mosspit

Really interested in how the quality of encounters are being improved. 2 of the obvious things I notice the game in the current state tries to handle encounters is by changing the number of critters and focusing on cc (either by making critters apply more of it or making them immune to it). It will be refreshing if the encounters were changed in other ways other than these.

Well in a way pathfinding is also kinda AI related? But instead of target prioritising, it is finding the optimal route to a target. Some of the weird behaviour that I notice are probably due to both. In any case, it isn't a deal breaker

I guess it is just kinda difficult for an external site to keep track of all the major and minor changes in PoE. Getting a site up is one thing, getting it constantly updated with changes on a game that doesn't have a fixed patching schedule (at least that I know of) is another.

Haha yeah As much I really enjoy this game, the pathfinding really could use more work. Sometimes the enemies just run around like headless chickens. It is already apparent when one use a character with just a Boots of Speed, not to mention a specialized build like this.

I can totally imagine something hilarious about how this character generates Wounds. "Oh no wounds? Ok let's engage a melee. Click back and forth do trigger a few disengagement attacks and get some Wounds. Go kill stuff while the poor melee sod tries to chase you in slow mo. Oh out of Wounds again? Where is that poor sod... There he is!"

For custom portraits, check out an existing thread https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/71722-the-custom-portraits-thread/. Plenty of great content by talented guys and ladies. Thanks to them, my current playthrough looks like this Kudos to the developers for making it easy to do use custom portraits too

Well I have a failed idea. Given the attractiveness of Pain Link from the other thread, I toyed with the idea of affecting both enemy and friendly targets with Pain Link. "Infinite" dmg loop triggered by dmg instance proc on opposing Pain Links. I thought of casting PL on a charmed enemy. Sadly, it can't work as the charmed status is not a proper ally flag and the charmed enemy can't gt targeted by PL

Btw Boeroer, CW isn't nerfed and should work with DoT as you mentioned. I just checked with Tidefall. But there is no log entries on the tick dmg so it is difficult to show the results.

Yeah, it might be nerfed. This and the other thread gave me an idea of something involving Pain Link. I have to see if it works (or most likely not) after I knock off from work.

So in some ways, Pain Link acts like a reverse Carnage and Combustion Wounds is the dmg multiplier? Very nice! Reminds me of a previous discussion of the synergy between CW and Bunderbluss. Even better yet, there is some flexibility in setting this up on other classes. Any idea of the interaction of CW with DoTs like Deep Wounds or Wounding Shots?

Some people, myself included, like RTwP very much, and whilst I have no particular desire to see very long combats, I would prefer them to be long enough and tough enough that I can actually make use of spells and abilities. There's already a problem with Chanters hardly being able to use their invocations on easier difficulties, faster combats would just extend that to harder difficulties and make other classes unable to use multiple in combat buffs. Yeah, I like RTwP too. That's why, you know, I bought the game in the first place? Got to know PoE from D:OS which is incidentally a sTBRPG. At this point I find PoE is more entertaining than D:OS. But I like both. Story Mode will suit the original poster most likely.

Then how would a game have to be for you to consider it to be difficult to you? Bearing in mind this is a RTwP crpg. I'm really happy with the options PoE provides as it is actually. I considered my first playthrough on 'hard mode' before 2.0 to be normal for me, offering a small challenge and providing for a very fluent playthrough. On that difficulty, I didn't have to think much about combat encounters and neither did I have to reload. PotD on 2.0 with trial of iron enabled is more to my personal taste, as I enjoy a (very) difficult game with a high chance of dying and with having to replay certain pieces. As it forces me to think about how to approach certain encounters, I derive more pleasure from progressing in the game and eventually finishing it. I'm not sure if that answers your question. But if it doesn't, feel free to ask for a better explanation . The reason I asked about your take on difficulty is because of the subjectivity vs objectivity question. I think there is a bit of both. Problem is I think it is difficult to point out the factors that make the game objectively difficult, and which everyone can agree on. The subjectivity part is also there as everyone has different skill(?) levels, I don't even know what being skilled in a RTwP game means Anyways, difficulty is like what the previous poster said - it is a personal gauge. But I don't think it should be insulting to say one isn't good at the game. Personally, I am fine with admitting I'm not a good gamer. As long as I can be entertained by the challenge arising from all the game options available, kinda like what you said, I am satisfied. Because what matters is that I have fun, not because of the label that I am somehow "lesser". I guess I should describe what difficulty means to me? Well I guess having to reload like more than 3 times for an encounter is difficult? Taking into account that over the past 6 playthroughs I gain more insights and it naturally means I have to adjust the settings to stay entertained. So much so my previous playthrough is a triple crown no-caster playthrough with 5 reloads and the current is a PotD ToI all-melee with 1 reload so far.

Very nice find Boercer Although I'm not good and creative enough to come out with new combination, it is always fun to experience these kind of synergies. I flirted with the idea of the micro heavy Vengeful Death Barb though, trying to see how I can make the Barb useful for boss-type encounters. If I go ahead with it, the playthrough with the Barb is going to be very different I feel. Btw you and I know that this will be patched out eventually right ?

Yeah, and the market self-regulated so that serious RPG's were only done by lone developers laboring away in their basements, like Spiderweb. The limited cRPG renaissance we're seeing now owes more to happenstance than any self-regulating properties the computer game market may have, and if inXile, Obsidian, HBS, and Larian go under, decide to do something else, get bought out, or go after the mass market, I don't see any guarantee that we won't have to wait another ten years – or more – to see anyone take their place. So happenstance. The answer to your own question "Then how come there was, like, 10 years in which hard, serious cRPG's effectively disappeared from the mainstream? And are only coming back now, in a small, limited way, in fits and starts?" is because of coincidence. Sorry but I think that is my cue to give the good ol' saying of let's agree to disagree.

The market segregated. I am not suggesting to fight the paradigm shift towards casual gaming, and I am not saying that hardcore games aren't niche. Just that there is a self-regulating aspect. The "coming back now, in a small, limited way, in fits and starts" can be treated as the effect of this self-regulating aspect and is attributed to the particular gamer group hitting critical mass, and also because of introduction of crowd-funding.

The beauty of it is with regards to the desire for challenge, there is also a personal component that is independent of your peers. If games cater too much to the lowest denominator, the market for neglected gamers who want more challenge will grow and form another opportunity for developers to satisfy them. That's how games like Souls and XCOM capitalize on the situation and cater for the more hardcore gamers. In some ways, it is self-regulating.

Just browse through these forums and compare the complaints of "game too easy" vs "game too hard". Plenty of gamers want more difficulty either because they want to "look good" or genuinely desire the challenge.

^ You underestimate the gamer ego.

I seriously doubt the original poster was thinking in terms of conservation of development resources. Options are always welcomed. I personally dislike and have never used party AI. It doesn't mean I do not welcome its addition, as long I have the choice of not using it.

If the majority of the playerbase finds the 'normal' difficulty of normal difficulty, and 'easy' difficulty to be easy, then those modes are, not objectively in the scientific sense, but as objectively as you can get (I would say, objectively for humanity studies standards) normal and easy. Thus, saying the game on easy difficulty mode is 'easy' would for the majority of people be a factually true statement. And for me, that makes it very unreasonable when certain people who still find the game difficult to be insulted when other people claim that the game is objectively easy. In this case, wouldn't anyone with a small bit of self reflexivity be able to realise that the problems they face with the game on issue mode do not arise by the game being too hard, but are also caused by the fact that they have a lower than average skill with playing games? The point I'm trying to make is that in your line of reasoning, you can never make objective statements about a game's difficulty. And if you extend that line of thinking, that statement could go for anything in the field of human culture, because none of our norms and standards are based on anything but systems of human thoughts and are not grounded in nature. But I also think it's a very nihilist way of reasoning. We don't need to feel apologetic for upholding certain standards that are the norm in a given culture. Otherwise, you would in principle not be able to pass judgment on anyone for any behavior anymore whatsoever, because anyone can feel offended about anything going against his or her own personal standards. Apart from that, I suppose people are just worried that this story mode will have cost the devs much time and resources and might have detracted from the content of the game and expansion pack. But like you said, if this makes the game more accessible to more people, without it arguably detracting from the quality for other players (at least by leaving the other options intact), that's also nice. Then how would a game have to be for you to consider it to be difficult to you? Bearing in mind this is a RTwP crpg.

If your basis is purely because another rpg happen to have same sort of resource management system, I have to respectfully disagree. Never played WL2 but from what I can see the ammo and meds resource management makes sense as it is a post-apocalyptic setting where scavenging is crucial to survival.

That's all fine and dandy. My point is not to make the game more difficult for the sake of difficulty itself, but to make the other aspects of the game more relevant and/or require some degree of planning. Imo, not all ways to make the game more "difficult" is agreeable to me.

Endurance and Health bars are meant to complement the supplies resource management for resting. What makes it seem redundant is the fact that resting can be done with not much consequence. It kinda ties in the Health aspect as well as the the per-rest abilities aspect. I have previously suggested ways to make the resource management stricter eg. make some dungeons un-escapeable once entered so the supplies management is more crucial. Then came the objections as this would legitimately have a game-over effect, in which one might need to reload before entering the dungeon if the supplies was wrongly managed. Note that there are some situations where this is already present in the game itself, eg. The drop to lv5 of Endless Path via pit or the final dungeon of Sunless Shadow. At this point, you can also place self-restriction on camping.

I found lvl7 to be the sweet spot to enter WM without scaling up. I managed at lvl5 but the odds (stats-wise) are too stacked against the party to have an enjoyable experience. For my party composition anyways. Moreover at lvl7 would imply you still got a healthy quantity of quests left in the main campaign. Those quests/areas can provide the fodder needed to power up the various soulbound weapons you can find in WM.

Playing with a reduced party is one of the last things I will personally do in PoE, not until I exhausted other options. It is already rare that rpgs nowadays feature 6-man parties (usually they have 4 or less). I really like being able to micro 6 characters through hectic encounters.