Jasta11

Priests are ridiculously powerful in this fight. Not only are you swarmed with Vessels (making for an extra juicy Holy Radiance) but the Alpine Dragon has enough accuracy to actually hit most tanks, Éder included, for a lot of damage requiring you to buff and heal them for once. My advice is to send your tank straight for the dragon, to keep it busy, and above all make sure the beasts's sides face the party, last thing you want is to get hit with Frost Breath or tail lash. Don't group the rest of the party too closely, the Blights have AoE attacks. Take them out first if at all possible, then the bevy of Vessels, then the dragon.

Well damn, if the Witcher is from an Atheistic point-of-view then that completely destroys my "Atheists are intellectually lazy" argument I'm not going to make friends by saying this, but I find The Witcher to be a bit of a lazy setting overall. A lot of its stories are fairy tales with added gore, its monsters are often lifted straight from Eastern European folk tales, its different countries and nations are either stereotypes (Nilfgaard, Skellige) or undistinguishably bland (all the Northern Realms). It also abuses character archetypes; peasants are pogrom-happy and supersticious, soldiers are sociopaths who hang everything that moves, sorceresses are conniving and ambitious, kings are racist **** when they aren't just mad. Eora has shown more originality and personality in its setting that the Continent did in three games to me. In the light of the above, the writers of that series treating religion with all the maturity of an edgy teenager doesn't surprise me. Cripes, even Dragon Age did much better in Inquisition. Also, if one example is sufficient to challenge your ''atheists are intellectually lazy'' theory, maybe it wasn't that good a theory in the first place. But The Witcher is based on a series of Polish fantasy books. That kinda makes sense, right? Well, OK, to be fair that explains using common Eastern European monsters and folk myths. But I feel the rest still stands. For all the talk of TW being a "mature" setting, I feel it doesn't really explore explore its themes, beyond "war is bad" and "racism is bad" or "religion is stupid". Pillars does it better I find, with far more nuance and subtlety. To get back to the topic, I do feel that the whole "gods aren't real" reveal is flawed because the setting doesn't quite earn it yet. We're only one game in, and the writers already drop such a huge lore bomb on us, which I feel is too soon. I mean, sure, divinities and their effect on the setting were prominent in the game, but not omnipresent, and a lot of that happened in side-content like the Temple of Eothas or the conversations with Durance. I'd wager most players didn't really care that much about the gods and their lore, then the game goes "Aha! Gotcha! they're fake!" and many would go "Ah, well, that's a thing" rather than ''Oh snap, that changes everything!''. I'd compare it with Dragon Age, which waits until the third game before it starts dropping huge reveals on its diverse backstories, and on a pantheon in particular. Since the series had much more time to establish all the lore, the bomb is far more effective I find.

I always end up coming back to the Temple once I've cleaned the wilderness around Gilded Vale a bit and grabbed at least 4 party members, preferably 5 (MC, Éder, Aloth, Durance, Kana or an adventurer). Once you have enough bodies to throw at them, those shades aren't so scary.

Well damn, if the Witcher is from an Atheistic point-of-view then that completely destroys my "Atheists are intellectually lazy" argument I'm not going to make friends by saying this, but I find The Witcher to be a bit of a lazy setting overall. A lot of its stories are fairy tales with added gore, its monsters are often lifted straight from Eastern European folk tales, its different countries and nations are either stereotypes (Nilfgaard, Skellige) or undistinguishably bland (all the Northern Realms). It also abuses character archetypes; peasants are pogrom-happy and supersticious, soldiers are sociopaths who hang everything that moves, sorceresses are conniving and ambitious, kings are racist **** when they aren't just mad. Eora has shown more originality and personality in its setting that the Continent did in three games to me. In the light of the above, the writers of that series treating religion with all the maturity of an edgy teenager doesn't surprise me. Cripes, even Dragon Age did much better in Inquisition. Also, if one example is sufficient to challenge your ''atheists are intellectually lazy'' theory, maybe it wasn't that good a theory in the first place.

Inquisition actually has bonuses for each race. Humans gets an extra ability point, elves ranged resistance, dwarves magic resistance, Qunari extra HP I think.

I disagree. Sure, you can cheese th mechanic by backtracking a lot... but I don't want to do that. I want to press forward and see how far I can get before I am forced to use supplies. Several maps also have supplies liberally distributed about. The only area that is designed not to be completed in one go are the Endless Paths, and that's kinda the point of said Paths. It sure as hell beats the Baldur's Gate system where you have no reason not to rest between every fight regardless of how little sense it made to spend 3 days escaping Chateau Irenicus.

I don't exacty get how a game that has existing, tangible gods (that you can have chats with, for frick's sake) and portrays a vast array of religious people, some of them being very nice and reasonable like Éder, is somehow an ''atheist cliché''. As for the gods of Eora being jerks, a cursory glance at any polytheistic pantheon shows us that Woedica would be tame compared to the likes of Zeus. To say nothing of Old Testament God who smote all the things which displeased him with extreme prejudice. You want an atheist cliché? Look at The Witcher games, where almost every hip and cool main character is atheist to various degrees and the main stand-in for Christianty is invariably, across three games, portrayed as overzealous, corrupt, racist, or a combination of those three.

I had Pallegina ever since I could in my party, and she definitely earns her keep. Her damage is good, her tankyness is acceptable for someone using a two-hander, Lay on Hands is endlessly useful, Reviving Exhortation is a lifesaver when Durance eats one blow too many, Zealous Focus is nice, and Sacred Immolation is so gud. Given that Obsidian's vision for the Paladin is of a support-heavy frontline combatant, I'd say they do that job well. If you want melee damage, Barbarians and Rogues are here for that. My bow-using Cipher does less raw damage than a Ranger, but he compensates with his array of useful spells. Same deal for Paladin vs other melee combatants.

The patronising is strong in this one. Anyway, ''P&P RPG'' is a vast medium. They don't all play like D&D by any means. So it's hard to say that Bioware has veered away from tabletop since tabletop is an incredibly diverse genre. They moved away from doing D&D games, sure. But given that I am lukewarm at best towards the D&D ruleset and think alignments are pure idiocy, I don't consider that a bad thing, all things considered. And yes, I have played P&P. But I think judging an RPG simply by how much it emulates P&P is a bit nuts, since not only does it change so much depending on the game but on the GM. All the D&D campaigns I've played had not a lot of player choice (to account for 4 players) with a plot that was mostly on rails so that the GM didn't have to spend his life creating new plots. Doesn't seem to different from Bioware RPGs, or any other RPG from that matter.

I think it was the intent, too. Not to make all stats equal for all classes (that would be boring anyway) but putting Int on fighters, Might on mages and Per on druids can all be helpful, to some degree. The major flaw is that we have two stats (Res and Per) that do very similar things, and Con is just not very useful. With some tweaking, I could see PoE's stat system be very good indeed. I also like the lack of a Charisma stats, because in a game where the player controls the whole party that's utterly useless to put on anyone but the main character. Res is a much better replacement. The other thing I would change is more penalties for stats below 10, with a gigantic one at 3. I've heard of people having tanks with 3 Con, and that simply shouldn't happen.

Yeah, but those are all relationships between characters. PCs (especially in games like PoE where there is so much variety in race, background, attitude, etc.) are almost never characterized strongly enough for a romance to feel very compelling as anything other than fanservice. Romance between CNPCs, that could possibly work. I'm not convinced by that argument. Surely if the PC can form other kinds of relationships (such as friends) with NPCs, they can form a romantic one if well written. Whatever some people might say of Bioware romances, some of them work very well. It's all a question of writing them accordingly.

So we are looking for a non-backer who should have had a cat picture up until now... or... You know you sound a lot like a dev yourself so it's probably you. If I was a cat worshiping developer I would definitely want to post in such a thread as my secret alter ego. I wish my career was half as successful as Josh's, so I'll kinda take it as a compliment .

Yeah, if I was a game dev I knew I'd be jumping with joy to interact with people who say things like that about me. I know people love to cover up things with similar tone as "constructive criticism". But there is also a social aspect of things like that. If some guy sells me a product that I'm not happy with, I don't say "you're a bootlicker, now listen to my complaints and do something about them". That's probably the most basic lesson in social interaction. If you want someone to listen to you, then try not to insult them first you know? It's apparently a very hard-learned lesson on the Internet. Definitely this. If I spent all my time on a game, I would welcome criticism, but I would not welcome people making snide remarks and borderline insulting comments all the time and hide behind ''constructive criticism, grow a spine'' when called out on it. At some point, some people have to recognize there are human beings on the other side of their forum posts. Humans who just might (and brace yourselves, I know this will hurt) not agree with their viewpoints, and who have no obligation to answer one particular criticism over thousands and thousands of others, nor to cater to a particular group if they don't want to. The more I look at the sort of virtual lynch mobs that form as soon as something they don't like happens, the more I understand why developpers increasingly seek a more controlled environment for their feedback. Some might call it isolating themselves or censorship or whatnot, I call it being able to keep their sanity in an era where you can get death threats for changing the stats of some guns in Call of Duty. To say nothing of cluster****s like the recent controversy about paid mods on Steam.

Thankfully, because looking at stuff like the Colossus in Od Nua and the souls-stealing machines, if the Engwithans were as advanced in metallurgy as in soul manipulation they would probably have been packing 10 story tall mechas and railguns.

-Disagree on limited campaing supplies. I feel that it makes rest a meaningful mechanic, rather than something you need to stop yourself from doing after every single fight to keep the challenge up. -Disagree on custom companions. I use them sparingly, and they're a nice feature. Even nicer for people who want to Icewind Dale it and don,t care much for custom made companions. -Agree on the Stronghold. It didn,t have its place in the game and felt like a tacked on stretch goal. -Disagree on enchanting/crafting. The system just needs refining. Obsidian already did a good crafting system back in KOTOR 2, and they could also look to Dragon Age: Inquisition for a decent crafting system.