abaris

The skills and atributes do entirely different things than in other RPGs. So it's a bit of a learning curve to get it right.

It really depends on how linear you played. If you followed the yellow brick road to Caed Nua so to speak, you shouldn't have missed anything. There are certain triggers when they want to have a talk.

I remember watching an interview with Feargus Urquhart where he said something along the lines of keeping the players hooked by expansions not being released too long after the original game release. It was something like, the first one very soon, the second one soon. But whatever that's supposed to mean is anybody's guess.

Yes, that always happens, regardless of your security level. You get about five days advance warnings anyway. That should be more than enough to return.

It's also what keeps me up until 2:30am playing this, well that and trying to level up if my experience points are close. Yes, that can be a real bugger. Getting these last few points to make another level has kept me up too.

Mechanics is the one and only skill influencing trap- and hidden object detection. So I'm afraid your skill distribution is wasted for your intended purpose.

Sadly she seems to be the one and only NPC who cares when there's fighting right under their noses. At leat as far as my observation goes. I made a little experiment of slaughtering each and every NPC residing in the upper levels of the inns. Noone cares, it's absolutely inconsequential. One of the select few problems I have with this game.

I would like to know that too. Can't say I have seen anything happening because of prestige being high or low. So I made it my business to not care too much about stronghold prestige. If that drunkard comes in to stay a few days, I let him, since he doesn't influence security, which seems to be the bigger issue. Also I select my hirelings only based on their security rating, even if it means losing a few notches of prestige. But I would really like to know what prestige actually does.

For you they have been resolved. For me there's still no big difference in loading times. Sometimes it loads pretty quickly, sometimes I can literally go brew a coffee and the game's still loading when I return. Saves however work faster now.

Yes, I know. It's not my playing style however, since I'm rather into micromanaging step by step. I never was a big fan of hotkeys, which doesn't say anything about the system, just about my own preferences.

You get more per member. But what's the point? There's enough XP lying around to carry you over the level cap anyway.

Well, Kolsc bites the dust in any case sooner or later. Not that the consequences could have been handled better in any case, but Kolsc is the one, who goes, regardless of your decision. With Raedric's return he's history.

Not that it bothers me, but the fog is there when walking through an explored area. Only the map shows the region without any fog attached, if you explored the whole thing.

An improvement to enemy AI would be fine. As far as party AI goes, I'm rather glad they do nothing, other than seeking out the next opponent when their original one goes down. I like to choose my spells and abilities depending on the situation. The only thing I may be comfortable with, is the approach DA:O took, where you could script certain basic behaviors in the strategy window. So, for example, telling your priest to cast restoration if one of your party members falls below a certain endurance value.

They all do nothing. They add to security and prestige, but don't let them autresolve attacks. You'll lose quite a few of them and some buildings on the side. Always take matters into your own hands if an atack is immanent.

Unless XP distribution works differently above normal and hard, I don't quite understand your situation. I always have a party of 6 and always reached the cap well before the end game, with side quests to spare. And I'm talking about patch 1.05, which I run since it came out on beta. To my knowledge, only the warden quests got nerfed as far as XP is concerned.

Which, if I may say so, is a nice and quite daring approach from an American company. Kudos for that, Obsidian.

Let's say, not as linear as DO:A. When it first came out, I had sleepless nights playing DA:O. It was the last game where Bioware was allowed to be Bioware. With DA II I didn't even finish the demo. The monkey on speed feel of the fights was enough to put me off. I didn't have any hopes for DA:I, since I knew beforehand it would feature tagged on multiplayer to satisfy the shareholding gods of EA. The reports about the abysmal PC port and the usual FedEx quests were enough to make me refrain from buying. As I said, the main problem of so called AAA titles is the catering to the lowest common denominator. Skyrim was the last game of that sort I gave a try. After some time I was bored rigid with the ever repeated fetch me this or that and kill this or that and an open world that didn't give a damn about my achievements.

And the next time round there will be another redundant item. It's totally random and that's fine with me. The only suggestion I would have is that item value mirror the difficulty getting it. So hard to find hidden spots should hold more valuable random items than everyday looting places. Hard to defeat enemies should drop items according to their difficulty. Random loot is fine because as has been mentioned, they add to replayability.

I'd rather they expand on the reactiveness of the world. I mean really, what is it these days that everything has to be cosmetic to be good? Voice acting is fine if there's money to burn, but right now no NPC gives a damn if you fight next to them in the street. You can murder your way through the inns without any consequences whatsoever. Well, voice acting is pretty low on my to do list when I think about what could be done better.

Do you even get the option window to recruit him? If so, try to dismiss him and make him rejoin at some inn. In any case, you should get the popup window to manage companions, if the joining triggered.

Well not quite; the effectiveness of the longbow against plate armor remains a point of some debate. Where the longbow proved effective at Crécy was against the unarmored horse used to transport the heavily armored knights. But we don't even see mounted knights in PoE, so massed warfare could be quite different in this setting. My point is, the game features a mixture of at least three centuries of European culture and weaponry with added fantasy elements of course. So, nailing it to a particular period in earth history doesn't quite fit the bill.

And nevermind that they either just fought together or the player character just saved Aloth's hinparts by talking the brawlers out of a fight. Strawman after strawman after strawman. If you just said, you don't like swearing in games, fine. One doesn't have to like everything. But as I said, this is getting ridiculous.

Well, there's that certain armor you can loot when doing the first crucible mission. I never can quite remember the name, since it's something nordic, but it looks like a pimp outfit, complete with red and gold variations. It gives Eder the speed needed for the instances you mentioned. Boots of speed, no way. If I happen to pick them up again, they go right into the resell chain.

It depends on your possibilities to expand on that foundation. Personally I dislike RPG games with a premade character. So I didn't play any of the witcher games although I get they're supposed to be very good. And you had it right with the Dragonborn. It was a joke because Bethesda never creates a reactive world and a storyline going beyond four or five missions. So being dragonborn was inconsequential to say the least. POE handles it rather well in my opinion. Could be better. In fact, it could always be better, but at least this world reacts to your played personality in one way or the other. Is it always believable? No, of course not, but the foundations are there and I get that they didn't have the budget of so called AAA titles to work with. What I really miss, and that's not necessarily character specific, is the fact that the NPC population doesn't react to bloody murder and fighting right under their noses.