Elkor_Alish

Just an aside, was there really anything wrong with Resolve? In my playthroughs, I found Perception and Resolve the primary attributes for my Paladin, with Dex and Intelligence my second tier. Con and Might were my dump stats for the most part. I mean, I had five other dudes to build for combat support, but only one for dialogue and discovery. All he really needed to do was be competent and hold his own. Which he did. Better than Durance, that is for damn sure.

The objection is to the allusion toward mysticism, which is intrinsic to all real world religions. Paladin's in PoE were more akin to warrior philosophers, which was rather novel really. I happen to agree with them actually, as partial as I am to the traditional fantasy concept of paladins, it was refreshing to see them recast. Especially after the storyline of the first installment which left no doubt that while the the gods may be powerful and useful, they are certainly unworthy of veneration or worship. More than anything they all need to be taken out for the good of all humanity, and demi-humanity.

Ah okay. That puts things into perspective.

lol I am pretty sure we wear different collars, but just what line of work are you in Achilles?

I think a company should stand by their statements. If they make a deadline, I would like to think the integrity of their brand means enough to them they will move heaven and earth, shoulder any amount of billable hours, and make it happen. When I am not on ships, I am usually doing construction, and in these fields so many things are contingent upon one another that deadlines have to be met. Even when it means no days off and eighteen hour days of ***tty. ***king. Work. I also realize the world that reality reigned in has mostly moved on. Probably for the better, but I will miss it. I don't care about additional swag. I don't want some sort of compensation. I just want them to know what they are talking about and deliver on their promises. Just be grown ups. Life is messy, things happen, they missed a deadline and its not really a big deal, but if the game is not solid when it ships. . .If it is some buggy, unplayable mess like say Deliverance: Kingdom Come (XBX1, I saw it on console first so that was where I bought it) I will be deeply disappointed.

The only balance I want is for villains to be made with the same system PCs are, and actually equipped with the gear they are using. No invisible buffs, no hidden enhancements, no ridiculous stat allocations or abilities not open to the PC (unless it is somehow justified and explained contextually in the game). That to me would be perfect. Don't balance their forces because of my arbitrary party restrictions, position and populate NPCs in a way which makes sense. Ideally, if I see a badass NPC, I would love to know I could copy everything about them to do it myself. And no scaling. No tiered zones. High risk, high reward. Just have everything make sense. I like an element of risk in exploration, makes the game exciting, so if I decide to pillage NPC apartments and steal their poorly tended wealth and stumble upon a high level vampire sleeping through his day in a basement, that is perfectly fine by me even if losing the encounter wipes hours of progress.

I've been guilty of this, though lately roleplaying opportunities are becoming rarer. I like to conscript characters from books I've loved (usually all from the same book) and sort of treat that game like a continuation if it shares enough similarity. It seems as though a lot of contemporary developers like to dictate the experience they want players to have, and most characters in RPGs are already more defined than I would prefer. Like in Fallout 4. I could name my character Rick Deckard, I could make him look reasonably like a young Harrison Ford. I could run around in with a trenchcoat, fedora, and pistol (edit: I even restricted myself to only taking perks which suggested he was a replicant and not really human at all, running around with a skinjob Curie). I could adopt a combat and quest play style sort of reflective of his general personality. . .But then every dialogue exchange and cinematic would just ruin the illusion (especially how every choice was 1.) I will do this 2.) I will do this 3.) I will do this, or; 4.) I will do this later. . .and then that terrible voice)

Well, I am going to be flying out as of May 1 so I may not get to play it for another year or so now, but at least I can look forward a fully patched and stable experience when I get to it

It sounds like reactivity Deus Ex:HR had at the start of the game. If you take too much time hostages you were send to save will be dead already. It seems less like choice, as more like devs bypassing expected behaviour (game always waits for players). If it doesn't get any reactivity beyond loosing on "town defence" than it is disappointing. Still, a positive thing in a campaign, in which every thing after the battle of Ostagar I found extremely dull and rigit. Deus Ex has always had those moments. In the first one there is a point where your brother (who is also augmented) starts shutting down while a grip of agents are incoming. The mission is to escape and leave him behind. His dialogue is to escape and leave him behind. If you try to stay and fight with him, he will die in a hail of gunfire (there are a lot of them), but if you ambush the agents in the lobby or stairwell and take them all out before they can reach his room he will live through the rest of the game. There are also hostages in the subway who will be shot if you **** around too long in the air ducts trying to infiltrate, and who will all be blown up if you are seen at any point trying to rescue them. And then there are also two mini bosses whom you face at different times, or not at all, depending upon choices you have made throughout the game, which is also pretty cool. edit: I will never understand devs who think content people may not experience is wasted, because having a dynamic experience which is different from your friends who are also playing is what makes you replay a game you would otherwise forget about as soon as something else comes out

Dark. I like to do a perfect run after I have finished a game and have a complete idea of how everything works, but nothing beats figuring things out for the first time.

In IWD I would run a full party of thieves. It depends largely upon the system, but with mechanics like flanking and sneak attacks, in addition to being general skill monkies. . .Rogues are just the best.

Now that is a worthy mention. It was an inspired way of incorporating lore. . .and I will be honest with you, I pretty much never trusted another Gnome I met after this quest. If they had a half orge bodyguard, and they all did, I just could not see them as anything but complicit. I think the various abandoned vaults one encountered in Fallout, particularly New Vegas, were also clever ways of letting you experience lore, but none of them really rivaled this though.

So I have noticed the topic of writing, and specifically satisfying quests, brought up in a couple different threads. Since these are things which I also find very important, I thought I would launch a discussion on the most memorable moments from other games. For me? The first that comes to mind is pretty recent, it was called The Flea of Cyrene from Assassin's Creed Origins. To start this quest, you perform a Leap of Faith off of a temple in Cyrene, and a little kid spots you, then asks you to perform similar jumps off of other locations around the city. After each, more children gather around, commenting on your actions, speaking to one another, spouting the sort of inane madness which young children are prone to (some eight year old girl, for instance, tells you come back and marry her in ten years). . .And like. . .I really liked it. It was a very human moment. It reminded me of being a kid and building BMX ramps, or playing basketball, when that odd adult would come over and show off, leaving us all impressed and rabidly motivated for the rest of the day. I hate saying it, but PoE didn't have anything like that for me. . .So what side quests stuck with you so vividly that they stand out with distinction? Who knows, maybe if the devs are listening, we will get more than mere fetch, carry, and kill content going forward :D

Could not agree more. Nothing to add whatsoever to the first two points. As to the third. Suppression really didn't bother me to any great degree, but I find the idea itself irksome in the extreme. It is an inelegant way to handle issues of balance, and balance is really only an issue when you are trying to dictate the experience you want players to have - a concept which I find incredibly problematic in the first place and earnestly believe has no place in an RPG. Some people are into optimization, and if over powered play is what they enjoy, who the hell does it hurt in a single player game? As for me, I just dislike the tedium of tracking down the redundant armor piece. . .Which in PoE wasn't really an issue since there were really only a handful of aesthetically pleasing but also inherently effective arms and armor to choose from. So long as Dreadfire isn't any worse in this regard I won't complain, but it doesn't strike me as anywhere near a necessary consideration as the first two points.

The first video game which really changed my perception, expectation, and play style was Deus Ex. In the opening, some terrorists have taken over Ellis Island and as a newly recruited member of a UN peace keeping force, you are sent in to take them out. My first playthrough I killed them all with typical run and gun tactics. . .At the end, I was remonstrated for not trying harder to find a more humane solution. I had failed missions before, I had had my balls busted by NPCs in other games, but for some reason, that stuck. So I restarted, and Splinter Cell'ed my way through the game, knocking out every enemy. Tasers on the ones in tech suits, gas to immobolize agents then a bludgeon to the back of the head, tranq darts on the humans. And it was really satisfying. In the process of sneaking around, I also found a lot of content you would never see any other way, Little conversations NPCs would have with each other, phone calls they would answer, behaviors they had been coded with. Sometimes I would see things really revealing and impactful. It allowed me to really immerse myself in the game and enjoy it. It was just hugely rewarding. A couple years later, I played through the first Halo sneaking and using mostly just my gun butt except where I had company. And, as strange as that sounds, you can do it. 70% of the enemies are idle or literally asleep, even the huge behemoth guys go down in one hit if you slap them in the orange patch on their lower back. . .Until, of course, you reach the Flood, and then it becomes a whole different game. But even in Halo, there are lines of dialogue and interactions in the game which you would never see unless you go in quiet. But I also like to save everyone, I can't tell you how many times I reloaded on Legendary playing the same scenario over and over again until I would save every soldier in every scene. . .But as tedious, time consuming, and ultimately frustrating as the process was, the results were always deeply satisfying. So that is what I like to play. Stealthy super heroes. Whether it is Deliverance Kingdom Come, or Fallout or the Elder Scrolls, my approach is pretty consistent. For games like this, which force you to play a determinate class, I almost always opt for offensive rogues (melee as opposed to gimmicks and gadgets), except where I find the experience lacking. I hated the rogues in POE and opted for a paladin instead. The sheer lack of skillpoints just made rogues completely unfun. I had to choose between infiltration and a variety of dialogue options, and in the end went with the latter because I like options and will always go with whatever approach gives me more of them. Rogues were just way too limited, ironically, as they are usually the class which relies most upon their abundant skills. Of course, when I read that the number of achievements one unlocked in the first game would result in options for the second installment, I went through a played a variety of classes and styles I would never have otherwise considered, and while some of it was fun, I can't really say I enjoyed any of it. So yeah, hope that answers your question. This all seems really personal though, I can imagine it is very interesting to snyone other than myself :D

If I understand Gromnir correctly (never easy, enjoyable, or a certainty) Alpha Striking as a tactic I employed only as a last resort usually in lieu of save scumming. The first time I jumped into White Marches I was woefully unprepared for it. I think I hit Crägholdt Bluffs with a level 10 party and consequently had to ambush and kite my way through every encounter. Aside from that, I was always running around in Sneak Mode to reveal hidden objects and traps, but never allocated any points in that direction, so it was merely slower rather than advantageous. Once I got the hang of the game mechanics, I found combat occasionally frustrating, rarely interesting, but nearly never taxing.

I found the majority of weapons pretty uninteresting to be honest, but the ones which did stand out certainly weren't soulbound. Spelltongue was pretty special, Drake's Bell was very useful, but far and beyond my favorite was Puitènte med Príncipi. I can't remember my skill point allocation, but on my solo wizard run, I remember that thing (along with Blast) alone was able to keep most trashmobs flattened throughout entire encounters which allowed to me conserve my spell usage quite efficiently. Between that and tentacles, most of that run was a breeze.

I pissed off Bereath. I liked the idea of double crossing death. How many mortals can make that claim? I left a consolation prize, they got Thoas for eternity. Even if they don't have a sense of humor, they have to appreciate that one :D

You know, that is kind of an interesting question when you think about. I sort of like how games a couple decades ago were far harder to pidgeon hole. Like the original Deus Ex, where you can complete the entire game with maybe five combat encounters. The original Fallout was flexible enough to also accommodate a relatively pacifist playthrough. There is also The Longest Journey which, while not really an RPG, always felt to me like it should have been and sort of missed its calling. Only a rare few truly extraordinary titles allow sufficient freedom for a player to elect their own experience and still be satisfying without relying upon combat as filler content.

I like the concept, but I sort of think PoE is the wrong platform. Maybe I am alone on this, but I found combat was the weakest aspect of this game. 90% of all encounters were against trash mobs, and only a few distinguished themselves as being fun, let alone memorable. Increasing lethality with random variables wouldn't solve what is fundamentally lacking in the vast majority of encounters, and in fact might even make them even less challenging when the RNG favors the player. The one thing I did like about the combat as designed though, was tactful positioning trumped raw power. You could tackle things, like the dragons, at levels lower than recommended by placing your people intelligently prior to kicking off hostilities. Ambuscades worked terrifically well.

I am familiar with the background, I chose it myself, though I opted for the White That Wends since it seemed more analogous with being a Pale Elf. I never intended to suggest mine were solutions elegant, only that elegant solutions were possible, my point was to contrast economy against extravagance. As to my prior statements, I stand by them. Difficulty should never be a deterrent, pity the species which believes otherwise.

I owe you one. thank you very much!

I am not really qualified to answer this, but I seem to recall in an article on precisely this topic it was mentioned there would be cameos and encounters which would be influenced by decisions ported over from a comprehensive save, which sort of suggests that selecting the initial variables at launch will be more general. Sort of how like in Mass Effect many of the smaller quests, like negotiating to have a soldier's body autopsied, would only be referenced with an import.

Can you upload it at higher resolution on Imgur? That Photobucket site is just terrible. Alright, so I have two files I can offer you. The original and additionally the one I tried to crop in the hopes it would save you some time and trouble. I can't seem to embed the pictures themselves, I get some weird error message from the board when I try, so I am sorry to say links will have to suffice. I am terribly sorry, https://imgur.com/2LpyHbU - cropped https://imgur.com/9zIjslH - full

Your pessimism is rivaled only by your assumptions. To have a decision acknowledged in a game which calls itself an RPG is not an unreasonable expectation, especially for a genre which prides and defines itself upon choice and consequence. The query which launched this conversation did not ask for quests or elaborate detail, merely acknowledgment. Elegant solutions could be found which did not necessitate unnecessary complication. They could use NPCs in any home who meet the appropriate racial requisite, if the home is modest, perhaps they have fallen on hard times and the reunion and ensuing dialogue could just be catching up. Perhaps they'd been murdered by a rival and a small quest could be introduced to investigate it, a quest available to all but intensely personal for a select few, or maybe all that remains is their name etched upon a mausoleum. Perhaps they departed for the Dyrwood, in search of their child, leaving one with the unanswered question as to whether they had been lost in Eothas' wake. . .And that is literally a few thoughts just off the top of my head without any previous consideration. The possibilities are endless really. There is no reason a satisfactory solution could not be found, and even less reason why it should not be attempted.