Voss

@Emerwyn- Is the difficulty high, or are high damage weapons and DT mitigation talents merely mandatory? A high might rogue stacking sneak attack, reckless assault and blinding strike on an estoc or arquebus is going to sneer at 10 DT, but an average sword and board (or rather, hatchet and board) fighter is going to be frustrated beyond measure. I'm not sure I agree with this. The exceedingly temporary nature of buffs in PoE makes me very leery of them, at least for the spell/ability per rest model. Ciphers, naturally, can just go to town with whatever fits best for the fight at hand, and will be quickly ready for the next. I just watched a video where the commentator mentioned that the druid spell firebrand was 'OP' as he used it to kill a single spider, at which point it faded away because combat was over. I also facepalmed because it did roughly +5 damage over basic attacks from the rest of the party. That is.... really bad for burning resources to do it.

That... isn't how math works. The random number generator produces exactly 20 results, and AC in AD&D is (theoretically, though some people/games ignore this) capped at -10. Every bonus counts, and that extra bonus will always be there. I'm not sure why you're assuming the person with superior stats has just a +1 bonus (and not just to hit, but damage as well), but even so, if we're talking about two warriors for simplicity sake, the warrior with the better stats is the better warrior. Period. If they're in the same party, they're going to be roughly the same level and have access to roughly the same quality equipment. The one with superior stats always has a higher bonus, and thus... is better. In an ie game, opting for the NPCs with worse stats honestly makes no sense, and there are enough of them that you're honestly presented with same class characters that are objectively inferior to each other. For later game opponents, having just the bare minimum bonus (from class +weapon) simply isn't enough. In D&D particularly, sending meatshields against late game and non-trivial opponents without bonuses is a quick trip to the load screen. But regardless of which D&D edition you deal with, since the bonuses from str, class and item are additive and the RNG is capped, there is never a point where more bonuses become useless. Having an attack stat as high as possible is always better, and objectively so. Gauntlets and belts of giant strength are an oddity, with an odd duality that they're either absolutely required or a complete cheat. Frankly they are a game design issue, an admission by the game designer that the mundane classes can't compete at higher levels, and if the meat is going to be of any more use than pocket summons, they need to artificially boost their numbers. For BG, they're pretty much a metagame issue, not available for half the game, and you have to know exactly which trivial side character to poke so you can murder her and take 'em.

Part of the problem is the attribute system is really disfunctional when it comes to companions. The attributes really dictate how you run a character, which in some ways is really good for customizing your primary character- you can get it to perform exactly as you like (at a cost of the fairly high system mastery requirement- you absolutely must understand how the background math works). At the same time, it is really bad for companions. If the mage companion has a low might, there is nothing you can do to make him a good damage dealer, and you have to focus on support abilities instead. There simply isn't anyway around that, short of being able to assign attribute points when you recruit the companion. The attributes absolutely dictate play-style, and some classes really aren't functional if there is a mismatch. That is going to really frustrate players with no prior exposure to the system. And it's going to double down if the classes don't do what they expect them to do (as D&D re-skins). The knee jerk reaction of many players is going to be that the class (or even the game as a whole) is junk.

This is very true. Pre-made characters are almost always poorly built in these games. I'll hopefully find some way to customize the companion builds up to my standards, without taking away their "spirit" and keeping them the same class of course. I think it's more that developers aren't making games for min-maxers...and I approve. Eh... I dislike being punished for enjoying a companions story by making the companion worthless (looking at you, dwarven ranger), or being forced to take an irritating companion to unlock content. Or have a no-brainer companion that is an obvious choice to take every time (which is a big worry with PoE, for example, being able to tell Eder to piss off doesn't seem doable, unless you're min-maxing your character for a solo run, especially in the early game). If players (especially new ones) want to even try the game with certain classes, they're going to have to take the meatshield or have a very bad time.

This is very true. Pre-made characters are almost always poorly built in these games. I'll hopefully find some way to customize the companion builds up to my standards, without taking away their "spirit" and keeping them the same class of course. I think that is usually intended. We are talking about RPGs after all, and characters are supposed to be flawed just as real characters, rather than being super heroes. A min-maxed party of super beings can never be 'good' or 'righteous' in my book. I'd settle for effective, and often that is too much to ask. It certainly was for a huge chunk of the companions in BG, and since we're stuck with only 8 (and one or two in functionally broken classes), the bar needs to be a little higher. Granted PoE isn't coping with AD&D ability scores, which makes it a bit easier, since -9% damage for 15 might rather than 18 might isn't as non-functional as 15 strength vs 18/88 strength. Though I'll admit, good and righteous aren't qualities I look for in NPCs anyway. When I hear those words I start worrying that some donkey is going to start setting innocent people on fire.

Yes. On day 1 of BG release back in 1998. Clicking on 20 separate piles of gibberling trash loot was too troublesome to even bother. Were there scrolls? If no, then picking up a random assortment of crap gold and gems wasn't even worth the effort. Sorry, I don't understand this "It's too troublesome" to play the game thinking. You click on the loot and your guy walks up to it and a stash window opens, what is troublesome about this? Well, good. Because no one said anything about 'too troublesome to play the game.' Just that 40+ mouseclicks* to pick up the equivalent of trash wasn't worth the effort. Picking up one magic weapon would net you far more gold, and the games were frankly swimming in magic crap you could sell to idiots. *Minimum 40, unless you've got a fair amount of gems, and little or no inventory space on the character picking them up.

Yes. On day 1 of BG release back in 1998. Clicking on 20 separate piles of gibberling trash loot was too troublesome to even bother. Were there scrolls? If no, then picking up a random assortment of crap gold and gems wasn't even worth the effort.

A game developer being unable to effectively optimize characters for the game they work on isn't anything new or shocking, in fact it's quite common in computer games, P&P RPGs and tabletop wargames, to the point of being almost universal. Given Josh's performance in various PR videos (which I find pretty painful), I think the takeaway is not that everything is fine, but that hard difficulty isn't. It is notable that his answers are handwaving the math and dodging the real issues- the 15 points matters a lot more when you realize you're potentially quadrupling the amount of times you miss or crit, or even denying those possibilities altogether. (Something that doesn't happen in D&D, except on the very far end of messing the RNG when it comes to misses) Similarly, if you recognize the limitations of the AI and use basic positioning absolutely zero of those defensive mage spells matter. Ever and if you have screwed up, in the hurly-burly of combat it is quite possibly too late to even put those up in order to save the poor squishy.

Useful. Patch notes/changelog would also be useful

Or you could just go to the wikia or other fansite. I'm boggled by the idea that prima can still make money selling those things when they're 20 years out of touch.

If built that way, sure. But that is a pretty corner case (can he even hit 5 slots with the bg1 level cap?), and even so an longbow grandmaster with 18 dex is still just strictly better than an archer grandmaster with a 12 dex. Same with an 1st/2nd edition melee warrior without 18/xx strength. Without those bonuses, such a character isn't worth taking along, if you have a choice in the matter. The BG games were rife with NPCs that were just horribly built, both in terms of stats and proficiencies. (and available magic weapons.... poor Ajantis and the lack of decent bastard swords)

No it isn't. Its provably and trivially true that initial bonuses matter more. No one is arguing 'invincible,' just mathematically better. Take Minsc and Khalid from BG1. Minsc continually has... what... +2 to hit and +4 (or 5) damage over Khalid for the entire game. As they level, they might get one level apart due to the differences between fighter and ranger level progression, which is 1 point of THAC0. Minsc is literally always better from beginning to end. It is even easier to see if you take two characters of the same class, and much easier to see in 3rd edition due to mkaing the level progression uniform and making ability bonuses sane. Now granted there is the spellcaster vs. mundane useless idiot issue, but that is a completely different kettle of fish, marked by extraordinary levels of failure in basic game design.

I can't express how weird and unintuitive that is.

Actually, in most games, it is the complete opposite. Great stats allows the character to face-roll content, and poor stats are an optimal path to suicide. Rolled stats generally lead to problems regardless of format, unless they're deliberately tweaked to avoid sub-optimal (and hopefully godlike) results.

No, I caught onto the lack of actual argument, which was happily illustrated by pulling numbers from nether regions, rather than from the available evidence. Unsupported optimism because you 'suspect so' isn't persuasive.

why a hatchet particularly?

So true. I mean, if you create a new Ranger, and go to select some abilities, and see that Level 1 ability X now does 30 damage instead of 15, and that Class Talent Y is now twice as good, you have to assume the other 11 levels of Ranger-dom got no love whatsoever. Yes. Clearly nonsense numbers illustrate your point well, especially since many abilities are multipliers along the lines of 1.2. But sure, they're clearly going to add 15 points to a level 1 ability when the talent (Brutal Takedown) that modifies a level 7 ability (Takedown) did all of 20 damage at one point in the beta build. Your expectations are clearly reasonable and born of deep analysis. But if you seriously think rangers are so glaringly bad that they need actual doubling of their damage and effects to be worthwhile, clearly the game is in much worse shape than I thought. Even if they do manage to bring them up to snuff, I'd expect a much more nuanced approach.

I can only see this being a problem if you try to overlap the same auras or take a fairly opposed paladin order. I suppose there could be a limit on only a single aura affecting party members (though that seems odd to me), but the other paladin could focus on non-aura abilities instead. The real potential problem is what you are giving up instead, basically the opportunity cost of other class abilities in the party.

Ah. I misunderstood you, I thought you were saying the boss fight had a twist. That confused me a great deal. As for a post-apocalyptic army being shaped into an image of something historical by their leader, that... definitely isn't a twist. It is a cliche of the genre. Part of the point is rebuilding the new world in whichever shape the leader's convictions or insanities dictate to be 'best.' But you're pouting is cute, so go on. But yeah, looks new vegas didn't fit the open-world bs. Bethesda's will though. I... don't understand. NV was entirely open-world BS. It was the main reason I found it so empty and pointless.

It raises some questions regard exploitation of companions (proper ones or otherwise), and various ways you can min-max the stronghold options. If the loot from bounties isn't particularly standout, saving it to the end to focus on upgrades that matter more is a pretty big deal. On the other hand, if they give big rewards, move over dungeons, as major items early as possible can severely change the course of an RPG. But particularly it makes me wonder about XP and leveling. We're told excessive companions can be there for stronghold companions, but if they don't level with the adventuring party, that seems pretty useless. On the other hand, if they do, there is room for all sorts of exploitation.

Great? That seemed rather obvious from the constant stream of praise in the thread. But you still haven't explained what the supposed 'twist' was or what filled that big empty area.

What twist? It just had numbers (most especially DR) turned up to 11. Pure bullet-sponge boringness, even for a terrible concept in general (boss fights as a concept) it was a nadir-depths implementation. As for a big draw... no, definitely not, it was a turn off. But what I meant by empty is I never found a big draw... just trivial errands for cardboard cutout people playing dress-up. As for a Roman mold... not really. They sprinkled some names and titles about, but the Legion was a pretty typical mindless raider-rapist band from insert <post-apocalyptic> title here.

It does seem odd that three melee dps classes have been dumped (as a group) as companions. Really limits party composition if you want to experiment with different things while keeping the (at least theoretical) depth of fleshed out companions.

You seem to be operating under the assumption that one simply must assume either that the class will go completely unimproved between the last beta build (what... almost a month ago, now?) and release (and simply never even bother to check that class when the game releases), OR that the class will definitely be perfect (and plan to definitely play THAT class without even checking out any others or forming any contingencies). There's a third option, called "take 10 seconds to see if the class is actually better, lest you avoid it for no reason at all." But, maybe that's just crazy talk... *shrug* It is crazy talk, because it isn't possible. The character creation screens clearly don't break down the mechanics of the classes, let alone over twelve levels, so 'checking for viability' isn't something you can do at a glance... or in 10 seconds. The summaries and limited explanation you get during character creation are going to frustrate a lot of people when they get into the game and discover they've chosen a dud (or in a couple cases, the easy mode classes, depending on individual views of the benefits of hard/easy games), for many it isn't going to be apparent for a few levels, and then they get the joy of dumping their starting character and starting over. And no, unimproved or perfect aren't the options. There are playable classes and extremely bad classes, of which, sadly the ranger is only one (though easily the worst).

But you do have to worry about being killed over and over again by encounters you can't handle because the class design is terrible. I'm not sure where 'raid guilds' enter into anything. Terrible game design is quite feasible (and evident) in single player games.