Dragoslav

What I read in the other thread(s) was that there are at least two... maybe three separate issues: 1) Neutral NPCs turning hostile to the player 1a) Possibly linked to the above, neutral NPCs not being removed from the basement map at the end of the quest and being attacked by the now hostile flesh constructs (possibly what turns the remaining NPCs hostile to you) 2) Wichts not spawning in the basement 2a) Enemies spawning, but in bugged positions (default T-pose) Either way, as an addendum, I loaded up my second save game from the OP to test something further. After winning the battle after the cutscene, I moved my party to the large, empty room where the wichts should have been and created that save in order to show the problem. After loading the save, I was immediately attacked by the wichts, who were now quite obviously in the room... heh. I reloaded that save one more time, and the wichts were there. Exploring the rest of the map, I saw that the wichts in the other areas were also now where they should be. So basically, a workaround for people running into this bug who really, really want to have to fight through wichts on their way out of the basement, is to save and reload -after- the cutscene at the end of The Man Who Waits, which should properly spawn the enemies in the basement. I would add this to my OP, but I don't have editing privileges yet.

Description: At the end of the quest "The Man Who Waits," the wicht enemies do not always appear. After talking to the patient who triggers the final battle of this quest, a cutscene plays, and several enemies enter the room you are in (crazed patients and flesh constructs). After clearing this battle, you can proceed back through the main, large room in the middle of the map with tables. In this room there are now supposed to be several wicht enemies. However, these enemies do not always appear, and instead the only enemies are the flesh constructs guarding various points on the map. Aside from having fewer enemies on the map, this issue does not seem to affect anything else. Steps to reproduce: When I initially played through this area, I entered the map, triggered the final battle for "The Man Who Waits," and then went into the main room with the wichts all in one go without saving and reloading. There were wichts in the room, as there should have been. However, I then reloaded to a save directly before speaking to the patient who triggers the cutscene that starts the final battle (this save is included in the .zip file). After clearing that battle, I went into the main hall and found it completely empty (no wichts, no neutral NPCs) except for a lootable guard corpse. I loaded from that same save at least 3 more times (4 in total), and each time I did, there were no wichts in the main room. Steps: 1) Load the earlier save of the two I have attached 2) Talk to the patient and trigger the cutscene 3) Defeat all enemies in that room 4) Walk back to the large room in the middle of the map where all of the patients were previously and where there should now be wichts. There will be no enemies. The second save I have attached is from after the battle triggered by talking to the patient. Files: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51501711/NoWichts.zip Let me know if you need any more information! Thanks!

Respeccing doesn't have anything to do with the "choices must have consequences" game design philosophy. The latter refers to narrative consequences, which isn't affected by the mechanical choices of character build (aside from maybe skill points, but that's all). Taking a talent that lets you engage one additional enemy at a time instead of a talent that lets you do extra damage helps flesh out your character build and says something about the character (i.e. that he is more focused on protecting his allies than being a butcher on the battlefield), but it doesn't have any narrative consequence in the game world beyond that. Narratively, you're not making any immutable, long-term decisions that impact the game world and the characters and factions that populate it. If you anger one in-game faction or character, that has interesting consequences later on. If you make a poor choice in choosing talents or spells that you will never use later or don't understand how they work, the only long-term consequence is that the game will be less fun because your character is crappier than it should be at that level. Mechanical choices are not part of the narrative; they are the meta-game. No one is asking for an option to go back and undo a dialogue decision to help one in-game faction at the expense of another--that's the kind of choice that should have a long-term consequence on the narrative. Instead, people want to have the ability to respec so that they can play the type of character they want to play throughout the entire game, even if 1) their preferred gameplay style changes over time (e.g. wanting to play a heavy damage dealer instead of a tank), or 2) they realize that a certain mechanical choice freely given at level-up wasn't designed well or just doesn't work like they thought it did (not just from poor design, but also just because they player doesn't perfectly understand the system and is now stuck with a talent that might actually be useless for their purposes). Just because a character chooses to specialize in rapiers at level 3, why can't they decide at level 10 that rapiers are for sissies and that they should specialize in spears instead? There's no narrative reason, and in terms of gameplay it just makes sense to let people modify their mechanical choices if something with their character build isn't working like they had hoped. 4th edition D&D even has core rules built in for retraining at level up: you can drop one choice made at a previous level (either an ability, feat, or skill training) and instead choose a different one of that same level. It has restrictions in place to prevent you from rebuilding your character from scratch whenever you want, but it gives you the opportunity to try out interesting choices instead of either only picking the "obvious" choices or taking a risky option that ends up crippling your character for the entire time you play in the campaign. Even without such rules built in, you'd have to be a pretty stubborn, viking hat-style DM to not make concessions for a player who says, "Dude, we're level 10 and I've never used that talent I picked at level 1. Can I just replace it with something else?" I've even had DMs who would let players change their character's class in the middle of a campaign because they wanted to play something else. In a computer RPG, the only option is to let people respec or force them to start over from the very beginning of these epic 60-hour role-playing bonanzas any time they aren't satisfied with a mechanical choice they made tens of hours ago.

I feel you, man. I gave the beta a try for the first time the other day and, given my experience with cRPGs and pen-and-paper 4e D&D, I figured I would start on Hard difficulty. Trembling with excitement as I found myself on the precipice of my first combat encounter in the game, it went a little something like this: "Yes! LET'S BATTLE!" *several seconds pass* "Okay! All my guys are down! ... GG, fellows!" Every other battle went like that, too. I figured that it was because I'm not familiar with the idiosyncracies of this particular game, but given how badly everything was destroying me, I think I'll wait for the next version to give it another go. I didn't really give it a try on Normal difficulty, though. I've read that difficulty settings don't artificially increase enemy stats, they just increase or decrease the number of enemies. Is that true?