Tigranes

Everybody's pretty viable. Ciphers are easiest to pick up and achieve "powerful enough" levels, while it can take a bit longer to learn to get mileage out of priest, paladin and ranger. Don't worry about it and just take whoever you like. As you can always hire hirelings and level them, and as story companions get XP while out of the party, you can always chop and change on the go.

You often don't notice it, but it is indeed a stupid design decision. Enemies shoudl always work by the same rules unless there's a clear reason that it benefits gameplay.

Gwent is OK, and best comparable to the card minigames in FF8/9 - lots of collecting across the whole game involved that you can do or ignore, and the fun being in building up your deck and crushing increasingly difficult opponents. It's not the light no-frills affair that dice or arm wrestling was. Not very far in but I think it's a superb game marred by its open world pretensions, which seeps in regrettable bits of MMO everywhere.

None of that is a problem, and I'm happy for us to discuss opinions. This is simply a different stance than your original one, which I disagreed with. It is quite obviously the case that buggy games are the norm in the industry and have been for decades. And yes, players' willingness to buy into the hobby, the corporatisation of the industry and its frenetic release cycles, the way in which every game 'reinvents the wheel' and engines were never really standardised to any high degree, etc. all contributed to this situation. If you want to argue that we should not have allowed the industry to become this way and we need to take a stand and push for less buggy games, OK. But that's got very little to do with POE and it is a general argument. And I think if we were to push for less buggy games, we need to be aware that there would be tradeoffs - e.g. for the same budget and resources we would have to expect less ambitious games. If you want to argue that POE is an unforgivably buggy case relative to other games within the current industry norm, that's again a different case - and there you would have no credibility. The history of CRPGs stands testament. Your rabbit hole on experience and opinion here is strange, because it is you that is arguing that POE should be marked early access - something that would affect everybody. So what exactly is the standard you're trying to use? Is there an objective case that POE is buggier than other CRPGs? No. Is there a case that POE should be marked early access to encourage the industry to be less buggy? Not really. Is there a case that the majority of people believe it should have been marked early access? No - as your own poll shows, you are overwhelmingly in the minority. Did you have a buggy experience with POE? That sucks. Complain. Should we always push devs to have less bugs? Yes, because bugs suck. Could you, based on your experience, have an opinion that POE is super buggy? Sure. That's about as far as it goes. You haven't produced any data or reasoning that could support the rest - so I'm not even sure what exactly your argument is.

You basically demanded that people avoid using an extremely common and sensible standard for judging whether a game is so buggy it does not deserve to be called a final release. You also presume - mistakenly, in my opinion - that any reference to other games is an invalid 'excuse'. I dispute your premise because I believe it is biased and unrealistic. If you really want to have a discussion about this, then you can't prevent that kind of disputation. I'd be more than willing to respect and consider your views if you are willing to discuss on that level. Not to mention you break your own rule when it is convenient for you, by commenting that many games released are relatively bug free at launch - which is hypocritical. It is furthermore unsubstantiated. In order for your position to be persuasive, I'd need to see some argument that (1) CRPGs of this kind - scope, budget, resources, etc. accounted for - are capable of being "finished" by your definition, whatever that is; (2) that such levels of "finish" are actually the norm for the industry and can be reasonably expected; (3) that POE's bugginess, under whatever calculation you use and specify, is again, off the charts. Sans all of that, what you are doing now amounts to a complete elimination of all real world factors and perspectives. People demand that trains run on time. But nobody demands that your plane lands exactly in the promised minute. People demand that a book they buy always has all the pages, but they don't demand that it has zero typos.

Just for clarification: we'd never ask anybody to not talk about another game. Maybe you meant the OP in this thread?

Its a poll, that's what a poll is for, right? You're trying to prevent people from having reasonably possible interpretations of the problem, and pigeonholing them into your specific interpretation. It's a poll that any respectable pollster would throw out. Why should I sign up to your personal definition of 'finished product' or 'early access'? I refuse to vote in your poll, because you only seem to want input from people who already share all of your premises, and not to debate those premises themselves.

"This poll is solely related to POE, please do not make comparisons to "other" buggy released games to justify the label "Finished product." Simply weigh up the state of completion of POE on its release and consider the amount of changes and fixes brought into the game based on both community feedback and developer input. Also consider whether the game is "Playable but not complete." and if it is subject to "Further development" or not." If you already think you're right, why bother asking other people?

Karkarov basically has it right. The adra / machines / etc stuff all fit in pretty well - and the whole conspiratorial uncertainty of whether Waidwen really is Eothas and how much the other gods like Magran knew when they did(n't) interfere, is a highlight in the plot. Durance is written in a needlessly confusing manner, though.

If you play for achievements you're basically accentuating your genetic similarity to lab mice (which we all have, yes). You miss the challenge? You already said it - go POTD. Difficulty goes down in Act 3.

Well that is up to you, I'm not here to split hairs with you... I'm making a reasonable estimate on copies sold. An stated so to you directly. And I'm pretty sure I'm SERIOUSLY underselling it.... given those are ONLY STEAM numbers not the other sales outside of STEAM. Likely the number is much higher than even I estimated.... I was pretty conservative. 18 Million dollars up to this point on a 4 million budget. Heck its more likely a good 20+ million on a 2.5 million budget. But either way... it proves everyone wrong that a game like this in this day and age isn't a moneymaker... its actually a really big moneymaker... Because the cost vs risk is incredibly low and the profit margin much higher than in other games. What makes you think they didn't spend the budget? I think it's pretty certain they spent all/most of it.

On odd levels you get only class abilities, on even levels you get talents. There's some overlap, though. In any case, you may not have been able to select RA at lv4, but you will be able to at lv5.

It's a mess from almost every single conceivable view. It screams of changed plans mid-development - I struggle to think how anyone would have planned it the way it turned out from the start, and thought it was a good idea.

You can pull in all IE games and in POE. SCS's improved shouting was an important step. I do wish games as a whole would move on from "bunch of monsters stand around at a spot" design.

Are you having them heal each other? I wonder if for healing the recipient's bonus is used? E.g. the 17 might paladin receives the 10 might's lay on hands, and then his 17 might kicks in because it's determining his healing? Been a while since I played a paladin, so I don't remember if LOH is self-heal or heal others, so ignore me if I've got it wrong.

I don't know what the life drain in those examples were exactly, as I never played them, but there are several weapons with life leech (drain 20% of endurance from every hit), the first can be found reasonably quickly.

Just make sure Monte doesn't secretly change your dialogue to push his tunnel-fighting ideology.

Basic mechanics guide: From your screenshot: (1) You're in the middle of nowhere surrounded by the enemy, which is a bad idea in any kind of fight, real life or fantasy. Manage your space. (2) Half your party members are fatigued, which makes them much less accurate and easier to hit. Hover your cursor over the various conditions characters have - don't ignore them. (3) You can pick up a priest called Durance in Magran's Fork, but you don't necessarily need a healer. I think your issues go much deeper than that right now. I don't know what they are, especially if you can handle DAO on nightmare, but you'll need to tell us more about what you're doing and what's going wrong.

There's really not much consequence beyond your own RP satisfaction, difference in ending slides, and the talent bonuses above. You can do the initial quests and access merchants of all 3 factions, even after you have committed to one.

The one in Magran's Fork, I believe.

You posted this about 8 times, so feel free to pick it up here: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/79178-105-patch-is-live/page-4?do=findComment&comment=1692166

Oh, I'm sure scripts, action queues, etc. would please some people. Their inclusion, as an option, wouldn't harm anybody. It's a matter of how many features you can fit in a single game (as opposed to IE's longer, iterated development), and which features should be prioritised. It's simply my personal opinion that if you play a game like this, then actually controlling everybody should be prioritised - and then, when they have resources, add options where you let the game do stuff for you. Obsidian has already said they wanted to add scripts but couldn't this time round, so we will likely see it next time. Of course, for some people, they are so amazingly right that anybody who disagrees must be brainwashed. I wonder if there is any universe where that strategy helps you persuade other people or get your point across.

I love turn-based, but: -The difference between POE ban on prebuffing on DOS' solution is negligible. Your feelings might be a little less hurt if you were outraged by a hard restriction, but in practice you're not really going to prebuff on DOS. -Turn-based may make it 'easier' to script good enemy AI, but that's not really what we've seen in these games. DOS has nonexistent AI. Indeed, this is perhaps the biggest problem about the game, where there is huge pleasure in doing all sorts of wacky things to them, but after a while you realise they are lemmings letting you do it, too. Again, it's strange: I love TB and would love a TB game from Obsidian. But nothing specific you've said actually shows any supremacy of TB. You sorely exaggerate the AI of DOS (which again is gormless), the pathfinding problems of POE (which are extant but not debilitating), and the difference in prebuffing (basically none). If Obsidian does a TB POE spinoff I'd love to see things like more environmental interaction, abilities and mechanics that creatively make use of the turn system / initiative, more complex mechanics that can be handled in turn-based pace, and so on.

In a 3 person party, for example, the Rogue has a ratio of, let's say, 1000 damage, 200 hits and 150 crits over the whole game; the Monk gets 750 damage, 600 hits and 200 crits. Or something like that was my experience.

Sorry. I don't speak MMO so I actually may be using it all wrong. I thought it was a broader designation. Now that I do know, my response would be that almost every class has clear ways to make themselves more durable - though of course not to the extent of the tank. I'd welcome enemy AI that tries to bypass Fighters and hit the 'squishies' more - even if nothing else in the game changed, it would be an improvement. You'd be able to use disengagement against enemies, you'd have a reason to take abilities like Grimoire Slam or Rogue Escape abilities, and Hard difficulty would actually have a semblance of a challenge.