Rhaeg

Earlier today I criticised, and not without good reason, the steam library of fellow forum person TheisEjsing in another thread somewhere on these boards. Since it's only fair then to let other people cast an eye over my own library and because I'm actually quite curious about what the other geeks over here are playing, I thought to myself: "Why not start a new thread where we can share and harshly*, but fairly, criticise each others game libraries?". And after having had that thought I actually decided to take action and do it, so I made (or actually am making while I type this) this thread. So I'll start with my Steam library... *drum ruffle* As you can see it's a very tiny one (I've seen quite a few people with hundreds of games in their libraries!(!!!!)) that easily fits in one small screenshot, even though I've had a Steam account since forever. I also spend quite a bit of time gaming, but I just buy maybe 3 or 4 games a year max (not counting DLCs and such). I do own some old games from the pre-Steam era like the original Black Isle games from when I was a kid (Baldur's Gate on 5 cd's not counting Tales of the Sword Coast ring a bell to anyone? ). I also own some non-steam games, mainly the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series on Origin (which I know some people here hate a lot ) and I've played some MMOs over the years that I ran away from because I was too anti-social or because some fellow guild members were too anti-social or whatever: Lord of the Rings Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Elder Scrolls Online and a bit of Eve Online. I've lost interest in Lotro and Swtor years ago and never was able to find a good guild for ESO, a pity that since I love Elder Scrolls and ESO isn't that bad for an MMO. As for my Steam library: some games in it I like more than others. Crusader Kings II I've never even played, it was free a few weeks ago (and now Paradox wants me to buy the bazillion DLCs for that game, I guess). I spent most time on TW:Warhammer 1&2 by far, so much I'm ashamed to mention the combined total of hours One other game from my list I'd like to mention is Age of Wonders 3, made by the pretty small Triumph Studios (fellow Dutchies \o/): I'm guessing it's not incredibly well known, but if you like (fantasy) turn-based strategy I can only recommend it. The older games from the series are great too but pretty ancient now. Age of Wonders 4 is expected to be announced later this month. Now, have you ever seen such a fine bundle of pc gaming greatness? And what are you peeps playing? Show me show me show me!!! * In case you couldn't tell, I mean harshly in the "*wink wink* ;) "-type of way Edit: lots of grammar mistakes and for some reason I called Age of Wonders real-time while it's actually one of the dying kind called turn-based strategy

More people should post their game libraries so we can criticise them

That's nice and all, but Total War:Warhammer 1 & 2 should ALWAYS be installed on your hd, young man! Hop hop, you have work to do!

If you watch now you'll never have that same special feeling of entering the game for the first time. Only a few more days!

I only looked into the whole ship combat thing very briefly a while ago, but now I've finally given it some time. At first I thought I wouldn't like it, but it really isn't too bad after having tried it more extensively. I can see it can turn into a fine mini game: gathering your crew, assigning them to positions where they can gain experience and level up and become experts in their tasks, defeating other ships as an extra source of loot, getting better ship equipment and better ships... I assume you start with a very small ship and can eventually get pretty huge ones with lots of cannon and crew slots. It has a nice little progression part in it then. I'd like to see a few more features like being able to capture enemy crews and ransoming off important captains and passengers to the factions they belong to or delivering them to rival factions for additional reputation. The one thing I'm a bit scared of now is that getting a large ship with a large crew will get very expensive. And because you spend money on your crew as in-game time goes by, I'm afraid it will really inhibit exploration. I can see myself dreading the cost in food, water and wages if I want to sail around a bit and I'll end up using my ship as little as possible to save money and choose where to go do quests next depending on proximity to my current location. I really don't want a mini game to start influencing my decisions in the overall game. Sailing around has a penalty to it now because of the costs involved and that can't be an intended design thingy.

Casting the lvl 4 wizard spell Maura's Writhing Tentacles does not seem to spawn the 3 tentacles properly: - the only thing that appears is 3 times a sort of swirly green mist. I don't think these are what the tentacles are supposed to look like so they are definitely visually bugged; - the summoned thingies never do any dmg/score hits (they do not appear in combat log either) even when you specifically order them to attack enemies in melee range. The 3 mist thingies do have hit points and are targeted by enemy NPCs though.

In the first level of the Engwithan Waystation dungeon I have 2 characters that got stuck in/near the wall during combat. They can't move anywhere anymore also after combat is over and saving/reloading didn't fix anything either. See image below.

I've got a few things I'd like to mention on character creation, I'm sure others will have more to add later. Love the changes to the interface and entire look and feel of the character creation process! It is quite hard to see which are the recommended/highly recommended attributes for your chosen class. The stars in front of the attribute names that mark these are easily missed (especially so if you haven't played POE1 and know not what to look for) and you only read the text descriptions once you have assigned a point to an attribute. It should definitely be more obvious right away which attributes are important to your class; When selecting colours, you do not see the selection of the default colours highlighted at the start. The consequence of this is that you have no idea which colours to select if you wish to go back to them. A button for "go back to previous choice" would solve this and is very welcome IMO (or some way to save a colour set during character creation); I really like the new hair styles, they seem to be a lot more different from one another than what we had in POE1. While there is nothing wrong with the character portraits that are available, I wish there would be more available reflecting the available options in character creation. I guess what I would really, really like to have is an option to take a pic of my character model's face so my portrait would reflect the character I have made. Not having a portrait reflecting the looks of my character (even remotely) is very disappointing.

#Metoo *cries*

We can do 2 things now: 1) Grab torches and pitchforks and storm Obsidian HQ; 2) Cry. I prefer the latter, for various reasons. Edit: but torches and pitchforks can be pretty cool too.

Same (and restarting Steam does not change anything for those wondering).

Next stretch goal: the whip. Not as an in game weapon, but a real one sent to all backers now, so we can whip the non-backers and convince them to back. Need moare content!

Cool, I'll buy it. New story and companions are always welcome ofc and I'm sure they'll create some beautiful new areas All the extra levels en abilities and such are not my cup of tea though. You hit harder, but monsters will be tougher. And after one or two new expansions, let alone a sequel, your characters will be achieving godlike powers and the enemies will have to become more and more absurd to match those. I never had any problem with the original BG only having somewhere around 7 levels or so.

I lost interest during my 2nd run through the game. I enjoyed my first run, but still had expected more from this game. There wasn't a single thing that stopped me from playing, but the overall replay value seemed lacking to me, which has many reasons, I guess. Nothing so specific as having to choose a certain faction.

"I can't get over" why people need to bash one game that is loved by many to praise another. PoE and DA:I are very different games, both have their strengths and weaknesses and which one you prefer is a matter of taste.

Hmm, now that review was a bit harshly written, but I have to agree with many observations that were made in it as well. Overall, I like PoE and I'd definitely support a sequel. I do have to admit that the game did not live up to my expectations and even though they were high they were not over the top, I think. I've already quit my second playthrough of PoE because at the moment I have lost interest. Main reasons for this: - I know the story of the game now, including companion stories and though it wasn't bad I wasn't incredibly impressed by it either. The setting and the entire soul business has a lot of potential, but for the most part of the game I had no idea what the antagonist's motives were and when I finally found out at the very end I was thinking: "Ok, well I can't be very mad at this dude. And should I care about the status of the gods?" I think me not caring that much at the end largely had something to do with the execution of the story. There just weren't many impactful moments during the course of the main quest: nothing really shocking happened (ok, the end of the Defiance Bay act perhaps) and I just felt like I was completing quests, nothing special. Then how they did those "visions of the past" was very underwhelming too - inferior to how the old BG dream sequences were implemented. They could have done way more to visualise those. - Character creation seemed nice at first, but I have to agree with the reviewer about especially the skills and talents being mostly uninteresting and/or useless. There are not really that many spells that you need to use and at least on hard difficulty only a few are useful at all (CC mostly). - Combat does get a bit repetitive after a while and is mostly about positioning and having the right character classes in your party. Is that strategy/tactics? The positioning is, but from a game with tactical combat as a selling point I expected more. Very rarely did I have to make important decisions like: do I take out the archer in the back first or do I need to do something about the melee guy attacking my tank from behind first? - If you add something to a game, do it right. Especially crafting was lackluster and it even hurts the enjoyment you get from nice treasure while you can easily craft it all anyway. The stronghold was underdeveloped too. There's really not much you can do there other than rebuild the ruined structures. And why did we have a reputation system with a couple of factions? Where are the reputation vendors? What are consequences of a faction getting mad at you? Special quests for high reputation? These would be my own problems I see with PoE. Luckily, the game has many good points too, so like I said I'll definitely support a sequel.

No idea what it will be, but I'm personally only interested in classic medieval fantasy or decent sci-fi RPGs. And even though Pillars to me is not the perfect game it seems to be to some, I'll happily back a POE2 game if they go that way.

Ugh, first the Hugo Awards (http://www.avclub.com/article/years-hugo-award-nominees-are-messy-political-cont-217574) and now this... Once there was a time when I thought fantasy and sci-fi fans/readers/gamers/etc/ were all cool nerds who always got along well with each other and only had heated debates about whether tabletop RPG system X or Y is best. Of course, that turned out to be a completely naive idea, but I do wish I'd never found out about that...

Maybe Greg Campbell can find a general feedback thread for his ideas or at least, you know, try to play the game a bit? As much as I think everyone should be able to give feedback, if we were all thinking we were Greg Campbell and create a new thread especially for ourselves after 1 hour of gameplay, these forums would become a bit of an unreadable mess. But that's just my humble opinion not being Greg Campbell...

I haven't checked to be certain, but I think paralysis spell has a much shorter duration than Gaze of Adragan. Aloth was able to stun the dragon for more than half a minute, which is an insane amount of time and more than enough to kill the beast.

Cheers, that helped a lot! With the Eldritch Aim potion Gaze of Adragan finally had a decent chance of hitting the dragon, and once he was stunned for over half a minute it was over ofc.

For me personally it's a very frustrating battle, more than anything I've ever tried in a cRPG. The main reason is there is no smart way to do this reliably without resorting to cheesy tactics. I've been trying this on hard mode but am not making much progress at all for the past 2 days. What I dislike most is that there is no way to effectively tank the dragon, not even with an über tank with the best potions and a priest watching his health constantly. There seem to be two main problems here: as the OP said, there is no effective way to guard against charm in this game: even the spells that are supposed to work against it seem completely, utterly useless. Then the tank also gets stunned frequently, making it impossible to reliably perform any action with him. The second problem with tanking is that there is no aggro mechanism or there does not seem to be one. The dragon sometimes just leaves the tank alone, turns around and fries or smashes some other party members that are far from engagement range. Why? Clueless, which makes it seem random, which makes it seems like the player has no control over this battle. Then there's the other stuff OP mentions, like hit box problems and a completely overpowered breath attack. A challenge is nice, but this battle is only challenging because the dragon has some ridiculously damaging attacks, cannot be tanked reliably and has adds with charm skills that cannot be defended against even when using the exact spells that are meant to counter the charms specifically. Hard mode was challenging for me at the start of the game but then quickly became almost too easy... and then you encounter something like this which seems completely over the top and I honestly cannot mention anything fun about it. So for me personally it's a very disappointing end to the Endless Paths dungeon.

What spells were you thinking of that can neutralise her? And did you just ignore the adds?

Hey all, seems I've encountered the first fight where I'm really stuck: the big Adra Dragon with her bad breath I'm playing on hard with a lvl 12 Rogue and the story companions and think I'm ok prepared: upgraded the equipment as much as possible and everyone has a stack of the best healing potions. I've seen some lame walkthroughs of this fight (use petrification trap and keep reloading until dragon fails save etc.), but I'd like to beat this one in a normal way. What I do right now is move Edér up a bit so he can try to tank the dragon, then I move the rest to the right so they are below the dragon and Edér takes that first breath attack by himself. I haven't had much success and what I find hard is this: How to keep the dragon's aggro on Edér How to survive even one breath attack on non-tank characters with their lower health. Everyone has corrode proof armor, but I don't think that 3 DR or so is helping me much against that breath that does tons endurance dmg Edér seems to keep getting stunned (is it the lightning which appears after a few secs? Dragon's fear aura?), which makes it hard for him to do essential stuff such as drink potions. I'm not really certain which buffs/protection spells I should choose here. Is there anything decent against corrode dmg? Which companions to pick: Durance seems a must for heals and buffs, Edér for tanking, so that leaves 3 other spots. I like having Hiravias along for his spells to take out adds quickly and I use Kana for buffing against fear, reload speed buff and ranged arquebus dmg. I have Sagani now with me for another ranged dps, but I'll probably swap her with Grieving Mother. So far in my best attempt I was able to kill most of the adds, but sooner or later Edér goes down or he does not keep aggro and some other people in the group die. Any tips are welcome!