Gairnulf

I'd have to know more about what games you prefer in order to recommend it to you, but if you've played and liked any of the isometric games that use the Infinity Engine (Baldur's Gate I&II, Icewind Dale I&II, Planescape: Torment), or even other isometric RPGs like Fallout & Fallout 2, Arcanum, if you've liked the recent Divinity: Original Sin or Wasteland 2, you will certainly spend your money right if you spend it on PoE.

This should definitely be in. I just wonder what should the acc penalty be, to the main hand. Can't be the same as for dual wielding.

This is the right thing to do. I hope that the decision was affected at least somewhat by the arguments I brought up, but who knows, maybe it was the plan from the beginning to make it optional.

Hey, wtf did you do to this thread? I came here yesterday and wanted to know simply what did BAdler mean by this: Do I understand correctly that tomorrow I'll be able to download the digital almanach, strategy guide, digital collector's book, etc?

It's already at v1.0, the build version of the latest BB is 1.0.0.480. I know.

I'm expecting the build number will reach v1.0 around a month after release if not a bit later

Yep, it would be, but doesn't seem like it will be. I already wrote about that - we get the stronghold around the middle of the critical path, upgrades cost from near a thousand up to a few thousand cp and give boosts of a 3-4 points to stronghold stats. At the same time it costs 75cp to remove an equal-sized penalty to stats (pay off the drunkard). At first glance, these prices pose virtually no challenge for someone who has been even moderately thorough in looting stuff up to this point in the game. I start the BB with 2800-something cp and by the time I had finished all quests in it I had over 20 000cp. The most expensive room at the Inn costs 250 (or 280?) cp, and I didn't use food buffs.

Oh, I thought you had beta access and just had overlooked how loot sparkles work. BTW, it's still completely possible to send loot to the stash when in the wilderness, and when you come back to town, access your stash without problem to move items into the inventory to sell them. Actually I'm pretty sure you can sell directly from the stash too. On one hand I know that after all these items have been put in the game for the players, so not collecting them is similar to deliberately skipping content, but on the other, I fear that all these conveniences for players will lead to the player raising such a large fortune and so soon, that money will stop being an object, and this will make the game as a whole somewhat less interesting. But I've explained this point enough times already.

Drilling holes into skulls of living people who were perceived to be mad was a practice in the Middle ages. As usual, I'm very satisfied with the lore's complexity and depth, and happy to recognize the touches of a fellow historian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanning#Pre-modern_Europe http://mentalillness.umwblogs.org/middle-ages/

By "loot containers" I mean the corpses of dead enemies. From what I understand, the 3m rule is only applied to dead enemies' loot containers and not applied to chests, cupboards and the like. This would be a whole new level of confusing. This isn't true in the current version of the BB. Either they have said that what you describe is how loot sparkling will function in the final game and I don't know about it (have they?), or you're not completely clear on how loot sparkling functions right now. All loot containers have an animation of yellow sparkles raising from the loot container. I think this animation was justified by Josh at some point as being related to the lore (something to do with the souls of killed enemy creatures). But the sparkles don't go away after you open and close the loot container once - which is ironically in tune with the lore aspect - there are sparkles no matter how many times you open and close the container. The sparkles only go away when the container is empty and then you can no longer open it. Bottom line - you can't tell which loot containers you have already accessed and closed without picking up everything from them, and which you have never accessed. They all look the same. And I imagine this will be confusing to players. Unless players choose the path of least resistance, like most people tend to do, and take advantage of their unlimited inventory, so they just vacuum every bit of loot they come across in the game.

What if the mysterious backer was the Black Hound!

You mean decreased by half after you click "half speed" to the left of the clock? IMO, movement animations are a bit faster than what I'm used to in the IE games, but I haven't compared footage from PoE and BGII for example. On average, there are more active abilities in a PoE party than in an IE game's party, so I guess people who want to play optimally will have to pause more. I pause an awful lot, but I doubt I'll be able to win encounters otherwise, not until I'm much better at the game at least.

The sparkles can't be turned off, but I guess they can be modded away. I dislike them but can live with them. I suppose the sparkles along with the bigger than average loot containers sprite are connected to the lack of separate sprites for different types of loot.

Do I understand correctly that tomorrow I'll be able to download the digital almanach, strategy guide, digital collector's book, etc?

I don't mind giving it a chance, but I'm pretty sure I'll run into the problems I've described above. IMO, if you can spare the resources, best to make it adjustable. Yes, I remember when loot highlighting was added. It was in ToB for the first time. Personally I liked it, although I've become addicted to it somewhat. Well, yes, it's a matter of preference. That's what I said too. I don't see how area loot improves gameplay, but that's me.

It does shine, so there is no problem in knowing what has been looted and what not. Your logic is weird - first you complain about not knowing what you looted (so you'd have to check everything just in case) and when there is something that helps you to keep track of what has been looted you complain about that mechanic to go back to the square one: complaining about not knowing what you looted. I find it easier to manually track which corpses I've looted if I actually have to click on each one. Area looting somewhat obfuscates that process, making it less easy to do manually. Yes, with shiny markers I can probably do that in my sleep, so what's the problem? I don't want to play games that put me to sleep. At least with optional loot glow/optional highlight/mouse cursor changing on hover, I can play in a way that I find engaging - without necessarily impacting the preferred playstyle of others. However, if they're adding this area loot feature for the sake of convenience, then it seems unlikely they'll also add functionality which potentially makes the same feature less convenient than before. I mean, there's gotta be a cost/benefit analysis in there somewhere, right? I agree with you but apparently we have different expectations from the game than other people have... Trolls I'm just going to ignore though.

I honestly didn't know it was even an issue for someone. Maybe it's been kept mostly to the technical section which I really don't visit that much. Weak argument. That's what the tab key is for, it highlights containers. No, I'm not about nostalgia at all. I want improved gameplay and I don't think area loot counts as an improvement. Sources of immersion are subjective, because immersion is personal. Good writing and story give some people more immersion than graphics, for others it's the opposite, etc. So, judging people by what they consider to be breaking their immersion leads nowhere. I agree, but individual loot containers are not a feature that I see for the first time. I think they create a whole lot of problems while solving none.

*Sighs of relief heard among fanboys*

BTW, more "Vailian" music:

Hey, that's great! And I guess they are using the default loot icon when on the ground. At least I haven't seen an item on the ground look any different way.

Underrail does it perfectly here BTW (I just hope people accusing me of nostalgia don't bring up the 'It's not an IE game' argument now) - you have an unlimited number of slots but a limited weight carry capacity before encumbrance penalties are applied. Simple as that. Oh, and items have weight values. With two decimal places after the whole number. So an ampule weighs 0.01 This what I call cool. Limitless inventory and area loot isn't. Why should it shine in the first place? Shiny loot... don't get me started. I just hope it gets modded out and I'll let everyone else enjoy progressive non-tedious mechanics. Yes, but loot items from various containers still overlap. If anything this actually encourages looting everything.

One easy remedy I can think of for at least this problem (not touching on the other problems I have with this mechanic) is to highlight all containers in the highlighted container's radius. This would at least give the player a hint about which containers' contents will be visualized. If remembering which container you have left to check instead of remembering which ones you have already checked is easier for you, then I guess that's ok. For me it's easier to just remember what I've just clicked.

Here's what I expect area looting to turn into and that's why I'm skeptical towards it. You have four loot containers and you have to guess and try to click such a loot container as to select all or most of them, but you don't know in advance if this is possible. The end result being that you still click on every container, only you are not really sure if what you're seeing isn't something you just saw when you were clicking at the last container, because the loot interface won't just show you the container you clicked but also the other container: So in a situation with four loot containers you are blind guessing which one you should click first and which other containers will its 3m radius include. That's what I call confusing and that's the main reason I don't like the idea. It's got nothing to do with nostalgia and much to do with common sense. In this example you would need at least two clicks to check all containers, and that is if you were able to tell which containers you are seeing with each click. In reality most people would click all containers anyway, just to be sure they aren't missing anything.

You thinking that's even remotely comparable just underscored how nonsensical your reasoning is. To repeat myself, nobody's talking about eliminating back-and-forths, I'm talking about not keeping a system that only adds back-and-forths and inventory juggling. Haha, getting defensive already? How did you know that's what I meant? :D I don't know what's the difference between "eliminating" and "not keeping", and I think it's you that are not making any sense. I also think you are arguing just for the sake of argument by now.

No, why? While we are on the subject of tedium and what's adding to it, let's consider the tedium of having to walk to the merchant to sell loot. Why bother? I already have infinite inventory, I already have "All to stash" button, I already have loot area to make looting faster, and I already have merchants with infinite money who accept all item types unconditionally. So what's with this tedium of having merchants at all? Why not just click on an item and transform it into cp? That's your logic after all. @CaptainMace, I haven't tested it in the current version actually, but from what I have tried in previous versions, it was possible to send loot to your inventory (and separately from there to the stash) or to the stash (directly). I'll check how ot works now. I admit that if in outdoors you can move loot only to the inventory this would limit the vacuum cleaner tactic significantly.