Luckmann

They name dropped Baldur's Gate and Athkatla. If you're going to use those cities as the benchmark as big cities then I expect something similar in size. Indeed. But despite this, I'm still going to be lenient in my criticism of that particular aspect of the game. Mainly because despite how small and un-city-like Defiance Bay and Twin Elms feel, I would have to say that they're the two parts of the game that I actually enjoyed the most. I rank them higher than the mega dungeon experience, higher than the wilderness exploration, and about a bajillion times higher than the stronghold. If we want to discuss underwhelming experiences based on expectations, the Stronghold is probably the biggest let-down in the game. The game has bigger issues, I think, but purely from expectations vs. reality, Stronghold was just.. such a disappointment. If there are other parts of the game that are good and just doesn't fit together, the Stronghold feels like something really good that wasn't assembled at all.

I tried to quickly replicate this but failed. The points seem to save for me.

Problably related to this issue in some way: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/77258-changes-from-console-command-skill-does-get-resetted-after-a-reload/ It could be that it simply does not recalculate skill bonuses that do not come specifically from items correctly on loading and probably has something to do with how they "fixed" the stacking of bonuses that was breaking characters in pre-1.03. Edit: Couldn't actually replicate the issue of Command-Skilled Skills resetting. :| So it might be unrelated to that issue.

Alright, so, I've homed in on the issue. The bonuses are not being re-applied on loading. So I can use the IEMod's RemoveTalent Command to remove the talent(s), and then use the basic AddAbility Command to re-add them, but as soon as I save/load, it is broken again. Thanks, Obama! Because I assume that the installer has been patched.

There is a range of "hidden" Talents in the game, that were cut during Beta, and isn't normally assignable during levelups. However, they were addable through the AddAbility command. However, 1.03 seem to have broken them. Not removed them, just broken them. And I'm asking why. I was using them to get around what I consider to be design flaws, and adding raw Skill Points is far from a workaround. I realize that they are not meant to be used, but breaking them just seems senseless to me. Unfortunately, I wasn't smart enough to do a backup of my ObjectBundles before patching, and I can't restore functionality. Guess I'll just stop playing, I'm tired of fighting the game at every turn. Edit: Actually, this is only broken for pre-existing characters, and re-adding the Talent creates a duplicate talent that actually works, so this is a legit bug after all.

No tailors in PoE as far as I've found. I went for the longest time looking for something nice to wear until I found out that there just isn't any (if you're a male). There's a very limited selection of clothing in the game and it looks arbitrarily different depending on if you're male or female, and I've seen very, very, very little clothes drop from enemies. Come to think of it, I can only specifically remember one "enemy" (it's optional) dropping a set of clothes (Vailian Clothing). Other than that I think I've just found Dyrwoodan Clothing and Dyrwoodan Fur (also called "Dyrwoodan Clothing", but it looks different).

Humm... hey, maybe you're right. I was kind of assuming that it'd be possible to give higher resistances (and therefore also immunities) to specific status effects at least, e.g. Prone. I don't think it'd be necessary to distinguish between, say, Slicken and Knockdown for this to work; just have some enemies which can't be Blinded, Paralyzed, or Prone'd. If the system really doesn't allow for that then yeah, that does need fixing. I may gbe wrong, but aren't there e.g. some items that give increased defenses against certain status effects, especially "prone"? If so, that sounds as if they do have a system in place to specifically defend against status effects. A drake could be then given +200 defense vs prone and all attacks that would cause prone would be converted into misses. I don't think so, but I may very well be wrong. But either way, I'd prefer something more granular. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to smack a drake over the head and knock him to the ground.

Double-checked, and Type is now listed underneath Level. Must've been an unlisted fix in 1.03.

Wha.. what? When? Where? I could swear that I checked the bestiary.. The fact that creature type wasn't listed was the biggest piece of BS in the bestiary, but I didn't see it in the patch notes...

And make them... slip and fall? Have you ever seen bird coated in oil fly? Edit: Eldoth overload. No, but we're not talking about birds, really. I will admit that it's less of an issue now when Slicken is a simple knockdown AoE instead of the AoE Hazard it should be, but on account of that change being stupid, the point stands.

And make them... slip and fall?

No such thing. They're all Kith. Now, I think that there should be a very basic information about all the Kith races in the Bestiary, fully filled out, from the beginning, but for your question, no, no such thing. Unless they've been assigned for some arbitrary and artificial reason, they should all have the same stats as you do, no modifiers save from level and equipment.

I think PrimeJunta meant AD&D 2E - because there's nothing like that in my 2E manual. Also, "Breaking Off From Melee" is clearly different from AoO:s. You do not need to be engaged in melee to trigger AoO:s in 3e/3.5e/PF (and not 4e either, but I'm not sure). Furthermore, Engagement in PoE is not AoO:s either. It works differently. So PrimeJunta is correct in that AD&D does not have AoO:s, and I think Sensuki is also correct in that I think PrimeJunta meant 2nd Ed.

Irony alert. What does Josh like? I'm certainly finding PoEs systems more puzzling than anything in the mad-as-a-box-of-frogs 2nd Ed AD&D. The combat is a mess, not a puzzle. If PoE:s combat was a puzzle, it'd be square peg, any hole, round peg, any hole, in fact, forget the shapes, peg, meet hole. Irony alert. What does Josh like? I'm certainly finding PoEs systems more puzzling than anything in the mad-as-a-box-of-frogs 2nd Ed AD&D. You keep saying this, which keeps puzzling me as I find P:E's mechanics incredibly straightforward and transparent, perhaps even too much so. What exactly is puzzling you? I don't think it's a puzzle as such, but there's some valid critique against the actual mechanics going on. It's anything but transparent. It doesn't need that transparency, because it's really not a puzzle, and like I've said many times, you can just kinda do the drunken dance through the game, but it's.. obtuse. For example, we know that variant DR modifiers operate on percentages based on the core DR, for armour. Where is this explained? Nowhere. We know that all damage calculations take fractions into account, but all we see is rounded numbers. Where is this explained? Nowhere.

... Q_Q

Nothing counts as Molyneux-level overpromising except the promises of Molyneux himself.

On some level, I think the obvious choice would've been to allow the player to freely choose what colour he wants on selected character, allies, neutrals, and opponents, through the options menu. Wouldn't even need a colourblind mode; the colourblind could just change them into a colour they prefer.

Do I just suck? Do you all have massive Edér buffs due to bugs? Since the guy's pretty fragile to me, my main barbarian double-wielder was more fight resistant than he was. I play on Hard. And I took a bunch of defensive talents and Eder has best defensive gear in my part (+10 to all saves and +10 to deflection). I'm not sure, I'm just taking a bit of a stab in the dark and it feels like a bit of a band-aid, but we know that the game does deal in fractions in a lot of cases, and it might be a good idea to extend the base rolling to deal with that and impose percentage-based diminishing returns on stacking values such as Accuracy and Deflection. The flatness of the current system clearly has a hard time dealing, beyond the theoretical stage, and greatly incentivizes this "all or nothing"-approach to damage and defence. I'm not sure though, someone would probably have to write a small thesis on it and come up with concrete numbers for the argument. It was just a thought.

Problem is the use of one-trick hard counters. Kangaxx can't do anything if he can't Imprison you or Death Spell you. What if he actually dealt damage on top of that? The issue is just having an all or nothing situation. There's nothing wrong with Hard Counters but once you've countered the main problem, there still should be a challenge IMO. I can see Josh's problem, but I don't think he thought it through all the way. It is like the arguments around Pre-Buffing. I don't think even you can say that Pre-Buffing did not have any issues at all in the IE games, but people get hung up on a ridiculous dichotomy based in the belief that either it works exactly like that, or you remove it completely. Nobody likes Save-or-Lose mechanics, and nobody likes the one-trick-ponies of Kangaxx & Co. Does this mean all hard counters needs to die? Of course not, that'd be nonsense. There are likely hundreds of ways to do it "properly" without falling into these extremes. Do I just suck? Do you all have massive Edér buffs due to bugs? Since the guy's pretty fragile to me, my main barbarian double-wielder was more fight resistant than he was. No idea. Edér is a beast in my game, and while he had two or three Attribute points too much (Per, Res and something else, I think; this was with pre-1.03 changes) I don't think that made much difference.

Humm... hey, maybe you're right. I was kind of assuming that it'd be possible to give higher resistances (and therefore also immunities) to specific status effects at least, e.g. Prone. I don't think it'd be necessary to distinguish between, say, Slicken and Knockdown for this to work; just have some enemies which can't be Blinded, Paralyzed, or Prone'd. If the system really doesn't allow for that then yeah, that does need fixing. It's of course possible to make such a system, but I don't think it's just about adjusting numbers. The underlying system needs quite an overhaul. And I'd prefer it if you could differentiate on a spell-per-spell basis, or use keywords/mechanics tags to do it. Let's say there's a "Concussive" tag that is shared by some Abilities and Spells, then you could have some formidable foes (Dragons, Ogres?) have an immunity (or high resistance) specifically vs. "concussive" spells. It would let you denote some Spells and Abilities as "Cold"; say, you could tag Chill Fog as "Cold", and then it's blinding effect would not work against Ice Elementals - the fact that Ice Elementals also have a super-duper high DR vs. Frost has nothing to do with it; they will obviously not be blinded by cold. Slicken could be marked with "Terrain" - and flying enemies, such as Drakes, would be immune to Terrain-based spells. And so on. This would of course be in addition to blanket immunities, such as Oozes not being able to become Blind or Prone at all, or undead Vessels being immune to Terrify and Frightened. I have to agree, the whole "enchantment" thing is IMO the 1st worst thing (2 being trap/lockpick XP) in PoE, totally ruining the joy of finding new weapons or armor. The only items which can be fun to get are (*shockingly*) those who cannot be enchanted! That should already speak for itself I think. Crafting doesn't really affect my game much (I ignored it) but enchanting actively dragged the game down even if you're not using it. This. Enchanting isn't fun, because found items have more interesting things, but then when you find the unique items, they don't feel unique and you kinda wish you could enchant them... but you can't. A unified system sorted under the enchanting mechanics was probably a bad idea in regards to itemization in this regard.

I don't think a completely different designer team is necessary. Just key changes to the makeup. And yes, of course, any changes along these lines would require abandoning Josh's ideas.

I don't think so. For example, I don't think there's even a mechanic for specifically resisting... anything. So it's not just numbers adjustment (far from it, I believe). Let's take the oft-cited problem of Slicken vs. drakes. Slicken targets Reflex, unless I'm completely off. Fail, you go Prone. You can bump up the drake's Reflex, but you can't give him resistance specifically vs. Prone. To further complicate matters, we'd probably be fine with making drakes go Prone with Knockdown, right? But not Slicken. So it's not just vs. Prone, but suddenly vs. a specific form of spell or ability. The same goes for Malekith's example. I don't even think it is possible to make Firearms freely punch through Arcane Veil, but at the same time allow 95% physical resistance (I would go so far as to say 100%; magical effects on weapons would still allow you to do that super-tiny amount of damage we'd see with 5% anyway). There's no numbers to adjust, the game needs new functions and it needs to use it. On a side note, I can't express how much I like the Arcane Veil idea. It's the exact kind of thing I think is needed. In spades. Massive spades. All over the game.

Past experience tells me when they say "balance changes" they mean "nerfs galore". Rather than crippling existing characters, which people have invested time and effort in (including PotD, Iron mode etc.), by ruining their abilities that are somehow "imbalanced" (in a single-player game, yeah right), how about buffing classes that are currently made of suck and plainly uninspiring (looking at you, paladin)? TL;DR: instead of weakening good classes, how about strengthening bad classes? That way everyone wins! I agree with the general sentiment of buffing bad classes rather than nerfing good ones, but why is it illegitimate to balance in one way, based on the argument that it doesn't need balancing in a single-player game, yet legitimate to balance in another? Your argument makes no sense. If you said that balance didn't matter at all in a single-player game, you'd have a point - I'd disagree and argue against that point, but it'd be there - but first suggesting that imbalance isn't a thing in a single-player game and then call on balancing is nonsense. I think you missed his point entirely.. and he makes a good one. Instead of nitpicking what he said in parentheses, please read his post again and try to take it in context. Instead of nerfing classes, buff the weak ones. This can work for singleplayer games, since it's only YOU playing and other people playing other classes will not care as much as in multiplayer games (see guildwars 2 forum flooded at the moment with turret engineer nerf posts and everyone calling for a nerf except people playing a turret engineer). How many people are calling for class nerfs in singleplayer game forums? Sorry if I made this sound too simplistic, but this way it can be understood. Most importantly with 50+ hours in your character will not be gimped all of a sudden (especially in POTD). So I wholeheartedly agree that this approach is better. Don't nerf classes, buff the weak ones. I didn't miss his point, I agree with the conclusion. I questioned the logic, because there was none. You'd know that if you had read my post.

But.. a scripted AI cycle of abilities is all it is. Yes, PoE:s is arguably more advanced (arguably) but it's the exact same thing. You learn how they behave, and you beat them based on that merit. So of course it's comparable.

Random enemies spawning at random without any rhyme or reason is the worst kind of lazy game design, all the way up there with inflated numbers. Having enemies pop up from nowhere in the middle of a battle would have me shutting down the game in sheer disgust. It works in a limited capacity when it makes sense, but the way you describe it, it just sounds like DA2:s nonsensical and random teleportation of enemies into battle.