ibanix

That's a lot of words to basically give no explanation. Spent your next level points on Reading skill? Original post made complete sense to me.

Paladins are slightly sub-par Fighters with passive group-buff abilities. They're nice to balance out a group. Oh, and the shield that only Paladins can use that gives +5 Defenses to EVERYONE in the party.

Don't get me started on the new XCOM. I was so disappointed. I still play the original XCOM: UFO Defense.

Seriously? The graphics were so rudimentary and the aesthetic so regular, geometric, rigid and sterile that everything felt dead boring or simply goofy and lame. I agree with this.

Yes. And that's a GOOD thing.

Not really. Not allowing pre-buffing in PoE does nothing to force us to make harder choices. Using pre-buffs in PoE would mean you get less out of them. That's not meaningless as the wizard can only cast so many spells per day, and the duration in PoE are very short. Taking away that option adds nothing. Although it does serve to help make playing a wizard feel more constrained. You can't pre-buff => You have to cast buffs during battle => You have limited amount of buffs to choose from in a given time => Your choice in buffs affects the outcome of the battle vs You can pre-buff => You don't have to cast your (same) buffs during battle => You have no pressure to chose/cast buffs during battle => Your choice of buffs during battle has less impact Having to choose buffs during battle clearly and obviously forces harder choices on the player. If this chain of logic does not make sense to you, please go take a course in basic logic and return.

What I find interesting about PoE in general is that it is heavily focused toward group buffing. A Priest, a Chanter and a Paladin in your group will massively increase your effectiveness. Even just one will provide substantial group bonuses. This feels very different from IE-era stuff to me. (That's a good thing.) Buffs may be far shorter and you can't pre-buff, but those buffs are REALLY useful during actual combat.

To be fair, Chanter buffs are more limited in choice than Priest buffs (and the few Wizard buffs), and they take longer to build up to an Invocation.

How? Why? I can see no reason as to why that statement would be true. PeE buffing is - at least with regards to my playstyle and skill - a bit different. Instead of picking the generally best buffs which I know will be fine against almost all encounters, I now wait for the encounter to begin before deciding the optimal buffs, based on that particular encounter. However, due to time constraints, there's much fewer buffs to chose from. But, since I actually know who and how many I am fighting, I can chose the optimal buffs for that particular situation, which is - again - different from encounter to encounter. This - depending on what we mean by the term - seems much more tactically engaging. This is exactly the reason I like the PoE combat-only buff better. It forces players to make harder choices about buffs (and character actions in general), given limited options and time. It's more strategic. I can understand how this does not appeal to players of IE-era games who got used to regular pre-buffing.

Oh look, another person who finds [insert trivial reason] that their immersion is destroyed. Just play the f-ing game already. It will never be 100% perfect for 100% of the people.

Anyone else find it odd (and annoying) that the activity log for the Stronghold is in linear chronological order, not reverse order? Any time you want to see the newest entries, you have to scroll all the way to the bottom. A simple reversal of entries would stop the always-scroll-to-bottom behavior.

Good news! The 1.04 patch notes has a line about optimized save/load times. Let's hope it's a big improvement....

I can't comment on any promises made in the Kickstarter, but I find the graphics to be a great mix of BG2-era nostalgia with higher quality. I'm 95% satisfied with it. My only gripe is that placement of some objects (eg. large trees) makes it sometimes difficult to figure out where your characters are supposed to go. That's a pretty minor complaint.

The game is somewhat over the top, I guess I want some over-the-top humor. Hell, Fallout 3 had a side mission in which you had to collect Naughty Nightware for a guy; and Fallout:NV had stuff like Fantastic, who had some great lines: Fantastic: No, man. I know exactly what I'm doing. I just don't know what effect it's going to have. Fantastic: "They asked me how well I understood theoretical physics. I told them I had a theoretical degree in physics. They said welcome aboard." Fantastic: "Well, see, we're getting power because the guy running this place is Fantastic." Fantastic: "Got the whole NCR suckling my teats, and it feels so good." Fantastic: "...the mirrors outside aren't aimed right, so we're running at one percent efficiency. And I guess that just isn't good enough for some ****."

Bro, this isn't real life. It's a video game. Which also has prostitution, murder for hire, drug use, and torture. So I am 100% ok with the game having more racial tension in order to add to story value.

Svef, Whiteleaf, Carrow, etc. I've never actually used these because the side effects seem to hurt more than the buff. Is there a useful situation for any of these? How do *you* use them, if at all?

Crowd management is definitely the way to go here. Open with spells/abilities that prone, cause stuck, or otherwise hinder movement. Move front line into position. Use ranged casters to put down AoE on then with the red area only touching the bad guys. For bolt-type spells, you either need to move your caster, or tank the caster (hooray wizards in plate mail).

Aside from the backer epitaphs (love it, by the way) I'm noticing a general lack of humor in the game. Maybe it's just not my type of humor? The NPC banters are enjoyable and sometimes mildly humorous. I just haven't hit any serious laugh-out-loud moments. Where's my "GO FOR THE EYES BOO!" situation? Aside from that, I find the storyline to be extremely well written.

Yes, I've noticed this too. After a few hours I start to get audio stutter, particularly on NPC banter.

Nope. I have to agree with the OP, IWD/IWD2 play usually meant heavy pre-buffing - at least on the hard modes.

Just to be clear, I was posting /in favor/ of combat-only buffs. I find it makes the game far more interesting.

^ this, exactly. BG/BG2 fights were "cast all prebuff spells, attack, move to next encounter, repeat"

I have to ask, if the f-bomb and frak *mean the same thing* and sound almost the same, what's the point in changing it? Are you trying not to expose your kids to the f-bomb because you're afraid they'll use it? I see this huge irony where parents start having kids use 'frak' instead of f-bomb and then kids start using 'frak', and 60 years later all the parents are trying to get 'frak' censored.

Given the content of the game, swear removal/replacement is sort of like putting chrome spinners on your rusty '68 Chevy Vega. Could you see Fallout having swears removed? Good luck with that.

Nice catch there. I wonder if we can get that patched.