Tigranes

That's not how any of my casters fight. POE battles rarely take more than 30 seconds to be decided, and in early level fights, two or three judicious spells from the caster is already enough to turn the fight. And most caster builds with accommodation for non-magical combat contribute just fine, and no, you don't need Blast, and no, you don't need to spam rests. Anyway, wouldn't your solution make casters more boring? You go into battle, you can only cast like one or two spells until level 9. How is that more fun? I do think the per enc / per rest system right now is just a mess, and should be overhauled entirely. I like per rest spells like IE games, but right now it's just a weird mix where it's really hard to avoid making something be really underpowered/useless/boring.

I believe Wozzeck's point is that you can't just get someone to grab a mic, yell, and have it give you a voiceover that isn't annoyingly unprofessional as hell. That said, yes, it seems a silly oversight and they should have taken care of it when they did have voice actors in the room.

I didn't realise there's a teleporting function. Can people confirm? In any case, it's silly. The fights are trivial trash mobs, so auto or manual, travel or teleport, it's just a time filler. Instead of a real trade-off, it's a tradeoff between annoyances - especially because losing a couple buildings only matters when you're really short on money or you're really itching to, say, get started on bounties. No idea about the dungeon levels / monsters, OP, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Raising your security (20+) and building the Curtain Walls should stop most of the invasions. And then if there are a few infrequent ones, don't worry about it. Scenario 1: You're in the middle of something, you know it'll be a big hassle to get back to fight off the invasion. You autoresolve, you lose a couple of buildings, you rebuild them. Takes you 20 seconds and some gold (which you'll be swimming in after midgame). Scenario 2: You agonise endlessly over the prospective of losing a buildling or something and you rush back through several load screens, you fight, maybe you ragequit because you're so frustrated by this point, etc. That's not to say it's your fault (I think the mechanics are poorly designed), but to say, once you stop agonising over it you'll learn it's not a big deal and waste a lot less time and stress.

If you like turn based games, I'm going to presume you like tactical combat. To me party AI is anathema to fun, because I enjoy micromanaging and I enjoy having full tactical control. So it depends on you. If you're confused as to what is going on and why things are happening, that might be a reason to turn off party AI.

Pause. A lot. You can pause literally every half second, if you want to. Set the game to play out on slow mode. Mechanically speaking, everybody is acting in 'turns', it's just that everybody's turns happen at different speeds and you can always interrupt their 'turn' by making them move away. Make sure you have the tooltips turned on so everybody has the bar above their head showing their 'turn' clock (the white bar that winds down), which is an easy way to keep track of those 'turns'. Playing with less party members (3-4) and, if necessary, on an easier difficulty is one option if ultimately it is still too messy for you.

Many questions were asked, few were answered. There's no official statement from anybody as to the why. Myself, I don't really care about the why. I just hope whatever he ends up doing, he gets to create something he has full creative direction over (instead of becoming a professional stretch goal / advisor). Since we have two threads for this, continue at: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/82371-yay-chris-avellone-working-on-divinity-os-2/page-2

Sky dragon is far weaker than Adra and Alpine, because it is a crit path dragon. There's also problems with how easy it is to cheese repulsing seal, adragan's gaze, and a couple other spells. I agree with you in principle, though.

Install IE Mod, use the console to teleport to a different area? AreaTransition MapName PointLocation Example: AreaTransition AR_0002_Dyrford_Tavern_01 North1 The list of all areas: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/62420848/poe-areas.txt You can probably do this with any save after the pit, maybe even the ToI saves where you've already beaten Thaos.

Yes, my bad for the spoiler. Fixed. Exactly. That's why I questioned you when you made those claims. Dragons aren't cheaty trick monsters that force you to use dumb cheese to beat them - dragons are very challenging, optional enemies that some people enjoy fighting and others find frustrating. Your idea about RP'ing in information for dragons is cool. Otherwise, you still haven't explained what exactly is so terrible or illogical about them. There's nothing cheap about BG2 wing buffets - they are a regular ability playing by regular rules, just very powerful, and it makes perfect sense for dragons to have them both in the setting and in the gameplay context. FF7 Weapons did have cheap, cheaty tricks; when Ruby Weapon can randomly remove a party member from battle permanently, that's what I'd call frustrating. Of course, with, say, Emerald Weapon, you had to spend a long time going to extraordinary lengths in convoluted sidequests to even fight the thing.

I forgot to mention the RP proposal, which is unfair because that is in fact a specific point. I think the motivations behind the idea are good and I'm all for it, the trick would be how to implement it. Some games have done it before, where the questing prior to big baddie gives you some bonus or buffs or a special weapon. The issue is that such bonuses either turn the fight into a cheap trick (e.g. here's a big cannon you shoot the baddie with a couple times), or is rather negligible (here, +2 damage reduction!). Probably the best way is to focus on the information. They could well have integrated information about the Adra Dragon, e.g. discovering little pieces of his scales or whatnot that give you tips, based on your Survival skill, etc., about his defenses, attacks... now that would be a very cool.

If you don't have beta enabled on Steam you shouldn't be getting the beta patches. It's likely a Steam problem (since 2.02 Beta certainly hasn't been rolled out for everybody), but hopefully a dev can look at addressing the bug.

You stated that "Try to fight all these dragons in a regular way and you'll enter a valley of tears and frustration OR figure out the cheap trick." I am saying I disagree with your claim that there's no fun way to fight dragons, only cheap or frustrating ones. I love fighting dragons, although some of them certainly could be rebalanced to be less gimmicky (see below). Fighting a dragon, dying, and then trying again with new strategies isn't "meta gaming". You spent most of your OP making these big claims rather than telling me exactly how, say, POE dragons or BG dragons are mechanically designed to destroy fair & fun fights, so it's hard for me to engage with specific points when they haven't been made. In your newest post too, you simply declare that they are "totally op monsters". You talk about a dragon with wing buffet, but you can't tell me what dragon it is, and you can' t tell me what exactly it does (I assume it wasn't just "9999 damage to everybody"), so how can anybody agree or disagree with that? Put simply: you say " a good design enables the player to win fights by using skills and talents, doing preparing quests, acquire appropriate equipment and so on." I would argue that is exactly what the dragon fights are for the most part. Specifically, I would say the BG2 dragons are a fantastic example of such well designed fights, while the Adra Dragon is probably the weakest and the most gimmicky. If you have specific arguments to make rather than declarations, I'm all ears, of course.

Sounds like a bug report, moved to right forum.

You're getting wiped by dragons, they must be only beatable by cheap tricks? But many people enjoy them and beat them without cheap tricks like spamming Adragan. How are you coming to the conclusion that dragons are just cheat fights? Consider BG2 or IWD2 dragons. None of them could be described as "only beatable by cheap tricks". One or two tries make their strengths and weaknesses very clear, and it's relatively straightforward to strategically mitigate them (e.g. Shadow Dragon's level draining, Firkraag's breath attack). In fact, POE's dragons aren't really designed much differently. They have one or two abilities that are powerful but also obvious, then they have strong defenses that need to be broken down. The thing is, even on POTD, most players can win most fights without really understanding how the system works - e.g. how to stack status effects that target a Fortitude save before using abilities that attack Fortitude, how to combine that with things like Scrolls of Valour and Accuracy, and how to do the same when defending. When you try to kill Adra or Alpine on, say, POTD without cheap tricks, that doesn't fly. You can't even come back with overpowered gear, because Adra was designed for max level in vanilla (consider how much easier Sky Dragon is). In other words, the dragons force a qualitatively different response from players in the same way ghosts' teleporting and paralysis force players to stop charging in with, what do you guys call it, tank and spank? The players who hate such enemies and demand that they be removed instantly tend to be players who just want to rinse and repeat the same thing. Dragons are a more extreme case, because there's less room to overcome these problems by just getting better gear or whatnot. So it's obvious that dragons are difficult. And arguably, one could argue that the defense values on, say, Alpine is simply too high, or that its damage output for the breath needs to be adjusted. (My one experience with Alpine on POTD is that it's a bit too loaded with super attributes, but one party and one try isn't ever enough for a conclusion.) But I've read nothing in this thread that actually tells me why they are cheaty fights where you are 'forced' to use cheap tricks. Furthermore, you say yourself the dragons are mostly optional. So drop the difficulty. Or don't worry, move on. You say you don't want to? OK. But, uh, isn't that like demanding cheeseburgers be taken off the menu because everybody has them, even though you don't ever need to order one?

It would be very funny if it didn't, given

It's an old gaming term, and yes it does refer to the 'chunking'. Think Doom.

POE definitely has a lot of trouble handling xp progression, and probably even more now with White March. Bounties, for example, just give broken amounts of XP. Nobody wants to hit level cap 10 hours before the end. That said, just removing the cap would fix nothing - it'll just make the game more broken. You'll gobble up every single talent you'd want to take - but levelling up will still cease being really exciting (arguably, if you plan your characters, you probably take all the important things by level 10), just cleaning up the secondary talents, and the game will become even more easy when it is already quite easy late game (non-WM content). It's hard to make a game and make the systems and enemies and levels handle such a huge variation in power level from level 1 to level 12/14/etc. I would hope that in POE2 they design the level range (e.g. 8-20) better from the start, to make sure you don't sit there with max XP.

If you're getting your rear kicked, of course come back a little later? There is no "should". Some people do it at level 4, others at 6 or 7.

Nothing to do with your character, which I know little about and in any case isn't my business to comment on. It's all about the substance of your points. Now that I've read the full post: I certainly agree with aims like making the wizard think hard about the spells they cast and the weakness of the enemies, but I think that this happens more in a Vancian system. In per enc, too often you think "yeah whatever it's a waste not to cast every spell I have" - e.g. the rogue has no reason to conserve the blinding and crippling strikes. In contrast, a Vancian mage will only use that level 5 spell when they really decide they need it - and maybe in anxiety that this will get them in trouble later on (although there's so many camping supplies around it's not a huge deal). I'm also not convinced that the current system encourages people to spam their best spell, while per enc would do otherwise. I think that's a feature of spell balance, not Vancian/per enc. If Slicken is overpowered as it was in 1.00, then the only difference is instead of spamming it 4 times per rest people will spam it 4 times per encounter. Everything geared towards making grimoires more relevant and interesting I think is good, and as I say, maybe one way to do it is actually further limit the wizard's repertoire (e.g. a 'point buy' system where a level 4 spell costs 4 points and the whole grimoire has a limited number of points), and then compensate through varied and powerful grimoires (grimoires with unique spells that can't be 'learned' and pasted onto other grimoires; grimoires with a higher point buy limit; grimoires with a bonus to fire damage...)

Sorry, no time to read the whole thing, so just call me an idiot if I'm missing the point. The big gist seems to be, though, "wizards aren't very fun a lot of the time because I want to be casting lots of spells all the time, let's make some changes." I simply disagree with that fundamental premise. I don't find wizards 'more fun' after level 8. (I don't find them less fun, either. As I said in the other thread, I"m not necessarily opposed to the per encs.) I like the fact that I'm casting a spell every once in a while. I don't want to cast spells all the time non-stop. Why? I want my spellcasting to have be meaningful, powerful, significant. I don't want to spam them like a Diablo 2 sorceress spamming mage bolt. For the same reason that I prefer fighting 10 powerful orcs to 300 orcs. I want each spell or enemy to mean something. I also want to have to think about the spells I use, and what that will mean for the next battle. If everything resets after one battle, it quickly feels pointless. I feel like I"m not a party of adventurers delving into a dangerous dungeon, I feel like they are magically transported to a healing centre after each round. I don't feel like the second battle has anything to do with the first one. Lastly, this is a party based game. Most people will have 6 people in the party. So there is plenty for ME, the player, to do - even if the wizard is conserving spells, the cipher is collecting focus, etc. (Now, if you did want to make wizards spell-spamming cannons, OK, that's your opinion. In that case I'd say the whole class would need an overhaul. Just making all spells per enc would lead to all sorts of balance questions. Maybe that would mean developing the grimoire concept so that you really only have 5-6 spells available, total, forcing you to switch grimoires more.)

Like any forum several years old, the Obsidian forum now has a life of its own, and will gobble up your children if you dare to temper with its code.

Sure, if you decide to play without consumables then the priest becomes more important. And sure, priests offer more to the team compared to other classes, because they're a class built around offering stuff to the team. Has anyone used cross-class talents to good effect, by the way, in making any class more synergistic with other party members? The +4 accuracy Paladin cross talent seems a decent one for anybody that has a spare talent lying around, for example, but some of them seem too underpowered to really be worth it.

"Fewer, longer, better fights, plz. " Probably the single most thing that is realistic to achieve and is crucial for overall quality. Encounter design was poor in POE and better but still fundamentally mobby in WM. Otherwise, I'd look for exploring more interesting settings, and bringing back Obsidian's traditional forte - the ability to explore offbeat / derivative themes and poke holes in common themes and tropes. POE was a bit too straight and narrow in its writing.

Heh. And I remember all the threads complaining how priests suck. I definitely agree about their usefulness, but they are not mandatory, they are not irreplaceable, and it's easy to run POTD without them. Priests, unlike D&D clerics, don't offer surefire get out of jail cards, e.g. dispel magic, because there are no 'hard' remedies by design. Their buffs are significant, but in fact, depending on your circumstances, sometimes it's better to just have another guy slamming away at the enemy than +5 Accuracy or +10 Deflection or +5 Might. That's not to knock down how good they can be at their job, but to say they aren't a must. Ironically, to me the Priest becomes truly useful thanks to one particularly powerful spell - the repulsing seal.