Xosmi

Wait, what? Isn't it not released until the 19th? This happens a lot, games get shipped out early, so they can be put out in the shelves on release day, some shops just start selling them straight away. Can suck with online-only games, as you can install them but not actually run them till release date.

Ciphers are a pretty narrow class to be honest. you're pretty much going to want to max might and dex to push out the max possible physical damage in the shortest amount of time to regain focus (espescially now they start with only 1/4th of their max focus at the start of battle) and also int, since your powers scale off it, leaving not much room to put points in the other stats. Charms (whispers of treason, puppet master) are good, taking out an enemy out of the equation while he is attacking & tanking his teammates ? yes please. use psychovampiric shield on the enemy beforehand to drain them of 20 will, so you're sure you have a good chance of charming them. the 'linked beams'that continue to do damage to enemies are good too (antiphatetic field and ectopsychic echo) takes some getting used to positioning your cipher/party just right so you get the ticks off, but they do damage each second for 6 and 10 seconds long respectively. Desintegration is also great, deals damage every few seconds for it's pretty long duration, and since it's raw damage it's great against those enemies with high DR.

One stands alone now "works as intended" which is a huge nerf compared to what it did before. Used to add 20 damage to all hits (even grazes) instead of the intended +20% One big con here is that carnage has a damage modifier of -0.34, so it does 34% less damage then your direct hit melee attacks, which amounts to a bit over 1/3rd of your damage. On top of that, if you have low accuracy or the enemy just has high defenses, a lot of your hits will graze, adding another 50% damage penalty, for a whopping 84% total. this means that you're going to see a huge drop in your damage output, especially compared to what it was before. Also, to make effective use of carnage now, you're going to want to stack accuracy and/or getting DR bypass on your weapons.

Rogues are masters of single-target damage output, though barbarians outclass them in total damage output. You can build pretty solid rogues around using the Arquebus or Arbalest, and even the Blunderbus. Because they are inherently squishy, a good option for melee rogues are pikes, giving you enough reach to stay behind your tanks. After 1.05, barbarians really need a good armor penetration to make the most of their carnage, so Estoc's are a good choice. you'll also be able to pick up a pretty great one during the endless paths of od nua, so that's a plus. If you want to build a stun/interrupt build, there's only 2 specific weapons you can use, both with the "stunning" enchant on them (attacks stun on critical hits) one being the Cladhaliat spear (google how to obtain this with the correct stats, i won't spoil it for you here), and the other being the Starcaller flail which is only available after starting act 3. If you fancy dual wielding you can go with dual rapiers for extra accuracy, but after 1.05 i'd go with either stilettos or sabres, for DR bypass and extra damage respectively. they both get benefits from the ruffian weapon specialization, so you can have a set of both and switch between them as you like. There's a stiletto with the Draining enchantment (20% of damage leeched as life) available on the endless paths lvl 1 - so you can get that really fast, which is great.

Yeah, imho the fire godlike passive really isn't worth it - barbarians have good damage output anyway, you'll get a lot more out of the healing you get from the moon godlike passive. personally i used dual rapiers on my barb with a dex of only 10, using the attack speed boosts from abilities/talents and to make sure i was hitting fairly fast, focusing on int more then might (16 might, 18 int) i've allways felt that increasing the range of my attacks was more important then squeezing every last bit of damage on barbarians.

Barbarian is a good way to go. You're going to want to put a lot/max points in int for their carnage aoe anyway, so that helps with dialogue, and depending on how you build it you can have high perception as well,(for a stun/interrupt build) which opens up even more dialogue options. High might is also a staple, though isn't used as much during dialogue. Used to be you'd want to pump resolve on barbs as well, but with the latest patch, not so much anymore, so you'll not see much of the dialogue options revolving around charismatic/determinated options. Race-wise, moon-godlike is probably the way to go, which should also add some small banters/interjections, so there's that.

I wouldn't mind some kind of blend where they invest some of their profits in creating a sequel, paired with additional funds from a kickstarter though.

Just finished my playthrough of BG:EE, taking the character through BG2:EE now

Personally, i havn't encountered any gamebreaking bugs since the 1.04 update so yeha, i'd say go for it.

Terrible idea. as it stands now, stats generally don't impact character performance in such a way that you have to minimize or maximize them, but you can if you want to. The only thing you acomplish by enforcing penalties to make it so people can't/won't min/max is that you're setting up arbitrary boundaries, limiting players in ways they can build out their characters. With the system implemented as it is, you can min/max, but it is in no way required to make a build that can clear the entire game. No class is unplayable with average scores in all stats, and even when you minimize certain stats, you need ways to make up for the penalties you incur. don't like min/max-ing ? then choose not to and don't. But just because you don't like it doesn't mean other players should be limited in playing the way they enjoy the game. Your suggestion would pretty much mean everyone that plays this game i gonna have to run the same bland stat setup, since you'd pretty much be forced to average all stats, lacking ways of making up for the penalties if you do lower and/or minimize a score. Hell, why not suggest that all characters get set to 13/13/13/13/13/13 and just not give the player any choice whatsoever in how they want to build out their character, it would make just as much sense.

Currently re-playing my way through baldurs gate : enhanced edition for the 3rd time, this time on a swashbuckler that i plan to export to bg2:ee and dual to mage at lvl 15.

I don't know about comparing DA:O combat to PoE combat, they both have their own strong points and flaws, and personally i feel they're equally enjoyable. Now, comparing PoE combat to the combat in Dragon age Inquisition however - yeah, PoE is better. I've played Da:I just before starting on pillars, and the combat in DA:I just feels very generic once you're past the first 1/3rd of the game. At least pillars offers more diversity in party composition/abilities and different ways you can tackle encounters

But..but.. i was..

"Mana.. mana.. whatever that means.." https://youtu.be/9ytei6bu7kQ

Nah, stag form allready gets bonuses to all defenses. making stag carnage passive would put it too much on top of the other forms imho.

no wonder people are shipping eder and aloth, they're basically the same person

This seems to be the majority opinion. Why is that? The Crucible Knights are buying souls (which seems like an evil incarnate type of thing to do) and planning to use them to make a golem army to keep the peace which seemed like a sufficiently bad idea that I sided with the Dozens who just seemed to be mostly harmlessly stupid. (The Doemenels were, um, unavailable.) Really, how could the stealing souls to make a golem peacekeeping army plan not go wrong? Well, I never even attempted the Doemenels, but for all the crucible knight's authoritarianism and how they use animancy I just simply cannot get behind a reactionary group that's let fear lead them around. Maybe they enslaved a few souls, and maybe they were really stupid about the golem thing. But fear mongers and reactionaries have caused more suffering in history than immoral scientists. Really wish there was some fourth option. Maybe have the sanitarium as it's own faction? Or an anti authoritarian faction that isn't just giving your authority over to some grandstanding ideologue. In my opinion it should be possible to uncover and/or admonish the things all 3 factions are doing - then when you're not going to join with any of the 3, have dunryd row be the one that sponsors your entry into the animancy trials. Lady webb says as much through dialogue - only with the notion that it preferrably would only be as a last resort, since all 3 factionsould look at you with suspicion.

Fact of the matter is, a select group of people are the ones not enjoying this content - those are the ones that have to make the decision to skip it, or not. in no way, shape or form does this reflect the opinions of all the people who play the game, and those that do enjoy them will obviously choose to complete them. I see no reason for oblivion to cater to the people that don't enjoy these parts of the game by cutting them entirely- fleshing them out, making them better - sure, that's only going to help the player base as a whole.

So what's your opinion on trees full of hanging corpses and the ability to perform human sacrifice in a game kids could play? I agree, it's not for nothing that this game has a Mature ESRB rating. The warning is there, if kids <17 are playing this game, that responsibility lies with their parents/guardian - in no way is obsidian responsible for this.

I don't know. I was a bit split with my Bleak Walker paladin, but I didn't really have a choice - I was locked out of the Doemenels, so I could only choose The Dozen or The Knights of the Crucible. But my point being that Bleak Walkers, while reduced to blackguards in practice in PoE (Hurrrrr Aggressive/Cruel, Durrrrr Diplomacy/Benevolent), are still supposed to be a Paladin Order that believes in order and discipline, and just seeks to end conflicts as fast and resolute as possible. The Doemenels are scheming bastards, when push comes to shove, and I realize it's up to individual characters as to what they do, but I'd say that the Bleak Walkers are definitely predisposed towards the Knights of the Crucible, at least to a degree. Yeah, thee thing is that none of the factions are really at a singe point on the moral spectrum. Arguably the dozens are working towards what they think is right, but from the encounters with them in the game their methods are equally questionable as those of the doemenels - They're the one behind the harassments in the docks, wich hit the common folk the hardest, and their treatment of the animancer you need to retrieve the notes on animancy knights from is hard-handed to say the least. Even the crucible knights, although with the best intentions in mind - using the animated knights to keep the peace, manage to screw up big time and cause more harm then good in the process - it's also hinted during dialogue that they fully well know the souls used to create them are not just from 'willing volunteers' An argument could be made that yes, the doemenels are scheming bastards, but at least they don't try to hide the fact In the end, besides being locked out of a faction because of the wonky way the quests for them are set up - there's nothing to stop any character from joining any of the 3 factions so it all comes down to RP i guess - people should just join whatever faction they are happy with and/or what feels best for their character.

Still, the fact remains that no way am i going to raise my mechanics to 10 on all 6 of my characters.

I did at least the 1st quest for all factions so i could get access to all the merchants, though the crucible knights one has by far the better items in stock. Other then that, i really don't like the Dozen's ideology myself, but it's a close contest between the crucible knights and the doemenels. The crucible knights are a bit haughty and interacting with members of their faction during quests/conversation you get a "holier-then-thou" attitude from a lot of them. In the end though,they are generally trying to do the right thing - and even when things blow up in their face *cough*animancy*cough* i feel they are the faction most likely to learn from their response and set out on a better course because of it. Basically, i pick crucible knights for my "good" characters - i find it making a lot more sense for a benevolent fighter to join their cause. On the other hand there's the doemenels, who - if not evil, are self-serving in every definition of the word, and don't have many scruples about the methods they go about to get what they want. I find that they are a good fit for my neutral and downright evil characters - good for rogues, but also cruel or "evil" fighter types, like bleak walker paladins for example.

None of these things you mentiones, besides the camping supplies actually take away from the game at all in my opinion. They're there - you can use them, or leave them. Being able to carry all that gear and yet limiting the amount of times you can rest in the wild was done for completely diffrent reasons. the stash is there because the gross majority of players really don't enjoy micromanaging their inventory and/or having to make multiple trips into a dungeon just to be able to haul the items out of there so they can be sold. The camping supplies is to counter the well known resting abuse from the old IE games. you can trivialize even a triple crown solo challenge if the game would allow you to rest wherever, whenever - just rest after each encounter and boom, suddenly there's no challenge in the game at all. If you really don't like the system, just use the Rest command in the console to rest as much as you'd like. the fact you can't get achievements once you do use console is something you'll have to live with. i personally feel unlimited resting is, if not cheating - very cheesy indeed. Same thing for custom companions, you don't have to use them at all, just run with the game supplied ones if you want - at no point during the game are custom companions pushed onto you. The option to make custom companions is there however, for those people that like more variety in their parties, and is something that should increase replay value down the road - after the first few times you've taken the default 8 companions along on your journey, i can imagine most players wanting something different. As for the stronghold ? Go there, find Maerwald so you at least own it and can open the way up to defiance bay, then just ignore it for the rest of the game if you hate it that much. you don't have to explore the endless paths, same as you don't have to spend copper on upgrading it. As for it not belonging in this kind of game - BG2 had strongholds, hell - it's one of the first games i know of that had player strongholds. Sure, it's basically become an RPG staple these days but there's no reason why pillars shouldn't have one. Some people like the gameplay element of having a place your PC can call their own that they can upgrade as they grow in level and prestige. Same with enchanting, i feel they left it pretty bare-bones for this game. you can use it to marginally improve weapons you find, be they normal or already enchanted ones, but again- at no point is the option forced upon you. there's plenty of weapons available from enemies/loot/shops that already are enchanted, many of which come with mods on them you couldn't have enchanted on them in the first place. Enchanting in this game is more a tool to make your gear suit your needs, then an option to completely create your own awesome and overpowered weapons. I feel that the scope of the system is just right for PoE. So yeah, i understand that these are things you don't enjoy, and that you may have wanted to see the effort put into creating them had gone into aspects that you do enjoy. But simply because you don't enjoy them or didn't want to have them, doesn't mean no-one else does either. The consumer base of this game is bigger then you alone, and there's plenty of players among it that requested and wanted these additions to the game to warrant putting them in. My advice would be to just take the game at face value for what it is, and not for what it's not. Skip the parts of the game that you don't enjoy if you have to, but have fun with the parts of the gameplay that you do enjoy.

I don't mind having my party stand still for a bit so i can listen to the banter, but i too would have preferred for it to pause the game and happen inside the dialogue screen. As it is, i actually have to pay attention to when banter starts up, when i'm on the other side of the screen with my party members on the other side running to where i just clicked, it's a hassle to find your way back to your party to follow the banter.

Trap setting really needs to be fixed, both the trap limit and their triggers. Since i disarm pretty much every trap i come across, i end up with a load of them in my inventory, but they all inevitably get put into my stash and sold, since there's no use for them as they are now. No way am i going to invest into mechanics on all my characters just so they are all able to set 1 trap that won't majorly affect the outcome of the battle. I understand that being able to set any amount of traps you wish can be overpowered, but it seems to me that having a global maximum would be better then the 1 per companion system there is now, i.e : be able to set 6 traps maximum, but have any character in the party be able to set those 6 traps.