Tigranes

I don't know about weapons, but actual abilities and scrolls can hit even the final boss with paralysis or prone, especially if you use other abilities to give them save penalties.

Stealth skill controls how close you can get to enemies and their line of sight. You can tell if you are going to be detected, because a yellow eye starts filling up underneath the character, then the red. Yellow is 'dangeorus but not yet seen'; red is 'they will now walk towards you and you are going to be revealed very very soon'. I don't know if the skill ever lets you literally just walk 2 feet in front of the enemy and plant a dagger in their face, though. Unsure if enemies have different capacity to detect sneaking. Nothing is scaled.

Edited title, feel free to continue.

It's great. I play small parties to have a challenge, not to become super-powerful and be over-levelled for everything. 3 or 4 overlevelled characters are far more powerful than 6 normal ones. Didn't IE games only do the bonus with quest XP, though, and not kill XP?

He means the two specific gatings that happen in the entire game: between Act 1 and 2 (defiance bay), and between Act 2 and 3 (twin elms).

Exactly. Let's talk about it there. XP Progression: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/75906-seems-like-xp-balance-is-out-of-whack/page-7 Combat / Objective XP: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/76400-remember-with-objective-xp-no-one-will-do-combat-anymore-all-enemies-will-be-avoided/page-5

All IE games have loading screens for every indoor area. In modern PCs, many smaller ones load fast enough that they're 'instant'. The simple improvement indeed would be to let individual party members enter smaller buildings, but maybe, given that POE is more resource intensive, many PCs would have problems with it?

It was never going to be feasible to take 4 million and build a new system, all that art, a stronghold, a 15 level mega-dungeon, so on and so forth, and do it all at the complexity and size of, say, BG2, which remains an unparalleled achievement. I too would have preferred that they cut out the stronghold, as it stands now it's pretty... facebook-gamey. Obsidian know how to do it better (NWN2's keep invasion, the 'trading' system in SOZ, etc), so hopefully POE2 can improve on this.

It doesn't sound particularly OP, since you'd have to work to let the Barbarian be surrounded, and build your strategy around it, e.g. raising his deflection and whatnot. Not to mention charmed/prone/etc enemies don't count as engaging, right? Certainly seems an interesting tactic though.

KS cares very little for full VO game. Actually most don't want it because it almost always means less overall conversation in the game. I would rather see a KS that gives us 2x those interactive adventures and have them all voiced with a cool DM/narrator kind of a voice. Voice acting costs many, many multiples more than 50k, otherwise everybody would do it. It's not a good use of money.

Have you actually played the game on a harder difficulty? It's possible to reach level 12 halfway through act 2. Clearly there is something wrong with that. But yeah, a game option that cuts XP in half could indeed help with that. But imho the default leveling goes way too fast. I played Hard. I'm playing on POTD now. But my experience is different because I played with 3-4 characters, increasing XP gain.

Xaurips should be one of those things you can kill with just about anything. What level, what chracters, what weapons?

Level cap is fine. This isn't Diablo, what's the point of getting to level 20 if you don't get enough time to learn and use your new capabilities? Each level introduces a significant increase in each character's power, just the way it should be. What's the point of having 30 levels? Why is it important to go OMG IM LEVEL 50? What matters is what the levels mean. I don't think you can be level 12 with a party of 6 unless you've done most of Act 2 & most/all of Od Nua on a harder difficulty - which would actually place you at 70, 80% of the full game while being very completionist. Meanwhile, someone who skips a lot of side content can get to the last boss at level 9 or so. I do still cry out for an XP mod to suit playing styles, though.

You're getting very confused. Which is what happens to many of us in the first hour, of course, so not casting blame. Just to clear up a few things, hopefully: 1) Use your autopause options so it doesn't autopause every hit. 2) When you use an ability and there are feet sign on the spell icon, it means you're too far and you will be moving into range to use your ability. You can also read ability casting ranges on spell / ability descriptions. 3) Charm doesn't mean you can select them and use them in the same way a Dominate spell would in BG. They will turn green and fight on your side, but are not under your control. 4) If you charm something, be careful that your characters don't wack it immediately after. (Yes, this is something they should have fixed on their end.) 5) Who damages how much to what enemy is dependent on the weapon you use, the damage type it delivers, the various damage reflection values of the enemy, as well as your Might. You're carrying around a tutorial-only fighter (Calisca) at the moment. Check your Bestiary, which should now be filled up after a few wolves. For example, some enemies have high DR against Pierce but low against Crush; in those situations, a priest with a hammer might well do more damage than a fighter with a sword. (Of course, forgive me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't sound like you've got the hang of DR / damage type system in POE, so.... you could also read the manual.)

"Guys, we did it! It's been fifteen years, but we finally helped kickstart a beautiful isometric cRPG with hand-painted 2(.5)D backgrounds! We're so glad, because there are so many 3D games and first person games out there, but not many of this kind-" "OK that's cool, but can we make it just like Skyrim next time"

Go to the backer portal at https://eternity.obsidian.net/ If you used the same email as your KS account for this account, you should already see your KS rewards. If not, email Obsidian and I'm sure they'll help you out.

Stick Level 1 wizard in heavy armour in chokepoint, never worry about enemies' melee attacks and abilities again.

How many times does this happen? In most cases I've found I can position everybody, then just select one character (I suppose the frontline guy), open the door and walk up and talk to the person, then run back. NWN2 for example was terrible with this, where you'd sneak the entire building with your thief, enter a room, then the big bad initiates dialogue and suddenly all your party ends up teleported into the room.

I don't remember for sure, but I found that there's quite a few around, and after a while you'll be moving on to Superior anyway. I don't think a few unwise enchantments will screw you over.

Well, there's a lot of people posting wherever they like. We try to move & spoiler-tag things, but we can't deal with it all. It's just a general rule - e.g. nobody wants to be surprised by a thread discussing the ending, so it's a common courtesy. If in doubt, spoilertag it. If your whole topic is about something specific that happens in Act 3 or whatnot, go to Stories or Gameplay forums.

If you try several times and the enemies are way too tough, the natural thing to do is go somewhere else. You're not going to be able to do 15 levels of Od Nua right now, anyway. And yes, bestiary for creature levels, and also other crucial info like their DR, reflection, saves, etc.

Actually, if you did all the Athkatla quests in Chapter 2 you'd end up severely overleveled, able to throw around 6th level spells, before doing Bohdi - never mind Spellhold and the Sahuagin City. It's impossible to achieve 'full balance' of the XP so that everyone reaches max level just at the end, unless you have a game with no optional content. That's an obvious, obvious truth. Right now players can rush the main path and skip what, half of the optional content and still hope to reach a reasonable quantity of XP. The problem is that Defiance Bay and Od Nua open up in Chapter 2, encouraging others to really overfeed on XP. Again, I think the solution here is a simple XP mod.

It means two things: 1) On Easy, Normal or Hard at least, there are ways to protect your party from being damaged significantly in many normal battles. It's probable that you are not exploring those options fully, if you feel your health is going down all the time. POE enemies are very susceptible to charm, confusion, prone, paralysis, priest spells, Eder... 2) There is no problem in another sense, because as you say yourself, of course you'd expect your health to take hits in a big / difficult fight.

Yep. That's why overall reduction should be a mod. The 'default' balance is pretty much fine.

When you have everybody selected and you choose to open a door or something, it'll be the closest character. If it's a lock or trap, the high mechanics character will step up. But conversations will always check PC stats no matter who initiates the talking. Just like how you do anything else in the game, you can select individual characters by clicking on them or using 1-6 hotkeys, then direct them individually. There's no real reason to do this when you open boxes or talk to people, though.