Atheosis

There isn't just one way to fix it. I think bounties are the biggest offenders. After that side quest xp probably needs nerfs (especially the ones that basically amount to talking to people and nothing more). Altering things so you have to have double your xp to level every time will actually make the cap unreachable based on the xp available in the game as it stands now.

Well this is true in shadow fights, Aloth and durance can get perma deathed pretty fast by these guys who are some of the more fun opponents. Other than them though there aren't too many fights you get forced out of position and to adapt are there?I'd say that sadly a lot of the other fights rest on your initial angle of attack, if the enemies all run towards Eder, it's already pretty much done. Let me think. Banshees (not bothering with their crazy in-game name) also teleport and have an aoe paralyze that is quite nasty. Mind control effects can be real trouble as well, though if they don't mind control your cipher you can flip it rather easily. AOE attacks can do quite a bit of damage to your whole party, especially the squishies. I've lost a few fights due to the insane raw damage of plague of insects (which seems to hit a lot harder than other enemy aoe attacks). I've figured out counters to most of these issues as I've played, and leveling gives protection spells against mind control and paralysis, so again it does seem to get easier as you level up. I do get what people are saying and I do think there's some validity to it, but again it wasn't until I got past level 9 that things became "easy", and that's on normal. Then again for me almost losing a fight or having one or two people drop feels challenging. I don't need to party wipe and reload to feel challenged, and I think that's what some people are looking for. I've probably only party wiped four or five times, and most of those were the result of being caught off guard by an attack that I didn't expect (plague of insects and the final boss in endless paths' aoe attacks account for pretty much all of them). Funnily enough you've basically named the things I mentioned, I include phantoms and banshees with shadows as they're often together on path at least. Insects comes from pwgra/ogre Druids mind control comes from spores. Theyre pretty much the main fights with a bit of challenge to them on path. You already only get 2 supplies on both I believe hard and definitely path. For me part of the fun is stocking up supplies at an inn, food potions, resting bonus etc. then going off on the quest to get it done before you come back, I just wish it was necessary but it really isn't. Sure you can return at any time but in lots of contexts such as raedrics hold that doesn't make any sense, I would say it's pretty cheesy to go back for supplies all the time, i have no problems with an attempt to stop you using all cool downs every fight and for me it's worked because I make sure I Don't. Got this from mods for BG where you can't rest in many places such as starting dungeon more than once and illithid lair for example (youre trying to escape you can't spend 3 days napping) I totally get that it feels a bit metagamey UT prefer it to nothing. Fampyrs too. I do feel that human spell casters need more stuff like confuse, paralysis, etc. They aren't very scary in PoE, and they were always scary back in the BG games. I also feel that most melee bruiser types need to hit harder. Adra Animats are big and tanky but their damage is piddly. Same goes for trolls and forest lurkers. Ogres are the only big bruiser enemies that feel like they hit appropriately hard (plus they have that aoe prone attack).

Lore is awesome. Scroll use on non spellcasters can be really handy.

I don't see the problem with estocs. I actually think great swords are better overall since two damage weapons tend to be better than DR reduction more often than not. That argument makes no sense. Great swords uses the best out of Slash/Piercing depending on the enemy's DR. Estocs have a Penetration of 5, and thus ignore 5 DR. This means that the difference between the Slashing DR and the Piercing DR of the enemy has to be greater than 5 in order for the Great Sword to be better than the Estoc, while the Estoc will always do 5 extra damage against anything that has 5 DR or more - which means practically everything. There are a lot of enemies where the gap between those two DR values is greater than 5.

I think changing the camping supply capacity depending on difficulty would actually be a really good way to up the challenge on higher difficulties. Make it 3 on hard and 2 on PotD.

Well this is true in shadow fights, Aloth and durance can get perma deathed pretty fast by these guys who are some of the more fun opponents. Other than them though there aren't too many fights you get forced out of position and to adapt are there? I'd say that sadly a lot of the other fights rest on your initial angle of attack, if the enemies all run towards Eder, it's already pretty much done. Let me think. Banshees (not bothering with their crazy in-game name) also teleport and have an aoe paralyze that is quite nasty. Mind control effects can be real trouble as well, though if they don't mind control your cipher you can flip it rather easily. AOE attacks can do quite a bit of damage to your whole party, especially the squishies. I've lost a few fights due to the insane raw damage of plague of insects (which seems to hit a lot harder than other enemy aoe attacks). I've figured out counters to most of these issues as I've played, and leveling gives protection spells against mind control and paralysis, so again it does seem to get easier as you level up. I do get what people are saying and I do think there's some validity to it, but again it wasn't until I got past level 9 that things became "easy", and that's on normal. Then again for me almost losing a fight or having one or two people drop feels challenging. I don't need to party wipe and reload to feel challenged, and I think that's what some people are looking for. I've probably only party wiped four or five times, and most of those were the result of being caught off guard by an attack that I didn't expect (plague of insects and the final boss in endless paths' aoe attacks account for pretty much all of them).

There are two reasons for this: 1) Happy people don´t come to forums that often and may not even thought about the game in analytical way, just played and enjoyed it. There is a good chance that they will never comment on the game beyond slapping a number in Metacritic or Steam for a recommendation. They have no motivation to participate in the discussion and thus they never will. 2) Positive feedback is often of low value. "Thanks for a great game" is almost as bad as "This game sucks rotten eggs!". A lot nicer, but lacking anything constructive nonetheless. 100% true, and I think it's worse with really good games with some clear flaws, because people are so invested in the game fulfilling their ideas of its "potential". I think that's what we are seeing with PoE. I was actually on the other side of it with Elite:Dangerous recently, though that game really is all unfulfilled potential while PoE just has balance issues mostly.

I don't see the problem with estocs. I actually think great swords are better overall since two damage weapons tend to be better than DR reduction more often than not.

I guess I'm just not as good as you guys because I have my squishier characters focused and taken down every once in a while (even when doing everything possible to keep them safe). What's funny is I beat the old IE games on higher difficulties so I don't feel like I suck at this kind of game, but apparently I do compared to you guys. The game has definitely gotten easier as I've progressed and that shouldn't happen, but still tend to feel like death instead of maiming would make it quite a bit more challenging for me (especially at higher difficulties), but I haven't tried it yet.

Game forums are ruled by negativity. It is known. Even with great games like PoE there will always be the malcontents who just have to come to the forums and rant about every real and perceived flaw in the game. I do see some of their points and think xp gain and some monster design is unbalanced (too easy), but the sheer negativity over such a great game is silly. Not surprising though. Every time I go to a game forum it looks like this.

Seems to generous if anything, and I'm not one of the "make it masochistically hard!" people on these forums.

Not really. Being forced to do tons of side content is oppressive game design. The better route is to scale back bounty xp rewards and possibly scale back xp rewards on minor (read easy) side quests and side quests that you have massively out-leveled. Forced to do tons of side content in order to beat critical path with low difficulties so that if you wanna rush it, it will be very hard. Actually, even doing only critical path, is too easy (i skipped WHOLE Caed Nua and WHOLE Twin Elms), I wonder how it is when doing also all side content. What difficulty are you playing on? And are you using death over maiming? I've been playing on normal and I definitely see the inverted difficulty curve (going to play hard next, then PotD, and then mess about with trials of iron and death instead of maiming), but I have to wonder how people are having such an easy time with hard or PotD without xp grinding, or cheesing and/or min/maxing. And I have to wonder if they are using death over maiming.

Not really. Being forced to do tons of side content is oppressive game design. The better route is to scale back bounty xp rewards and possibly scale back xp rewards on minor (read easy) side quests and side quests that you have massively out-leveled.

Bounties are a huge part of it. Each bounty gives what? 20k xp total? And there are a ton of bounties. Since they already reward the player with money and loot it seems to me that their xp rewards should be 1-2k xp total.

You people don't know a good thing when you see it. I feel sorry for you.

Half your list is just different ways to make the game harder. I'm near the end and have reached level 12 and I get it to a degree. The bounties in particular offer absurd amounts of xp when they really shouldn't since they already award the player with gold and often a unique item. I also do think some enemies later on are undertuned (Adra Animats do literally no damage for instance), but if they go too far with it a lot of people will be unhappy. I think some xp should be scaled back (bounties especially) and some enemies need buffs. I hope they don't do more than that. Also general weapon, armor, class balance would be great as long as they don't nerf a bunch of stuff. I really dislike nerfs in single player games.

English isn't your first language but you feel qualified to criticize the excellent writing in this game? Just wow...

I like the idea of tying max number of traps to the highest mechanics skill in the party. I also strongly feel most of them need significant buffs. They usually aren't even worth using honestly.

I honestly think it's better than both BG games mainly because I think the story is vastly better, and that's the main reason I play games like these. This is a matter of taste. And I am still in Act 2 of PoE so I cannot compare stories fully.But it is a shame to play games like BG or PoE for story only. I didn't say I play them for story only. That's what books and movies are for.

I honestly think it's better than both BG games mainly because I think the story is vastly better, and that's the main reason I play games like these.

1) You like really bland stories and really bland worlds apparently. I hate to think what kinds of books you read. 2) The combat is really good and I can see why some people would prefer it. 3) Divinity Original Sin had tons of bugs on release. I stopped playing it due the absurdly load time bug I was dealing with, until they finally fixed it. And there were a lot more than that that other people ran into. You lucked out on the bug front with that game clearly. 4) As a counter point I would rate PoE a 9, D:OS an 8.5, and DA:I a 7.5 as well. So we at least agree that PoE shouldn't be the lowest rated of the three.

Yes many of us do. I seriously can't comprehend the negativity on these forums...

Why post on the forums of a game you seemingly hate? And how the hell can you have such a negative attitude towards such a great game?

IWD2 had a story? And here I thought it was "Journey with the dead cat... also most annoying forest ever". *shrug* And that's all I really recall from IWD2. IWD1? Even less. I do remember lots of stuff's from the PS:T, BG1 or BG2. Actually, that's not entirely true, I still remember some of the backstories I wrote for my IWD(2) party members. More than the actual ingame story... huh... They are by far my least favorite IE games, and yet they still had better stories than DA:I or D:OS in my opinion.

Rather than whine about review scores, I'm gonna second this comment. Larian handling the combat/game mechanics and Obsidian handling the plot/writing would create a god-tier game. Only problem, I think their sensibilities might be too different. Yea I've thought of the same thing...tell OE to step aside and let Larian take care of the gameplay mechanics and combat...then OE can do the writing and story and characters...would probably be the best RPG ever but will likely never happen. The gameplay is awesome too though. Also are you an avid CRPG fan? I'm just curious, because I feel like saying that is just weird when talking about this genre. Fallout 3 and Skyrim were heavily undermined by their poor writing and story. So was Mass Effect 3 when the end hit. So are the Dragon Age games. I just don't get how a person can rate a game in a story-driven really highly when the story part falls flat. The gameplay is far from awesome from many people's point of view...I view it as serviceable but nothing near good...they strayed too far from the IE games for me. Yep, and that doesn't surprise me. PoE IS the best game Obsidian's ever made. It deserves a better score than FO:NV, Mask of the Betrayer, Stick of Truth, etc. MOTB is easily better than PoE IMO...it was a masterpiece and if we still count them as BiS then IWD is better for me as well. I guess to each their own. I love the gameplay in PoE and find it easily on par with D:OS (just with a much better world and story). And I strongly disliked the Neverwinter Night games. I'll never understand why people liked those.