Voss

Actually it is more than 1h just isn't worth anything at all. Dual isn't off the scale compared to to twohanded and ranged weapons (given the lesser effect of multiplers and greater effect of DR). They just dropped the ball entirely on single weapons.

In spite of the fact that the space piglet is supposed to be a "bonus" ? Bonus preorder content is usually pointless. Or economy wrecking, depending on which version of insanity the developer/publisher adheres to.

I don't get this. The point of an autosave is to prevent loss of progress when you hit a stress point, which loading a new area always is. Doing it after a likely crash point defeats the entire purpose of having an autosave in the first place.

Well BAdler specifically mentioned it when closing the 'I'm a bit worried' thread, so they can't pretend that they don't know.

Disengagement attacks are more than enough to punish movement. I'm curious if anybody feels that the disengagement trait bonuses are even worth taking over other perks. Honestly, the talents in general feel awful. Honestly I can sort the list and go down it and think 'yeah, one of those often (weapon focus), no, no, no, no, wait, what are the details: per rest=no; no, no, never, what is distant? what is close? (why don't these have explanations?), no, no, specific build, specific build, no, no, stupid, stupid, never, no, absurdly circumstantial=no, ditto, ditto, ditto, no, maybe.' It makes a lot of build decisions absurdly easy, but it makes me wonder how much time was wasted on absolute trash if this is the stuff that survived the design process. It also doesn't help that they're flat math bonuses, and boring, rather than interesting things that open up new options in combat. That said, I can see a use for the rogue class ability escape, just for being able to instantly be somewhere else with minimal nonsense. And the added security of a panic button if I really screw up, or if the companion tanks are wholly inadequate at their job before I can afford to replace them.

If the choice is mana vs cooldowns I'm going to be unhappy with either solution for different reasons. Mana costs are gibberish numbers that basically boil down to 'use abilities at the rate that designers want you to use them.' Cooldowns are entirely gamey constructions based on nothing at all that artificially draw out combat because the basic attacks are almost inevitably utter pants. You're just stuck waiting around until you can do real things again. Both are pretty miserable and miserly game design. That said spell or ability per day is also a frankly horrible way to approach things. Personally I prefer building some sort of skill (or momentum) up through combat and using it to unleash abilities (or starting with the pool at some appropriate level, burning it down through use, and building it back up). Like the chanters and ciphers in PoE. Though having it side by side with per day abilities is also pretty miserable and mind-boggling. In the sense of hey, these two classes have jet fighters, but you, you and you have to fly bi-planes for no reason.

It is incredibly moronic, needs to be fixed and the devs are aware that it exists. What needs to be discussed? Fix it.

o_O what is this I don't even Meaning it's not like you can just play for hrs interrupted on a pc. Unless your 14 living in your room with only enough space to walk to the door. Most folks old enough to remember these games have kid's and a life now. The computer is a shared household commodity. It's not like your cell phone you can take anywhere with you. Because it's a 60 hr+ game, finding time to sit down to play it without interruptions will be a chore. That is a weird generalization about how adults live, that matches literally no one I've ever met in the last 30 years. I haven't met many people who had to share computers since I was that proverbial 14 year old. Though actually, it was '88, so I was 12. 60+ hrs makes interruptions kind of a given, but well, save game solves that problem.

I'd rather see someone write up an editable manual that can be kept up to date than listening to various people drone on and on in unrelated videos that will be obsolete in a matter of days. Videos- good for gameplay impressions, terrible for explanations.

I don't think PoE has many of those, to be honest. Far more heavily on the x1.2 or +10% abilities. What it does have is a very limited ability to explain to the player what exactly is going on. Beta backers have been literally digging into the code to find out how things function, because nothing in the game tells them.

Um.... New Vegas is an open world FPS with very limited RPG elements. It is a completely different genre. Myself I started with PnP RPGs and eventually these new fangled computer thingies started having games on them, including dungeon exploration games like Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. It was interesting to see how things changed over time and eventually story and plot took center stage over combat, and then both were abandoned entirely for semi-interactive movies. It will be interesting to see if the genre can be revived from its long death. New Vegas is the epitome of rpg in a video game form. Not only it is heavy on roleplay it's full of rpg elements. Presentation (open world FPS) is irrelevent weather agame is an rpg or not, since it's a video game and there is no default way to present things (like in pnp is always people around a table). It has a very basic skill system and there are maybe...20 people to interact with beyond selling loot. You might as well argue that diablo 3 is an rpg. If you like the game that is fine, but it is missing a lot of what I consider to be essential to an RPG, and a lot of rpg-like elements that make a token appearance without much depth.

I agree, what you're doing isn't cheesy at all- its perfectly sensible to drop AoEs on unengaged (if that even matters in PoE) enemies. But I think most of the problems with the bigger/badder encounters is encounter design and layout, and of course the AI. If you can just walk up to the big bad and drop a couple nukes on their heads- the encounter has been designed poorly. Put some guards and/or traps first so you can't just waltz in and bomb the majority of the encounter. [Note here: just artificially inflating the boss as a bullet sponge for damage is also really bad design. For example, taking that screenshot, if two of those guys were by the doorway (and inside or outside makes a huge difference), 1 by each pillar and the other two by the machine, the whole thing would flow very differently indeed. As it is, dropping a couple AoE's on their head is the logical and obvious solution to the problem, which is crappy encounter design.

What? This is elementary school stuff.

Um.... New Vegas is an open world FPS with very limited RPG elements. It is a completely different genre. Myself I started with PnP RPGs and eventually these new fangled computer thingies started having games on them, including dungeon exploration games like Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. It was interesting to see how things changed over time and eventually story and plot took center stage over combat, and then both were abandoned entirely for semi-interactive movies. It will be interesting to see if the genre can be revived from its long death.

Ah. We're back to 'don't use successful tactics because winning is for bad people' again.

I see. In that case, PoE already has a "respec" feature. Don't like your Wizard? that's fine, get rid of him and hire a Chanter of the exact same level the next time you're at an Inn. I'm not sure that works for PoE. Pretty sure there are stupid Chosen One shenanigans going on and you can't replace your main character.

Well, two things, there. Bioware did promise (originally) to create a fantasy setting the likes of which no one had ever seen before.... but failed miserably. Generic fantasy stock plus a not particularly veiled christian church. As for warhammer [fantasy] territory... only so much as both settings are painfully generic.* With a couple exceptions (largely, the chaos gods) everything in warhammer was public domain or historical expies. Or properly nicked, like Skaven (more or less everything but the name) from Fritz Lieber. *Or rather were, since the Warhammer Fantasy World is officially all blowed up, as of... last week It is actually interesting if you dig into the rationale behind it (or at least Ed Greenwood's rationale behind it, which gets fuzzy as time goes own and other people stick their oars into the writing process), because Ed actually explores this in a couple places. The setting goes absolutely bug**** when the big name mages act, everyone in the same region starts pulling out all the stops and wide scale destructive conflict rains down on everyone, more or less indiscriminately. It's all very 1980s nuclear deterrence, but well, personified in a handful of ridiculously powerful people. So everyone (that matters, which is to say, spellcasters) sticks to lower level agents, because the resulting scale of destruction is an order of magnitude less.

A truly frightening thought.

none of the races suck so much that you shouldn't pick it for roleplaying reasons. Disagree. I'd happily set most of the races in this game on fire and start over. For being ugly, mechanically terrible or just boring. And I'd start with the godlike, for violating all three. For a first character, I'm leaning toward Island Aumaua Rogue, Raider from Deadfire. Strong, Smart and Loaded with Guns, because resting is for chumps. Seriously, I hate per day abilities. I may choose companions just to avoid them entirely, partly just to see what that does to the feel of the game, even if that means allowing the ranger (read that in the same tone most people say leper) to exist in my presence. Plus then I can rag on Eder and Pelle for not being tough enough to push on in the front.

In order: how is length related? how does purity lead to cookie cutter internet builds (which are about as far from pure as i can imagine) [bonus question: so what if it does?] Lore: Go on, then. Throw down a lore based rebuild-your-character-from-scratch-for-reasons and then also give a reason why it could only happen once. Though when you get right down to it bugs, bug-fixing and the active (and accidental) obfuscation of mechanics (which a lot of players aren't going to penetrate or understand if they do) is a decent real-world reason for it.

Well, conceptually, its about being tough enough and conditioned for the armor. The change to the lower DR armors is to remove the penalty for even thinking about armor, which I find pretty strange. If you want to encourage a variety of strategies and builds, you don't put a penalty on the minimums. As to the difference with dex- quite a bit. Dex modifies the action animation, while the armor penalty affects the recovery animation. Totally different timers. As for the armor type issue. Eh. Part of it is presumably 'realism,' but what it mostly comes down to is exploiting the inventory system, switching armors out that best fit the enemies you've just spotted. Aside from gaming the system, I don't see a lot of benefit.

Is it though? At this point I doubt it very much, since multiple videos have showcased Josh sleepwalking (and not using abilities) through 'Hard' mode with completely indifferent character builds. While keeping most of his attention on talking to an audience.

I expect the guides to either not cover it or be hilariously wrong. Printing requirements + code revision up to day 0 patch = not in sync.

The opposite. Having context and description is amazing and vastly superior than listening to a voice actor drone on for several minutes after I finished reading the same thing for myself. Full voice is an (expensive) ship that sailed to the overwhelming detriment to games. The detail and description isn't kept in modern games (in either animation, cut scenes or full voice acting)... instead it has simply been abandoned, leaving a lot of what is going on left lacking any sort of coherence or direction. Which makes them feel either trivial or horrendously dumbed down for an illiterate audience.

lol. I think you've pretty much conceded with this statement. By saying you can build a better archer archetype with something else and in 80% of cases you absolutely have to? No, that is the exact opposite of a concession. It is me pointing out that your position is 99% completely untenable. The ranger archer is one minor option amongst many (for a single character) in BG2, and completely non-existant in BG1, IWD, IWD2 and Torment. I have no idea in the world how you extract the idea that you are correct out of those facts. Next you're going to tell me that since I spent a two week vacation in Japan, I've spent most of my life there.