LaSpeakeasi

Haha just replayed the Skaeon temple and was thinking the same thing. How the hell does an organization that prides itself on secrecy amass literally hundreds of followers jam-packed into a tiny dungeon?

It is because both the Fereldens and Orlesians were both colonizers. The Dalish and the Chasind Wilders were the indigenous population of the land. The same way how the Brits and the French were both colonizers to N. America.

I'm not explaining this to address you. I don't address trolls as a rule. But others might be interested in the D:OS comparison in a civil way. Combat isn't just the mechanics. As fun s D:OS was, and as much as I wish PoE play more like D:OS, it has one class and a total of 4 companions to choose from. It's also a 4-member party system. For many people who grew up with the IE games, 6-member, class-based gameplay = automatic preferable, myself included.

Dragon Age: Origin was a classic. You can tell PoE took a few notes from DA:O: - The "noble savages" of the Dalish Elves vs. Six Tribes - The pro-life subplot with Morrigan and Grieving Mother - The post-colonial politics of Ferelden vs. Dyrwood - The "is God real" factor with Andraste vs. Eothas - Orlais vs. the Valian Republic etc. Bioware may not have the best writers on a technical level. But they are always socially conscious and try to reflect the real world zeitgeists at the time. They were the first to do it and now everyone's doing it. PoE too tries to rise above the fantasy subgenre but somehow never manages the same impact.

That's highly subjective and therefore highly debatable. While I do feel like PoE is a lot of fun and the combat really isn't that different from BG; except er, BG had more sophisticated AI (what the hell, Obsidian?). A lot of people take issue with stat system being too realistic (wizards require high Might? WTF?) which in turns breaks RP. And I can't fault them for that. I would much rather they go back to the classic stat system. Divinity: Original Sin was considered better than PoE in the combat department. And I am impartial either way. But I had tons of fun play D:OS. It had some brilliant innovations that PoE so sorely lacked. There are many games that does RP better than PoE in one way or another: - Dragonfall and SR: HK came to mind. The RP element was incorporated into the gameplay. I wished PoE had taken a note from HBS. But you already know that. - Dragon Age's Thedas is just a better, more "modern" setting than Eora. PoE at its core is stuck in 2000. Audiences have moved on from the PG-13 dark fantasy. Thedas has gay people, and religious fundamentalism, racism and class struggle - these are the things that strike a cord with today's audience; opportunities that PoE missed.

Pretty sure there's enough room for 2 kobolds xaurips to coexist in the world of videogames. The friendly kobold's always been such a popular trope in D&D anyway I'm surprised not more games have done it already. Plus, if Obsidian were worried about comparison to the BG franchise they shouldn't have made this game at all should they? The only difference between rip-offs and tributes are the latter being done well.

Spellcasters aren't weak in PoE at all. They were way weaker in the original IE games. Early level progressions are fine. Although I expect we will be starting at a later level, or importing our PoE characters into PoE2, as was the case with BG1 and BG2.

Did you read Vithrack's encyclopedia entry? They are extremely intelligent and not dangerous unless threatened. If their birthrate weren't so low they could very well be a Kith race. They have the sentience and technology to match. But I understand your question. It's actually pretty easier to address. Just give a dialog option where the PC says, "That's my pet Xaurip / Vithrack / Ogre." Now queue sarcastic banter. If the PC doesn't requirement to trigger the dialog, guards will attack on sight. Other RPGs have done it very well. Shadowrun: HK came to mind. Every mission people will react to the ghoul in your party. NWN was one, altho by today's standards Deekin was not very well fleshed out. Even BG had Viconia.

We quite desperately need a new patch. I for instance have encountered (am encountering) a game breaking bug and just dare not go forward with POTD playthru right now. If I set companion AI on spellcasters will ignore orders completely. Just wouldn't cast any spell you tell them to, and choose spells that don't make any sense (like charm animals on a bunch of skeletons). Yeah. It gets THAT bad. Just to give you an idea of what to expect.

I believe a dev said he would suggest this in the design meeting. So any follow-up? It is still very much a requested feature... Especially since WM is out, with retraining we do desperately need to be able to re-enchant elemental enchantment.

I should also add that compared to Devil of Caroc and Zahua, the original companions aren't 'bland' as some people call them. But they do feel like what we've seen before. I think WM may be an indication that we're moving towards more unconventional character concepts, characters that player NPCs won't be able to realize without scripted storytelling. And I think it's a good thing. In fact, that's my biggest gripe about Eora - it gets the old-school classic feel down, but at the same time doesn't take enough chances, compared to 'contemporary' worlds like Thedas. There are gay people in Thedas. Racism and religious conflicts practically define that world. And it was such a acute representation of the world we live in. The whole Ethoas-Margran thing and intermingle of races in Eora seems like a missed opportunity to me.

I interpret it as the stats just aren't what they meant in DnD, and are completely relative to the class. Might for instance, doesn't always mean physical strength - it is if you're a fighter, etc. But for ciphers and wizards it means mind power. So for all we know, your wizards could be magically grabbing someone by the collar and listing him up. Otherwise it would make no sense at all for it to improve healing, ranged attack and spell dmg etc.

I'd like to be able to import my save to the sequel. Like in BG1 to BG2.

I like having Krograg the ogre as my body guard in Caed Nua. A lot of the wilder races in PoE are fascinating. Ogres, Xaurips and Vithracks all had characters that stood out, if not downright endearing. Maybe in future expansions/sequels we could get a party members from one of these races? I mean let's be honest. Kith NPCs are never gonna be as good as custom party members, due to their stats alone. The only reason we play pre-made NPCs are because they bring something unique to the table. Thoughts/suggestions?

They re-balanced it a bit since WM. So maybe hybrid classes are less useless now. I am not as combat oriented as you seem to be. So for me the difference between those classes are mostly about flavor. And They are, for the lack of a better word, classic. They are exactly what you'd expect for a wizard, a fighter, or a priest. Again, for a new IP, not necessarily a bad thing. The game does give you room to experiment - if you want to create a heavy armored melee wizard, the game doesn't restrict nor penalize you for it - which is more than I could say for the IE games. It's been a while since I played the IE games and my skills have improved quite a bit since then. But I feel the game is easier than BG. Which for an cRPG (vs. tabletop) I think it's a good thing because you no longer feel pressured to do certain builds, or you won't even be able to beat the game. You get to experience the story and everything. I do agree with the combat encounters. Not a lot of non-combat resolution to get through the game. And there's no enough out-of-combat mechanics to make the game interesting - I quite enjoy the idea of utility classes (e.g. faces, spies, fixers,mechanics, etc.) that don't do as much in combat but can, say talk their way out of situations, or use networks to gather information, etc. Shadowrun: HK did this extremely well. Some didn't like it but you're assigned the face role for your party. So if you don't want your PC to fight, he doesn't have to.

I didn't use Long Stride until Zahua joined my party, and now I realized movement speed bonus really should all work like that. I would make armors and items like the Aru-brekr more usable. It just doesn't feel right to have one or several party members charge ahead when the party moves.

I don't have phantom summon. My point stands though about him only uses lvl. 1 summons. Has anyone ever had him use lvl. 2 or above invocations? I think we need an option to have AI save up their resources (chants, focus, wounds).

Wow. Thanks for pointing out the error of our ways. It's almost as if we paid for our games or something. The audacity!

1. If past experiences with Bethesda games are any indication, the game is never going to reach an acceptable level of QA. The game was buggy at launch, and it seems with every bug fixed new bugs arise. So might as well play it now and just hope you don't encounter any game-breaking ones (which contrary to what some say, there are many). 2. All the mechanic issues from WM will be present in the base game. 3. You said you've played the Infinity Engine games. So unless you plan to play on Path of the Damned difficulty, the game shouldn't so difficult that you can't complete on a specific class, nerfed or not. Also, you can retrain your characters anytime. So if further research/actual experience makes you feel like builds need to change, you can do so any time. The only exception is the wizard class. They cost about 2-3 times as much to retrain. You have to pay for extra spells and lose them all at retrain, and must pay all over again. It was pointed out to the devs the absurdity of this design but they refused to change it. So be extra careful with your wizard builds.

I have tried all 3 configurations (aggressive, support & summon) and it seems regardless of my choice Kana always summons skeletons when the 3-phase threshold is reached. The only way to prevent that is: A) to constantly have him selected and give him other things to do, or B) turn off his AI completely. Even when I already have him selected, if I don't constantly have him running around, he will immediately summon skeletons. I can't turn all my attention on just babysitting him! Not to mention skeletons are completely useless. I can't even use any of the higher level invocations now (or retrain him since you have to have that invocation) - It's like Kana is perpetually stuck at level 1! Is there some sort of coding issue that make chanters do that? Is there a work-around? Or did I set something wrong? This is getting really annoying and I might have to drop chanters from my party permanently now...

I run it on a 2013 MacBook Pro. And it can run the highest setting no problem. The graphic engine is very well optimized. CPU on the other hand... erm, performance is not ideal. Loading takes quite a bit of time.

...on the character and inventory screen, like we do with stats and skills? e.g.: accuracy = 41 (26 base + 5 weapon bonus + 10 weapon specialization), etc. I've encountered a few time a bug where when you level and pick a talent that improves your accuracy, it doesn't apply properly. And now I'm paranoid if it happened to instances I didn't know of. But there's no way to check for sure unless they show a breakdown. C'mon, Obsidian. How many months into release are we? Why are we still dealing with alpha-stage bugs here?

The having to re-purchase all of your spells is a limitation of how the re-leveling works. I don't see how they would fix it unless they somehow flagged your spell picks and did not allow you to pick any spells at all during a re-spec level up. You have a limitless stash that can hold every item in the world, so I don't see the hardship of simply not vender trashing some of your grimoires that you collect. You can even fill each one up with different spells so four of them should be sufficient to hold 16 different spells of every level for use in case you choose to re-spec your wizard. That would actually be exactly fine. Just don't let the character learn any spell at all at re-spec. There are other ways for wizards to learn those spells. You'll save more than you miss. Respecing wasn't a thing until a patch 6 months into release. If you have a save from before and you've been selling your grimoires you're sh*t out of luck. Buying them back is 750cp a piece. And how much do you suppose it was to copy those spells in the 1st place, and now to pay them all over again? I hope your wizard is rich 'cause that's easily double or triple the cost of respecing of other classes.

Oh I just mean that wiping (unlearning) spells make sense for other casters but not for wizards. Like, if a cipher needs to learn a new spell when retraining she needs to get rid of an old one to make room. With wiz there's no limitation on how many you can learn anyway.

The only major problem a wizard faces as of now is the fact that you pay extra gold to learn spells. Then when you retrain your wizards you lose all the spells you already paid for. And you ended up with a huge copper investment. And dozens of grimoires that you must drag along for the entirety of the game, since there is no centralized archive that lets you manage your spells better.