Emptiness

The development team had a choice of devoting a lot of resources to making a party AI that would have been really bad (due to limitations of modern computing) and not being able to devote those resources to the game itself (resulting in less content or the same amount of content with less quality), or skipping party AI and bringing us the game that we have now. I think they made the right choice, because the niche of the game is "active entertainment", meaning that you participate in what is happening. The more decisions the game makes for you, and by extension the more automation of gameplay that takes place, the less well the game fits into its intended niche. The development team has tried to make this game appeal to as wide an audience as possible, but adding a variety of optional features to suit many different playstyles and preferences, but ultimately, nothing will satisfy everyone. A player who finds themself unhappy about all of the decisions they are constantly having to make ("micromanagement") simply hasn't selected the type of entertainment that they are craving. There is plenty of "passive entertainment" out there waiting to be enjoyed. Time spent complaining that this game isn't passive enough is time that could have been spent enjoying entertainment that was meant to be passive.

This forum really needs a way to "dislike" posts.

The flashback doesn't trigger as soon as you talk to them. You have to choose a dialog option to trigger it.

It isn't adding different amounts of Shock damage reduction to different characters. It is adding +3 Shock DR to characters who have different amounts of Shock DR from other sources (most likely just from their armor). In your case, without the boots, your barbarian has 9, Eder has none, Kana has 11, Durance has 5, Grieving Mother has 8 and Aloth has 8. The confusion arises because armor lists DR as a general number, and then after it lists any exceptions (damage types that the armor has a different amount of DR against). So, for example, if your armor has a base DR of 5 and no exceptions it will only say "DR 5". If you then equip an item with +3 Shock DR your character sheet will then show "DR 5 Shock DR 8" - which will make it look like Shock DR just jumped by 8 unless you understand that you already had 5 Shock DR even though it didn't explicitly say it. This is why I say that DR should just be listed explicitly for each type, rather than the current method of base + exceptions - the current method is easily misunderstood because it is not intuitive.

This is what you get for flaunting your hats before the gods!

I'm pretty sure this system does not lend itself to dual- or multi-classing. Not that it is impossible; they could do it, but the system wasn't designed for that from the start, and adding it in would highlight that fact unpleasantly. Whatever notion of class balance exists now would pretty much fly out the window. Of course, it's a single-player game so in one sense class balance doesn't really matter. You won't be playing the game with your single class character getting stomped by four-class supercheese players. So it wouldn't really hurt anyone. Except the developers, of course, who would have to do a bunch of work to implement it and then listen to the forum erupt into endless debates about why all the classes aren't as effective as some specific multiclass build. If they do add multiclassing, though, I would definitely use it.

Do you have the Barracks built? Have you hired 8 hirelings to guard your keep? I don't know for sure, but I'm betting those are very important parts of not having prisoners escape.

Putting a 5 into Int isn't "not investing in Int", it is "dumping Int". You can put a 10 Int on your Barbarian and still have a decent area and duration for your abilities. Those 5 points you are trying to scrounge out of Int are going somewhere else, so it isn't like you're forced to have a smaller duration and area of effect with no return. If you aren't finding that tradeoff to be worthwhile, then try putting the points back in Int.

There's nothing special about even attribute numbers in PoE. Each point provides an increase to those things that are influenced by the attribute.

Which achievements disappeared? What type of computer are you on? What OS? Which version of the game do you have installed? Can you provide a screenshot of the message you're seeing in Steam?

Normally they should stack. Are you sure that you don't have another item that has +Int on it? If you click on your Int score on your character sheet it should show you everything that is affecting your Int.

I'm unclear on how you're okay with characters having all 20's but are wary of 50 more health. That's what crosses the threshold of your tolerance level for cheating? Without more information it is hard to know what is causing the problem. Check under Active Effects and see if maybe some of the characters have an effect that the others do not. There is a potion, and I think also a spell, iirc, that will raise your health by 50 for a while. Aside from that, maybe you made an error when modifying the characters, or maybe the method you used to modify them broke your characters or the save itself (causing the game to miscalculate their health). If you're using a mod you might want to check with whoever made the mod; they might have some insight into the situation.

Looking at your saved game, everything looks fine: You appear to have gotten the Int bonus for your culture, and I don't see any missing attribute points. (4 in Con, -7 in Dex, 6 in Per, 5 in Int, 7 in Res = 15, +1 Int for culture, +1 Dex and +1 Per for race.)

Check your character sheet to make sure that: A) It actually indicates that Old Vailia is your culture, rather than something else, and that B) It doesn't show the bonus to your Int if you click on your character's Intelligence score. You can also try creating a new character and then assigning all of your attributes to be 10. Then, when you get to the culture selection step, look at the attributes shown at the top of the screen and look as they change based on what you select. What happens when you click Old Vailia?

Hearth Orlan Kind Wayfarer Paladin 10/8/10/21/10/19 Fighting with a single dagger for the accuracy, for the higher chance to hit and crit. Currently level 4, leads the party in crits and damage (Aloth has more hits because AoE). Not as tough as Eder, but not too far off thanks to plate armor + slash/pierce DR belt.

Yeah, there is one particular Lich that is super easy to beat if you just go back and forth between his crypt and the area outside it, timing each exit to happen when he starts casting a spell. His protections wear off and he runs out of spells and then he's about as dangerous as a peasant without a weapon.

If you are fighting the enemy in a chokepoint, then the enemy is also fighting you in a chokepoint. In other words, if you choose to use this strategy then the AI is also using it, and if the AI were programmed to use this strategy then you would also be using it. I do agree that a more advanced AI would be a wonderful improvement to these sorts of games, but there's always going to be a limitation to it that the human mind can exploit for advantage, at least with the computer hardware we are using to run games currently. If you program the AI to fall back from chokepoints then someone is going to come up with a strategy that pelts the AI from range while toggling the arrangement of the front line to make the AI think that the path to the ranged attackers is alternatively blocked and open (resulting in the AI rushing forward and falling back in cycles, but never actually engaging or attacking) - or something else similar to that. The AI's strategy is locked in, but the player is free to adapt to it and the player will do exactly that no matter how the AI is programmed.

Now I regret responding to your other "I hate monks" threads, because now I understand that they were just "I hate monks" threads.

Vulnerable Attack is very important for a Monk. It is hard to say exactly where the break-even point for Vulnerable Attack is, because there's more to it than just how much damage your attack does. There's also the question of enemy damage reduction. The simplest situation that demonstrates this is when fighting an enemy with no damage reduction: obviously Vulnerable Attack is lowering your dps against this foe no matter how much or little damage your attacks are doing. Take the other extreme: if your enemy has 30+ damage reduction and your attacks hit for about 25 damage each then you'll be doing minimum damage with Vulnerable Attack on or off...and you're better off without it. As it happens, however, most of the enemies in the game have damage reduction that falls between those two extremes. Having Vulnerable Attack on versus those foes is going to increase your dps; the faster your attack rate is the more of an increase it will be. My suggestion would be to take Peasant weapon class first (higher accuracy translates to fewer misses and more hits and crits), then Vulnerable Attack, and then get Lightning Strikes later if you want. (The damage from Lightning Strikes is not as impressive as the 10% might lead you to believe, but more damage is always nice.) Edit: Also, remember that Vulnerable Attack is modal, so you can turn it off if you get into a fight where it is not helping.

Shouldn't one of the middle steps be "Magic happens."?

Yes, I want them to keep Mechanics. I would prefer is searching was based off of perception, or if it was at least shared with perception (ie you can spot whatever if either your perception or your mechanics is high enough).

Everyone now gets an "extra" weapon set with no weapons in it, unless they already have another empty weapons set. Maybe it is so players can simulate putting up their weapons outside of combat.

I never said that. Reread your OP. If you aren't asking for balance, then what did you make this thread for? Asking for more balance is fine, and maybe that's what you're doing; I'm just pointing out that there will always be imbalance. Its not one person i.e. myself. Tons of people are opting for those choices due to getting disappointed or anally raped. What race/class did you pick? Yes, Ciphers are in the lead, but Rogues are in second place. Humans are leading the race selection by a healthy margin, with elves in second place. How does that mesh with your rankings? Not well. I know that's not a scientific poll and shouldn't be used to represent the entire community of Pillars players, but the same can be said of your own person race and class preferences.

Try playing zoomed in.

Balance is not the same thing as all things being equally to every single person's preferences. So while I agree that there are imbalances, I disagree with the idea that it is possible to remove them all, and also with the implication that because one person only uses a subset of the races and classes that there is a problem.