Blarghagh

The reasoning given is that the waking God nom-nommed your soul leaving you permanently level drained.

As someone who studied at a game school, I can agree with Tig that going to a game school isn't a great idea.

Didn't Josh say in a QA that the power of Eothas restored the statue?

That may have been a factor. Multiclassing gives your party access to EVEN more abilities and your encounters need to account for everything a party can throw at while still working with all the problems I mentioned before. Less characters means less abilities on the field. I don't think it's THE reason but it definitely affects it. Sorry if I get ninja'd or repeat stuff or make lots if typos, I type extremely slowly on my phone.

When they don't enjoy their work yes. People who are genuinely enthusiastic about what they do don't have this, in fact they often suffer from the opposite problem. No, he's absolutely right. No conspiracy about it. This simplifies the amount of work hours and effort to make a good encounter. Since dev time and money are limited, the easier you make it to create a good encounter the more good encounters you can make. That is exactly the call someone passionate about making games would make. Like I explained to Lanyon, there's a host of problems (readability, pacing, screen real-estate, ability pool and micromanagement) which made it hard to balance a good encounter with 6 in PoE leading to more trash, visual bloat, lack of clarity etc. - after all, an interesting encounter needs to account for everything gour party can throw at it. Moving to 5 mitigates these problems, making it easier to design a good encounter in PoE 2. You have a budget for encounters (time and money): The less budget you use per single encounter means the more encounters you make. Also, what makes you think passionate people don't seek efficiency? Why would a painter seek to get better at painting if not to make better paintings more quickly? I'm a 3D artist by training, 90% of what I do is to accomplish a goal more easily.

Carrie Patel wrote my favourite bits and LLaney drew them, so I'm happy.

I don't think they're "copying" more from IWD and PS:T by choice so much as Obsidian just consists of more old Black Isle devs who worked on IWD and PS:T. The same design styles and philosophies come into the forefront more. I do agree, though. I think all IE games have strengths and flaws and BG2 is no exception, but I'm hoping to see more aspects of BG2 in PoE2. Specifically the amount of companion interaction and interjection, the massive scope, and variety of different and exotic locales, (side)quests, encounters and monsters. Firkraag, the Sahuagin city, the Unseeing Eye and the Planar Sphere may have had diddly to do with the plot but they were damn awesome.

My moderatorly appendages don't reach into this particular subforum but I've passed the request on.

Cartoon night last night had Moana and Storks. Moana was good but pretty by the numbers, with the only standout moment being a random encounter with a giant crab/lobster thing that sang a Bowie-esque song about bling. Storks was only funny in a "what the hell is wrong with these filmmakers" kind of way. A massive pack of wolves acting like a transformer and turning into suspension bridges and submarines was honestly not something I ever expected to see.

But Irenicus is such a pain in the ass if you don't have Keldorn + Carsomyr to one shot him for you.

I don't think you quite understand the definition of the word 'nostalgia'. According to OED, nostalgia is defined as "a sentinmental longing or wistful affection for a period of the past". So yes, actually, nostalgia does disappear if you touch something again later and it's still everything you liked about it originally. Nostalgia would be if someone were to harp on about the merits of BG2 compared to PoE without ever having played BG2 again since about 2005 or something. Nostalgia does not apply to anyone that has played the game nearly once a year, every year, since its release, because there has been no time lapse required to develop a longing or wistfulness for "a period of the past". As for 'convenient handwaving', you're doing exactly what you're accusing me of... except in the opposite direction. You say I'm conveniently handwaving everything you said regarding the difference between tabletop and game design, and yet you are conveniently handwaving what I said about their similarities. However, I'm going to 'conveniently handwave' most of the rest of your reply (i.e. "BG1 and 2 actually had way more boring trash than PoE") because I simply flat out disagree. And you may say that my arguments don't prove quality, but your arguments don't refute it, either. You say a bunch of my arguments 'pander to the lowest common denominator' and then list a bunch of things that only excel or are noteworthy about a single aspect of the many I listed with regard to BG2/IE, wherein the reality is that the quality is evident in the fact that it hit ALL those aspects on the head. And yes, I do know what opinions are, and everyone's entitled to them, including me. And IMHO, Obsidian is taking PoE2 down a path that diverges too far from the 'spiritual predecessor' that the franchise was supposed to honour. We could keep arguing forever. - About nostalgia: That sentimental and wishful longing isn't removed by playing because the game isn't what you're longing for, the period of your past (as per your definition) in which you played it is. The game is only the conduit and it strengthens nostalgia. It's the whole "it makes me feel like a kid again" thing. - Or handwaving: I handwaved NONE of your points about the similarities between tabletop and video games because you made none other than "you could make encounter design work" which I've adressed in detail. - Or why BG 2's popularity does or doesn't show quality. I specifically pointed out myself that I wasn't trying to prove BG 2 was bad, so you saying I didn't doesn't really change anything. Again, I like BG 2 just fine, just that popularity isn't the same as quality. Neither your or my arguments about BG 2's popularity say anything about BG 2's quality. But all of that is missing the point. Let's just assume you won those arguments if it makes you feel better, they're still of no consequence to what we're actually talking about. What interests me is that you even take the time to say you're handwaving my opinion about BG 2 having lots of filler, yet you continue to completely ignore and don't even mention the parts that are actually about party size! Again, you're totally free to argue why a party of 6 is better but as of yet, you STILL haven't done that. Your points have been that the devs of PoE could have made it work with 6 because it worked for BG 2. Again, because you seem to keep missing it, but I've conceded this already several times. But again, those arguments only claim that they could make it work, not why they should. Yes, again, it worked completely fine in BG 2. I've conceded this. But again, PoE 2 is not BG 2. The differences between BG 2 and PoE, especially the ability and character progression design, require a different approach. So again, as long as those things are different then what worked for BG 2 is not neccesarily going to work the same way for PoE 2. And AGAIN, yes, it totally could be possible for them to work hard on their encounter design and work hard on fixing all the other problems PoE currently has, which made them have to resort to workarounds such as padding several encounters with trash, to make a team of 6 work. Those other problems such as pacing, visual bloat, readability, screen-real estate, engine limitations and pathing that currently make 6 not the ideal party size for PoE 2. But again, as of right now, because of time and budget, it's more beneficial and economical for PoE 2 not to do so because moving to a team of 5 and adding subclasses already mitigates or removes those problems while still allowing for the same or more strategic depth and player choices in PoE 2 as they had in PoE 1. There's no downside, This allows them to use their time and budget to make a bigger game with more content instead of wasting time hammering away at everything to MAKE 6 work. You seem to interpret this as an attack upon BG 2, but it's not. A party of 6 not being the right design decision for PoE 2 doesn't mean it wasn't the right party size for BG 2. 5 being the right decision for PoE 2 doesn't mean BG 2 was bad for having 6. Okay, you think it moves too far away from being a spiritual successor. That's perfectly fine. I'm not sure why team size is that important to the IE games, but if you think so, that's fine. But I'm going to heavily disagree with you that "it worked for those games so it's how it's supposed to work, it doesn't feel like the IE games with 5" is a good enough reason to not make a simple design decision that looks like it will ultimately be beneficial for this game.

I don't have time to respond to everything you wrote and i have no desire to write a novella, but I'll respond to a couple things that stuck out. First, your statement that a tabletop game isn't comparable to a cRPG is flat out false. Just because you don't feel like the comparison is valid, does not automatically make it so. My personal opinion on the matter still stands: even in the cRPG medium, encounter design can be tailored to rectify pretty much all of the "issues" that have been quoted as the reasons for reducing the party size from 6 to 5. Just look at the IE games... there are no shortage of encounters where a bunch of trash mobs weren't required to make a challenging encounter (i.e. dragon fights, demilich, Irenicus, to name a few). Maybe I'm alone in this, but I'm getting tired of 'micromanaging' being brought up as a NEGATIVE all the time and used as justification to introduce simplification in games where there's already much too rampant oversimplification already (look no further than The Elder Scrolls franchise). I actually happen to LIKE micromanaging. I loved combat in the IE games and still do. Given the choice between another playthrough of BG2 or PoE, I would choose BG2 any day. Which leads me to comment on the statement: What better content? I liked PoE, don't get me wrong, but an actually worthy successor to BG2? I think not (in my opinion). BG2 is the superior game, by far. After all this time and getting back to the genre, there were high hopes that Deadfire would be to PoE what BG2/ToB was to BG/ToTSC. Personally, for my own taste in games, I don't see that happening now because they're departing too far from the formula that won them their initial KS success in the first place, by appealing to fans of the IE games. Last but not least, I have to comment on the 'nostalgia and memory' comment. It's a tired, old argument and it needs to stop. I've heard it way too often when attempting to discuss the merits of the IE titles compared to what's on offer today. The thing with nostalgia and rose-coloured-glasses is that they don't stand up to modern/recent exposure. Nostalgia is when someone claims 'those were the good old days' without being able to remember the flaws and negatives of the thing. This isn't at play, though (for me, anyway) since I still play the IE titles all the time. There's no 'nostalgia' when I can say, unequivocally, that I'll be playing through BG2 again in the next few months for probably about the dozenth time in my life, if not more than that. BG2 set the bar high, and it hasn't been met yet. I was hoping Deadfire would aspire to. But, for me, it never will because of these fundamental changes to the gameplay mechanics. Nostalgia doesn't disappear if you touch something again later. Regardless, when I said better product I didn't mean "better product than BG2", although why you'd take such a sentiment so personally is a mystery to me. I simply meant a better product than it would be with 6. By pointing out so many things that worked for BG and the Infinity Engine games that didn't work for PoE, you pretty much make my point for me that those things won't neccesarily work for the sequel. For the record, I like BG2 just fine for what it is and I'm halfway through a Wild Mage comedy playthrough with my buddies Minsc and Jan Jansen right now, but I also don't think it's a pinnacle of gaming. You conveniently handwave everything I said without any real counter argument regarding the difference between tabletop and game design, but that still doesn't make you right. A tabletop game still doesn't have to account for screen real estate, visual bloat, readability, UI size, pacing, as well as budget and resource allocation during development etc. - since you like to boast "I know, I'm a DM" I'm going to counter that with my "I know, I'm a game developer" experience to point out that a game dev is not going to have to infinite time to perfectly tune every encounter the way they want it. Budget (of both time and money) will override a lot time-consuming design work. As I've already explained in depth, this change of party size is a much more economical change than rewriting the engine, pathing code, ability and engagement system and pretty much everything else so they can tune their encounters around 6 better. Especially because I still see no reason why 6 is better for PoE other than "well it totally worked for those games!" Using BG2 still as an example because you did, despite being a "spiritual successor" PoE has some very different requirements. The most important difference is that half the classes in BG had no real abilities to speak of and the others shared the same abilities. For the most part Monks, Fighters, Paladins, Rangers, Barbarians were set and forget, Clerics and Druids shared a lot of the same spells, and Mages, Sorcerors and Bards had access to exactly the same spells. Other than backstab and traps which were useless until ToB, thieves were practically a non-combat class with their strength lying in disarming traps, opening doors and picking pockets instead. In PoE, every single class has it's own list of unique and important skills and abilities with their own effects and strengths, not to mention all the other systems in place that affect combat, like the engagement mechanic and crafting, that BG2 doesn't have. There's so much going on that it's a LOT harder to keep track of, and you have to use your characters a lot more even in trash encounters. Despite being isometric RPGs with RtwP combat, their combat systems really aren't that similar. For the record, BG1 and 2 actually had waaaay more boring trash than PoE. IN BG1 you're cutting down scores of Hobgoblins pretty much the second you're on the road, and anyone who thinks BG2 didn't have trash fights where you were up against hordes of disposable, boring enemies clearly never played enough of it to hear the phrase "you have been waylaid by enemies and must defend yourself". Your handful of examples are the exception rather than the rule, barring Irenicus, whose encounter holds a high place in the "most disappointing end boss" pantheon especially considering how cool he was before you fight him. Entire armies of orcs, sahuagin, drow, beholders and vampires get put to the sword in that game in fairly dull filler. The difference is that the trash isn't very involved - it doesn't take any effort because devs weren't focused on game balance and challenge. BG 2 is all about setting and companions and flavour and good ol' fantasy escapism. Half the fun in BG 2 is in creating character builds that completely break the game, like Kensai/mages or Ranger/clerics. PoE takes some cues from that, but the tactical side seems to take more cues from Icewind Dale and the story more cues from Planescape Torment's philosophical discussions on what life is worth, and it adds its own goals and designs like how it takes great pains to have all the classes be mostly balanced which BG 2 definitely was not (go ahead, pick Wizard Slayer and pretend you're not gimped from the start by a completely unviable and worthless kit). Being inspired by IE games doesn't mean having the same priorities as a single one, as clearly the IE games all had very different priorities and goals. See, even just a cursory look at the community behind the IE games provides ample evidence that this statement is just ridiculously uninformed. BG/BG2 were released almost 2 decades ago now, and they are STILL relevant today, played by tons of people, modded to hell and back, and then even after all that an enhanced edition of the Vanilla (unmodded) experience was released and sold exceptionally well. There may come a day when i eat crow, but personally I don't believe for a second that PoE will ever have the same following that BG and IE titles in general did, and STILL DO. BG2 was everything it's cracked up to be. Who cares, though? This isn't BG 2. This isn't TRYING to be BG 2. At most this is a sequel to a game that was, as a "spiritual (not literal) successor" to isometric RPGs and IE games, in part inspired by some of the things that were also in BG 2. It never advertised itself otherwise. What worked to make that game great was a combination of lots of things, but PoE isn't looking to carbon copy all the things BG 2 did and doing one thing different at all is going to upset that balance. Again, what worked for BG 2 isn't neccesarily going to work for another game. If you want to play BG 2 again because it's the best game ever or whatever, no one's stopping you. But you've got some very wonky expectations for PoE. For the record, while I like BG 2 just fine and this is not the argument I'm making, an argument could be made that all those things are true simply because it panders to the lowest common denominator. Skyrim is modded to hell and back, doesn't make it a good game. Avatar is the highest grossing movie of all time, doesn't mean it's the best movie. Final Fantasy VII isn't the best Final Fantasy, Majorah's Mask sucks, World of WarCraft has people paying good money every month to play it for over a decade but that doesn't make it anything more than a loot pinata simulator etc. etc. blah blah yadda yadda. Your arguments don't prove quality, just popularity. Yeah, lots of people keep going back to BG. So what? Big whoop. Lots of people also have some extra pounds because they keep going back to McDonalds.

Ah, dear BG1 lightning storms. Jaheira screaming in distress as Khalid gets one-shot by a random bolt from the Gods. Me laughing at the useless berk's misfortune. Good times, good times.

A tabletop game isn't comparable even if you insist otherwise - not just because party size and challenge rating aren't the same thing, and because party size restrictions aren't really a thing in tabletop, but because in game design the encounter design doesn't exist in a vacuum. A game has many other things to take into account, like pacing, visual bloat and readability (hugely numerous complaints about PoE encounters) to deal with. Just because it works for your DM campaign doesn't mean it works for game design: Because of the aforementioned visual bloat and readability problems, you're restricted in how many abilities you can add to your encounters. Lots of ability effects going off at the same. Those effects could be short or small, but then your player might not see them all. They're long and flashy? They bleed into each other. Encounters just turns it into mush, hard to keep up with and hideous to look at. Especially if you want to add any cool visuals to it - who wants their fireball to be a little pop? It might read well, but it's not cool. So instead of giving your encounters more abilities, you could make your encounters have more hitpoints and hit harder, but that's boring, makes fights longer but not really giving your players more meaningful choices. What you want is to make sure your party has to position itself strategically, but again because of visual reasons like that bloat, readability, resolution, UI size, screen real-estate etc. you're also restricted in your arena size. Most rooms in PoE take up the entire screen, so obstacles are minor and even if they weren't, the pathing issues would make it a nightmare. But you still have to, as I said, balance your encounters with the amount of players out in the field, because the sheer amount of active abilities in PoE means all characters in your party are going to be using abilities. Reducing the amount of abilities per character would remove a crapload of strategic choices per encounter from the player, and one major goal of PoE was to make sure no class was boring like an IE game fighter (set and forget), so that's a no-go as well. Options are getting incredibly reduced, aren't they? So in the end, to make sure most characters have something to do and it's still challenging while also keeping it readable, PoE ended up throwing in extra trash in most fights. They don't require a lot of micromanagement or screen real-estate but they do affect positioning and how many abilities the encounter is able to hold, after all. Raedric got some extra guards, trash encounters were larger because you can't really have two Xuarips pose a threat to anything to put it bluntly but you need some trash for flavour and lore reasons. And lo and behold, excessive trash and need for micromanaging (six players worth of abilities) every encounter ALSO become a numerous complaint about PoE. I mean it's all well and good to dump this all on the encounter design not being good enough, but no offense, game designers have much more to deal with to make something work than a random DM. As Josh himself stated, this choice was designed exactly to make it easier for them to create more interesting encounters with the limitations they currently have. Less bloat and trash, more readability and strategic choices. With the addition of multiclassing to make up for it so you can still cover all the roles you could before with less characters in your party, it solves or at least lessens a lot of issues. I mean, yes, they could pour all their energy and completely rewrite their engine and the way abilities work and everything else so they can fix those issues just so they can keep it at 6, but considering they can solve it more easily this way and concentrate and actually delivering more and better content, why would they? I'm not sure what's so magical about the number 6, other than "The IE games did it", in the first place. If your nostalgia and memory of a game hinges on a number, I'm not sure what will make you happy, tbh. It's a balancing act, and right now it's more economical to use 5 for a better end product.

As much as this makes sense, I don't like super-long cast times (battle-speed in PoE1 was such that lengthy chants evocations (4-5) didn't get used much if at all as the battle was over already - summon drake to deal with the one ooze that's left). that's the kinda trade-off being proposed though, yes? is more powerful, but takes longer, so why would you use your tactical nuke to deal with the single ooze? with per encounter, your are less likely to have exhausted all of your useful solitary ooze killing spells during your previous two encounters. You wouldn't use it on a single ooze - is my point (added emphasis to 'that's left' above for clarification). At the start of battle there were a number of enemies more dangerous that would make that summon useful - by the time it became available, it was useless (except when facing the uber-dragons who could last that long.) If it takes too long to cast a spell, that spell almost never gets used. I can understand that from a purely balance perspective - but not from a fun/variety perspective Not that I think uber-nukes should be available for every encounter either - it's a balancing act. Of course it depends on how long is 'long' - may be they hit the sweet spot that I think is perfect, maybe not. It's why I like my idea of being able to defend the caster at the expense of attacking - it'd be a tactical decision 'wail on an enemy physically and cast faster spells' or 'defend the caster for a while and wait for a big boom' I agree with you. This cooldown system has some issues, though currently the vancian system does too. But also, ideally there should be something preventing you from using your nukes on a random pair of trash xuarips, I just think the Vancian system's a pretty poor way to do that. Ask yourself, are you being encouraged me to ration your spells for encounters because it's interesting or rewarding? Or are you simply being discouraged from using spells because what you have to do to replenish them is inconvenient and boring as sin? Any mechanic that can easily be worked around if you're willing to be bored or inconvenienced for a bit (slogging back to an inn or paying for more camping supplies) isn't a very meaningful mechanic, IMO. Judging by judicious use of rest-spamming in IE games and even PoE (like I said, it's only a slight inconvenience) not a very immersive one either. Seems to me the Vancian system is currently failing to reach its intended goals on all accounts. Something that might work is like the health/endurance split. Per encounter spells combined with per rest magic points. Higher level spells cost more points, running out doesn't stop you from casting but causes some kind of fatigue (like injury except for using too many spells instead of taking too much damage) that makes you much weaker. Still managing your resources, keeping the rest mechanic, and not using nukes on goblins, but also no reason to sleep between every fight because you used up your daily alloted usage of Slicken and your mage isn't completely useless when you've used up his spells. Possibly combined with some kind of soft cooldown on resting, something that gets removed in case of injury or fatigue but otherwise a perfectly healthy party can't sleep for 8 hours 20 minutes after they slept for 8 hours. I dunno, just spitballing right now.

4. Less trash and more readable and tactical encounters - most fights in PoE (and the IE games too) ended up having extra trash to deal with the amount of characters you were bringing and how many abilities they have. 5. Redundancy: With multiclassing returning, characters have an easier time assuming multiple roles. That's ridiculous. First of all, that's not what's happening. With six, you're going to get encounters padded with more trash to balance out the amount of players you put out on the field. You have enough characters to deal with any meaningful thing the enemy throws at you unless they give the enemies an impossible amount of skills too. That's the aspect that's currently broken with six, and the aspect they're trying to fix. Second, none of these "aspects" exist in a vacuum. A change in one aspect is going to affect the other. A game needs to have many systems working in tandem. You say you don't want change for the sake of change, but what you're saying is more like staying the same for the sake of staying the same. Once again I have trouble understanding some objections. How is six characters more tactical? I feel like five + multiclassing is plenty to cover all your bases and experiment, while leaving you with more meaningful choices. In PoE you can have a dedicated tank, a DPS-offtank, straight DPS, DPS caster, support caster and debuff caster in one team. You literally don't have to choose anything. You can cover every single possible weakness twice over. Less room for each role makes you have to make more tough tactical choices, not less. You can multiclass into those things, but you're not going to be able to cover all your bases as well with people entirely dedicated to it, meaning you'll have more a challenging and interesting experience where you have to make more choices that actually matter.

Isn't that the intended trade-off? Access to two sets of skills on one character compared to being better with one set of skills on the other. For example: If the fighter/mage doesn't lose out on deflection compared to a pure fighter of the same levels, then the fighter/mage casting stoneskin before the fight is always going to be the better option for tanking, isn't it? Either multi-classes need to sacrifice something for their versatility, or they make pure classes obsolete. But then, I still don't see the need for perfectly balanced power levels in a single player game. Again, viable is good enough for me, I don't need optimal. My balance concerns are "can I make my way through the game with it", not "can I make my way through the game with it easier than anyone else". The only one forcing you to pick the optimal path instead of the path that seems more interesting is you. Especially in PoE, where the difficulty difference between classes seems to be "my Watcher is godlike" and "my Watcher is even more godlike".

Can you explain to me how it's strategic? I've never understood this claim. It seems to me that the choice you refer to as tedious is the only choice you're making. It's convenience rather tactical. You ration your magic because the game gives you mind-numbing boredom if you don't, not because rationing it gives you a tactical edge anywhere because in practice, resting before every encounter always gives you the tactical edge. It's a punishment mechanic, not a tactics mechanic.

Tumblr slang for aromantic/asexual. Everything's gotta have a cool tumblr nickname now, despite the fact it makes it look like a fad instead of something real and means tons of people will take it less seriously. I don't think the Watcher should be canon "aro ace" because there should be no canon watcher in the first place. It's a roleplaying game where you make your own character. Their worldview and development should be up to the player. A game with a set lead character established as such could be interesting, but not PoE.

Fair enough. I disagree, and I fail to see how your problem seperating viable from optimal should be anybody else's burden, but I'm sure more people feel that way and if it's enough, then Obs should act on it by balancing. Personally I feel like all classes should feel powerful, but it doesn't matter to me if one of them is more powerful than the other. Heck, half the time I gimp myself because I don't like minmaxing - I prefer to have a believable, balanced character than for example dumping int and having the "headcanon" of my character being an idiot because it's more optimal to play the class that way.

Well an equivelant to Bard/Red Dragon Disciple/Pale Master won't be possible I believe? Didn't they say max two classes? I'm not concerned about other people making crazy op builds. I've never been sure why in a single player game everything needs to be perfectly balanced. I don't care if one combo is optimal as long as the others are viable.

TBH I've never liked Vancian casting. It works in tabletop, but in game so far it's come down to spamming a sleep button. Oh no, Aloth ran out of spells again, better sleep in this dungeon surrounded by enemies even though it's the middle of the day. In all practicality it IS per encounter because you can just sleep between every fight, with a slight inconvenience - camping supplies/finding an inn is at most a bit irritating. It's not like dungeon enemies respawn, or at least I've never seen them do it. If I really need more spells I'll go through the irritating slog of retracing my steps, going to an inn, and finding my way back. The only thing encouraging to use less spells isn't strategy, it's annoyance.

Pretty much the only difference I remember is the sniveling guy who greets you at Gilded Vale asking if you've ever given birth to a Hollowborn.

Also dual-wielding scepters and a bunch more combos if I understood that correctly.

On the flipside, we've also had some completely insane "promancers" that felt like any companion you can't romance isn't a companion at all and claimed that to be realistic something HAS to include a bunch of romance and more importantly sex. Fair is fair, some of the BioWare fanbase is... rabid, to say the least, about romances.