but how can someone seriously expect to win a game without knowing the rules? "Bad builds" can be bad for a variety of reasons, not just attribute choices. Straight classes were mainly cited as an example that in the BG games, it was quite difficult to actually make a "terrible build" even if you didn't fully grasp all of the mechanics (like dual and multi-classing). Basically the only way you could end up with a "terrible" build was if you didn't know even the most basic rules of the game (e.g. what attributes do and how classes work). The IE games gave plenty of freedom in making various viable builds for most classes. Not even taking into account class kits and subclasses, even the most basic, straight Fighter could be played either as a Melee powerhouse (focus on STR) or as a Ranged sniper (focus on DEX) - something which is in fact absent from PoE (given the melee bonuses and ranged relative penalties PoE Fighter gets). So in reality it is PoE that forces you to play a "cookie-cutter build" - simply because there are no alternative builds, basically. In general I am not against the idea of "different stats = different playstyles". As I said before, that same idea existed in BG as well - e.g. the STR melee fighter vs. the DEX ranged fighter. However, there will always be some choices that will be clearly inferior - e.g. the low STR/low CON/low DEX/high WIS/high CHA/high INT Fighter. But that is only logical - if you want to play a mentally focused character, rather than physically focused, why choose the Fighter class which is clearly oriented towards physical combat? Trying to completely eliminate the possibility of "bad choices" - rather than just giving a variety of "good choices" - leads to elimination of choice per se. Because if whatever the player does will lead to him winning the game, what's the fun in playing?

Where exactly did the developers say that? And how is character creation not gameplay? It is definitely the initial stage of gameplay. It involves building up your character, both background-wise and mechanic-wise, which is a clear and direct element of playing the game. What are you, a developer? Last time I checked this forum was called "Discussions", probably for a reason. And the developers seem to be ready to take suggestions.

The "terrible build" is a result of playing poorly. Not knowing what you are doing at character creation = not even bothering to understand the rules = playing poorly. And frankly speaking, it's pretty difficult to get "stuck with a terrible build" in BG, unless you not only have no idea of what you're doing, but are also actively going out of your way to "experiment" with dual-classing etc. Most of the time it's pretty straightforward to just take a base class and level it all the way to the cap. Straight fighters, priests and mages were perfectly valid in BG and BG 2, often outperforming the badly built dual/multi-classed NPCs. Multiclasses were just as easy. The few ways you could actually "end up with a terrible build" involve either A) Not understanding what attributes do (and giving your Fighter 3 STR and 18 INT), or B) Not understanding what dual-classing does. Both times the fault clearly lies with the player. I remember when I played BG 2 for the first time. It was my first ever AD&D game (or maybe Torment, IDK). I remember not quite grasping the concept of "negative armor class", or the Vancian spell system. Nevertheless, I managed to take that Fighter all the way to ToB's end. It was the first AD&D character I ever made, and it was probably the best character in my entire party (after Edwin). All it took was sticking to what I understood and not taking any risks with things I didn't comprehend too well (like dual-classing). So yeah, IMO the BG series was pretty forgiving with the "stuck with a terrible build" thing. Torment even more so, with the adjustable attributes and on-the-fly class changes. Really it didn't need more simplification/dumbing down.

The pieces are the classes themselves. The game gives you every "piece" for the "chessboard", you can't "forget" a class that's right there in the character creator. What you can do is play badly with the pieces you are given, just like in chess when that queen is all but useless in the hands of a rookie.

After some experimenting, here's more info on this bug. It is apparently due to the dead party members not being removed from party properly. Even though they disappear from the game screen, their "placeholders" are still there "behind the scenes". Sometimes, when loading a game, I can even glimpse these "dead" characters being loaded, only to disappear once loading is complete. Once, the dead party members were visible as translucent shadows ("ghosts") which had their own green circles, but could not be controlled by the player. This leads to all sorts of buggy behaviour with new adventurers hired in their stead, up to and including unloadable saved games. In other cases, the new adventurers (hired instead of dead ones) disappear, leaving you only with the player character and the surviving default party members. I tried playing Expert Mode with permadeath always enabled, this didn't solve the issue.

Running it on an HP Envy DV7. For some reason it still uses integrated Intel graphics rather than dedicated NVidia card, despite my settings in the Nvidia control panel. Been running decently, though suffers badly from long loading time.

I find the entire idea of "no bad builds" confusing. I understand and welcome the need to have diverse OPTIONS of gameplay (e.g. melee, magic, stealth etc.) which should all be viable. But of course there will be "bad" builds just as there are "bad" players who do not bother to approach the game intelligently, on a strategic and tactical level. So these players can make "mistakes" by pumping the wrong attribute or itemising wrongly. Conversely, there wil be hardcore players who will dissect the system and construct "optimal" builds and strategies. Is this "bad", should this be stamped out? That's how the world works, why shouldn't it be the same in CRPGs? It's like trying to make chess so that there are "no bad moves". Of course there will be bad moves and good moves, like in any game, it's only natural. So the entire concept feels alien and unnecessary to me.

This game definitely needs to follow more closely in BG's footsteps. So far there's an unfortunate tinge of "action-RPG"/MMORPG that needs to be stamped out. Otherwise it'll just be another clone and not the Classic CRPG Revival messiah we've been anticipating.

Unique items need more love, including custom pictures and unique enchantments.

BUG: With Death enabled in Game Options, any party member dying makes saved games created after this moment unloadable. Background: While trying to get around the artificial limitations on creating a custom party, I killed off the default NPCs by using the "death" option in the Options menu. This freed up party slots and allowed me to finally create a full custom party. However, once I tried to load a save made after this, turned out the save was broken (wouldn't load, stuck at the PoE logo loading screen). After some investigation, I discovered that if any of the default party NPCs dies permanently and is removed from party, this makes all subsequent saved games unloadable. Please fix this.