ISC

What is "close range" here, is it melee contact or a few meters?

Ok great, but IN COMBAT, you cannot stealth. I order to use backstab during combat you must use shadowing beyond. Does no one care that this is a huge problem? Let alone the tooltip is apparently incomplete for backstab... It is perhaps a problem, especially since there are no other known sources of invisibility. But the ability to open with a backstab still makes quite a difference here, since it is then potentially a once per encounter (from level 2, by only spending talent. Shadowing is per rest, right?). I guess you can backstab using a ranged weapon, no? If so, its a fair bit safer to open that way at least, and a quite meaningful talent at level 2. That's.. uhm.. actually a really good question. You'd be surprised by how often ranged backstabs are not a thing in games. I don't have the time to pop into the beta and check right now, but I'm sure someone will, or Sensuki will swing around. But I would not make the passing assumption that you can backstab with ranged weapons. You couldn't backstab with ranged weapons in the IE games at all, and I'm still annoyed you can't do ranged backstabs in D:OS (you can't even backstab with a friggin' blackjack). Well, I'm fairly sure that you can sneak attack with ranged weapons at least, so I guessed it was similar to that. We'll see. But if it is possible, you might just wanna use a rogue with an arbalest or arquebus to backstab-open your fights. It will probably leave you with one less enemy to begin with.

They have stated that it depends on what path you'll take, and that you can get it pretty early but you can also take other paths (the crit path?).

Ok great, but IN COMBAT, you cannot stealth. I order to use backstab during combat you must use shadowing beyond. Does no one care that this is a huge problem? Let alone the tooltip is apparently incomplete for backstab... It is perhaps a problem, especially since there are no other known sources of invisibility. But the ability to open with a backstab still makes quite a difference here, since it is then potentially a once per encounter (from level 2, by only spending talent. Shadowing is per rest, right?). I guess you can backstab using a ranged weapon, no? If so, its a fair bit safer to open that way at least, and a quite meaningful talent at level 2.

Can you stealth in combat? You're not simply thinking of stealth attacks?

So what you're saying is that dw 2 maces + Vulnerable Attack is viable and > stilettos?

Is there no other source of invisibility in the game? Even later than lvl 4? Spells or items?

This is basically whats important to me. Im thinking that the wilderness shouldnt be devoid of animals the next time you return, for example. And I'm not saying that 10 lions should return every time you get to the gorge, maybe 1-3 will respawn or whatever. While a Skaen temple, should you happen upon such, shouldn't repopulate once emptied. Maybe with a lone spider or whatever, but you know. Not having to go through a number of the same enemies again is the point, without making the gameworld feel static and predetermined. As for "random" encounters, I actually think that fallout 2 did that pretty well. You hade some unique and some random, and the random ones were tied to different sections of the world, yet varied in each one of them. So you could encounter, say, rad scorpions, slavers or a trader among other things in the same area. That made it interesting and hardly tedious (to me at least).

I do think that level 12 can only be reached if you do all the side quests. Otherwise you would finish the game being like level 10. yeah, we've been told at least that level 12 is only for completionist runs. I don't know about level 10 or where you'd end up but there you go That's prob a good thing, it would be incredibly annoying if you hit 12 with a lot of content left.

Yeah, I dont think these dragons are directly comparable to hundreds of feet tall interplanetary Gods that uses dream-inception to manipulate people. But manipulation should be possible to pull off anyway... However, since you invoke the animal-part, we risk getting bogged down in a discussion concerning exactly what intelligence is and how it works. What I mean is that if intelligence is an inborn capacity separate from stuff like working memory and a language center, you'd probably end up with dragons actually being less intelligent than (grown) people in practice. Actually, intelligence beyond the ability to communicate (and recieve) knowledge, beyond abstract conceptual systems, or the human ability to imagine alternative scenarios is probably difficult to convey because it could not exist in any meaningful form?

Well, a mix of unique scripted and random would be nice, with some kind of weighting system for the randoms (e.g. different enemies in different areas of the map, or shifting slowly as chapters pass)

One way of doing it is in a Lovecraftian style. Many of the Cthulhu mythos entities are intelligent beyond any human ability to comprehend, which is conveyed by creating a feeling that you (or the protagonist) is at most a pawn in some large game of terrible hyper-intelligent minds (outside and beyond your own main story). When done well it can be quite unsettling and creates a sense of mystery. Basically the narrative need only imply a big scheme which will leave players theorizing on what is actually going on etc. The problem of using conversation to convey higher intelligence is that the conversation still needs to be comprehensible and thus within grasp of human intelligence, which, at most, creates the feeling that the dragon is of higher human intelligence.

Finally, someone else who sees this! We need to get waylaid! (and preferably have some limited respawn of beasts/monsters). But the answer is no, for now.

Thank you for doing this. Even though I should know most classes inside out by now, I really cant get enough of PoE videos.

This please! It makes those magic trinkets appear very exotic, wondrous and desirable in a way that is ruined when cheap magic items is sold all over village squares. In addition to being a potential money sink it creates some depth to the world, making it feel a little bit less gamey.

Didnt fallout have both unique and random encounters? Like fallout 2? In any case, thats a good way of doing it, I hope no one compares fallout with MMO's simply because there are infinite elements in it.

This, greetings comrade Luckmann!

No, wait, you're still misunderstanding me, I'm not advocating anything remotely like skyrim. I'm talking about a re-spawning lion or two of several in the stormwall gorge, or a couple of bandits on the roads now and then, nothing that allows any re-playability or infinite resources in practice, I am only interested in the principle. I dislike a game world which feels like it is ending for every step you take, and I that it feels more alive if all lions are not extinct from your very first visit. Oh well, people got to discuss open world vs hand-crafted games at least.

Dont get me wrong now, I am all for hand crafted content all the way! But the occasional respawn in the wilderness or random travel encounters would hardly make PoE an MMO, if anything it may be more like some IE games (You have been waylaid by enemies and must defend yourself!) and create rather than break RPG immersion. Again, the point is not that this should be something people spend any time on. But I do believe that h3st has a point in that the game will likely have old school powergamers swimming in gold soon enough anyway.

Attila: Total War mostly. Some Dying Light for casual zombie stomping.

If I remember things correctly, PoE is not going to have any kind of infinite content. Everything is limited in a pre-determined way. I am talking about things such as stronghold events (I think it was stated that getting taxes was limited, for example, and negative events as well?), no random encounters (which, by the way, comes with IE-feels!), and no re-spawning enemies (am I correct on this one, or did I miss something?). Am I the only one bothered by this? As a compulsive powergamer (or perhaps it is some form of Freudian death anxiety) i find finite content a bit disturbing because it hard caps resources. I can imagine myself frustrated by finding out that a quest could have been solved in a way that would have given me 100gp more, or hoarding potions for the entire game to save them for the perfect moment that never arrives (this is also IE-feels!). This could of course apply to exp as well, but we are not having that discussion again. Note that this is an entirely psychological thing. I am by no means advocating a steady stream of significant amounts of gold from the stronghold, or enabling any kind of meaningful farming behavior, just the comfort of knowing that I could remedy small mistakes though hard work etc.

Why are Monks so good, I hate monks..

In a believable and interesting fantasy world there would be a bit of both, I guess. That is, tons of stuff that are not in our world would obviously be commonplace and natural there. But there would still be weird stuff by their standards, political conflicts and racism. And that is necessary for the world to have some believable depth.

In a design-fashion sense it sure looks dated (which is the point of making this game), but I think that PoE looks way better than divinity graphically.

Well, since it's impossible to create something without influences, I think we can all agree that all games are influenced by previous cultural products. Originality is more about how sophisticated, uncommon or far fetched new hybrid ideas are (e.g. fantasy+colonial era). Some works appear as lazy, boring or predictable because of its uncreative overuse of certain narrative elements (currently playing dying light, just saying).