Sir Ray of Light

Just use 2016-11-03 https://xkcd.com/1179/

OT: Indeed. ​In any sufficiently complex game system built by human beings and sold for a few dozens of $USD, someone will always find something wrong. If you wait for zero defects, you will never play a computer game again, and certainly not a highly complex RPG with a myriad of interacting rules, wide diversity of items, vast numbers of character builds, dialog options, quest orders, and quest completion choices. I think PoE is actually quite solid, even relative to some far simpler games. I'm on my 3rd play with 0 crashes, 0 corrupted savegames, and maybe one medium-severity bug I easily worked around by reloading. Did some item or class skill not quite act like it should've? Oh, probably. Sure. Let's go with "yes". ​There are games so buggy you can't reasonably play them, but PoE is not such a game. It's a seriously good time and shows a lot of love for a genre that recently was all but extinct. It's gotten more post-release updates than most games do. There's been a great 2-part expansion, they're making a sequel, and another independent game done in similar style. Things are good . Since you like the Infinity Engine games, I predict you'll love PoE too. Never mind the folks complaining that because the Sword of Causing Nearsightedness in Marsupials is only +3 instead of +4, The Game Is Totally Broken Unplayable Garbage. Guys. It’s great that you haven’t been hit by more or less game-breaking bugs. But other people have. Please stop insulting them. You are not helping. Here’s just one example from yesterday: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/88776-cannot-change-party-logs-attached/ The “infamous” stacking bug (apparently fixed) would be another one. Just because you haven’t encountered these bugs doesn’t mean that they don’t exist (or didn’t exist). It has to be possible to report (or to mention) such issues without getting jumped on.

Here you go: It's really not. Unless you think any of the +X% damage talents is "meh", then your standards for "meh" are just vastly different I suppose. Because those generally are in the range of +10% to +20% damage, and conditional on any number of factors (weapon used, type of damage, sneak attack conditions, etc.) and/or with penalties to other stats attached (eg. Savage Attack). By comparison Confident Aim (correctly implemented) increases the mean base damage by about 8% (without conditions, other than using a weapon), and the graze to hit conversion is equivalent to about a 3% damage bonus as well (varies with accuracy, of course). Moreover, because the +8% is on the base damage it scales all regular +X% damage modifiers as well, so a crit effectively adds +54%, Might adds +3.3% per point, etc. That adds up rather quickly. A small downside is that it doesn't increase the maximum damage of course (but it does increase consistency, also valuable) so it isn't fully comparable to +X% damage, but the math very clearly points to it being at least on par with most if not all of the other +damage talents. In the current, bugged implementation, CA gives about a +48% on base damage instead and also vastly increases the maximum damage. So while not game-breaking (though no one claimed it to be, I believe), it makes it vastly overpowered; it's a bit like permanently doing Crit damage, except better because all damage bonuses are scaled up as well and you have an additional +74% damage when you genuinely do Crit.

Take a look at e. g. post #32 in this thread. Btw: I don’t know what to say about the never-ending “excuses” or “solutions” from some people. These… - This issue - Psychic Backlash - Shield Bash - Cannot change party - Brighthollow Upstairs …are existing and more or less confirmed 3.03 bugs (affect multiple users, no known fix even from devs). Please stop playing down these issues. You are not helping. Don’t shoot the messenger. People are not making these things up. It’s okay to talk about these issues, even if they are not fundamentally game-breaking. It’s probably helping to get them fixed. It’s productive. Thanks.

they've been patching the game for 15 months, it's a bit rich to say they "don't intend to support" it. I didn't buy the dlc 15 months ago. I bought the dlc within the last month. It's great that they released patches during those 14 months but it doesn't help me much if I run into a bug that effects my enjoyment of the game. At the very least potential customers should know ahead of time that support has/is about to run out. When some feature, like multiplayer support, is no longer available steam product pages generally note that. At least be transparent. I'm not trying to throw anyone under the bus. It's just disappointing. I'll be more wary of purchasing OBS games in the future. It’s also a bit misleading to say that they’ve been patching the game for the last 15 months, because they’ve worked on and released two commercial expansions during that time. So it’s not really release + 15 months of support. Only in some way. Not pointing fingers, just pointing out.

I really liked the atmosphere in the Searing Falls cave. Smoke, pieces of burning ash floating through the air, and finally the dragon emerging from the shadows. It also was a long, drawn-out fight for me, and the victory felt very rewarding. - Tactical retreat http://i.imgur.com/DhT4wFH.jpg

I was referring to e. g. Karkarov in #45. <quote> </quote> I admit that one could argue whether the bug really is game-breaking or not, but that’s a bit of a moot point in a game with elaborate debugging features. I know that there seems to be a fix since at least the 17th of May, but it’s still beta and it’s Steam-only. Edit: As an owner of the GOG version (and as I understand it), I have two options right now: 1) Wait for the patch./Not play the game. 2) Avoid (quick)saving (?) whenever possible. Just to clarify: I absolutely DON’T want Obsidian to rush the final (?) patch. I prefer quality. I’m just trying to give a bit of support to everyone who’s upset about the way this whole thing turned out. It’s not the end of the world, but I can understand it.

To be honest, I don’t think comparisons with other games are particularly productive. There’s a lot of subjective judgement involved, and it doesn’t really matter (at least not to me) how good or bad Skyrim or Diablo III or whatever other game is in regards to bugs. Two wrongs don’t make a right. And excuse me, but the argument that it’s not cost-effective to fix (potentially) game-breaking bugs is definitely not a sensible way to run a lasting business. If I told that to a customer, they’d think I’d be joking—and rightfully so. (I have a tech background. I kinda know how hard—and what a mess—QA is. I can relate.) From the customer’s point of view, we should be allowed to expect a product that’s free of any major issues. Even more so after almost 1.5 years and two paid expansions. Obsidian didn’t patch the game for all the time out of the goodness of their hearts. They did it because they were working on expansions (and possibly also on improving the engine for future titles), and, as I understand it, they actually introduced new issues. Obsidian does a lot of things right, and I really like PoE, and I’ve been a fan of the Black Isle stuff for half my life, but, you know, the game’s almost 1.5 years old, and I… am “waiting” for a patch to play it. Sorry, that’s just how it is. As far as I’m concerned, we don’t need to be overly dramatic about this, but, well… (Don’t ask my friend who’s waiting for the novella, though.)

FWIW: The stacking bug is the reason why I have postponed my second play-through (this time with WM1+2). I don’t really care about the specifics of the bug (whether it triggers on save or on load (or both) and whether it’s quicksave/quickload or normal save/load (or both)). I’ve read that it can be a bit of a problem and that the whole of Defiance Bay counts as one map or something. I don’t want to deal with the details, I’ve other stuff to play (e. g. D:OS), and I don’t really have much time anyway (not really playing D:OS, too). So, no big deal for me personally. I probably would have played PoE, but I can wait, and I prefer a good final patch. But, generally speaking, I can’t judge how bad the bug (potentially) is, but issues like this need to be fixed. I can’t really see that there is a discussion. WM2 was released 4.5 months ago (PoE 15 months ago), and I have the impression that the game is currently in a state that is not considered to be 100 % playable (depending on a player’s style/usage of standard interface features). That is a bad situation, and I understand why people are upset about it. “It costs too much money to fix the game” doesn’t really count. Sorry guys. This is not a Free Software project. It’s okay to—within limits—have certain expectations. I really think the customers have been patient enough (*cough* novella *cough*).

I’ve played BG1/2, IWD1/2, P:T, and PoE. I definitely agree that “accidental un-pause” happens from time to time. I’m a really careful player, but I’ve certainly ran into traps because of a badly timed auto-pause/space-bar combination. I also think that this issue is one reason why I’ve never used a lot of auto-pause options. (Another reason is that extensive use of auto-pause does get annoying in many fights/situations. That’s why I’ve never understood the “you can play these as turn-based games” argument. That must take forever and be as repetitive as photocopying a book.) I’m not a hardcore player, and I’d probably have no real need to use distinct keys for “pause”, “unpause”, “toggle pause”, but I think they would be a nice addition to RTWP games. Using them would be completely optional and up to the player. I don’t think the cooldown idea would solve the underlying problem. It would just give us a bigger margin of “error”. It would also really annoy me having to wait for $x milliseconds before I could move out of an auto-pause state. I’d have *a lot* of premature, and therefor non-registered, space-bar presses. That would probably drive me crazy. I’d very much prefer distinct key mappings. That would probably be much simpler to implement, too. Then you are clearly not the target audience for an idea like this, because you don’t play the game in the same way most other people do. I agree. That’s the implementation I would go for. I’d like to experiment with that. I feel that I’ve disregarded my Chanter quite a bit because I was too busy watching my Cipher’s meter. I don’t know if I’m the best example, but there are a finite number of things I can keep track of in a RTWP game without losing interest because it just starts taking too long to micro-manage everything. [Edit: Sorry for not adding author’s names to quotes. I tried to figure this out for a few minutes, but the editor gave me a hard time, and I couldn’t really be bothered.]

GOG/Linux FWIW: I did a reinstall with the non-patch GOG files and the formerly bugged save seems to be okay so far. (Didn’t play much, but tested ranged combat, spells, resting, talking to people, fighting in Black Meadow, quicksave.) File order for reinstallation was: 1. gog_pillars_of_eternity_2.11.0.15.sh (GOG-15) 2. gog_pillars_of_eternity_white_march_part_1_dlc_2.5.0.7.sh (GOG-7) 3. gog_pillars_of_eternity_white_march_part_2_dlc_2.1.0.2.sh (GOG-2) 4. gog_pillars_of_eternity_preorder_item_and_pet_dlc_2.0.0.2.sh

Basically the same thing happened to me, too. (Ubuntu 14.04, GOG, WM1, WM2, 3.00→3.01 patch, normal difficulty.) At first, I thought that my Cipher just missed a lot. Then I realized that no ranged spell or attack worked anymore. Well, minor glitch. Save and reload and it will probably be gone. Quicksave didn’t work. “Save” in the game menu was greyed out. So, let’s try to rest. Couldn’t talk to the innkeeper of the Black Hound Inn. Couldn’t talk to anybody else really. Tried to rest in the wild. Tried to reload an autosave (only kind of save that still worked). Nothing changed. Finally, I sighed and uninstalled the game for now. Don’t want to deal with this stuff. I’ll try a clean install after the next patch or so. It’s really really broken for me right now.

Seems to be the same/a similar issue as this one: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/84755-black-meadow-is-buggered/

There’s “Post Options” at the bottom of album pages. Click it and choose “download album.”

OT: What GOG does seems absolutely normal to me. You can buy accessories for everything everywhere without having to prove that you own the thing they are meant for. Steam probably doesn’t allow it because it wouldn’t make much sense with the way their DRM works. That’s more a special thing about Steam than anything else.

Try killing the dragon last (i.e. kill the wyrmling(s) first). That seems to have worked for me (tried in for the first time on my sixth replay today).