Luckmann

Well first, I think they are consciously trying to do away with "good" and "evil" as concepts. Second, Pillars of Eternity only has 8 CNPC:s total, so it's not like one really has a choice in the matter either way. And I'd be utterly flabbergasted if any CNPC actually left you due to metagame circumstances (such as the Reputation score in BG1/2). I'd be surprised if they left you for anything whatsoever, bar directly and deliberately working against them or their goals (if any), precisely because PoE doesn't have the freedom to do so without crippling the player (again, only 8 CNPC:s).

This. So much this. Honestly, some of the current portraits really should go for the sake of consistency. People that still want them could still get them online or something, but they should be plucked out of the game. At this time in the development cycle and with already lacking a lot of potential combinations, I doubt it's going to happen, which I think is very unfortunate, but yeah. I've really grown to hate the hodpodge nature of some of the portraits compared to the overall style. They stand out as unfitting and unworthy, and really do look like placeholder material that should've been replaced with actual, "in style" art.

Now, Druid is probably a pretty good pick for a same-class party, I'm not arguing that, but I think you are the first one I hear mentioning "strong offensive melee/shapeshift abiity". Shapeshifting is currently rubbish. :| Generally, I agree with Sock that Chanters are probably the best class for a same-class party. They've got those stacking buffs, they're versatile, and they have powerful abilities.

Basic mechanics and such you can probably hit up on the Wiki, which shouldn't be hard to find. The specific mechanics are still changing, and anything added to the wiki would be out of date upon the release of each Backer Beta, which of course means that people don't bother updating it, so at best, large parts of the wiki is actually several builds out of date.

[citation needed] I'm surprised it took that long for that rubbish to be called out. I'm on moderation, so it usually takes a couple of hours for each of my posts to show up.

Yeah, no kidding. I've downloaded ~32GB since I got up this morning, like, 5 hours ago. And by that I don't mean that it took 5 hours, just that it's about what I've downloaded since I got up. 25GB is nothing in today's market. I realize that we shouldn't squander digital space and bandwidth on principle, but by comparison, 25GB really isn't that much.

Yes, everyone knows that. The "Red Boot" is just a label for piecemeal DLC.

On the other hand, while I think that Wizards suffer from a lack of thematically interesting spells in some regards (let's say I want to be a Fire Wizard, there's only 1-2 fire spells per Spell Level, it seems), it is hi-lar-ious to play a fire-based wizard. I just created a fire-based wizard for the first time, and although this is rather end-game-ish (I was level 8, the rest of the BB party I didn't even levelup, I just wanted to test Wall of Flame for you), with Scion of Flame (+20% Burn Dmg), I turned the fight against Medreth into a burning inferno, ending up killing my party along with Medreth's group, firewalls crossing the field of battle, balls of flame roiling through everyone, fireballs flying. Good times. But yeah, I think that Wall of Flame should definitely cause FF AoE, but it doesn't.

There is Friendly Fire in the game, but it doesn't apply to all spells, and I can confirm that in v435, Wall of Flame does not cause Friendly Fire, for whatever reason. The game is a bit inconsistent in what causes Friendly Fire and what doesn't. Some spells say "AoE", some say "Hazard AoE", and another says "Foe AoE". Out of these, I know that Foe AoE is only supposed to hit enemies, but the rest I have no clue. So it's all guesswork. The description of Wall of Flame suggests that it's supposed to cause Friendly Fire, though. But it doesn't. And goddammit the whole "Combat Only" thing is annoying. I couldn't even initiate with Wall of Fire just to try it out, I had to actually start combat, so forget about setting up a Wall of Fire when initiating combat.

First, OP, if you're paying for 5 Mb/s but only get 500 KB/s Down, you should probably get a new ISP. It is very common that Upload speed is restricted (usually at a 1/10 rate) but marketing something as 5 Mb/s but only provide 500 KB/s Down sounds fishy as hell. I didn't want to say anything, but I have this vague recollection of that, too. Not sure where I picked it up, anyway. When I'm getting the game, it's via GOG, either way, so it doesn't really matter. I doubt Obsidian would interfere with that, really. Digital distribution is up to Steam/GOG to decide themselves, and "pre-loading" is just a feature that Steam has that GOG doesn't. On the flipside, GOG gives you the game forever and never mucks with it, but Steam gives no such guarantee. I'd be surprised if there's no preload on PoE for Steam users.

The UI and associated changes is pretty much the primary reason I'm staying away from the "Enhanced" Editions. It looks absolutely horrendous. When I saw the out-of-place fat, bolded selection circles, I nope'd straight out of that.

[citation needed]

Do not feel bad. Most people that speak English as their first language do not understand many words in english. My girlfriend came home from school the other day (she's studying basic English for reasons, even though she's German, living in Sweden, and we speak fluent English at home) and I just learned the word "genial". Which apparently has nothing to do with genius. English (and most languages, really) have an astonishing amount of words to describe almost anything, and when it doesn't, it's soon to borrow it from a language that does. I consider myself fairly adept at my own language, yet damn, I keep running into new words.

Realism is contextual.

It's Offensive in that it forces itself on an enemy, and has an offensive effect. You could argue that any offence is "active defence", in that killing someone means they can't hurt you. Which is exactly why Offence almost always is more important and has a bigger impact than Defence. It is offensive when it deals with the enemy, whether it hurts the enemy, disables them, or interrupts them. It is defensive when it deals with yourself, protection you from the offence of the enemies. Interrupt is the offence to which Concentration is the defence. I'm not arguing with you, really, I'm just making the offence/defence definitions as I used them clear. Your point can basically be summarised into the adage "The best defence is a good offence", and I completely agree, which is my entire point.

Molyneux always had really great ideas and very high aspirations (or at least he seemed to have), but he's never actually delivered on the hype he's built, not anywhere close. Some good(-ish) games came out of it, but at the same time.. eh. So I completely share the sentiment. Well RPS is a pretty pathetic company, so no surprise, really. They're desperately trying to win back what little credibility they ever had (which doesn't say much) and the easiest way to do that is to start stomping right over the easiest target available. "Look, we strong, look, we harsh! Mwwwuuuh!". I'm not defending Molyneux here, not even a little (nor am I backing him over with the bus), but damn, RPS needs 99cc of testosterone and they try to compensate by acting out with a stick. Look at us, we're manly, rarrgh. Oh please.

That's true. And it'd probably be for the better.

Honestly though, I'm pretty much so poisoned by games and gaming fantasy (oddly it's not so common in literary fantasy) that when someone says "monk" in context, I automatically think of a martial arts asianesque monk, even if it's a westernized setting, it just means that they're westerners practicing martial arts of some kind, and mastering their inner strength or personal soul or something along their lines (if it's straight-up asianesque, then it's obviously just called 'Chi'). I don't think of the meek, vaguely homoerotic, cheese-making winery priests of post-Dark Ages' Europe.

Actually it's a surname, supposedly stemming from some aryan poet in antiquity (or further back), and it just happens to be mine, too. But yeah, PoE is moddable. Exactly how moddable remains to be seen. On one hand, they've said that they want to support modding and modders, but on the other hand, like Sensuki said, they haven't actually externalized everything, nor replied on the question as to whether they're going to or not. There's also supposedly going to be a Pillars of Eternity Nexus, officially supported, or at least that was the word way back when. So yeah, there's going to be mods in greater or lesser capacity. Hard to say, so far. But you can do some pretty fly stuff already. Bester & Sensuki appear convinced that they can mod abilities and mechanics enough to remove Engagement and actions related to it, and Bester has already (for the Backer Beta) released mods that frankly should already have been in the main game, solving minor issues and peeves (the NPCs-and-allies-are-both-green; I hate it, I hate it, I hate it; Cyan for the win!).

Absolutely, I think that the available deities are all a bit meh, personally, and I'd love it if expansions added more deities and properly integrated the choice of deity into the main game. Also, I'd love it if there was a possibility, maybe through Talents or maybe on creation, to profess affinity to a deity without being a Priest. Or if not, then at least for there to be plenty of narrative support for venerating a deity (or deities) of your choice.

Yes, you may even preorder one now from Amazon. However, all retail physical copies will use Steam (no GoG.com option). Wow, that really sucks.

Well the reason no-one cared about the House Harond Guard is because everyone hates them. That being said, your reputation should definitely suffer, and it's rubbish that hostility works like it works at the moment, but yeah, it wasn't exactly great in the IE games either, so I'm not sure what we can expect on this.

Not the gentlemanly kind. Sure, pirates without class, u_u... Yeah... I really almost wish it were a lot more modular. I mean, I realize no one wants to spend 1 proficiency point every other level on a single weapon or anything. But, what if we got to pick 3 weapon focii at creation, then could take talents from there on out to take more if we'd like? Or, maybe the current groupings are simply tied to background, and don't take up a talent slot? Then you build on top of that. *shrug*. If we could have a talent that simply granted 4 basic weapon proficiencies, even, instead of just giving us a specific 4, then just let us pick them, and apply those modifiers. Then, maybe as you specialize further, the number of choices gets smaller. "You're decent with these 5 things. You're good with these 3 things. You're awesome with this one thing." Or something similar to that. I'd like to make a melee-capable (not necessarily TANK) Wizard who uses a rapier, but, to do that, I have to give up other weapons I'd like to use as backups. I can't use a rapier, and alternatively a quarterstaff or something, because that's two completely different groupings. I think the idea of the grouped Focii are intended to represent a wide enough range of weapons to allow someone to use what they find even if they don't happen to find that one macguffin that just happens to be your favourite weapon. I think it's designed to avoid cherry-picking things, especially once you know the game. Like going for Two-Handed Weapons just because you know you'll get the Holy Avenger, or Warhammers for Crom Faeyr; leading you to ignore the many quite nice Clubs and Quarterstaffs. So instead, they give you a set, so you'll use this and that, and that, and maybe a bit of this.. but still be able to later use that one thing that you really want, for whatever reason, and also give those things no-one would otherwise use a place. It also guarantees that everyone is proficient with at least one ranged weapon, afaik. That being said, I'd really just like to see more overlap, and different combinations. I think the ideas of the developers (or at least my interpretation of those ideas) are actually really good, great even, and we should avoid the cherry-picking of the IE games. I just want to see.. more and more flavourful weapon focus groups. I can think of two on the top of my head; one for Swashbucklers (Rapier, Stiletto, Pistol, at least) and one for Fusiliers (all the gunpowder weapons, at least). They just need to prevent the bonuses from stacking (so that if each Weapon Focus group gives +6, taking two groups that both include Rapier does not give you +12).

The problem really is that we have no idea what narrative effects the Attributes will have, so it's all really a moot point. We can't discuss possible narrative effects and the narrative pros and cons of certain Attributes because we don't know the narrative. All we know is really the mechanical aspects, so that's why we discuss them. Until release, the narrative aspect of Attributes exists in a Schrödinger's Game state. It's interesting to guess about, but honestly we have no clue until we play it, so we have to assume that the narrative design is both terrible and/or glorious. We can't affect it in any meaningful way. And if we try, we might kill a cat or something, I don't know, I'm not good at metaphors.