Rack

I think the difficulties with hard being too easy are partly due to xp issues, but not so easily addressable. Without level scaling you can decrease the xp available but that will only cause issues elsewhere. Level scaling would fix it but I don't know how easy that is at this juncture.

A) Yea, if you are a high level wizard and your spells are too weak, it will feel broken. B) Wizards casting time is already long, adding more and most of the fights will already be over by the time you cast your first spell. There is still no valid arguments against including an option to turn off resting limitations. It is a singleplayer game, it changes nothing for other people who still want to use the current system. That's fine, but in the same vein it should be in a menu that has options for Monks using their abilities without needing wounds, and Chanters be able to use their invocations with no restrictions. As it happens you're in luck and this is somewhat accessible from the console. As far as the mechanic goes the idea was a strong one but as long as people are getting round this by backtracking and resting constantly it's just not working. I'm never a fan of soft restrictions like this anyway because people will frequently use the path of least resistance, even if it isn't good for them. If that's you though then the best solution is probably to force yourself to abide by the limits as designed. Don't rest until your characters are all out of resources AND are low on health. If that's still not getting through with the supplied resources then try turning the difficulty down. If you think it's boring for a character not to be using all his resources every fight remember he's just 1 character out of 6. Control them as a group and consider when it's best to use which characters resources.

Pauses in the voiced conversation would drive me up the wall. Since my reading speed is well above average I'd end up reading half the dialogue, then it would randomly start speaking throwing me out. Then I'd start over, get halfway again before it randomly started speaking again and I'd lose the thread again. It works for subtitles because I can just glance down for 1/10 of a second to read the line then resume watching, but a weird half-measure there would be a real problem.

Ugh, he really should have had courage in his convictions there. Since Oblivion level scaling has become a dirty word. No-one understands it, they don't get it's been used to great effect in loads of games, but they vehemently oppose it because it was used badly that one time.

This man has it. As it goes the pros and cons go like this. Pros. Can get closer to enemies without being seen, Don't run the danger of running into traps. Spot hidden objects. Cons None/looks a bit silly That's not a decision. In the IE games it was worse because the con was "is boring" Ultimately I don't mind overly, as flaws go it's pretty minor. I don't think there really is an interesting decision to be made here, unless harsh time limits are applied being absolutely meticulous is really the only option, no matter how you try and balance it. You need something in that con column.

Wow, this is speedy for GoG. Now I can start a real game of PoE.

I went with GoG, but the downside of no patches is pretty severe.

I dont think it was so bugged, bugs saving games in the same place you get a companion, randon bugs where files are damaged that usually start happening when you already have 30 hours in the game ... thats not something you can test in the beta. sometimes happens, the same way that sometimes games stop working when you have 200 saved games. thats not easy to test before release. The game was not bugged at all, there was nothing that made you lose your file or that made you unable to finish the game (even that damage files bug could be solved by yourself in less than 30 seconds if you google how to solve it) I'd argue a bug that makes it impossible to not finish the game is at least as bad as one that makes it impossible to finish the game. But the point is that both of these bugs should be blatantly obvious to anyone even reasonably familiar with the game's systems within the first hour of testing. As soon as you equip your second item or reach the first town you WILL encounter these.

But you're not resting "too much", as the game lets you rest THAT much. The fact of the matter is the game mechanics allow you to rest after every single fight if you so choose. The game does not offer any plot or mechanic based penalty for doing this, and instead simply makes it inconvenient for the player, not THE PARTY, which is how it should be instead. Walking back to town is no different whatsoever from having one big ol' loading screen instead. Oh, except that the loading screen prompts you to click an area transition icon a few times, such depth and strategy, wow. The only way in which this system can be said to add challenge to the game is in making weak enemy groups relatively tougher because you don't always have all your abilities ready for them, but this illusion of challenge goes right out the window as soon as said group becomes too tough for your group to handle, because when that happens you can simply run back to the inn and wipe the floor with them again. As I said before, what do you think people will do with this system when they're presented with a REAL challenge, such as trial of iron? We all know the answer; They will rest spam, because that's a perfectly legitimate way to play the game, as made possible by game mechanics, and they will get really friggin bored of the runs back to the inn. I only hope Obsidian has the courage to break away from this nonsense when they make a sequel, which will have less obligation to follow the IE games' mechanics so strictly if it's not another kickstarter project promising such adherence. Really this is two points. 1) In principle is limiting resources over more than a single fight a good idea. For me the answer is "maybe". My favourite combat systems all revolve around insular encounters, but these are games with very limited encounters. If you're going down the Baldurs Gate route you need a lot of combat, and it's easier for filler combats to have meaning if the results of those combat matter. Even with no planning throwing a few enemies your way is an interesting problem because you need to work out how to get past it with the fewest resources. Having every encounter hand-crafted to be interesting is probably too big an ask so this is the best way. 2) Is the current camping system a good one and should it be changed for any sequels. I think this is where we can hope for an improvement. Going back to rest should cost an in game resource, otherwise you end up in an awkward situation. Maybe on normal or hard the system is fit for purpose, if you spend your resources wisely you won't NEED to go back and will just hold one camping supply back for the final fight. But on Ironman Path of Torment people are going to be inevitably led into spamming rests. A fixed system for a future game would rationalise classes powers across the difficulties and limit rests by ingame resources rather than player ones. But I don't think it's inherently a bad idea.

The "adventures where you choose a path" segments were great, I really loved them. The variable speeds is also a wonderful convenience feature. I'd normally use haste scrolls for this purpose but this is much better.

Given how big that first patch was, how soon it arrived and how broken the game was (if they had done any testing at all, or even idly booted it up they'd know about the bugs with saving and equipping items) my theory is the release game was an early development build from a few months back that they put out, hoping that this patch we just had would be day 1. It being an early build it had reference to alpha assets which were removed in what was intended as a release candidate.

I'm not sure I get the camping system, seems like something that is a nice idea in principal but falls down in practice. It's been well noted that supplies are limited by player patience which is clunky at best. Secondly it's really weird that resting supplies are limited by difficulty. I get that it's a lever you can pull to make battles harder, but the balancing of wizards is going to be all over the place. Are they balanced for hard and twice as powerful as they should be in normal, or balanced for normal and hopelessly underpowered in hard? Or is the combat system only intended to be a fluff option anyway?

But the games still largely functioned for most people. If a bug will break a huge part of the game for nearly every player that's different to a few abilities not working as intended.

Again, there's a difference between "bug-free" and "no crippling bugs linked to simply using absolutely core functions". If saving and equipping don't work the game isn't fit for release. Period. Why was this version even made available?