molotov.

I read an interesting post about this matter in the rpgcodex forum. felipepe: "The (lack of) Encounter Design Here's were things get really ugly. For all the talk Sensuki did against the engagement system, it didn't bother me much. The real problem here is the encounter design. It's extremely poor. People complain that most battles you just send a tank to engage their melee fighters and have the rest of the party attack them. That's true, but mostly because you rarely face anything that requires a different tactic. There's no zerg-rush of weak enemies overwheling your tank, no ogre doing a pincer attack inside a corridor, no archers in hard-to-reach places, poison-resistant enemies inside swamps, battles inside infernal traps, NOTHING! The only ambush you'll face the entire game is in the tutorial! What happened?" I have to agree with him, the lack of interesting encounter designs are enormous. In the Dozens quarters there is an Orlan adventurer that you can read his soul, he has an amazing story to share, the story describes how he escaped an encounter with an ogre in a corridor, it was a marvellous story, I read it 3 times and I was eager to experience something like that in the game, but it never happened. "It's all so limited that the role of environments in PoE is binary: either you are in open areas where you must protect your squishy characters, or in tight areas where you can have your tank block the enemies while the rest of the party goes pew-pew." Unfortunately that describes 90% of the encounters in PoE1... "As result, battles in PoE are more memorable due to their context (a lone powerful bear early in game, a big dragon, another big dragon, assaulting a fortress head on) than for being actual interesting fights. The hardest enemy in the game, the boss of the Endless Paths, is such a dumb, cheesy encounter you wonder if the devs were trying to make something cool or just going "heh, doubt you'll beat this, grognards!". Again... I have to agree with him, I can't remember any fight where I had to position my team in an intelligent and tactical manner, the only fight I remember doing that was against the Adra Dragon, and it was the only fight that I didn't wanted to do that, I wanted to fight the dragon head on, my PC is a fighter I wanted to block some fire breaths, to actually fight the dragon, but what I got was a fight where the dragon can one shot my tank with almost 160 deflection... then I searched in the forums for an explanation, I did find a way to kill the dragon I had to use glyphs and cc spells and that was the way to beat any hard fight in the game, some of the bounties in WM II, those Monks in WM II... everything could be destroyed with glyphs and cc spells. Oh yes, if someone knows a way to kill the dragons without the use of cc and glyphs I would like to know. "Overall, the only fights you'll have to put more effort into and occasionally stop to rethink your tactics owe this to a single effect: Charm. Yep... IMO a game can be made with only well designed encounters or scrippted ones, Dark Souls is a good example, every single encounter in that game is designed or scrippted you don't have a single trash mob without an objective in that game. PoE has something good going towards it, the combat, for me the combat is very, very good - well I don't know if it will keep it good with only 5 party members - but the team has to be more creative, BUT a good bunch of xaurips to kill is always good, just keep them interesting.

That's exactly what I said. He is overrated. It's unfair that you picked this particular sentence, as I made myself very clear. What I wanted to say is just that Durance and Grieving Mother were great characters. They completed the others. I think this added an important component to the whole game and gave me more access to the story. Especially Durance and his talk about the war gave me the feeling that this war thing was more than just blabber. Him being that ****ed up **** was an important counterpart to all those nice guys. It helped develop an interesting tension. The team has my trust regarding things like artwork, creation of culture and history for the game world or game mechanics (Im totally on the vancian magic side, but if they say they want to go in a different direction thats sad for me, but OK, they know what they are doing). But storywise and regarding characters I dont really trust them. I dont know, which parts of the story and setting (Godhammer Bomb, The Twelve, Ashfall) came from Avalone and which parts didn't. I liked this stuff and I have the strong feeling that they are going to erase everything from the game that I liked. At least their statements so far point into that direction. Grieving Mother ... maybe. Depends on how you can connect with this kind of thing. For me she also felt a little bit disconnected. But I'm totally shure, the problem was me, not the character. I still like her. Durance: Never. If you say that, you didn't get the character. He was integral on understanding the saints war, that means understanding the current state of the world. Durance represents an important part of the current world. You know, like with every war. Not everyone wants to talk about it the way Durance does and of course noone likes persons like Durance that talk about it. But it is there, even if people want to ignore it. Eder represents the part of the war generation that tries to look into the future, even if the past still is part of his life. Durance reprsents the past, he cant just move on. He was too involved. And as this is a thread about humor: I liked Durance's humor. How come that if Hiravias makes dirty jokes, everyone consideres it funny. If Durance wants to find a home for his other stuff that is suddenly not so OK. Also how the other characters reacted to Durance was very funny. If you have no Durance, you can't make jokes about Durance. The complete quote was "Grieving mother and Durance were just too disconnected from the real world to be likeable... but I do understand why people liked them." They being disconnected from the real world don't mean that I didn't liked their story, I really liked both of their stories, what I meant is that It was impossible for me to like their personalities, I couldn't connect with them, GM had no personality whatsoever and Durance was too preoccupied with his quest to show some of his personality.

Exactly!!! For me Ydwin is very pretty... She's a very attractive. A pretty good looking face! Where you are from? Why Xoti is beautiful to you? I'm from Brazil, her skin colour and hair are the main reason.

After reading about the Spanish conquest... I'll side with prince Aruihi, but I'll try to make them more friendly towards the Aumaua, perhaps a trade contract.

And they failed miserable...

PoE 1 had a good amount of trash mobs, it never felt tedious... well... just WM II, that expassion was pretty monotonous, with trash mobs being stronger than bosses... good thing that the end was really good.

PoE really suffered from the lack of a good dwarf - yes Sagani you were boring...-, give us anything good, even a cliché funny drunk dwarf would be good.

I don't think that we will get Ydwin as a full companion, but I think that Cadegund or a GOOD dwarf character will be a good addition to the game.

"Two of the characters that many loved (durance and grieving mother) were for me far too long winded and distant. I had them at my party for mechanical reasons but I hated them to death." I couldn't agree more... Kana Rua was my favourite companion, his dialogues were light and entertaining to read, he had some pretty funny comments about the world, well... it was funny if you knew about the lore, for example, one time I was near that BIG Adra Stone in the middle of the map and he said something like "try to not knock down that rock..." it was pretty funny if you knew about the stone war, It felt that he was part of that world and also connected with your world, because of his humour and happiness. Grieving mother and Durance were just too disconnected from the real world to be likeable... but I do understand why people liked them. That being said... I agree with you, we need more humour, A LOT of humour.

I saw games getting ruined because of "romance" - if you think that romance is just sex...- and I saw games getting better because of it. I never played The Witcher 3 because everything that I hear from that game is, "which bitch shall I bang?" and that is it... Dragon Age Inquisition is just an awfull game that didn't know how to handle romance right, with the exception of Harding, every single romance feel rushed, it feels like they want to give sex to the main character as soon as possible... talking about sex... Mass Effect is just a sex simulator now, the trailers are out and people are preoccupied with the appearence of the team, one of the comments from the trailers: 'There was a Bioware dev. meeting with fans two years before, in that meeting one SJW girl stood up and asked the developers to make the female characters literally ugly and 'thick'. Seems like Bioware took it to the heart." when your game community attracts people with this type of thoughts... that is when you know you destroyed your game... BUT, you have some games with great romance options, like Dragon Age Origins, I don't know about you guys but for me all of the romances in that game felt natural and, the most important, felt right towards the character personality. TL;DR: It's important that the romance don't get in the way, that the best thing about the game is the combat, the lore or the story and not if you can bang someone or not... oh... by the way, Xoti is not beautiful to you? Why? Well... maybe it's because your culture is different. The culture of your country really dictates what you like and don't like.

It's up to Obsidian now, they have to make interviews, release some gameplay videos, make an open beta, call some youtubers - angry joe is a good option he did make a good review about PoE1. Sure we can help, by spreading the word to some forums or youtube channels, but I believe we already did all those things...

TL;DR: To be completely plain and sincere, I think it's quite a dumb idea, not balance wise, but RP wise. PoE is a RPG game, a lot of people, ****.. I'll be bold, everyone plays RPGs with some RP element in mind, it can be something small or something big, but everyone does. To ilustrate why I think it's a bad idea - RP wise - I'll tell a story about a weapon in the game. I entered Caed Nua, full of fears, but I gathered my strenght and destroyed every single phantom in the yard, after the battle I had a vision of a ghost who told me a story about soldiers and fire, after the vision I realized that the ghost was near a big door, it was a strange welcoming. That door was the entrance to the main hall, the first thing I saw was a sword, her name was "Whispers of Yenwood", after reading her lore I realized that the sword chose me as her leader, it was something so new and cool to me. I used her in the entire game - well... almost the entire game my GPU died in chapter 3-, some of the npcs even noticed her, it was amazing, I never experienced something like that in a game. Now... they will just remove that possibility? Why?

I swear I read or heard someone at Obsidian say that paypal funds would count towards stretch goals, at least for a while. Correct You know for how much time?

It's official, RIP Ydwin. No more animancer companion for us.

Josh stated that they were afraid of one more companion and that is why they did the 5M stretch goal. So, basically, they don't want to do any more companions, too much work perhaps? That is why the party is now at 5 members?

Josh has stated that they are afraid of any more companions... so I don't think that they will introduce Ydwin even if we get to 4.9 million...

Introducing the HEMA in a RPG would make the fighter class much more enjoyable and one handed styles much more reliable.

If you wanted a response from me you might have tried not misrepresenting what I said. Unfortunately that ship has sailed so, like I said, this conversation is over. "Also no, these archetypes are not universal. They came to prominence with the rise of MMOs." ""As for your perfect party: that's an awfully specific set of roles that you must have." Those are quotes of what YOU said, I didn't add anything. In the first you said that archetypes are not universal, tank, healer, dps, they are not universal, I think that is quite hard to believe, that is why I wanted to know your amazing party without a tank, healer or dps. The second one you said: "that's an awfully specific set of roles that you MUST have", I've never said that you MUST have those specific role, please, quote me where I said that you MUST have. Better than that, let me help you! "Combat wise, 6 is by far the best number, 4 is really simplistic, generic and full casul, 5 is just weird and casul, PoE1 had the perfect party, 3 melees: 1 tank, 1 semi tank, 1 melee dps; 3 ranged characters: 1 healer, 1 dps, 1 dps/support. You could make a party with any of the classes without limitation, with 5 you will have a huge limitation, you will have to choose between 1 semi tank and 1 support/dps, both of them are great for CC and battlefield control, without them the battlefield will turn into a mess - just like Dragon Age." Where is the "you must have"? I can't find it! I basically said it was a perfect party, with balancing, of course you can beat the game whatever you want, but you are arguing with me that those roles don't exist, so, please, tell me what was your party? And I'm the one misrepresenting...

Yeah, this is the end of this conversation. "Also no, these archetypes are not universal. They came to prominence with the rise of MMOs." Rubbish. "Played through PoE1 multiple times now. played all the infinity engine rpgs as well back in the day and their enhanced counter parts now and have done so sucessfully without following such a rigid role structure. So not sure what your point is?"Just amazing, you and JerekKruger must be the only two players that can play a RPG without any roles. I just want that both of you explain to me the party that each one of you used to beat the game. Let's see if they don't have any roles. "As for your perfect party: that's an awfully specific set of roles that you must have." Please copy and paste where I said that you MUST have those 6 roles.

"For gods sake! I've never said that tank, healer dps etc. don't exist: I said the idea that your list of six archetypes are some sort of universal standard that everyone follows is rubbish. It would be stupid to claim that "dps" doesn't exist since it's simply a descriptive term. It's that you try to argue that you have to have a tank, a semi-tank, a melee dps, a healer, a ranged dps and a ranged cc that I have a problem with." Please, describe the party you used to beat PotD. "Rubbish." Now, that is some good argument! Just quote half of what I said and say it's rubbish. Incrível. "Well I imagine writing a fully fleshed out companion is much more time consuming that adding in some of this other content, but honestly I suspect they've placed her at 5 million as a tool to encourage backing. Remember that they've said that they'll allow funds raised after the campaign ends to count towards her stretch goal so I'm guessing they're hoping they'll reach that over the next few months." You know why they add Xoti in a small stretch goal? Because they had no healers and a lot of players don't like to play with a healer as the main character, but hey... as you said, healers don't exist. "If you need a different character for all those roles it's only a sign of rigid character customization options. Thank god you have to actually get tactically creative with your characters now instead of having to get one dude per role every time. It made it incredibly dull." That is why PoE is so good for me, any character can fill all of those roles. Expect for the healer role.

Speak for yourself, many of us actually like those sidekick concepts and see it as the best chance we get for them. Personally I would rather see them drop Ydwin and do the dwarf as the 8th companion instead but I'm sure you wouldn't like that. I would like it! Just make that dwarf an animancer. To be honest Pillars of Eternity really needs a good dwarf... Sagani was so... dull.

Aloth had a huge potential to be a full anime character... A cute, skinny passive elf who hates to get into fights that has an alter ego that love fights and getting into trouble! And he didn't go towards that... far from it.

It was Obsidian that created her, not the community we just liked the idea. I'm more interested in Ydwin than any of the other companions, because she is an original concept, she is an animancer, when was the last time you had an animancer companion? Never, because animancy is from the universe of Eora. Now... when was the last time you had a pirate companion? Or a ship captain as a companion? I guess you can find a game or two... But if we go with your logic, Aloth is a huge anime character...

Maybe someone from Obsidian will see this poll and talk some sense into Josh... everyone wants Ydwin, just cancel those 4 sidekicks, yes, they are somewhat cool but I'm quite sure that almost everyone would prefer a fully companion than 4 sidekicks...

We need to send your idea to Josh and Carrie.