WOLFGEIST

You sure about that?

This is what I am thinking while reading posts in the beta threads. As a non-beta tester and a big fan of the Pillars 1 system (by far the best system for party-based crpgs ever, imho) I'd like to ask the beta -testers: In general, do you believe the new system is better, worse or just as good as the old, just doing things differently? IMO I liked the combat and classes of PoE 1 better, BUT: - This is a very early version - Multi classing has a lot of promise

Auto pause on enemy cast will trigger when an NPC casts a spell seemingly anywhere far offscreen in the fog of war.

Personally I have 0 interest in a melee ranger outside of some flavored abilities that would use ranger specific weapons like axes and hunting knives. Ideally I'd love to have a micro intensive ranger with all sorts of interesting abilities and utility. Rangers thematically should be trapping experts but traps are somewhat narrow in scope in PoE. I really think we should have various types of shots like crippling, blinding, concussive, etc as well as an AOE "rain of arrows" style attack with hunting/warbows. Imagine a large list of shots you could choose akin to Cipher/Wizard spells. THAT would be great. The interaction between ranger and pet should be more involved than just "both get bonuses if they attack the same dude". There should be coordinated attacks, like where your pet leaps onto an enemy and exposes them for a vulnerable shot (though I realize that not all pets attack like that). Or even a pet ability that quickly exposes an enemy to which you have a small window to land a crippling arrow. That may few way too micro intensive for some but I think it sounds fun. I don't know, maybe I'm being too idealistic/picky.

Why would that make sense? If you don't like it, don't use it.

I think the new system will become much easier the more we use it. Right now, reading stuff like "awareness inspiration" seems weird because we're not used to it. Soon enough we'll be so accustomed to it that it will be intuitive. I'm sure MANY people had the same complaint about Pillars 1 coming from BG2.

Well, I suppose a vertical slice in PoE2 would include all of those mechanics. Might not be ideal in terms of playing but it exposes us to each individual mechanic for the most part. Although this is called a "beta" Josh has stated that it is an alpha build which is good to hear, it feels very rough. I'm surprised the game is launching so soon (relatively) but i suppose they have a very clear idea in regards to their production pipeline and it's just a matter of grinding it out. Most of the feedback they want is in relation to ways that the game might be "broken" through powerful multiclassing combos AFAIK. Although it seems even with multiclassing we're quite limited in what we can do with every ability per class pulling from it's own pool. With a ranger, for instance, you're only going to be able to use 2-3 abilities per encounter, that doesn't leave much room to "break the game" so to speak, even combined with other classes. That's my limited experience though, we should never underestimate people's ability to break games

Personally I would like to hear your input in particular. You're seemingly one of the most knowledgeable people in terms of game mechanics for the first game. I agree with most of the posts here. Josh said that the most valuable feedback is regarding multiclassing balancing which leads me to believe they are very aware of many of the superficial issues with the game. And why wouldn't they be? I'm hoping there will be more options for customization (non class restricted abilities), that was one of my favorite things about the first game even though I realize that could make it much harder to balance.

If you're on Steam, make sure you go to the Pillars DLC list and download it.

I mean, every encounter is mapped out and you know about every spell, stat, item, etc. If you know everything about the game is simply has to be easy unless it's impossible or random chance plays a larger factor. You simply have to find ways to challenge yourself. Try playing without Confusion/Dominate spells. Try playing with no magic or enchanted items. Etc.

Thank you for that table. I will now try to get my prestige higher as it's been sitting around 50 for some time now.

I strongly agree with Dragon Age: Origins. Amazing game. If you want something a bit different try Hard West: A tactical turn based strategy game set in the "Weird West" (i.e. the wild west but with vampires and stuff like that). Of course you could play Tyranny which is another Obsidian RPG, i haven't had a chance to play it yet but it looks great. i also recommend Fallout 1 & 2 if you haven't played them and if the outdated graphics and UI don't turn you off. Also, if you're a fan of Cyberpunk I strongly recommend you check out the Shadowrun games! Shadowrun Returns, Shadowrun Dragonfall, and Shadowrun: Hong Kong. Oh, and how could i forget? Wasteland 2, another brilliant RPG. Haven't gotten to play this yet but it's VERY highly touted.

As for dancing and puking - those are assets created by animators. Do you really think the game designers or programmers are spending time creating animations? Or that animators should instead be designing game mechanics?

"It just feels like such a game-y sort of thing." There's a really good reason for that - PoE is actually a game! "Food should exist only so people have energy and don't die of starvation." Games aren't intended to mimic real life. IRL we have a very strong incentive to eat, our biology rewards us greatly for it. It feels good, gives us energy, keeps us alive. It's enjoyable. We can't confer those inventives directly into the game, it's always going to be clicking a button to eat and there's no biological feedback mechanic to reward us. So, within games we have to sort of amalgamate concepts and give them a way to work within there scope of a game. We can't taste or enjoy the food but we can get a decent buff to our character which feels rewarding. Eating simply to stave off death confers no incentives and simply becomes a meaningless chore, although it works well in survival games where the goal is simply to survive as long as food remains difficult to procure in which the hunt for food pays off with the reward, but that's a much different topic although comparable to loot drops in a game like PoE.

While many of the mechanics in PoE may be unfamiliar to us and may seem strange on the surface, there really are multiple good reasons for the way nearly every mechanic works. To get a better idea behind the thought process behind the design of POE you should watch Josh's presentation on attributes here: Every mechanic design is a fine balancing act and is but one part of an ecosystem. One function can easily affect many others. I believe the mechanics and design of POE are actually brilliant if not hard to appreciate at first. If pre-buffing were enabled, fights would become too easy. If they buffed enemies to compensate then pre-buffing would become a tiring chore which personally does not sound fun to me. As for buffs being suppressed, this prevents people from abusing mechanics. In BG2 for example, my Korgan had so many immunities and spell defense stacked that by the time I hit the Underdark I could basically auto win every fight. In POE I have to manage my ecosystem of equipment and can't just blindly dump all of the good stuff into one person. Camping is designed so that we can't just rest after every fight, we again must consider when and what abilities to use, otherwise we'd just use all of our bar abilities in every fight which takes all of the thought out of resource management.