Archaven

I want completely new characters. If 3 of them are back it's kinda meh to me..

Kickstarter is possible, they spoke well about KS. And they probably will, since KS allows to check how much title is anticipated, and it is another way to get some extra money before release. Every trick which could bring POE2 to Skyrim/Witcher 3 level ofpopularity is worth consideration. This is where i hate. Witcher 2 was great.. and Witcher 3 to be honest.. Not so much. It has been toned down, less grim and more casualized. There's a price to pay for popularity. And it will end up to be appealing to 'wider audience' and hence certain content of the game has to be altered/removed for 'general audience'.

I seriously can't wait for more details

I really hope and excited to know about the improvements and features (maybe tech-wise?) of PoE2. I hope it's not the same as PoE. I hope there will be whole new character animations. The original was static old as the 90's

it better be PoE2 and it need romance...

I finished Dragon Age Inquisition and man that FrostBite 3 is one of the best engine i've seen. Second would be Ubisoft Dunia engine. Farcry 4 it was utter beauty. Now Obsidian would not have that budget for these kind of games. And i'm not interested in PoE becoming a first person either. I love top down isometric and it needs to be remained. While first person is sheer beauty, i find it a hassle to pull the camera up ala Dragon Age Origins. What PoE2 needs for me are just completely new character animations. Divinity Original Sins looks awesome even it's 3D. Comparing the assets of Divinity Original Sins, it looks far better than 2D PoE handrawn background to me, IMO. I'm not sure why Obsidian has to be so stubborn sticking to 2D. It's seems to me they are not technically capable engine-wise but they are good story tellers and make good RPGs. That's why they should not focus and waste time in creating/enhancing their engine. Just license a good one. Don't focus in building a car. Get one. As the point is not building a car but to reach your destination. Don't focus in finding which pen you want, but focus in writing the most intriguing story instead. Most devs are stubborn in wanting to stick to their old and not so powerful game engine.

I'm not sure at this point in time.. perhaps PoE2 already 70% complete? Who knows? Divinity Original Sins looks awesome.. why Obsidian didnt consider licensing Larian's engine? Considering their engine is good and tailored for RPGs. Last i streamed DOS2 and it was looking so beautiful. Also the biggest issue i have with PoE was the character animation. It was so static like it was from Baldur's Gate .. which was like what? 17 years ago? I know the character animations probably the same perhaps it's an engine limitation, etc. Hence, why not just license Original Sin engine or maybe consider Unreal engine?

Wow i wished i can get that. Only digital is available for me in my country.

One of my biggest gripe with PoE was basically Per Rest vs Per Encounter. Both don't mix together at all. It's either make all as Per Encounter OR all as Per Rest. I basically see Per Encounter > Per Rest. Most of the time, you'll be forced to rest anyway if there are classes that rely on Per Rest mechanics. It basically discourage me to play as a Wizard because it drag down the party. Basically for me, the rest mechanic is to make gameplay non-arcadey. Otherwise, there's no need to rest at all. Since Per Encounter does not bode well with Per Rest, i'd say eliminate Per Encounter altogether. Make it that there's sufficient casting for per rest so that gameplay will not be bog down by the need to keep resting.

That never was a problem, not to mention PoE's main path is easy as cake and it has huwrdadurp story mode. The problem is making game as big but also make quality content for it. Replayability&choice give content more quality - more options for roleplaying, more choice, more ways for characters to have diverse playthroughs; but game might end up shorter. PoE, really, could have been cut by at least 20% and that's not talking MegaDungeon that was and continues to be primitive and boring grind through same hordes of mobs. I see replayability as playing differentes class and perhaps each class/race may have specific story origins or generally how all NPCs in the world may be reacting to you. In PoE, basically all the henchmen/party characters already covering all the basic classes. This may be different in PoE2 especially if there's dual-classing. Why is that you think PoE should have been cut by 20%? I'm interested to know the reason of cutting content. Would the idea comes to your mind that Baldur's Gate 2 could have been cut by at least 20%? You may not like the idea of MegaDungeon and you may find it boring. For me, i do not see the MegaDungeon as a boring grind. The idea of a MegaDungeon is great to my ears. The only problem was the execution. It became boring grindy same hordes of mobs because of poor execution. I see that the dungeon as a benchmark to test how good and how far can your party survive. Some sort of 'Arena' in action RPG to test how good is your build. Of course, it wouldn't be easy to have a big dungeon without repetitive similar content considering Obsidian is a small team. I would really like to see enemy party AI in PoE2 greatly improved. Unfortunately Obsidian are a business that needs to make a profit in order to carry on existing, so they're always going to have to pander (at least somewhat) to what the bulk of their customers want. Also, as Shadenaut says, quality content is more desirable than having lots of it. Sure, if we can have quality and quantity that's great, but sadly we live in a world of budgets and deadlines. Yeah i agree with you. However, imagine PoE2 released and reviews go all around comparing the length and content of PoE2 is basically 50% from the original PoE.. do you think the general audience will think PoE2 would be a worthy successor to PoE? Just like for example.. Lord of the Rings movie.. most of them were 3 hours in length.. Fellowship of the Ring was a 3 hours movie.. The Two Towers was a 3 hours movie and out of sudden Return of the King was a 1.5 hours movie. The audience would be questioning why RoTK would be 1.5 hour in length?. One can argue a shorter movie can be better but i personally feel some story sequence needs sufficient time to develop the character relationship and better reflect the feelings to the audience. Just like Avatar, Jake Sully and Neytiri both need time for them to first meet, having conflicts, being together, and how Neytiri nurture Jake to who he would become. All those sequence need sufficient time. If the movie were to be to cut to 2 hours instead, i believe the Avatar movie would not be as memorable as it should be to anyone at all.

Thanks! A good read. However, it kind of make me feel 'worried' for PoE2. They are heading towards the direction of 'shorter' games focused on choices & consequences, re-playability and branching story-lines. Everything sounds good but i don't like the 'shorter' part. It should be as long as the original PoE or more, not shorter. If people, genuinely feels Baldur's Gate II kind of games are long, perhaps they shouldn't play it? It means that's not really their taste in gaming. They can just go play Tyranny? If PoE2 is heading towards that direction.. it troubles me. There isn't a single good top-down isometric RTwP RPG like PoE in the market. It really saddens me if they decide to go make 'simpler', 'shorter', 'casualise' games?. Maybe i'm getting old.. i mean really no one likes Baldur's Gate anymore? The frequency of combat in PoE isn't my complain. But the encounters were. It's great that devs are aware on this. For me, it's good to have a handful of normal encounters and mixed in with challenging ones. I'd still like some hard rock-paper-scissor kind of encounters where you need certain solutions before you can approach said encounters (eg. level drain from vampires, breach against mages, etc.)

i love the dungeon crawling too!. pls dont take away for those who love combat. the only thing that got me bored was it was tedious once it's too easy. one of the reason (to be honest) was engagement. warrior/tank should require taunt and only effective for couple of rounds.. and other party members should have some kind of escape mech. it will make that the players to be more "alert" and to really put up some effort in combat.

great post! but not all that i agree to. but here's mine: overall style of art and music. Both are excellent. ​6 character parties ​The GUI. i fell in love with the GUI but i think it can still be room for improvement! ​RTwP. nuff said ​No-DRM ethos.​ yeah!.. PoE are games i'm going to replay. not much other games that i love replaying. Yeah i spent a lot of time in Dragon Age Inquisition (around 300+ hours) but PoE is what i be replaying!

Here's mine.. 1) Improve the clunky combat animation!. Don't think anyone mention this before? 2) 6 character must stay!. Please don't dumb it down to 4 like Tyranny!. If they want to port it to consoles due controllers, you don't really have to dumb it down right? That's also the main reason why Torment Numenera went from RTwP go to full TB!. Come on! if i game on consoles, cRPG is not the game i'll be buying. I'll be playing AAA exclusives like UC4, H:ZD, GOW. So please 6 characters!. If folks like to play with 4 or 5 they have the options. But if you force the limit, others who like 6 are handcuffed. 3) Make stats/attributes important again. Recently playing Wasteland 2. Kinda love the mechanics of the CLASSIC attributes system. Perhaps Obsidian can take a look and consider some improvisations? 4) Have Quirks or Perks like in Wasteland 2 too. It kind of give players more options to fine tune their characters. Thanks and can't wait to replay PoE when i finish WL2. And PoE2 will be the full-priced game that i will probably buy and not some AAA games that i can think of :D.

Josh also seems to think that six party members may be too much. That he sees a problem doesn't necessarily mean that there is one, or that his analysis of it is correct. But even if we do posit that there is at least a significant minority of players who found the 'soul' to be lacking in some sense, that doesn't mean that your analysis of it is correct. And frankly, you have yet to provide any compelling argument for your "soul == wackiness" claim. Moreover, even if wackiness is what those players complaining about soul were missing, it doesn't follow that a) adding wackiness would have made for a better game, or b) adding wackiness would have made for a more successful game. If adding soulful wackiness pleases one segment of the audience and disgruntles another segment of the audience in equal measure, it's just a lateral move as far as b) is concerned. If Josh thinks 6 party members may be too much.. this really gets me worried. What i love most about PoE and older IE games were having 6 party characters. Tyranny put me off with just 4 characters. I understand the reason why 4 characters. Because of controllers and consoles. Now i don't hate consoles, in fact consoles are awesome for first party AAA exclusive games like Uncharted 4, God of War, Last of Us and stuff that i'm looking to play. But CRPGs like PoE are not something i look forward to play on consoles. There are way too many games being ruined in gameplay due to the fact there have to designed for consoles and controller in mind. Because of consoles, you dont see 100 spells in a spellbook anymore in most modern RPGs. Now don't blame me for highlighting about consoles. To be perfectly honest, it makes no sense for any developers/publishers to not bring games to as many platforms as possible. It's money and business as usual. PoE and PoE2 will be available for consoles anyway sooner or later anyway. But please i dont really want gimped down gameplay because it has to bring the games to consoles. I really hope PoE2 will have 6 characters again and really an improvement over PoE. Just look at Swordcoast Legend how it died a swift death because it was designed for consoles in mind.

i prefer a good balance of combat and story. but i will lean more towards combat/gameplay. for me combat and gameplay is the essence of a great game that makes me replay the game more than once. sure a good engaging story is important and the different endings/outcomes but that does not makes me want to replay the game more. if t he combat and gameplay are mostly the same, then replaying the whole experience again for a different cutscenes at the end of t he game, i had rather just watched it on youtube. i see this is the problem with most games now. you basically can just play the game once with longer playing hours but not much incentives in replaying the game again. i think it's alittle similar here for pillars. because all the NPCs in the game already covered all the available classes. it's like why i love action hack/slash RPGs like Diablo, because you can replay the same game with a different class that plays totally different! I think this problem can be mitigated when there's more specialized classes that when you create a new game with a new character, your role will not be overlapped with existing NPCs. i love NPCs with their own origin story. it makes Eder .. Eder and it makes Durance.. Durance. i love it because it focuses who they are and their origins and hence why they are that race/class. Let's hope Pillars 2 can be much better!

Why you need a mod. You can basically just not use it yourself. Also, i think due to certain classes relying on per rest, the limited camping supplies really make no sense to it.

I'm curious. Did you play any of the preceding 7? 8 was actually the last one I played all the way through. Having played 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and FFTactics, I rank 8 last amongst the FFs I've played. Still a good game overall though. You should play Planescape Torment. Edit: Talking about FFVIII reminded me to listen to a great song I hadn't heard in a long time. Final Fantasies always had great music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oQv3leISYU The FFVIII song was sung by a chinese singer. The song is "Eyes on Me".

I played on hard and was abit disappointed at how easy it was. Before midgame it went super boring i stomping anyone with the same strategy. Guess when latest patch out i may be hopping back for a PoD

Was hoping for an announcement of PoE2.. Well guess it's about Tyranny now. Have to wait a year or 2 for the sequel. Tyranny sounds interesting but no gameplay reveal yet. I do hope it's RTwP though.

Was thinking what PoE2 engine would use? Consider PoE is a success (more than 700K copies sold) any chance of it using a better game engine? How about Divinity Original Sins engine? DOS visuals are far better than PoE to me. Of course it's my opinion. Discuss

hmm means party characters will still block each other on chokepoints? did they mentioned they are fixing this?

I watched the announcement on 2.0.. does it address the AI pathfinding? Typically your characters blocking each other on narrow paths? Are they fixing it? Also, are there refinements to the AI? The game kind of bores me when 90% of it i just tank and spank.

there's a console command for this. And no it doesn't disable achievements. It's just lacking the UI to be used in settings. May i know what's the command for it? Still making that an option in UI wouldn't be a very big task if you ask me. But thanks. If i can just disable them via console, it will do. Edit Just found the command. Thanks for the heads up though.

I see alot of nerfs in upcoming patch. I think nerfs are not the correct way in balancing a battle. A smart AI is the resolution for the poor combat difficulty.