Noin

You'd be surprised but I didn't use a tank in my PotD playthrough. People tend to forget that PoE is not a MMO

The single player gameplay in Starcraft 2 is NOT the same as Starcraft, where you played each race in turn in missions you could create yourself in the editor, using the same reskinned interface for each race. Each Starcraft 2 campaign has it's own unique "out of battle" interface and gameplay, nor are you necessarily tied to playing as only one race. Did you know "Wings of Victory" included half a dozen Protoss missions? Considering Starcraft earns most of it's revenue through multiplayer, Blizzard put an awful lot of effort into their single player gameplay. Sure, Blizzard games are expensive, in the same way that my Volkswagen was expensive. You pay extra for a quality product. An Obsidian product may be cheaper, but you accept that you will have to contend with the bugs. It's Bethesda that offers poor value, their games are expensive buggy messes. About the quality: the comparison is incorrect. I would rather compare Obsidian to Blizzard games as Dr. Beats to Sennheiser or AKG headphones. Former are more expensive even though the quality is actually lower, what the person buying these headphones pay more for is the "feeling cool" and "mode". Unfortunately, in the gaming world price =/= quality. Beyond Earth is more expensive than Age of Wonders 3, but actually nowhere near in quality OR amount of content. Dwarf Fortress is actually free of charge, and is one of the most complicated and thought-through games ever created. I can list thousand more examples.

It is not like they released a new game, however. It's just modernizing it a bit, the amount of work is incomparable to creating a game like BG2 from a scratch. I'm sure both BG2EE and IWDEE were profitable compared to the amount of work they needed.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/pillars-of-eternity-getting-first-expansion-the-wh/1100-6428259/

I am playing PotD with a party of non min-maxed chars and it's not that hard. I don't even use Slicken :D

I believe the best way is DR and DT together, like it was in Fallout 1 and 2. This system allows for very varied armor types (Leather has DR but no DT, Mail has both but not as much, Plate has a lot of DT but not a lot of DR) and just easier to balance overall

If a dwarf dies in a cave and no one is around to witness it, is the combat mechanic flawed?

Game supports modding, although complex mods need paid version of Unity (because Unity 4.x's paid and free versions don't always have compatible files, if they upgrade to Unity 5 this hindrance would vanish) and their file structure isn't easiest to understand. They don't offer mod tools, because they don't have tools that they could offer, So...you can Mod the game, but there is no specific support for modding. This would explain why there aren't many mods for it (if any). For a CRPG, especially an Indie CRPG supporting mods improves the longevity and sales for the game. I would prefer if PoE went the direction of DA:O. And I assume we are talking about changing direction, because the eventual feedback after the hype of launch has not been 90% of purchasers are happy with the gameplay. As of today - there are 3,970 user reviews on Steam, and 91% are positive. That talks volumes. I want to cry now... Just to imagine such a game . I don't think we'll ever see something like this.

This would make sense if the game wasn't released to the public, but... It is. Surely, given a released product one can reasonably pass judgement on it -- understanding, of course, that others might disagree. If X has released products A, B, and C to widespread acclaim (and possibly to your own acclaim), and has now released product D that doesn't receive widespread acclaim (and/or your personal evaluation is that it is inferior), then it is flatly absurd to argue (as you seem to be arguing here) that "D must be as good as A, B, and C: the defect is in your perception of the product." I don't like the PoE mechanics for various reasons (far beyond "That's not the way it was in the Infinity Engine games"): those perceptions are valid regardless of whether or not Sawyer (or anyone else, for that matter) agrees with me. If enough people agree with me, then Sawyer will have to take these ideas into account or risk the financial success of his future products -- if more people agree with Sawyer than myself, then he will best receive success by ignoring my criticisms. "Past performance is not an indicator of future results", basically. I was answering to this: Yea so PoE was doomed to be worse by default I suppose...PoE is saddled with his ****ty version of D&D or w/e the hell crap mechanics he wants to call PoE. And I'd argue that creating a whole game system (DnD was being developed over the years and had feedback of thousands of players before the BG was even in the plans) with all the mechanics is a process which takes a lot of effort and can't be rushed. I believe that for the time of development and the size of the team, PoE mechanics are very solid and should simply be improved upon.

This is irrelevant -- the fundamental issue is that the Project Manager (Saywer) simply doesn't believe that the Baldur's Gate games (1 or 2) were very good, and believes that the IWD games are as good as they are despite being saddled with the AD&D ruleset (e.g. they would have been better had a different ruleset been followed). If this had been widely known during the Kickstarter, I suspect that it wouldn't have been as successful as it was. Yea so PoE was doomed to be worse by default I suppose...PoE is saddled with his ****ty version of D&D or w/e the hell crap mechanics he wants to call PoE. People are free to experiment. And the result of early experimentation is more often than not not particularly spectacular. I believe that if they take into account what was good about the game and what wasn't received that well they can improve it and build on it to be really fantastic. Most people forget that creating games is actually NOT EASY. Especially considering how small their team was. You know, I've seen a lot of games which, when I first read about them sounded absolutely amazing. Were was theoretically nothing wrong with them. In the end: deleted and forgotten very fast, they left nothing but a bad aftertaste on the tongue. Tarn Adams works on DW for how long... 9 years? And it's still alpha. So unless you created some fantastic games yourself, please do not be SO judgmental.

Actually, I have to agree with you or whomever the quote belongs: there is too much combat which feels like "filler". You can mostly feel that in Wilderness areas: there are enemies every five meters. I mean yes, the wilderness should be dangerous. But not filled up to the top with creatures which attack you on sight. BG and BG2 felt much more organic in this.

Making different shapeshifts feel different is actually a question of tweaking some numbers so it's not that difficult. For example, bear form: increase the DR, decrease the deflection and reflection, serious buff to HP, high damage but low accuracy, high Will defense. So, effective against units with low deflection but high HP, good tank but vulnerable to spells. And the Stag form - high deflection, reflex and accuracy, movement speed but lower damage, lower Fortitude and HP. Effective against mages and other low-DR enemies, but is not that effective against heavily armed melee fighters. Etc. So I'd say it'd be good if druids had an option to choose a second form, let's say on level 5? (because if the shape****s are buffed and they become viable it'll be boring to use the same form every single encounter as well!) But all in all I think the shapes should be worked on if only because they look really cool and it'd be a shame if no one really used them...

Have you heard the saying "Fight fire with fire" ? Maybe if you hit fire elementals with fire, it depletes all oxygen around them and they can't burn anymore ? I agree about oozes. It makes sense, they have no up and down. But spirits - how do you know how something as insubstantial as spirit "works" ? Besides, shadows in PoE are described as attracting matter to them as they grow stronger. They are partially substantial. I don't know about scrolls and potions, but they could make more use of their abilities. Currently enemies only have endurance, and outright die when you bring them down (I think). What if enemy paladins could use Reviving Exhortation on fallen allies ? What if they could use Deprive the Unworthy to cancel your buffs ? Players LOVE buffs. Trolls would technically count as stronger enemies, except they have pathetic Accuracy. Something like 35 on Normal/Hard for Forest variety I believe ? Also, they are not that tough next to the pwgra they hang around with. Those dudes have 15 DR on Normal/Hard ? Many interesting abilities already exist in the game, like disease and poison. The problem is they have too small effect on players. As a consequence, Neutralize Poison spell is next to useless. Mountain Dwarf special is next to useless. When I saw Disease Pudding, and earlier Swamp Slime, my first reaction was: "Uh oh! This is going to be nasty!". Not at all. Also, of all spiders in the game I think only Widowmakers have venom ? And it's not very dangerous. This is because making good arguments is often hard and takes effort. The part about poison is right, it is not dangerous at all because it has pathetic duration and damage. I'd say they should do damage over a long period of time so the player will want to cure it even if the battle is already won. Example: Widowmakers deal 15 damage per attack, not scary. But their poison deal 100 damage over 2 minutes and is stackable. That means that a mage with 300 Health will get hit three times by a spider and fail a check every time - he dies two minutes after the fight. Some people might say - you are mad! We don't want our NPC to die, we have to reload afterwards! Well, mates, I want me RPG to be hardcore, if I make a mistake I have to pay for it, otherwise the game is too simple for me to be fun. The same thing with deseases but they should be a graduate decrease of stats with rest being the only option to cure the effects and to restore the original stats. Also, I believe that every time being downed should result in a trauma of some sort, with small random malus. Curable only by sleep in an inn.

Theoretically it all sounds right. However, the implementation is so horrible that after spending two hours creating and leveling my char in SoZ (OMG! So many options!) I played for two more hours and gave up. All the theoretical coolness of multiclasses and thousands of perks don't matter if the game is just simply not fun.

In other words, you want the combat from Dragon Age 2 in PoE? That's... that's just... Nope, I don't have the words. I never played any DA after the first.. And i don't see anything wrong with the suggestions. Also, I'd like to see more enemies using stealth or invisibility... For example a group of Leaden Key assassins which are all rogues and use Shadowing Beyond repeatedly. Or groups of casters. I'd strongly recommend picking up DA2 and playing it -- as the previous poster pointed out, DA2 implemented many of your suggestions, most particularly enemies that spam abilities (especially invisibility and / or teleport), enemies who attack in waves, and enemies which spawn to the party rear. For me personally, the introduction of these mechanics in DA2 represents at least 50% of the reason that I don't own DA3. In my book, the only problems with the encounters in PoE is terrible foe AI and engagement. I don't have any hope that engagement is going to change at this point, but it at least possible that the foe AI might be improved in the expansion / PoE 2. You can't even play as a dwarf in this game. I will definitely not give my hard-earned money for this.