Madscientist

I also dislike alignment systems, especially the DnD type. For me the alignment was just an arbitrary class or item restriction. I am happy that PoE got rid of it. Now we can have a bleak walker paladin or an assassin who is benelovent and honest. I could never play evil or chaotic chars in some games, because the good options usually gave the better reward and evil was just dumb killing of everyone. The following things are my personal definition: I have played many JRPGS and I do not have a strong connection to DnD. For me the term "demon" is a is a material creature who has natural magic abilities, meaning they are born with magic powers. They can be humanoid, like animals or something different, but usually they are "alive", so they are not a construct, made of stone or such. The term "demon" does not tell if the creature is good or evil. They are intelligent and have a free will, though some demon types have behaviours that are typical for their type. According to my definition, a human or animal with strong magic abilities, the classical DnD demon but also the DnD deva and lots of other creatures can be considered "demon". My definition of "god" is any creature that becomes more powerful when other creatures believe in it, worships it or otherwise acts according to its will. In return it can give powers to creatures who believe in it and can produce miracles to prove its power and strenghen the belief of others in it. I consider the gods of PoE not "gods" according to my definition, but they are powerful soul constructs. While they can create powerful effects, people in PoE do not gain magic from the gods, but from their own faith in anything, which may be a god or something completely different. So a nihilist priest would make sense in PoE.

So what you say is: Chaotic evil chars want anarchy. Under some circumstances they are willing to cooperate and make plans as long as it leads to their final goal of anarchy. They do not feel bad for betraying others or breaking promises, but they do not do it just for the sake of it but only if they think they have a big profit from it and they can get away with it. Lawful evil chars want a dictatorship, and usually they want to have one of the top positions in it. They like laws, contracts and promises because they think it protects them from others. While they dislike doing it, they may be willing to bend laws or being not totally truthful if it brings them closer to their goal of a dictatorship and they can get away with it. PS: I think it is best to drop the concept of alignment completely. Chars in a game can chose to act in one way or another and their actions have consequences for themselves and for others. Its up to the player to decide if this action is good/evil/lawful/chaotic/whatever. The game does not judge you, it shows you only the consequences of your actions.

I have never played PnP, so I can only refer to what I know from computer games. In my personal view, a chaotic person is driven by his instincts or emotions. Such a person does whatever he thinks is " the right thing to do" at this moment, which may be good or evil depending on the other axis and who does not care much about rules or what other people think of it. On the other hand a lawful person plans everything carefully, keeps his promises and follows laws if possible. However, if you know the laws you can also interpret them in several ways and you may even bend them to some degree ( in good or evil direction ) as long as you do not break them. Also, while he usually does not lie to others, it a big difference between not telling everything and telling something wrong. So for me the difference is if somebody acts according to his instincts and emotions at this moment versus somebody who act rationally, makes plans and at least consideres laws in his actions. Once again, I am not an expert and I may be wrong. example 1: Somebody asks me: " I need this document. Can you tell me the way to the parliament?" I tell him correctly the direction to the parliament. But I know that you need to go to the city hall to get the document and the city hall is in the opposite direction, but I do not tell this. I did not lie because I gave him the correct direction to the parliament. example 2: A demon comes to an office. Demon in a broader sense, not the DnD chaotic evil version. demon: I want to become a citizen and get my pension. clerk: But you are a demon. demon: The law does not specify human. I have all the document here. clerk: But you are 1000 years old. demon: correct. The law says you get pension when you are older than 70 and you have worked for more than 40 years. I can prove that I did. So I want my pension for the last 930 years and from now on the pension each month for the rest of my life. clerk: But you are immortal. demon: Well, then you will have to pay me for a very long time. clerk: Thats insane. Demon: No, thats the law. Make better laws if you want to avoid such consequences.

Just to avoid confusion: By nuker a mean a mage who uses spells that cause damage, like missles or fireballs. Other possibilities would be debuffer ( int is more importent there for duration ) or self buffer ( mirror image + summoned weapons ). in the deadfire beta I never used spells with more than 3 sec base casting time. I did not use any mod, like the casting speed mod.

I filled out the survey too. Looks like for most questions one answer is the clear winner. Do you like choices where many players chose something different or are you OK with choices where most players chose the same answer? I like it when choices are difficult and there is no easy good/evil choice. So I guess the most interesting choice for the main quest is which god you chose in the room with the stars and what you do with the souls after defeating Thaos. I chose Galawain and used them to empower dyrwood. I think that Kana has the most interesting endings for his quest. While Torment:Tides of Numenera may not be as good as PST, it was a nice game and I really liked the final choice at the end of the game because I had to think a lot before deciding what to do.

My first char will be a paladin/chanter. But later I want to play an evil char who is not just a brutal idiot. So assassin/caster seems like a good option and wizard looks like one of the better options for casters. I hope that the additional damage taken by assassins will not be too much of a problem if I start with a spell from stealth, attack with ranged weapons and use invisibility abilities.

Nah, much more Neutral Evil, opportunistic and cruel when necessary. I never really could relate to Tanar'ri. Opportunistic sounds like a very Tanar'ri thing. I can relate to some extent with the Tanar'ri myself, more than Baatezu, or at least did in previous D&D editions (before they made all Tanar'ri be feral incarnations of violence and so on). My personal take on them was that they often appealed to the passionate, emotional and instinctive desires in mortals, and tried to have these commit atrocities by essentially breaking down and giving in to the worse side of their base nature, whereas the Baatezu were a lot more about the systemic evil, oppression through the structures of power and law and so on, where mortals would be forced into evil through authority, the classic "I was only following orders" sort, and where the trick was especially to bind mortals into a system (by means of a contract for example) that would force them into doing something unforgivable. Both are very interesting though, and I hate how future D&D editions really ruined this dichotomy. But anyhow, I digress, carry on. I would consider myself as lawful neutral. As scientist I like rules and order. So I never play chaotic evil chars. Killing and plundering just for the sake of it does not make any sense to me ( OK, the sense is that it does not make sense. That is another reason why I dislike Wael in PoE ). I think that if you want to achieve something you have do some planning and act systematically. I can imagine playing a lawful evil char. Somebody who thinks mostly about his own benefit, but who is very good in the use of contracts and laws and uses such things to gain an advantage over others. Extreme example: The king has given a reward for finding somebody, but the text does not tell clearly if he wants him dead or alive. My group has found and sourrounded the wanted person. I say: " If you surrender, I promise that I will not kill you." The person puts down his weapons. I say to my companion: "You kill him because I have promised not to do it. Let us keep his belongings and bring his head to the king. A head is easier to transport than a full body and a dead prisoner does not try to escape. This saves us the trouble of guarding and feeding him." Edit: For a good ending, the prisoner should have insisted that I promise: " If you surrender, I promise that my group will bring you to the king alive and well and you may also keep your belongings." The person is an idiot if he stands before several armed man and think he can stay alive when only one of them promises that this one will not kill him.

It's just a shame that so many RPG devs have pretty much embraced the story vs. combat false dichotomy. Video games are an interactive medium. They should each inform the other. You are correct. There are several games with a good setting or story but terrible mechanics while others have good mechanics but a terrible or no story. There are some games who do it right and PoE was one of the better examples. It could be hard or easy depending on the difficulty level, your char, your party, if you triple crown solo and so on . . . and the setting is also very good. If I have something to complain about, I think that the world of PoE1 felt almost too depressing with soulless children and mad cultists everywhere. I like it dark ( the impending doom atmosphere from vampire:bloolines is fantastic), but PoE PoE feels sometimes more depressing than just dark. regarding difficulty, there are some good games who do it wrong. Arcanum and D:OS1+2 are good in terms of setting and reactivity, but some builds are so OP that you steamroll everything while others are completely useless. There is hardly a middle ground so in some sense they are both too hard and too easy which means that both new players and experts can become unhappy easily.

Its quite simple to make a good wizard nuker: - use a nature godlike ( extra power levels when you have any inspiration ) - max out might or resolve ( the one that increases spell damage in the version you play ), high dex and some per is good to hit faster and harder. Int and str/res ( the one that does not increase spell damage ) do not need to be high for a pure nuker. - Take evoker subclass for extra power level and a small chance to double the effect of evocation spells. - get an inspiration ( if possible from another char like a priest, else take a fast illusion or enchantment spell. - nuke the hell out of enemies and do not forget that you can empower spells. bonus question 1: How useful is assassin/evoker compared to this? You can start from stealth and you can become invisible a few times per combat, but you have less spells and power level. How big is the assassin bonus exactly? Most of the time you will have only stealth bonus because you need to be within 2m for backstab and you must remain hidden during your casting time. bonus question 2: Is the backstab, sneak attack, death attack ( I assume it will be in the game ) and assassin bonus given to all damage, including spells? If you do not take evoker but the standart mage/assassin ( evoker is the only useful subclass for mages ), would it be effective when using summoned weapons and touch spells?

I agree with that. I loved PST and Morrowind, but not because of good game mechanics or combat ( its terrible in both games ) but for the atmospere, characters and story. On the other side I never finished IWD1 although combat was great but I got bored by the absence of story. I admit that it can be boring for some players if they win every fight without problems, but for me it would be more frustrating if I have to try the same fight again and again when I want to see how the story continues. I have tried to solo a few RPGs, but usually I quit after a short time because the interaction between characters is more importent to me than creating a self imposed challenge. At the moment I play legend of heroes: trails of Cold Steel 2 and I like the game. Sometimes there is a boss fight, I beat the boss in a few turns without getting hit but in the cut scene after the fight the chars sweat and pant and say "Uff, that was a tough one. Im glad we made it through here alive." I can live with that, because the opposite ( I need to try 100 times and when I finally make it my chars say "piece of cake") would be much more frustrating.

I think we need another game from MCA if we want really unusual characters. PST and MotB had some good examples, but characters who looked very different from humans usually had very limited equipment choice. A floating skull or a huge bear have big trouble if they try to wear armor. Equipment choice was very limited in PST in general. Another problem is that a banshee is an incorporeal undead. So she cannot use any items at all. I also think most people would react strongly ( and mostly negative ) if you travel around with a ghost. Well, MotB did have a ghost as possible companion. Or maybe it would be better to call it a soul construct, which fits ferfectly to the setting of PoE. The fact that there are almost no class or race restrictions in PoE is an importent feature so I think a possible companion should be shaped similar to a human. This means we could have possible unusual companions as: - corporeal undead, fampyrs can be intelligent and behave like normal people if they are not too rotten. I do not know the possible pros and cons of undead in PoE. Corpse eater would be a perfect class for them, either as single class or multi classed with assassin (sneak to and overpower people to eat them) or cipher ( mind affacting spells). - Xaurips, They cannot talk but they might be interesting, especially when you have to deal with other xaurips or dragons. - demons, I do not know if other planes exist in the PoE universe (like DnD or the fade from Dragon Age). If yes, there may be magical creatures who are intelligent, social enough to cooperate with humans ( or forced to cooperate by a spell or contract ) and who are humanoid enough to use most equipment. - a minor god, Maybe the engwithans did some test runs before creating the gods we know. Regarding gods and demons, the rebirth of Eothas could have created a big effect of soul energy in the world and it could have lead to the creation, summoning or revieving of some bizarre creatures. - A product of genetic engeneering, Animancy gone wild. What happens if you combine an ogre with a naga and an orlan?

There was a bug with werewolfs in BG2: Every time you loaded the game their recovery stacked. (Like the infinite stat stacking bug for PoE at release). I played BGT ( BG1+2+ToB together as one game) and when I was on the werewolf island in Bg1 it was impossible for me to kill the boss. I failed several times, loaded and tried again. After some tries I looked at him and found out that even after hitting him with max possible damage (crit with the best weapon and max strengh) he was completely healed less than half a second later. I gave up and killed him with console command, the only time I have ever cheated in an RPG. The smaller werewolfs are a piece of cake.

Als ich mir die ganzen weiblichen Formen von Personen durchsah kamen mir ein paar Fragen: Wie heißt ein weiblicher: - Folterknecht (Folterdirne, Folterknechtin, . . . ) - Paladin - Mönch (Nonne) Wegen der Gemeinen (das klingt so fies). Wie nannte man nicht adelige Personen im Mittelalter? Nicht nur Bürger(liche) waren nicht adelig, die meisten Leute waren Sklaven oder Leibeigene (bedeuten beide Worte das selbe?) und die waren keine Bürger. Laut LEO kann man commoner sowohl als Bürgerlicher als auch als Gemeiner übersetzen.

I agree with that. There is a huge difference between the number of people playing the game and the number of people who are active in this forum. That means your poll will not give you any info what most players do because most players are not in this forum and those who are in the forum tend to be good players who are more likely to play on the hardest difficulty. This poll will give you the upper limit of how many players play PotD. In reality, the % of players playing PotD will be lower. I am a scientist and I even consider games as science, so thinking and discussing about game mechanics is fun for me. I do not know how the really good players are playing, like Boeroer, MaxQuest or the people with the ultimate achievement. But having seen some videos of people playing, I am surprized that some players were able to start the game at all.

I play games for story and exploration, not to torture myself. I will play on normal or veteran. Since I played tons of RPGs and I finished PoE1 on hard without problems I will probably play veteran with a full party made of companions.

The game will have many updates post release. Why do I fear this? They will have an update for every single bug they fix. For every update you have to download the whole game again, even if they change only a single line of code. You will never be able to play because the game is updating all the time. The save files will not be compatible between the different versions, of course.

To those those who say PoE1 was unbalanced: I think PoE1 was the class based single player RPG with the best class balance. Some builds were better than others, but each class had several viable builds. It was very easy to make a viable build: You think about what char you want to have, read the tooltips for stats, abilities and talents and take whatever makes sense to you. Yes, You have to read a bit and yes, it is possible to create bad builds if you really wanted to. My definition of viable: It is possible to finish the game on a difficulty below PotD without dying every second fight and without your char feeling useless most of the time. In PoE2 multiclassing makes things more complex, but the game warns you that new players should take single class and it is still easy to make a viable char. I think that "no bad builds" does not NOT mean that it is impossible to make a char who is worse than most others if you really want to do so. I think it means that it is easy to make a viable char if you read the descriptions and take options that make sense to you. I think PoE is very good regarding classes and PoE2 could be even better. This is not a multiplayer game, so there is no need for perfect balance. In fact, perfect balance would be terrible. If all classes do exactly the same damage your choices do not matter at all and you might as well remove classes all together. Lets look at older games: In the IE games you had tons of options, but only a few ones were good while there were many bad choices. For new players it is really hard to tell which choice is good or bad. You can play a mage->fighter dual class with low int if you like. NWN1+2 gave you many more options, so you could create more different useful builds. But some combinations were OP while others were still useless. And the rules for classes and multi classing and making good chars were really complicated. I needed to do lots of reading before I could make a good char and know why it was good this way.

I think they shoul keep grazes. It feels terrible when your attacks miss most of the time, especially after a long cast. I like that you have more/normal/less (aka crit/hit/graze) effect depending on your roll. You can still miss if your acc is too low or if you have a bad roll.

I am sure the game will be full of trap choices. At the beginning you can chose whatever class you like, but only a few of them can actually finish the game. Only if you have the right class, join the right faction and have some other right choices you can finish the game. In all other cases you will face an unavoidable game over, but only many hours after the choice that doomed you and the game will never tell you what was the wrong choice. Like you have to be a priest of magram who joines the pirates and romances Xoti, a paladin/rogue who joins the Huana who burns down a village or a conjurer who is cruel and tortures a certain character can finish the game. All other will face game over. The exact combination of right choices will be different for every sold game and it will change with every update. This means you are doomed if the game updates during your playthrough.

I really like the Legend of Heroes: Trails series. There is the Trails in the Sky arc ( 3 games ), Trails of Azure/Zero ( 2 games ), Trails of cold Steel ( at least 3 games ) and maybe they will also make a calvard arc. Each arc consists of several games that form a complete story. But all arcs are interconnected and they take place on the same continent. So a character who is a playable character in one arc will be an NPC in the other and things that happen in one arc are mentioned in the others.

Sure, that’s why I said I hope they will wrap up Watcher’s storyline in Deadfire and go forward from there. Whenever it’s called Pillars of Eternity 3, or Pillars of Eternity: Origins, or whatever else I don’t really care. Changing creative director might go well with changing a direction for the franchise. When I read "Pillars of Eternity: Origins", I thought this game takes place over 2000 years in the past and you are involved in the creation of gods. Spoiler: Depending on your choice you will the one who sacrifices others for the creation of gods, you are being sacrificed or you become a god.

Every time i hear "level scaling" I get traumatic memories of Oblivion. After killing tons of demons I have epic battles against immortal goblins. This and the terrible german translation made me quit this game forever. Tyranny had level scaling and it was better than Oblivion (well, its hard to get worse). But Tyranny had a strange difficulty curve. The hardest battle was end of act 1 and from then on it got easier and the bosses at the end of the game were a piece of cace. For open world games I prefer the aproach of Gothic1+2 and Risen1: You can go whereever you want but most things can kill you right away. As you get stronger you can travel more and more parts of the world. Enemies do not get stronger. You get stronger and this allows you to enter areas with stronger enemies.

I play games mostly for story and exploration. I will always use the companions I find in the game and I never created hirelings in any RPG.The interaction between the main char and party members and between party members among each other is very importent for me. I will never play BG without Minsc, PST without Morte, PoE without Eder and so on. The game would only be half as much fun without them. I have never finished IWD1. Not because it was to difficult, but because it became too boring. Tons of fighting but little story or party interactions. I own IWD2 but I have never started it and I have never bought a pure dungeon crawler ever since then. If I make a full party myself it will be a classical optimized party (fighter, thief, priest, mage, not neccessarily those classes but the roles they have in the game). I finished BG1 with a self made party once because the companion interactions in Bg1 are really small, but I could never get myself to do it in BG2. I enjoyed playing NWN2 SoZ with a full self made party. They were 4 chars with different classes, alighnment, skills and so on so I could always do something useful when interacting with people, enemies or objects. But they had no personality. it was just power gaming to get the maximum amount of interactions with others (instead of the usual powergaming for max combat power).

In any computer RPG I always used the heaviest armor a char could wear unless a lighter armor had a really good special ability. I agree that I like the DSA armor system a lot. Armor absorbs damage, but it gives a penalty to hit, parry and dodge. In terms of PoE1, armor gives DR but lowers acc and deflection. unfortuatly all DSA computer games were quite unbalanced. The Realms of Arcadia trilogy ( rewarded as best CRPG 1991, 1993 and 1995) used exactly the pnp rules, but lots of things could not be implemented so most of the skills and spells were completely useless. (like you could spend points in riding skill but you could not ride anything in the game). Class balance was terrible too. I went with 4 fighters and 2 mages and saw no reason to ever use a different caster than a mage. Mages get an unbreakable magic 1h weapon that does not have hit/parry penalty and also acted as torch, rope and reduces mana consumption while all other casters except elves could only use crap weapons, but elves were very fragile. Mages could change their magic skills points for mana points and since you only need a few spells they ended up with more HP and mana than any other class. Fighters could use any weapon or armor while all other non casters had restrictions without having any bonus compared to fighters except different starting skill values, but fighters could improve all those skills as well. There were tons of magic swords (1h and 2h) but I remember only 3 magic weapons you could find that were a different category. An axe with tons of damage but pathetic parry, a magic bow and a spear that you could throw once and then it was gone. Drakensang was better, but still for from perfect. Basically there were only 2 classes: casters and non casters. Casters cannot cast when wearing metal armor. Specialized mages were still the best casters and fighters could still wear anything while other classes still had restrictions without having any bonus except different starting skill values. At least they adopted the skills and spells to the computer game so that each skill and spell had at least some possible use in the game. When I look back there have been big progress in the developement of computer RPGs. Regarding balancing and how easy it is to understand there are many improvements over the years from Realm of Arcadia -> IE games -> Dragon Age: Origins -> Pillars of Eternity1. So regarding game mechanics ( how easy is it to understand the basic system, class balance, many different usuful builds, . . .) PoE1 is the best game ever, at least from the games I know. Story wise, PST is the best game ever with MotB and KotoR2 coming after that. By the way: What does MCA now? Is he still a kickstarter stretch goal as main job or does he work on a project of his own?

Sure, though in PoE1 deciding when your weapon isn't effective isn't that easy. At what point your attacks become less effective and you would do better by switching? As loss of damage is gradual, there is a wide window of the "sort of" effective. When you hit armor your damage gets always reduced. At what point, are you better off switching the kit? In order to make an informed decision you need to do some number crunching, unless it is an extreme case. I think that Deadfire intentionally changed it to a wide window of static damage (when pen is = or > than AR). You do either well, or you don't. Tis true that in BG you were notified when your weapon wasn't effective, but it was an even more extreme system than Deadfire's as it was based on immunities toward certain quality weapons. You either have +3 weapon or you don't. Like I wrote it before: Your weapon is ineffective when you deal minimum damage. If enemy DR is higher than 80% of your damage than you will do 20% damage as minimum damage. The combat log already tells you when you do minimum damage, so it should be no problem that the game also gives you another message that is not so easy to overlook. You are free to play however you want and the game should not tell you: "When you switch from weapon A to weapon B your damage will go up by 5%." But when you do minimum damage all the time the game should tell you: "Most of the damage you try to do is eaten by enemy DR. Maybe you should think about changing your strategy."